This is such a terrible outlook, I hated when the Lich king fight stops right before you getting the finish blow and Tirion beats him.
I hated thrall during cata and following him around, It literally destroyed the character.
I find it fine when they help us during a fight with certain mechanics but hate when they steal the kill.
The last thing I want in this game is for Me to be stuck following Anduin as he defeats the last boss.
Something a Lot of People in this thread appear to fail to realise is the fact that no, nothing was âfatedâ to happen. Even Ignoring how the Forsaken were more Nuanced in Vanilla (They were still the most evil race, just not MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA Blighty Blighty time evil) blizzard didnât have to double down on their worst qualities, much like how it would be somewhat expected for Varimanthus to betray the Horde, tto say it was âAlways gonna happenâ is just wrong, you could easily make him realize that his situation in the Horde is far better then how his Situation would be if he betrayed them, and him realizing that any attempts to betray likely would fail.
Nothing in WoW was ever âFatedâ to happen, nothing in WoW will ever BE fated to happen. WoW is a story written by humans, the characters in it have no Will, they have no ability to make choice. You can imagine they do, in the immersion, which is how you write a good story, but at the end of the day theyâre just pixels and prerecorded messages arranged in an order that the writers thought would be most fitting.
So no, the Forsaken didnât have to be made Mega Evil, Varimanthus wasnât always gonna betray us, Arthas wasnât always gonna be âTo Powerful For Us to Defeatâ, Garrosh wasnât always gonna be Orc Hitler.
Thatâs the bit that stings, really, the paths not taken. And especially for Garrosh, to be teased that âWow, you got the one bad versionâ with regards to him⌠cruel, Blizzard, very cruel. And now Sylvanas taking the Illidan/Kerrigan/Raidboss route (could be all three!) instead of another potential path where she, I donât know, got some peace and growth? Shame.
Iâm fine with being dark, and Iâm fine with being edgy. Thatâs cool with me. Iâm an office worker and normal adult IRL, I can enjoy some goofy malevolence in the cartoon fighty Warcraft game. What sucks is the story narrowing in on certain aspects of the subfaction I enjoy and hyper-engorging them until they blot out all the other cool stuff. The Forsaken have a lot of cool themes and ideas and it ainât cool when that is railroaded because they need to serve as a plot device to gin up Alliance wartime spirit. Like, even if weâre purely in the realm of Forsaken evil - why is it always blight? Show us eating some elves, weâve got the racial ability and everything, if you want to make us the goofy villains than at least be cool/inventive about it.
I saw it as a very dangerous game of chicken, and because this was before 4d chess master Sylvanas she sometimes made errors.
Iâm starting to get the sense that the narrative Blizzard wants to portray is that Sylvanas is a 4D chess master in theory, but has the absolute worst habit of ruining all of her own plans with her jaw-droppingly terrible impulsiveness.
Itâs almost too perfect to be an accident, right? ⌠right? Maybe all of her mistakes in the past are this character flaw as well.
Desire to make political comment intensifies.
Warcraft 3 didnât have Forsaken. It had Scourge. The Forsaken were deliberately created to NOT be the Scourge. You can read the full story here:
Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne would like a word with you.
What the post he quotes is saying is something different entirely.
WoW and WC3 had parallel development cycles; an undead race was already planned for the former before the latter was written. Metzen created the Scourge, which didnât work as a player faction member, then created the Forsaken in TFT to transition to the MMO.
Good point. I had actually forgotten that that stuff happened in WC3. But yeah, also, what Metelissra said above. ^^
You know if they hadnât offed Vari so soon and if the whole Dreadlords are working for Denathrius/the Jailer thing is real, it may have made a lot more sense to keep Vari around and have him tempt Sylvanas into darker and worse things over time, as opposed to turning her into Skeletor due to offscreen crap we only just learned about.
Hindsight strikes again.
I was referring more to readerâs expectations than the actual story teamâs plan.
The Dreadlords have been billed as master manipulators, infiltrators, and their very purpose was to doom civilizations from the inside. Thus readers expect that from them. That is why it would never be that he was loyal, just he hadnât betrayed them yet, cause such a creature as a Dreadlord would never be accepted as that cause they are still âwaiting on that (Chekovâs) gun to fireâ.
Varimanthus would eventually be seen as lame if he never lived up to the billing they have given Dreadlords much like how the big gun the Goblins have is lame. We literally just had an all out war which the big bad wanted as much death as possible and the gun sat there unfired the entire time (just as the spaceship with lasers sat around unused).
Now if Varimanthus hadnât been a Dreadlord and instead was a pit fiend or some other powerful demon, then such turncoat would be more acceptable cause the story wasnât developing a reputation for legendary deceit from said demons.
It is much the same with Lothraxion and honestly I would be surprised if the Dreadlords are playing Death as well as the rest of the cosmic powers.
Pick your leaders more carefully or ya get⌠Calia. Your choice. Lillian or⌠a Menethil babysitter.
I mean, both arenât exactly good choicesâŚbut if we Had to choose between the two, I think they can work Lillian into forsaken leadership much better than Calia, who wasnât even relevant until like half way through BfA.
I always did feel that the Forsaken and Blood Elves got the short end of the stick in WOTLK.
The Ebon Blade stole the Forsakenâs thunder. All of the vengeful undead after the LK stuff post Wrathgate was taken up by them. No room for the Forsaken, outside of the horde version of the ICC dungeons, but those dungeons are ultimately kind of pointless plot wise except to foreshadow the âmust always be a lich kingâ ending. To a similar extent, any hope of alliance paladins out to put the fallen prince down/avenge Uther etc was taken by the neutral Argent Crusade too.
And the blood elves, whose society and homeland were decimated by the scourge, whose beef with Arthas was second only to the Forsaken themselves, mostly were used in the Dalaran/Malygos stuff.
Different players want different things.
Some donât want to be villains.
Some want to be nuanced villains.
Some want to be mustache twirling villains.
Iâd look great with a moustache. Iâd twirl with nuance.
Dreadlords and betrayal are like cats on a shelf with things they can push off.
Sure, maybe they havenât done it, and arenât even moving. But thatâs just because they havenât done it yet. Theyâre going to. They arenât restraining themselves in the slightest. They just havenât, at that moment, elected to put forth the effort.
Or just waiting til you turn your back on them.
The amount of Alliance bias in this threadâs dissenting posts is unbearable.
Exactly. WoW has a very large playerbase.
If A happens, people will complain.
If B happens, people will complain.
But that doesnât mean itâs the same people complaining in both scenarios.