and then they told us that stonetalon was because a writter (afrasabi,i think) didn’t get the memo, so even that questline was apparently a mistake.
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Yes, true. But we players didn’t know that at the time. Anyway, it’s an example of the direction they could have gone with Garrosh–and probably what they originally planned to do with him.
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The part with Garrosh I always felt was kinda amazing was the final part of the Divine Bell quest chain, where he’s trying to help Ishi gain control of the sha energy and not succumb to its influences. It’s very much him trying to use Orcish values to reason with and deal with the sha’s negative emotions. Obviously, it doesn’t work (possibly due to the player fighting and killing Ishi while doing this). Then, fast forward to 5.4 and Garrosh is resurrecting an Old God’s heart and desecrating the vale because reasons.
It would have been extremely cliche, but I would have preferred the Sha of Pride corrupting and ruining Garrosh rather than him using Old God powers for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Partially because it would have made more sense. Partially because the Sha was a bit anticlamactic in and of itself (just being the 4th boss and tucked away in a little chamber before actually doing anything - kinda a shame that the most powerful sha ultimately had the least meaningful impact on MoP, unless you read deep into the lore and remember that’s the Sha that kept the others around since Shao Hao never dealt with it correctly.)
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You can tell that blizzard has tried to justify it after the fact. By making Illidan a jerk who refused to give Kael the magic source he promised him in the first place.
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When Garrosh learned about the sha, he saw it as a force he could control, as he doesn’t want the horde to go down the same emotional rabbit hole he went through in his youth.
After the Divine bell was made useless, the only way to control the sha was to find the actual source of it. Which ended up being the Heart of Y’shaarj. As Malkorok says, the heart was exactly what Garrosh was truly looking for when he hired all those goblins to find rare artifacts.
But I do agree with you that the Sha of Pride should’ve had more screentime. It was hyped up by Shaohao himself to be the most dangerous of all the sha primes. However he is just the final boss in the first wing of a raid. The sha of Fear had more of a presence as it was the true final boss of the Heart of Fear story line and then Terrace of the Endless Springs. It was even given a special phase on heroic mode where you fight it in the sha realm itself (back when heroic was the top difficulty).
Kind of weird old lore, to be honest. Thrall never had any actual reason to hate them. That whole exchange makes Thrall look uncharacteristically racist.
I also assume he mellowed out by WoW considering Forest Trolls DID join the Horde via the Revantusk tribe.
Either way, there were hints for Zul’jin returning. Anyone who did Hinterlands would’ve gotten that impression and the Darkspear STILL cry out for vengeance for Zul’jin as their /charge. At the very least, as of WoW, he was presented as someone trolls cared about.
Until he wasn’t, of course. Blizzard decided the Horde should get blood elves and, like you said, that was the nail in the coffin.
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The Broken.
They should have been the Alliance Race in BC. Draenei could have been added later.
Then, even on Argus, the Broken are a foot note, while the Argussian Reach grants access to Void Elves.
Such a shame.
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Random question: do you think the Broken would have been as popular as the Draenei are?
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Perhaps. There are people who like The Broken. WC 3 ended with The Broken as a thing, while Draenei were sort of sifted out afterward. Had The Broken been the Alliance counter part to Horde Blood Elves, that would have been a contrast, indeed.
I have a hard time really getting into a Shaman. I have a Dwarf Shaman, yet it doesnt do it for me. But a Broken Shaman would feel awesome to play.
I feel like The Broken bring an austere yet stoic quality. Bereft but never finished. Steadfast and cunning. Not quite dark, and more fun than the current Alliance, as far as getting things done with folks like Akama.
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Prince Kaelthas and Garrosh definitely take high on this list.
Garrosh going bipolar mess to raid fodder who hated other Horde races for no reason put us on the current path that let this expansion be MoP 2.0.
Prince Kaelthas really defines wasted potential, let alone his presence would have shifted the narrative a good bit, especially since had Kael been alive he would have been a good counterpoint to Garrosh, given the Horde our counter mage presence to Kadgar and Jaina, and HotS shows us there was so much wasted potential of Slyvanas and Kael having a friendly leader rivalry.
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Yeah I did manage to get through that questline and I’m glade other quests here suggest it was an anomaly. Since that was the only time I saw him behave sensibly.
In the Silverpine quest line be turns up to insult his allies. Then the Orcs you run into are all fairly confident they’ll all be executed for incompetence for botching a naval resupply mission that your PC helps fix.
Otherwise the only time I saw him was the MOP opening where he’s being a growly dick again.
Honestly though it’s a shame that in 15 years the only consistantly sane Orc they’ve made is Thrall and even that’s debatable. Since he handed the keys to the global super power he founded over to his rage case nephew - like it was a job at a resturant he owned or something.
I feel like if if they wrote things in a way that Zul’jin felt forced to join the Horde regardless of the Blood Elves, it could have made for an interesting internal conflict that would address the issue of how to deal with the terrible wrongs to an entire people in the past.
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Reiterating: Khadgar becoming Dadgar.
Old grizzled wizard becomes saturday morning cartoon show explorer dad. “Hey kids ya ready to see Draenor! Hyuek let’s get going! Come back next week to explore the lost city of Suramar! Have fun!”
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This thread has been filled with Garrosh and Kael’thas mentions, so I don’t think I’d be able to contribute anything original at this point.
All I can say about Garrosh is that they should’ve followed through on his planned redemption arc rather than backing out at the last minute. He could’ve single-handedly saved both Legion and BfA for me if he was still around.
Obvious inclusions here would be all the WC2 Horde heroes from BC; Kargath, Zul’jin, Gorefiend. All of whom suffered from the universal BC issue of a non-existent plot resulting in all of them getting turned into loot pinatas at the end of their respective instances. All of them could’ve very easily fit in with the modern Horde bringing their own unique shade of grey to the faction that most characters of their races cannot.
One I don’t see here is Lei Shen, a character introduced to us in MoP as this powerful, cruel, tyrannical, dictator who had once ruled the entire continent of Pandaria. It is later revealed in both his last words and in chronicle that he was in fact doing all these awful things for the betterment of the planet and to continue the work of the titans. But he was dead and buried before all this stuff could be revealed, so in hindsight it’s a missed opportunity for super original and nuanced villain. A character who answers the question of; What does an evil titanspawn look like.
Other than that, I can’t really think of much else that hasn’t been listed here already.
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Yes, that was after the devs decided he was going to become a villain. So all of them–except Alex Afrasiabi, who wrote the Stonetalon scene and has said that he “didn’t get the memo”–started writing him as progressively worse and worse. But up through WotLK, they were writing him as if there was still a chance he could grow into the warchief role and do better. Someone here did a good breakdown of how he was written and when; I’ll see if I can dig up the link.
I find it a bit hard to accept Lei Shen’s arc as bad for that reason - mostly because so many things in WoW are titan derivatives nowadays. We have, among other things:
-Algalon almost wiping out Azeroth.
-The dragon aspects and their various stories and falls from grace
-Helya
-Odyn (if they’d fleshed him out a bit more, because he is pretty awful)
-The Breakers in WoD
-King Mechagon wanting to “fix” everything back to its original state
-Anything having to do with Sargeras and the Legion
-Vrykrul, troggs, and the other “bad” titan races.
Truthfully, I feel that Lei Shen’s one of the few ones actually done well. He’s evil, but his deeds actually make sense and had a fair bit of logic and reason to them. He’s doing things to carry out the will of the titans, but they’re on his terms - it’s not near the robotic obedience that the other entities had. I like that he truly considered himself an instrument of the titans and executor of their will because of his own interpretation of things rather than direct correspondence or interaction with the titans themselves (outside of his interaction with Ra-Den).
(I guess the other concern is that Bliz doesn’t have the best track record with nuanced evil. So, even if this was a missed opportunity of sorts, I’ll still happily take the nuanced dictator over whatever Bliz considers to be a proper evil titanspawn.)
My main gripe with Lei Shen’s arc would be that he didn’t really get a chance to do anything in MoP. He gets resurrected and gets his island palace back, but he didn’t get a chance to attack anything.
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That’s way too much faith for Blizzard’s writers. Besides, as much as it sucks, I’m glad Zul’jin stuck with his hatred.
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Okay, I haven’t been able to find the forum post tracing Garrosh’s progression, but here’s a link to Alex Afrasiabi explaining how they originally planned for Garrosh to be redeemed and become a “strong Hellscream leader”:
And here’s part 2, explaining what happened in Stonetalon:
Out of curiosity, why were you glad that Stonetalon was an anomaly?
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Because it was the only example of him not being a prick I could find. And I was starting to wonder if it was just me that found him to be insufferable. The answer is; no Blizz had decided he was a villain by then and I missed the part where he wasn’t an a$$hole.
Lilian Voss lol.
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