I really doubt that. If she wanted to do that she should have retired her. Instead she ripped off Frozen’s Elsa and made her into a one-woman-army that could sing, raise galleons from the depths, magically fix the galleon and use magic to crew it. Oh and it also flew. Then she solos the Horde’s elite. That was Golden.
Not to mention that her little Disney song tried to hint at the fact that she might have been tricked by the evil Horde to kill her daddy and left his kingdom into shambles while she was playing diplomat and keeping pet gnomes. But somehow they decided to make her the leader of Kultiras, cause Jaina and actual consequences don’t mix too well.
I really wish they’d just let her go (huehue) that character is so bad, it’s beyond salvation.
If the Frostmane are not “imperialist” because they didn’t expand beyond Dun Morogh, how are the Dwarves “imperialist”? They did not expand beyond Khaz Modan.
And No, child soldiers are not innocent, by definition.
“Tiny mallets” that are actual weapons that can bring you down to 1 HP.
to the dwarves who are expansive
They’re literally not. They spent the majority of their existence living in Dun Morogh and then founded a bunch of new colonies only in recent times after the civil war.
If you’re a regular on this forum, you’ll know that I’m no Christie Golden fan or apologist. But I don’t think she’s responsible for the specific issue of Jaina going psychotic.
The reason I think this is because of the tug-of-war that kept happening before Golden officially joined Blizzard’s writing staff. Jaina would act super-faction-patriot in the game, doing stuff like the Purge. Then Golden would write a novel where Jaina mellowed out and became more forgiving. Then the next time she showed up in the game, it was like the novel hadn’t happened, and she’d be slithering around whispering “Dismantle the Horde!” a la Grima Wormtongue. It really looks like someone on the game writing staff was pulling for Jaina to become a hardline anti-Horde character, and Golden kept trying to pull her back to something more like her WC3/early WoW character. This is what led to all the jokes about Jaina being bipolar.
Now, Golden did write the scene where Jaina tried to drown Orgrimmar, but she also resolved that in the novel where it appeared and had Jaina mellow out a little by the end. And we also don’t know whether Blizzard mandated the attempted drowning. I think Christie Golden has more leeway than this forum often gives her credit for, but something that major may well have been dictated by Blizzard.
Also, there’s no way she would have had the authority to just retire Jaina while she was a novelist for hire. Once she officially joined the writing staff, she arguably did just that as soon as she had the chance, by putting Jaina in charge of Kul Tiras.
Golden may have written the flying ship scene for the Siege of Lordaeron, not sure. But we can be pretty sure she wasn’t responsible for Jaina’s Warbringers song. There’s a tweet where Golden says the Warbringers videos were already in progress before she officially joined Blizzard’s staff, and I’d imagine the song would have to have been written well in advance. I can probably dig up a link to the tweet if you want to see it.
Really man? Are you really going this route? Claimaing Half of EK = not imperialistic.
Wantinting to prevent dwarves from taking Dwarves from taking little land they had left = impresialistic.
That is insanity.
so are knives, you can hurt someone with it, but you can also use it to cut a bread with it. The fact is that since Cataclysm Frostmane Whelps aren’t even hostile. You have to personally go to their village to kill them. Not the other way around. Like I don’t know Kul’Tiran spies creating assault plans on attacking Orgrimmar, Echo Isles and Valley of Trials.
If they made bunch of colonies it means that they’re expansive. If they wouldn’t be expansive they would stick to one zone like Frostmane did. But apparently they cannot even keep tiny Coldridge valley. Everything has to be taken by the Dwarves.
I get what you’re saying, and it just goes to show how the writing for the Cata-MoP faction conflict was better in pretty much every way than for the BfA conflict. But as Nezmith said above, I actually liked Jaina and didn’t want to lose the bond with her. Being told that Jaina blames my organization for it and then having the leader of said organization grovel to her without pushing back against the accusation just makes it exponentially worse.
I don’t know if anything could have made me happy about having my former favorite character turn against me in-game. But giving me my own side of the story and a better justification than “Evil warchief commands” for why the incident happens would have made it slightly less awful.
WTH are you talking about? “Half of EK”? Is this a joke? The Dwarves lived just in Ironforge and Dun Morogh for over 2,200 years and started founding colonies elsewhere only after the Dark Irons and Wildhammers were kicked out of Ironforge. Even then, the Dark Irons settled at the base of Blackrock Mountain and the Wildhammers first in Twilight Highlands and then in a corner of Hinterlands. That’s very much not “Half of EK”. This is clear bait.
so are knives, you can hurt someone with it, but you can also use it to cut a bread with it. The fact is that since Cataclysm Frostmane Whelps aren’t even hostile. You have to personally go to their village to kill them. Not the other way around. Like I don’t know Kul’Tiran spies creating assault plans on attacking Orgrimmar, Echo Isles and Valley of Trials.
They are neutral and aren’t necessary for any quest, so it’s not canon that they were killed and you are spreading headcanon/misinformaton.
If they made bunch of colonies it means that they’re expansive. If they wouldn’t be expansive they would stick to one zone like Frostmane did. But apparently they cannot even keep tiny Coldridge valley. Everything has to be taken by the Dwarves.
So then every major Troll tribes are colonizers/imperialists, since they don’t stick to “only one zone”. I’m glad we finally agree.
The frostmane whelps are not kids. Nor is there anything to suggest the Alliance is in the business of killing kids. Hence why what happened in Teldrassil was shocking.
They are young trolls(at worse teenagers) but the Alliance and Horde send teenagers to fight all the time. Its not pretty but its not the warcrime you are looking for in WoW.
Side note, they are neutral for gameplay purposes. The original frost whelps were aggro on sight but due to trying to make WoW more noob friendly all early mobs became neutral.(quick example Defias mobs)
I’m torn about that. You’re right that bringing them back too many times borders on ridiculous, but on the other hand, they’re one of the best villain organizations the game has ever had, and they’ve never been used to their full potential.
A word to the wise: You will never, ever get the hardline Alliance partisans to admit that “whelps” is the same as “children.” I’ve seen others try. You might as well save your typing fingers.
Thanks very much for this quote. I’m going to point to it next time I have to explain how orc society used to be depicted, pre-WoD. Is this from Lord of the Clans?
I think that’s way overstated, as I said on the “Christie Golden Laid Off” thread (see this post and following). The passage quoted above shows how the society Thrall established is really not that far off from the original orc society on Draenor (or how that society used to be presented pre-WoD, anyway).
Do you see anything to respect in the passage Zanthora quoted above? Because I do.
There’s no point in trying to get alliance faction die hards to see reason. Team blue in their eyes, has to remain morally pure and righteous at any and all costs.
Look, I’m not saying I know, like you I’m guessing and maybe I’m wrong here, but not likely. Too many things started happening since she joined. Including that dumb song. And she was already invovled, before she officially joined so her contribution to the stuff from BFA might be larger than you think. It was her writing that constanly tried to put Jaina in a positive light, every time. At least the Jaina from MoP, had a few flaws. The Jaina from BFA, everyone is either fawning over her or terrified of her god-like powers which were never actually explained and if there’s one thing I’m sure of, Jaina was her pet.
Anyway, like I said, just guessing based on what I know, which isn’t too much, but it’s not too little either. And the boot she got, come on, they wouldn’t have done it unless she refused to play ball with Metzen, who, for better or worse, wrote the WoW story. And I suspect it had something to do with her and the rest of her team practically writing the Horde out of an expansion plus the fact that they did pretty much what they wanted, given the quality of the SL story. Anyway, it does not matter. She’s out. But we can at least agree that she did some damage. That, at least, she had no business creating stories for the game, not directly and maybe they should have left her to write novels.
Well, yeah, I don’t know how he would have sold a life of peaceful farming like he chose in his retirement to a bunch of guys whose idea of retirement is dying epically in battle. So yeah, of course it had to be somewhat similar to their previous culture.
First, I’m not saying Jaina isn’t Christie Golden’s pet—I think it’s super-clear that she is. And I’m also not saying Jaina as written by Golden doesn’t have annoying qualities. I just don’t think Golden is responsible for the specific issue of Jaina being shown as anti-Horde in a borderline psychotic way. I think that is coming from someone else. Jaina has had plenty of issues since Golden officially joined the Blizzard team during the run-up to BfA, but being psychotically anti-Horde in the way she was during MoP isn’t one of those issues. In fact, as soon as Golden was given the reins, she leaped at the chance to write Jaina’s Grand Journey of Emotional Healing in BfA.
As for whether she (Golden) was involved with the Warbringers shorts specifically, she denies it, and I have no reason to doubt her word. Here’s a link to an article with a screenshot of the tweet.
Maybe, maybe not. It could also have something to do with Blizzard being acquired by Microsoft. We do know Golden has worked successfully with Metzen in the past.
I do agree with that. As I said above, I’m not a fan of hers, though I think she does well with some things.
I think that’s part of the fun of playing a Forsaken, feeling like you were taking advantage of a bunch of gullible but well meaning fantasy monsters. It paints a different sort of picture with Sylvanas’ actions and words also–she inspired those Orcs, trolls, and Tauren (who were in the vanguard while her own people shot arrows from towers) to charge forward with “For the Horde! RREEEEEEE!” but then a few months later it was “the Horde…is NOTHING! REEEEE!” To be honest I just kept being amazed that everyone else kept falling for it.
You also just described Calia and to a lesser extent, Gazlowe. Makes it kinda difficult taking any sort of pride in your faction if even their leaders don’t actually seem to represent their respective races.
Ok first of all that song was awesome and Jaina using bs “it’s magic I ain’t gonna explain it” to raise galleons from the depths etc was cool.
I’m not replying to zerde cause he lies non stop, just pointing out the obvious:
No one can do anything about jaina until blizzard decides that they will. Lorthemar is not a person. He is a character. Beyond that he is a horde character, and horde characters don’t even get a third of the screen time that the alliance gets.
From what we know of what was going on behind the scenes at Blizzard, it seems that the BfA cinematic inspiration scene was intended to be sincere when it was written. It’s just the story decisions of people who came later that make it look hypocritical in retrospect.
Tbh the stuff I’ve been hearing about the Arathi in War Within seems to indicate that they’ll be filling that slot and since I love jumping to conclusions (and being bitterly disappointed by them later lol) I think they’ll be what you refer to as the “full potential” of the Scarlet Crusade.
Agreed. Golden resolved the “Dark Jaina” arc in two different novels only for their following expansions to drag her back out. I suspect it’s not a coincidence that Jaina’s return to prominence in BfA and the displacement of her anti-Horde rhetoric (her defining character trait for a good six or seven years) with WC3 trauma lined up with Golden’s formal addition to the writing team.
