Interesting post to get flagged and removed considering everything else I’ve posted in my life but sometimes life is that way. Wild that it happened overnight while certain threads lasted weeks but y’know.
So I’m going to repeat myself using less words: Nathanos is unlikeable IC because he’s got a bad personality and unlikeable OOC because he is propped up by terrible writing to meet challenges he never should have been able to. The rest of the forsaken rep in bfa is similarly weirdly written in at least some ways barring Zelling.
Real talk, I’m going to be salty about Zelling for about forever. It’s not that killing him is bad - it could have been done very well - it’s the overall context of both how he died and where that death leaves the Forsaken that really bothers me. For one thing, Zelling was a fresh, new, well-written character in an expansion that would ultimately deprive the Forsaken of their figurehead character who got almost all their development, so killing him leaves them with very, very few developed characters.
The other thing about it builds on my ooc dislike for Nathanos - consequence free, he and Sylvanas perform a summary execution of a Horde member in front of several other leaders of the Horde, take another Horde leader captive, and all but one person there disapprove but everyone is apparently so scared of man with bow that they just let it happen without complaint. It leaves a seriously bad taste.
I’m more salty about the fact they could have used Zelling as a backdoor to unlock Shaman for the Forsaken. But now that I’ve got my signature elf-look Blue-side, I’m now championing the complete removal of class restrictions across the board.
No, we just need the eventual light as antagonist prepatch to be everyone as paladins.
All shall be good in the world then and I am not saying this because Loh would sell out the orcs if Yrel offered the Zandas a place on top of the new world order by virtue of being light users.
My reaction to that whole scenario is still “Grom, what the HELL did you do?”
Because the whole Ogre Enslavement and Dying World and the fact Grom has tried to Genocide the Planet before, I’m not convinced the Mag’har were in fact the oppressed minority. Especially since Yrel and her group were going out of their way to make sure as few Orcs as possible were actually killed.
There’s also the fact AU Thrallette was the only Horde leader to side with Sylvanas. Not a good look there.
Oh believe me, I’m inclined to agree with you there.
That said, forceful conversion to a religion, enslavement of the mind and all that goes with it… not really much better in the long run since, like the Eredar before, it’s basically zealots we’ll have to kill. Only this time the flavor is banana, not lime.
Was that ever really shown to be the case, though? We’re TOLD by the Mag’har that people were forcibly converted and we know Xe’ra had a problem with the idea of consent, but we’re never really shown anything of the sort. Heck, when we first arrive in AU Draenor, we’re assumed to be Lightbound spies.
I’ve long stopped expecting any sort of answers, but everything from WoD tells me what we saw and were told isn’t the actual truth.
Eh. I think until we’re explicitly shown otherwise, occam’s razor would say that Blizzard just wanted to remind us the Light can be evil (which I will always maintain we already knew) and throw up a dark mirror to the Lightforged.
I’m not going to play through the scenario again for a variety of reasons but I recall that I did get the forced conversion vibe from the dialogue of antagonist npcs as well. Just won’t be able to confirm that because I don’t want to deal with it again.
But,
Yeah, I strongly doubt we’re going to ever get a definite yes or no on it. At least not until they show up again, which could be in a long time or never.
Generally speaking, I imagine the opening group of Mag’har to hop on board weren’t forcefully converted.
That being said. They do state the Draenei did start the war and have been more or less doing so in the Mag’har recruitment scenario which, in turn, I’m inclined to believe since they did murder Durotan (i.e, not Grom) and were attacking the Mag’har. This is more or less reinforced by Blizzard being about as subtle with the whole “spooky ghost noise light might not be pure gooooood woooooooo~” that was Xe’ra in Legion.
Because, you know, we couldn’t just stop punking the Scarlets for five seconds and write the in having proper build up to become a menace they could be.
i disagree with making Yrel a raid boss but I do realize that a yrel raid would offer some pretty dank draenei mogs and I care more about dress up than the story at this point
I’m gonna hop in and say that the Mag’har recruitment scenario is some of the most frustrating writing in the whole expansion. It raises a lot more questions than answers, brings us back to a setting that a lot of people would rather forget, appears to villain bat one of the most popular characters of that setting, and importantly was wholly unnecessary. I mean, we jump through tons of hoops and break time and space again to bring Mag’har orcs into the Horde, when there are perfectly good Mag’har in Outland, which we know is still around and accessible because Saurfang had to go there to get Thrall.
The Mag’har recruitment just confuses me specifically because of the Bronze Dragonflight.
Were you guys bored, yellow dragons? Or is this some ~long term~ time shenanigans that we will totally understand and get later?
Except last time we had a bronze dragon send someone back in time, we had two expansions having to clean the mess of that so I don’t really trust that it’s “got to be this way”.
I swear, it was like after all the Dragonflights lost their god-like powers in Cataclysm, Norzdomu didn’t actually lose his and he just dramatically poured sand out from his pockets and giggled like a maniac as he flew away.
I personally still support the ‘AU Yrel is a Dreadlord’ theory since we’ve seen light dreadlords and could use that to bring back normal Yrel as a protagonist in some form.
On the “Farewell, my love” thing, I think the pre-BFA story showing his regeneration made it fairly clear that there were romantic elements to the relationship. When they were alive, it’s heavily implied they were together, and she sought him out even after he was raised as Scourge. It’s very clear that he maintained (probably unhealthy) feelings towards her, and it’s …ambiguous as to how she feels about him.
When he suggests letting him die, for example
The fire faded from her eyes. For an instant, he caught a glimmer of the blue-gray light that used to shine within them.
Moreover,
The corners of Anya’s lips rose in a brazen curl. “Sylvanas defied a kingdom to name you ranger lord. She scoured the Plaguelands to reclaim you from the Scourge. And today she drew upon her most precious resource to restore your strength. Think upon these things, Blightcaller, and tell me how someone so cunning can be blind to the simplest of truths.”
Have we seen more than one? I was under the impression that there was only one guy who was in the Army of Light.
TBH it confuses me because we had a source of Mag’har that wouldn’t come with all the confusing story stuff, that compared better to the dark iron recruitment chain, just sitting in Garadar Village.
Again, we only see this from the Mag’har’s perspective. And the Lightbound attack specifically coincides with the latest Ogre uprising because the leader of the Ogres got himself Lightforged because, hey, the Mag’har had enslaved the Ogres.
As for killing Durotan…I’m just saying Grom is the one who drove Ner’zhul into active necromancy after threatening to wipe out the Shadowmoon if they couldn’t be “useful”. Man’s not above putting a knife in somebody’s back and lying about it to their kid. (Kind of how in the MU, Doomhammer never mentions to Thrall that while he and his dad were total bros, Doomhammer’s the one who revealed to Gul’dan where to find the exiled Durotan. Unwittingly, granted, but still.)
I’m just saying trusting the word of a Hellscream generally in this setting is a bad idea.
That really is the truth. I used to get into so many arguments back during the whole “Jania is a Dreadlord” nonsense. Now all I’d ask is if she’s going to drop any good loot.
And while it’s sad my apathy for the story has grown so much, we’re talking about the narrative a game that’s been getting constant updates for fifteen years. Credit where it’s due, it’s a wonder the writing hasn’t flown even farther off the rails honestly.
I know, it’s about as good of an idea as thinking humans in WoW are good allies who will help you defend your homeland when you’re in the same faction and not go attacking neutral nations to ‘drive a wedge between them and our geopolitical enemy’ since that’s how that works… pans camera over to Kalimdor