::The souls of the dead of the Barrens / Camp T surround Baine.::
Souls of the Fallen: You betrayed us. You are not your father’s son.
::Baine fights powerfully, but they’re as the wind to a mace. He swings through them, they rip his flesh.::
::Baine perseveres due to genetics and tauren ancestry. This cannot do. It will not do. Cairne’s spectre appears. He doesn’t even deign to breathe a word to Baine. With one swift swing, the Traitor-Chief’s body is broken.::
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The best moment would be Blizzard exploring more about our rooster and give them small arcs that span for an entire expansion about the betterment of their respective race faction
-Give Rokhan more spotlight as he with the Zandalaris make reparations to other tribes in the name of the horde to make better relationships with them and join the Horde as partners
-Taurens: Make the other tribes appear and explore their role at their current society, Highmountain aren’t the only ones with many tribes and this expand their rooster beyond Baine snd Hamuul.
-Forsaken: Bring Belmond back and invent or give some minor apothecary some development snd you get Maldraxxus on the forsaken.
-Orcs: Nazgrel returns and forbbide Golden to write Thrall as he gets back his power and spine until another shaman orc is developed enough to take his place or maybe a Warlock tp spice things up.
-Blood Elves, not much can do except move them to Suramar and take the broken isles for themselves and make a separation from kirin tor so they make their own magical hub
-Goblins: Sassy and Gazlowe need more development, especially the latter as he feels a bit out of the blue that got the job
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What if this was the pre-patch event?
Roll with me for a second. I can’t really see any reason to have any faction storylines while we are (canonically) supposed to be in the Shadowlands doing death crap, but what if the pre-patch event was instead of another stupid a-- world ending event, it was instead a series of quests that take the players across Azeroth to the various race areas where they have linear questlines that to through these things.
Like you start in Orgrimmar and Thrall-Got-His-Groove-Back is doing something or another, then you’re sent to the Echo Islands to do a questline with Rohkan and Zekhan, then it’s off to Mulgore to do tauren things with Baine, before being sent to Highmountain to quest with Mayla and so on and so forth.
If I recall correctly, Operation: Gnomergan and the Echo Isles were questlines before the Pre-Patch Event for Cataclysm. So perhaps this could either just be the pre-patch event (I’d prefer) or a just before them as the last questlines for the expansion.
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I like your solution, pre patch questlines could be a good way to give some race development and a way to see the world grown and being left safe before we head to elsewhere.
And honestly seeing how easy can anyone go to the Shadowlanda(Taelia and Darion) you can bet we could get some development if Blizzard weren’t lazy
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Yeah great, another dead character on the ever dwindling roster so people can pretend that his replacement wont get shoehorned into he exact same token good Horde role he’s forced to fill. Wonderful. Rather than just taking some steps to make Baine a more palatable character, which the current settup of SLs does have opportunities for.
He needs distance and independence from Anduin again. He needs to get some internal balance, and get closer to that balance of Peace and War his father had. He needs a damned power up. Well, Baine is free and Anduin is still locked up safe and sound in Torghast. Baine has had his own weakness shoved into his face multiple times in recent events, which could be used as an impetus for growth. Finally, Huln Highmountain is chilling in Ardenweald.
The opportunity to give Baine a little long overdue maintenance does exist in this expansion. Its a better alternative than damning any character you shove in as his replacement to his same plot-device status; and then demanding their death when that’s exactly what Blizzard does. All Blizz needs to do is actually take that damned chance.
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Yeah but I dont trust them to like make good on that stuff 
its almost about as likely as them killing him off.
True, but this is a thread about giving the Horde a “feel good moment” … so then one such option is to try to actually fix Baine a bit. He’s always likely going to the the peacenik on the Horde (he’s a Tauren, its par for the course), but settup is here to do some maintenance on every single one of his character deficits. We also have the time to do it. So … lets hope they do.
It may not make Baine a Horde favorite, but he can at least be made tolerable. Which would be so much more of a win than throwing another character on the harsh plot-device pyre he’s been forced to cook on … and expecting a different result. It would be a small win, but a win.
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I remember going into WOTLK blind as a kid, being PUMPED AS HELL FOR SAURFANG JR HELL YEAH and then… welp.
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The Afterlife is filled with prior Horde characters who had their story arcs cut short to many Horde Fans, not to mention the vast reaches of the Ancestors, and prior generations of Tauren and various other races.
Looking at the Tauren, they have been around since before the War of the Ancients, and by that point already looked like the Tauren we know of today, and we know their history extends even further back. They are one of the oldest races originating on Azeroth, and yet their lore is largely a blank slate. If anything, the Shadowlands could be a perfect time to soft retcon in more lore for them. Have them meet Tauren like Huln, and Cairne, and perhaps even older Tauren Chieftains who can teach Baine / Other Tauren about an even larger history to their people. Perhaps, since Blizzard loves relying on tropes, flesh out that ‘Golden Age’ of the Tauren people, before they were driven to war by the whispers, and share secrets of their once great knowledge with newer generations.
As for the Orcs, this would be a perfect chance for various influential current Orcs (like Nazgrel or Jorim) to meet their Orcish Ancestors. Maybe take a page out of the Order of the Stick Comic, and have those Ancestors teach some really cool fighting moves (or something) that they managed to perfect and master only after spending a timeless age in their respective afterlives.
For the Trolls, even the Zandalari have seemed to lost some knowledge of their past (Such as with G’huun), so perhaps there is more Secret knowledge that they could learn by talking to the ancient, ancient dead in Da Otherside. Perhaps some secret or knowledge that would be great enough to give the Trolls the key they need to being able to reach some sort of new understanding, or rekindle some ancient arts.
What I am trying to say is that a lot of Horde races have a lot of blank sheets when you look over their history, and a lot of missing knowledge on their people’s histories that could be easily filled in with new knowledge that can be regained. The Horde also has a large cast of dead characters that could be brought back in some short side stories to give them closure, and perhaps provide some final truth of wisdom, or guidance. Perhaps Grom or Durotan, or Doomhammer could make an appearance, to pass on some message to the Orcish people about what wisdom they had gleaned from their time in the afterlife. The Horde has a strong tradition of Ancestor Worship, and Listening to the Ancestors for guidance. Shadowlands provides the opportunity for that message to be clearer, and more direct than ever.
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I certainly would NOT hate that, I agree.
Less resources wasted in a lost cause imho.
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Tbh most Resources that involve Baine are wasted resources.
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Absolutely. But then again, to achieve this we would need first a “renovation” on the irl writers in charge of the stuff.
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tbh we lost a lot of horde characters already but I am ready to loose more if its baine , this alliance peace loving cow tires me
beautiful
I would normally agree with ya but tbh its would be hard to make worst than baine , kill him and bring back magatha grimtotem EZ
I like this idea but blizzard is too lazy to do something like this , we all know it
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I mean Genn, Maiev, Jaina, and Shaw would all be villains in any other franchise (with Tyrande as a shady antihero-type) but, since Alliance MUST ABSOLUTELY ALWAYS BE THE HEROES, they never get that sort of catharsis.
I mean let’s all admit, Blizzard’s constant hero-sticking of the alliance no matter what is as bad for the Alliance story as endlessly villain-batting the horde is for them. if we could take some from one and give to the other, balance it out a bit? i dunno, might help.
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I feel like they are capable of making good tauren characters (I mean import krexus Character and personality onto a tauren and you have an actually good tauren character)
And we’re back to “As long as a Horde leader is Edgy and Alliance hating, it doesn’t matter how many of their own people they slaughter for personal gain”. Magatha killed Cairne. Had her Grimtotem go on a killing spree all throughout Mulgore. And then when they were exiled, some of them actually end up siding with the Alliance … which showed that their “antagonism” towards the Alliance was nothing but BS playing politics. They wanted power, and were fine using Taraujo as a tool to get it.
God I am not a fan of this side of the Horde playerbase. The “Horde ONLY needs to be contrarian to the Blue Team” faction. I’ve just always found it super odd, since it still means that the Alliance is still defining the Horde and its Reps. Just in a very “if they’re A, we need to be B” sort of way.
EDIT: And again, people missing the Forest because of the Trees here with Baine. Baine’s fundamental problem is that his characterization always has to come after his need to fill some “Token Good Horde” plot device role. Since that is the case, removing Baine wont do a damned thing so long as Blizz feels the need for that role to exist. It just means that someone else will be burdened with that duty … and then that character will need to die. And then the next …
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I like the idea of the horde as a bunch of thugs and bandits. sort of like the defias.
Horde needs some balls sure, but they dont need to cause senseless conflict, getting more resources is a good idea as a cause for conflict.
Baine allowed the Alliance to murder Tauren without rebuke.
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It’s hilarious how transparent the writer’s lack of care for Baine as a character is. Even on the little things.
Rescue Baine from Torghast? He’s just kinda there, leaves with you and sits and mopes in Oribos.
Rescue Jaina from Torghast? She’s fighting and putting up resistance. Teleports herself out after realizing she can, because of course she’s too good to just leave with you the normal way everyone else you rescue does.
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You know when you save baine in the maw intro and anduin cries out “hurry champion save baine!” I just stopped pressing buttons for like 5 seconds, and just auto attacked, then i thought “To hell with this i want to get this Crappy intro over with” The fact we still dont have a way to skip it is just mindblowing.
Anyway when they said the stuff about baine owing us his life or whatever (for the like 15th time already) my first thought was that it would make my life easier if he just stayed in the maw or something.
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