If I don’t get along with my neighbors trust me my first thought will never be to muerder them.
I’ve said multiple times that I hated Garithos and in that case it was about would have struck first and Sylvanas won that duel.
But to go from that to actively torture, experiment and kill is a whole other league.
At the end of the day I’ve always defended the idea of Forsaken staying in Lordaeron because it’s their rightful land but they chose not to live in peace. They went on to inflict misery on others and expand their decay as much as possible.
Even Varian helped (although reluctantly) Sylvanas retake Lordaeron but what triggered him to declare open war on her? the sight of all the vile things they’ve been doing under her command.
She could have easilly prepared for war, built defenses and make alliances with the Horde for her protection and by doing that they would be the good guys making Stormwind the evil faction but the Forsaken became the bad guys right from the start.
Hopefully Calia can turn them into good people if that’s even possible.
*P.D. I don’t like Calia as the leader of the Forsaken so Blizzard needs someway to build her up like super fast for things to work out.
“My neighbor murdered the mailman I sent them” isn’t simply “I don’t get along with my neighbors.” At that point, its a mutual blood feud. It’s the announcement that you are viewed as monsters to be killed on sight.
And if the Forsaken have reason to believe the Alliance would kill them all on sight, what pragmatic reason would they have to be discerning in their “test subjects”? Yes, its unquestionably monstrous, but morality means nothing to the Forsaken in the face of their determination to defeat their enemies.
Varian didn’t help her retake Lordaeron. Not intentionally. His entire goal of going there was to reclaim Lordaeron for the Alliance at a opportune moment when it wouldn’t have involved directly attacking the Horde.
Seeing the experiments or more broadly what had been done to Lordaeron in general was what made him go over and declare war on the Horde directly. But his intent was taking back what he viewed as rightfully belonging to the Alliance. And when a country thinks it has a right to another nation’s held land, generally the only thing stopping an attempt to take it is a pretense for conflict so that they don’t seem the aggressors.
Calia has a chance to begin undoing years of strife between living and dead and allowing them to come to see one another not as the innate enemies they thought they were. So long as she doesn’t compromise her ability to be their confidant by giving the impression of valuing the Alliance over them.
The most recent almost end of the world was still fresh and it involved zombies running rampant eating all the living they came across. The Forsaken should have thought about represing their killing instics to show everyone how they are not mindless killing machines but it seems they couldnt control their lust for blood.
Anyway what’s done is done. We can luckily move away from Sylvanas’ influence and see other aspects of the undead be represented.
I’m not saying they should all turn into light worshiping peace loving people ala Anduin but somewhere in between like dark pragmatic survivors trying to coexist with the rest of the world.
Thats the problem Blizz has written into the Forsaken though. They’re described as empty and devoid of positive emotion, and what was driving them was revenge against the Lich King for putting them in such a wretched state. Now that he’s gone, Blizz has no idea what to do with them.
Sylvanas said: “We have to keep raising undead or the Forsaken will die out!”
So? Honestly why is that so horrible, you’re not happy as a Forsaken, so raising more is just pure sadism as far as I can see.
Honestly, that change bugged me. It seemed so much simpler to say that more former scourge were gradually breaking away with the weakened replacement lich king, and Lordaeron could be an “unholy land” where pilgrimages are made or something. But Blizzard just wanted to ramp her up and make her worse and blah.
It does always seem odd to me that given in the same expansion, we have a the Alliance experimenting on a Vrykul (in “Absholutely… Thish Will Work!”, that this seems such a go to argument.
I was in a run recently and commented that everyone in the expansion kept calling her that… and found that my use was filtered. Which is hilarious when just one line above I could see the same word.
I still think its hilarious that we’ve gotten an actual explanation for why the Forsaken didn’t join the Alliance, but we still don’t have anything explaining why the Night Elves joined the Alliance outside of speculation.
The Alliance did nothing wrong against the Zandalari. Because they joined the Horde.
There is no moment where the Horde is in the right. Is ok. Isn’t filled with evil monsters ok with burning children alive.
And even then, the plan was to let the Zandalari off easy. To just cripple then instead of raid the city in force and gut them. It’s not a similar situation. It’s not an equal strike.
The Horde is evil. Full stop.
And any action taken against them post Teldrassil is fully justified.
Because as Baine says in the excerpt. “In time, we’ll right the wrongs done by the Alliance to the Zandalari”.
Even he’s all gung ho for resuming the War, once the Horde is recovered.
The faction should be disbanded. The people in it integrated. Their culture that encourages their bloodlust destroyed .
Even the damned Mag’har orcs were full in “look how strong a leader Sylvanas is!!!”
I would think that the Night Elves joining the Alliance requires far less explanation than the Forsaken joining the Horde. From a cultural history perspective, Night Elves and the Alliance societies are closer together than any Horde society. They fought alongside each other at Nordrassil, which the Forsaken did not. And since the Night Elves seemingly lost a lot of their nature allies following Warcraft 3 due to the sacrifice of their pact to defend Nordrassil to save it, they need to make up the gap against potential hostilities against the Horde in the event that a border conflict breaks out again (Warsong Gulch).
Night Elves seem a better, more natural fit in the Alliance than the Forsaken would seem in the Horde.
Perhaps, but I would like an official explanation instead of some bored lorebeard speculating. This Blizzard, I don’t trust any of their “implications” seeing as their ideas of obvious cues can be so off the wall nonsensical or downright stupid.
In Warcraft 3? …Not really. They actually have more in common with the Tauren and more shamanistic focused orc clans. Tyrande had no qualms wiping out Alliance towns just as readily as Horde war camps.
The Warsong are actually a non-issue providing Thrall has the balls to do anything about their antics. In the end of the day they are bloodlust-addicted meatheads who respect strength. Tell their chieftain to stop picking fights, and if he refuses, kill him. Thrall has done this with other orcs before.
In fact, making peace with the night elves makes more sense than picking a fight with them. Especially since they need resources and there are demons still running around Kalimdor that you could help them kill as a show of friendship. But alas no, Blizzard didn’t want factions dominating entire continents.
That only works in the post-WoW setting where the night elves aren’t exposed to the humans and dwarves clear-cutting or mining the land with no regard for nature. See the Human Camp ran by Duke Lionheart that got wiped off the map.
You realize that the Zandalari only officially joined the Horde round the time Talanji became queen, right? After the Alliance assassinated her father? Besides, you could argue
Regardless, saying that you think the Alliance did nothing wrong is missing the point. You can’t seriously expect that the Zandalari will stow their assassinated king grievance in a box just because you say “He had it coming because you’re Horde allies.” That’s not how reasonable people think anything will happen.
Dude, barely any of the Horde at Teldrassil were okay with it. Nathanos barely seemed okay with it at the time. Take whatever issue you have with the Horde “just following orders” and not openly rebelling against Sylvanas you want, but this is just strawmanning to the highest degree.
You can’t say that regicide is letting anyone off easy, mate. Because its regicide.
It’s not an equal strike for Teldrassil, but that wasn’t the point. My point was that it was its own Teldrassil of sorts to the Zandalari, and to some extension all troll kind. And now the Zandalari want payback for it.
That’s not what that says at all. Saying “We’re resume the war with the Alliance in time” means “We’ll resume the war with the Alliance in time.”
Also, do you really believe that Baine Bloodhoof, the guy famously derided on this Forum for being Anduin’s boyfriend, is the sort of Tauren who would eagerly start up a war to get vengeance for an injury to his ally (rather than settle for a non-violent form of apology and reparation)? Like, you can believe in one or the other, but those are mutually exclusive beliefs.
Because this would work out so well in the short-term. And not at all play right into Sylvanas’ designs.
By the way, the Horde agrees with your critique on their culture, which is why they removed the office of Warchief and replaced it with a council of representatives so that one bad-intentioned individual can no longer singlehandedly drag the entire Horde into a genocidal war, and the council is stacked with several appointees with well documented histories of working alongside favorably with the Alliance.
It was neither regicide or an assassination. Regicide generally involves the killing of a monarch by their own subjects. Killing a king in battle during a war isn’t an assassination. Was Richard III assassinated at the Battle of Bosworth Fields? No, he was killed in battle.
It took like 6 dictionaries to find a definition even close to specifying this, and it only does so after saying “especially”, as in “not-exclusively”.
Regicide means king killing. That’s what the etymology means explicitly, from the latin word for king to the french word for kill. The word literally mean to kill a king.
Anyone notice how oddly disjointed that imagine looks?
I mean, Tyrande’s torso looks kind of broken/crooked and Rokhan is a hulking behemoth, towering over everyone, even while stooped.