Yeah I think that’d be cool. In BFA the only time I felt heroic in the war campaign was helping save Vulpera from deranged Alliance shamans who decided to set them on fire.
But of course that doesn’t happen in the Alliance playthrough.
You’re asking for a fantasy Blizzard is patently disinterested in selling. They have consistently refused to let the Alliance do anything morally dubious.
That’s why Shadow’s Rising was such a breath of fresh air. Turalyon and Alleria just straight up torture civilians. A Forsaken Apothecary has to stand up and be the voice of moral reason. It’s great.
But I’ll be shocked if we see anything like that again. Especially in game.
If there is anything I have learned from the writers is that they constantly copy their own storylines and pretend that its an incredible new and fresh thing. They can’t help themselves.
If someone just rewrote the BFA script and just switched the sides playing the hero and villain parts… well as I said earlier that would be the great step forward for the Alliance and the Horde too.
To give you an idea of where I was at by the end of BFA, when the Vulpera unlock quest sent me to remedy a peon’s strike my knee jerk reaction was dread. Because at that point I figured I’d have to brutally murder the workers.
This is a quest about friendly fox people who wouldn’t look out of place in Banjo Kazooie. And I thought I was going to play the role of Pinkerton enforcers because that’s how completely deranged this storyline had been.
That’s a lot of things but I wouldn’t call it fun or satisfying.
I’m genuinely baffled by people who immediately want more faction conflict. Seriously? By the same team that gave us Zovaal?
At time of writing this team just can’t do moral ambiguity. You’re either Superman or Hitler. It’s ridiculous. Nothing satisfying is going to come out of that plot line.
Well, you know that I feel that Lillian Voss has been completely rewritten and furthermore was a better character when she wasn’t part of the Forsaken, so we don’t have to go another round of that particular discussion.
Also:
I assume you meant “story beats,” but “story bears” made me smile!
I can see why people would want more 3rd party undead characters. And when Voss was the only one in game I can see why her going Red would annoy people.
But we’ve Faol, Felstorm, Shoemaker, Shadowbreaker, and Bartholomew now.
I can rattle off more neutral undead characters than I can Forsaken aligned one at this point.
And by characters I mean characters. Things with origins, motives and an effect on the story.
Currently we’ve Calder Gray who’s been MIA since Cata. And maybe Commander Belmont and Apothecary Faranel but honestly I’ve no idea what their status is.
Kinda need everything they can get right now and one of the very first characters you meet in Tirisfal who is the procuring cause of the destruction of the Forsaken’s regional enemies is a pretty damn good choice.
Plus I’m just happy she’s happy. I didn’t play WoD or a Rogue in Legion so I thought she died horrifically in Scholomance.
And it seemed like such a mean spirited, torturous way to kill off a character who’d known only betrayal and suffering that I genuinely wondered if someone at Blizz didn’t have a bad breakup with a Lilian.
And I’ve a lot of Forsaken characters. So it was just seeing this poor woman get betrayed by her friends and family, get some vengeance and then die in the most agonizing and humiliating way an undead can over and over again.
As far as I’m concerned, none of the independent undead characters you mention have as much prominence in the storyline as Lillian Voss used to. I don’t even know who Shadowbreaker and Bartholomew are. And both Faol and Felstorm are too Alliance-flavored for my taste. Faol is still Turalyon’s best friend, and Felstorm is a veteran of the Troll Wars. He doesn’t even share the typical story of being killed and raised—was he actually ever dead? (Frankly, I consider him almost as much of a lore abomination as Calia.)
Also, you said Lillian …
Does she still, though? Has she done any of that since Scholomance? Because I can’t remember it if so.
I thought the new lore was that the Alliance actually would welcome the Forsaken, since they’re not actually prejudiced against zombies? And supposedly it was only Sylvanas brainwashing the Forsaken into thinking the living would reject them?
They can say what they like, but they don’t have the power to enforce a change of government or demand reparations or any of the other things you do with defeated factions.
They would welcome them if they showed contrition towards their living brethren. The Forsaken are still distrusted, but within a cautious setting the living will trust the undead. Forsaken still followed their Dark Lady as she burned Teldrassil, expunged from reality millions of people’s spirits from the Great Dark then sent their souls along with every soldier Horde and Alliance on Azeroth or beyond to the Maw to be destroyed and that’s after they butchered thousands in Darkshore, Gilneas, Southshore, Pyrewood, Ambermill, and beyond.
The living don’t necessarily hate all undead, that’s the Scarlet Brotherhood. The living of Lordaeron and the survivors of their atrocities would be willing for peace under the right circumstances and assurances from a good leader.
If the Forsaken were once led by a Dark Lady… It’s time for them to be led by a Lady reborn in Light. If they ever make Forsaken paladins. That would be the moment to really reinforce the idea that Forsaken aren’t evil monsters. They can be good and many actually are. Just a lot of them were misled by an evil queen who found them desperate and broken, took advantage of them, and even allowed a Dread Lord to co-lead them into depravity.
Voss and Calia along with a new Desolate Council can restore them into the Light and into a new day for all the undead of Lordaeron and beyond.
I have zero interest in reconciling current storyline with the past half-decade of nonsensical storylines that have eaten away at the foundation of the game’s lore. As I said before, it is wildly stupid to spend so long doing things that make no sense in a way that damages the player experience only to turn around and arbitrarily say “Okay, now things will start being logically consistent again in a way that damages the player experience”. If irrational storytelling got us into this mess, use irrational storytelling to get us out of it. Then we can go back to rational storytelling. Trying to rationalize current Azeroth as if it were real life would mean Horde being deleted. Period. That’s not a tenable solution.
This is a game with players written by people. If your story/game is not serving the playerbase, your story/game is failing. If you establish Worgen as ferocious and players buy in to that only to have that softened and ignored, you’ve failed those players.
I don’t even want Alliance to be presented as villainous. I don’t want the Horde to be paragons of virtue. I just want the game to go back to both sides being full of flawed, normal(ish) people who occasionally do bad things for understandable reasons. I want all of the races to ooze personality and idiosyncrasies instead of being blandified shells trapped under the pall of human potential and orcish genociders.
That maybe true, but you need to reconcile the past in order to move forward into the present and into a better tomorrow. You can’t ignore the past or try to brush everything done in the last 15 years under the rug. Pretend it didn’t happen. We need a rational story to close 15 years of mixed story telling.
Resulting in a narrative which will make people willing to live with it. Happy isn’t the goal. It’s reconciliation of the past. People will romantacize the violence, their actions and that of characters they liked. Just like in the real world. We have to understand why Alliance and Horde members are unhappy. Provide a logical storyline which allows for the characters to progress, and if some people aren’t happy on both the Alliance-Horde divide then we’ve started reaching something akin to compromise. Then we can go on with a new future.
Horde Forsaken have to be held accountable lorewise and their future administration/governance has to make sense within the lore perspective. The factions have to be willing accept that Sylvanas isn’t coming back nor anything like her. Evil undead are either mitigated or expunged from relevancy within the Forsaken ranks. Horde Council has to believe these surviving Forsaken will act in good faith within their faction led by someone the Alliance will accept, because the Council knows that the hardliners on the Alliance will use it as an excuse to further punish the Horde as a whole.
Alliance people and especially their leaders especially have to have some good rapport with the new leadership of Lordaeron. They have to believe that this person is respectable and someone who they don’t have to remove. A new government led by a new figurehead that isn’t your run of the mill shadow worshipper or maligned assassin. This is why Voss knows she’s interim leader. She can’t represent the best interests of the Forsaken to all people who would seek an audience with their government, because she lacks the looks, mentality, and respect which can unify all parties. You know who does? Calia Menethil.
BFA and SL storyline have pushed us to a corner that demands the Alliance take action.
Whatever that action is.
I am sure the Horde will benefit tremendously if we just “move on” but for Alliance major corrections are needed before we can even start that process.
Here’s what pissed me off about BtS. If a Forsaken wanted to go live in his kid’s basement in Redridge or whatever, that absolutely would’ve been allowed.
Again Sylvanas let’s government scientists and one woman killing machines with Scarlet ties just wander out of Tirisfal. It is stressed up and down the road that the Forsaken are allowed to leave or even just crawl back into the grave and die if they want.
I presumed the reason you didn’t see much reaching out between human and undead relatives was because they’re just fundamentally different now.
A Forsaken wanting to live in Stormwind would be like a human wanting to live in the Undercity. Even if there’s no societal problems, you’re probably not going to be too comfortable there.
The undead dont hang out in crypts to be on brand. They do it because undeath changes your tastes. Changes what you find comfortable and attractive. Characters mention how they used to find spiders disgusting but now find them cute. They’re disturbed by bright sunny fields. The idea of humans using the Plaguelands for an idyllic farm makes an Apothecary physically ill.
Essentially becoming undead gives you Addam’s Family values. They shouldn’t want to hang out in Stormwind.
Then she betrayed that by raising undead in Fenris Isle, and Western Plaguelands as well as in Pyrewood. She put down anyone who disagreed with her remember what she did Koltira? We have to have a story that makes sense.
Sylvanas wasn’t alone in acting like a monster. The Forsaken joined in her genocides and were her biggest supporters. Even after BFA some were being rounded up for refusing to applogize for their actions.
How does a story move forward and what will convince you to stop thinking in absolutes? In a story that needs logical consistency within a limited reality where if we followed logic the Horde would be dismantled and the Forsaken be put to the sword. Luckily in WoW the leaders of the Alliance are led by saint like priests who find it in their hearts to not only forgive the Horde as an entity, but even seek to reconcile with their brethren among the undead. Do you know that makes the Alliance look like naive fools? We still have to accept it.
So, what choices do we have? The forsaken have to move beyond Sylvanas and the culture she fostered in Undercity. They need to accept this new government will be unlike anything they had under Sylvanas, except maybe now they will have an independent voice and democratic representation in who rules their day to day lives thru a council led by a queen of Light who everyone agrees is their best chance at not going extinct.
You are out of your god damn mind if you think this story team will deliver an interesting and satisfying faction conflict storyline.
But that’s not what you want. You want to see other people’s toys smashed or ruined for some sense of schadenfreude satisfaction. Stop pretending it’s anything else.
We’re not even having the same discussion here. If you want to analyze the situation from a rational in-setting viewpoint, more power to you, but I’m not doing that. I don’t care if ruining subfaction identity makes sense in the wake of a storyline that was allergic to logic. I just don’t, and I never will. I don’t think logical bad writing is a good solution to illogical bad writing.
You can bring on a full chorus of Alliance and non-Forsaken players insisting that they have to soften their edges and embrace the holy light zombie for the good of diplomacy, but none of that will mitigate the fact that you’re taking a jackhammer to what has defined them—what those who gravitated to undead characters fell in love with over the years.
No Calia means spicy Alliance? Good. Maybe we’ll get a worthwhile faction conflict for a change.
If that action is more faction cheerleading pettiness that will punish an already demoralized faction full of players that also hated the same storyline and had no control over the outcomes, go ahead and fluff up a nice plump pillow to cry in. If you can find a way forward that reinforces faction pride/identity for both parties, I’m all for it.
By the by genius I play both factions. Haven’t you seen me gushing about Kul Tiras and rambling at length about ideas for where Worgen could rebuild?
Where do you think that comes from? I’ll probably always main Red because I find them more interesting. But I love the Worgen. I like the Kaldorei and in particular their half of the Illidari as you can have a character who’s ancient. I love the Kul Tirans. I think the Draenei are a USP of this IP. And the Gnomes and Dwarves aren’t exactly ground breaking but hey nothing wrong with playing the hits. Really it’s just SW I loathe.
I’ve been on record repeatedly as saying how stupid and frustrating it is that Blizz only updates zones by smashing them. I don’t want them to break the Blue toys.
Except for Southshore. But I’m cool with the Worgen rebuilding that. Everything north of Thoradin’s Wall and south of Thalassian Pass, with the exception of the Hinterlands, should remain Spookstadt, Capitol of Spooksylvania.
