Indeed. It’s admittedly a quest rather than flavor text, but Jaina’s Resolution remains the best example of this in WoW IMO. Her mid-BfA shift back to world heroism and neutral quest-giving would have sat better with me had we gotten a back-and-forth with her, too. Or Tyrande. Christ, especially Tyrande.
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One point I’d like to focus on a little bit here, because my vanilla character was Forsaken… I don’t think you’re that alone, Meldaea, with Calia. I don’t HATE her. Most of the time I quest with her, I do find her enjoyable.
And I’m not even going to say it feels like questing with an Alliance NPC - it doesn’t, with Calia.
The biggest problem with her is the disservice it does to long-term Forsaken players. This whole “light-forged undead” thing just doesn’t make any sense. If they were resurrecting Calia, why not just return her to life or whatever, instead of whatever the F she is. It’s confusing, conflicting - and not “interesting” in terms of a fantasy character.
I just CANNOT believe the disconnect between the real people writing future lore for the Forsaken, and thinking that "lightforge"ing anything would set well with them. It’s straight pulled out of the butt level stuff.
With that said, we are left where we are. Questing with her, I don’t hate her. Speaking with her; you know she means well. She’s a very endearing character on a whole lot of levels. At least her personality is written in a way where she’s very empathetic, kind, and decent all around.
That just ends up so much at odds with what the Forsaken, as a whole, are. The fact that they have to realize they’re broken; shadows of their past. And instead of being able to rely on their own strength and positivity to move forward, they’re shadows and consumed by their own negativity - Their priests can no longer feel the call of the light, in fact, calling upon the light causes their attention to be drawn to the fact their flesh is rotting around them. They can feel their undead shell rotting around them. That’s horrifying stuff.
I still remember in Brill when we’re sent on a quest to kill duskbats so that poor lady can sew herself some gloves because her hands are so cold; and you realize she’s starting to become mindless - because her body is giving away. And it still hurts to this day to remember that; to empathize with that.
And Calia, as what and who she is… She’s not really done enough to really explore that, empathize with that plight. These are a people that can’t reproduce, and they’re decaying. They don’t have forever, especially now that Dark Lady’s Val’kyrs aren’t raising or doing their magic stuff anymore. Every single member of the Forsaken, now, are on borrowed time.
And it’s criminal that not a second of Calia’s story focused on that whatsoever.
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Aside from all my other complaints about her, for me she will always be tied to that awful book that decided to retcon everything about the forsaken and just make them sad sacks who want to die.
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I agree with a lot of what you say in your post, but the lore really isn’t consistent about whether this is the case or not. Sometimes they’re on borrowed time and sometimes they’re basically indestructible. Given the choice, I prefer the latter; the former may be more poignant, but it leads to silly places like refusing to clap for fear of damaging their hands.
OMG, so much this. 
I hate that book so much.
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The problem with Calia is she’s not Forsaken, was raised by the Alliance and we even meet her from the Alliance side in BFA. She was so coded that people thought light-forged Undead were going to the Alliance. There was an obvious shift from Lordaeron humans, to Scourge to Forsaken. Calia has had none of that struggle. And feels like an Alliance plant.
It shouldn’t be forgiven and neither should Teldrassil.
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I am not sure that is entirely a correct presentation of it. The Sylvanas cult of personality made final death an anathema to be shunned; Sylvanas sought to endure at all costs, and she expected her Forsaken to have the same mindset. Some of the Forsaken were just beginning to voice that perhaps spending eternity as a rotting corpse was not really the afterlife they hoped for.
A lot of that book was not so good, but those bits were interesting to me. There were some interesting philosophical things in there. Like, if you are replacing your rotting body with bits of other people, at what point do you cease to even be you?
The Sylvanas cult of personality was justified. As far as the Forsaken were concerned she was their God. Because she took them when they were wallowing in madness and confusion and gave them a purpose, not only that but made sure they were not to be messed with, especially since most people wanted them gone for being abominations. And that was much better than what we have now, a bunch of sad zombies with no purpose.
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Frankly? They ceased to have any purpose the moment Arthas bit the dust. Their vengeance had been met, they should of all been ready to move on from the curse he had left them to suffer with.
Except, this is what the Forsaken were always meant to be, as envisioned by Metzen. Sad, plagued, misunderstood humans.
Vanilla-BfA Forsaken were an anomaly, a mistake that should have never existed, because the MMO team just wanted a playable Scourge faction in the MMO.
Calia is the true Forsaken, and she will bring the Forsaken to their true roots.
Now we will see who is truly interested in the Forsaken for what they truly are (sad, plagued, misunderstood humans) and who just wants a cheap Scourge copy-at-home.
I don’t disagree with that. They could have handled that story better. But not like they could have just deleted the Forsaken after that. Still, even then it was much better than what we have now, which is what? I don’t even know.
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It was definitely a consequence of that era when they were burning through the lore they had built up in the RTS era like madmen without really considering what came next.
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To me, the impression I get based on what was done to the Forsaken, is that this was a personal vendetta from one of the writers. I have no solid proof to back that up, just feels that way.
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I’m following you up to this point.
Wut.
So, you’re asserting that Calia, now lightforged and a relatively newer addition to World of Warcraft in game - that has zero understanding of the Forsaken plight as she hasn’t lived it, was never Scourge, never had to find ways to cope with becoming a mindless killing machine…
Somehow understands the plight of the Forsaken in such a way that she’s going to lead them back to whatever these “true roots” are? Dude, you do not understand the Forsaken at all. I’m not, and never have been, an advocate of the Forsaken being the “New Scourge”. But, at least from what you posted here, you don’t understand the Forsaken whatsoever.
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No, I think he’s just happy that forsaken players aren’t happy.
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I mean, I’m not saying it’s definitely him. But Alex “Cosby Suite” Afrasiabi definitely tried his best to ruin a whole lot of characters and lore on his way out.
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The forsaken have always had an internal developer schism on if they are scourge 2.0 or Metzen’s vision of a dark and dangerous but ultimately still heroic people trying to make do with their cursed half lives.
Danuser and Afrasiabi really disliked each other, and that often spilled over in how Sylvanas and the forsaken in general were depicted. Hence they came across as bipolar.
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And for me, neither of them will be missed. The former because I didn’t think his writing chops were up to snuff, and least when it comes to writing nuance in an MMO. The latter for so, so, so many reasons. And him seemingly to be kinda human filth certainly doesn’t help.
(Also, I want to clarify that I don’t think that Danuser is a bad person or anything like that. I’m merely speculating on the fact I didn’t like much of what he did for lore/story.)
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Danuser’s problem I think was not actually understanding Warcraft as a setting and trying to take it somewhere it was unsuited to; that culminated in Zereth Mortis. He was also prone to focusing on small emotional moments to the exclusion of all else and rarely on bombastic deeds done by larger than life heroes, when WoW is in a lot of ways meant to be treated as a comic book.
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Yeah, I think I can agree with you there. I think, as you sort of touched on, that his writing just wasn’t best suited for Warcraft. I don’t think he’s a bad writer, per say. I do think he was a bad writer for Warcraft, though.
I like how you put it in your last sentence. It’s very, very much like a comic book. Those big Avenger-like moments are what Warcraft’s all about. Yes, it’s a little shallow. Sometimes there isn’t a great deal of substance. But the game has always been about those epic moments that gives you that tingle of excitement. The spectacle of it all.
Sounds pretty sick to me. I’m sure Blood Gnomes will be the next Alliance allied race.
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