Night Elves and Forsaken don't need new cities

Sylvanas needs souls to possess abandoned bodies.
She could not cross the veil.
They could.

1 Like

I think the Frozen Throne missions more or less exemplify the reason. Who had control over the particular undead at the time, and how strongly?

When Illidan’s ritual weakens Ner’zhul, we see a general weakening of his formerly ironclad hold over the Scourge. Not ALL of the Scourge mind you - but a great many of them in Lordaeron at the very least.

Otherwise though, their minds seem to be seized by more local leaders. Emphasis on the word “seized.” Balnazzar doesn’t just assume control of the Scourge by default, he simply possessed a stronger will to command them than the weakened Lich King did from afar. Despite that though, Arthas and Kel’thuzad manage to retain control of some Scourge directly. Balnazzar, Detheroc and Varimathras maintain their own signficant camps. Sylvanas manages to either control her own camp and free their minds, or simply rally those who find themselves without a “team” for want of a better word. Perhaps a bit of both! In any case, what sets the Forsaken apart is the fact that their minds were ultimately freed, which according to CDev made them incredibly difficult to re-subjugate with domination magic.

In any case, my theory is this: Sylvanas didn’t necessarily have the capacity to free any and all undead from Scourge domination. She had a clear ability to free those who were only loosely controlled by the Lich King, due to his waning power. That does not mean she could free any and all undead under Scourge domination, especially those under a much more ironclad Lich King control up in Northrend. When and if she did, it was not a quick or easy process - after all even the freeing of Nathanos (who in theory could’ve had a quite weak Lich-King control like many of the Lordaeron undead anyway) was not instantaneous or really even practical - she had to bring significant security forces along just to subdue him so that she could work, if I remember correctly.

Bottom line - Sylvanas had a limited capacity to free the minds of Scourge whose bonds had already been weakened by the attack on the Lich king, in the Frozen Throne. This was not exhaustive or even necessarily easy.

In any case it’s now fairly irrelevant since the modern Forsaken have neither Val’kyr nor Sylvanas haha

2 Likes

Not completely. Banshees/shadowpriests also played that role.

1 Like

Definetly not.

1 Like

Nowadays I devote my forum time to ask for customization stuff, so… probably yes. SF has been pretty tame and quiet lately but then again, the lore is so atrocious one frankly doesn´t feel like discussing it.

2 Likes

What is there to discuss:

  • The writers have ruined everyone’s fantasy
  • Their cosmology is lackluster, euro-centric, and dumb
  • The current expansion story sucks in every possible way

As much as necromancy exists in-game and as much as we enjoy beating dead horses around here, there isn’t any point.

The “veil” has shattered, the immersion is broken.

We are all fully aware we are all miserable because the writing team truly, genuinely, absolutely s u c k s.

Side note: plz support warlock stables and forsaken afros

9 Likes

Out of interest what makes you guys feel this way?

Yup, 100% agree with all of the above. We degenerated to the point the MHP posters feel they have an actual chance to erase a playable race or at least make for it´s playable experience to be demoralizing and miserable.

Now that I have your attention, I may need to ask for a favor -for my new crusade, you see-: would you be so kind to ask the devs on twitter which irl language was the inspiration for the rune marks on the Belf TBC artbox (I suspect it may be Warhammer´s Eltharin but I´m not sure)? I ask you to ask them -sounds funny, I know- because they had answered you before, ergo you have a biger chance to get an actual answer for this question.

Firm supporter for your Forsaken Afros, I want some stuff too that I put on that thread. I want my Forsaken to look more bone-sih ala “Army of Darkness” -Deadites are awesome-.

2 Likes

errr which dev would I ask? All the TBC era devs are gone except golden and she has me muted I believe

Ohman I feel this is a story we’ve gotta hear

Lul, certainly NOT Golden -that woman couldn´t be bothered to research Forsaken lore and instead destroyed it, I rather not get her take on this-.

Maybe ask lother lore fans associated to Blizz that can reach the TBC devs like idk… REd Shirt Guy or something? (sorry, I´m quite ignorant as far as “wow celebrities” are concerned).

2 Likes

In what way did Christie Golden destroy Forsaken lore? I actually really enjoyed her take on them in Before the Storm, personally!

She is subject to harassment by WoW playing weirdoes more than any other dev for some reason so it’s not a surprise she’d be quick on the ignore function.

1 Like

Nah it’s simply that I was the first person who found her in-game vampire reference and she only didn’t respond to me among the 5 people who responded to her.

Ergo she likely had me muted over the fact I pointed out her characterization of the Tauren, Orcs, and Trolls, especially her use of IRL immigrant metaphor for the Orcs, was wildly problematic and inappropriate and doubling down on racist tropes.

The Calia choice, and the choice to make her a Lightforged-Undead.

nah Ian is just a guy

Best chance would be Metzen, and he’s fairly eager to respond to people asking about past inspiration, so you’re fair game to @ him

2 Likes

A person of color pointing out narrative racism in a 30 tweet thread calmly detailing the how and why with care and nuance being viewed as “harassment” is a problem onto itself

But hey, devs can only recall at most 10-20 POC at Blizzard over their many years so am I shocked? No.

2 Likes

In the “if you clap too hard, you literally fall to pieces”.

“Genius” take to explain the presence of rogues and warriors on Forsaken society. Also, the “this is WoW´s version of /insert facist state in here” after the lore repeatedly told us for a DECADE that Forsaken were pretty much free to believe whatever the damn they wanted -I mean, hello Cult of the forgotten Shadow- was absurd.

The peak of the hilarity was Calia the Lightforged self insert indeed. Not only Shadowlands once again soft retconned that “Light and Dead cosmical forces are chill to each other” in Revendreth, the whole arc to make her THE special snowflake wasn´t even worthy of a 12 years old fanfiction in AO3.

In short: she didn´t like to get her ugly stuff thrown at her face. Typical Blizzard working culture.

3 Likes

Golden repeatedly writes the Horde government as “fascist metaphors”.

Weird that.

Curious.

I am confident if she had been given Shadows Rising, we would’ve gotten Talanji the dictator.

edit: excuse me, except Baine, who she always writes as a Crying Indian/Noble Savage who does anything for the Blonde Blue-Eyed Savior Twinkadin

5 Likes

Nobody has any kind of ethical obligation to read your internet posts.

3 Likes

Only Garrosh fit a fascist metaphor because they actually wrote it that way.

The weird “High King is okay, Warchief isn’t” just reeks of indulging into idealistic fantasy while having an incredibly limited understanding of what a fascist government is. While I do think things like colonialism often have fascist elements, they do not require a sort of situation in the culture performing it that resembles what happened with Germany and Japan.

2 Likes

Oh no, not idealistic fantasy in my fantasy video game. Anything but that

3 Likes