Id go further and argue at no point in Warcraft have we ever gotten a story that wasnt Good vs Evil.
At its heart Wacraft 3 was the good guys all banding together to beat space satan.
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Also its a different game and I suppose structured in a way that makes it easier but ESO does a marvelous job at presentimg multiple playable factions that are neither morally perfect nor completely evil.
At this juncture in time in the story I cant say there is any choice that feels like “the good guy faction” or “the bad guy faction”
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I honestly think their problem is just making the Horde what they see as edgy, but really it’s just psychotic. “Victory at any cost” sounds cool, but the way they do it is flippin’ nuts.
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You could analyze further and say that this is a symptom of an early 90’s company struggling to adapt to 2019 standards.
“All Metal, No Girls, Blood and Thunder” worked for them back then, but it doesn’t now and they’re trying to figure out how to adapt. They’ve at least made progress on the “no girls” part.
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I told Taalva the other day, it’s insane how better adapted other companies are for modern culture. Blizzard needs to figure themselves out quickly.
I think they’re starting to realize they HAVE to make some changes, but when you hear Ion talk, he clearly isn’t happy about it.
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I think Blizzards bigggest issue is that the people making narrative decisions have not really moved past the type of story telling that made the Corpsegrinder incident possible.
We’ve seen a few instances of Blizzard writers doing a great job, but as the Metzen interview makes clear the writers arent making narrative decisions.
The ones who are? Well to quote Enekie:
And they’ve only just course corrected on the female representation.
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I’ll actually go to bat for Blizzard on this front and say they were at least making efforts as of Warlords of Draenor. They only hit their stride with parity in BfA, but the energy was there.
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Thats true but thats still woefully late compared to other mmos
Blizzard really needs to learn to approach certain things with care. Stuff like literal genocide for shock value is gross and terrible storytelling.
Thats not to say things that have the potential to be sensitive should be forbidden just handled with care.
A great example from FFXIV are the Miqo’te (the cat people). The seekers of the sun are a patriarchal society where the dominant male in the tribe does all the breeding.
This has the potential to be very, very, very, VERY misogynistic and problematic but, it isnt. This is because Square obviously approached the concept with care. That idea could have very easily ended up seeming like some pervy dev’s harem fantasy but it doesn’t.
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Good lord…
I think … I think I need to sit down for a moment. ![:dizzy_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/dizzy_face.png?v=6" ":dizzy_face:")
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ballsweat brigade.
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I miss that guy.
Dropping a comment here before we get too far off the Calia/Forsaken discussion.
Cole and I have had long talks over where we’ve thought the Sylvanas plot was going. Even before she was Warchief, Cole always figured Blizz would find some way to depose or kill her/make her a raid boss. And then we watched sadly as Blizz started to make their move.
Regardless of whether she’s killed, banished or magically redeemed as something other than the Warchief/Banshee Queen, it will alter (and perhaps damage) the Forsaken community and identity as it exists now. Many Forsaken RPers use Sylvanas as more than just a rallying cry. She was the leader who freed them and as such, they held loyalty to both her and her ideals of vengeance on Arthas and the living for what they had suffered at their hands, and taking back the lands they had lost. I would venture that this agenda literally kept the Forsaken from losing their sanity and helped them become a race. It makes them interesting and complicated to RP.
The Forsaken community by and large has been an extension of this. Many RP single minded, focused characters with lessened degrees of emotion, built on the pain of losing their previous lives while being reminded that they cannot go back. This is central to what has always defined their characters - we see this constantly in questing (there’s even an example in this expac of a human turned Forsaken whose family then won’t accept him, even as he had the best of intentions).
And then Blizz made changes to the Forsaken in Before the Storm. The council and normal non-military Forsaken folk were an acceptable addition. They made sense as a fit for Forsaken. But Calia’s magical light resurrection did not.
Had Calia been killed and resurrected as a normal Forsaken (or in a similar way to a Dark Ranger), she would have been both more believable and less jarring to the current Forsaken identity. In fact, she may have been a near perfect replacement. The citizens of Lordaeron would see her as a return to the Menethil line, but without the curse of the Lich King, and with the Forsaken’s best interests in mind. Having “this curse,” she could understand and relate to her people and more importantly, they could relate to her.
If they place her as a lightforged Forsaken, it will feel like watching a person of one race ruling over an entire people of another. Unless she uses that light up in some draining way that will render her as Forsaken as her people, I really don’t want her as the next Forsaken leader. I’ll retire my Forsaken characters permanently.
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I really dont think they are keeping her around to be ruler of the Forsaken.
Blizzard has gone on record saying they have an easier time coming up with Horde allied races than Alliance allied races. Keeping “lightforged” undead in their back pocket for an easy Alliance race is right in line with the way they think.
If anyone ends up leading the forsaken other than Sylvanas it will be Nathanos since it will allow them to change almost nothing.
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He’s still here, in spirit. Sometimes he’s an angry orc yelling about masculinity. Sometimes he’s a panda seeing conspiracies. But the True Horde Ballsweat Brigade will always be here, in one form or another.
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As far as Blizzard have gone out of their way to poison Sylvanas as a character in every possible regard, I still genuinely can’t picture the Forsaken without her. Aside from Nathanos (who will literally cause me to delete my warlock out of protest if they kill Sylvanas and elevate him to replace her) and Voss, they really don’t have any truly prominent characters sitting on the bench right now.
I mean, you just have to look at the imagery of their tabards to understand how important Sylvanas is to their entire identity. If/when they finally turn on her, it’s going to be weird as hell to see them still marching under that banner of “she liberated us from the Lich King.”
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I only say Nathanos because its the laziest route possible.
What id personally like to see is a new desolate council croping up to fill a power vacuum left by Sylvanas. Id love to see Blizzard give the Forsaken some new relevent characters to develop over time.
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On the one hand, I want to say Nathanos is clearly a lackey and not fit for a replacement.
On the other, he’s a self-insert, so logic might not penetrate that armor.
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Nathanos will be a boss in the Sylvanas raid but at 10% health Thrall will swoop in and declare him leader of the Forsaken ala what he did with Gallywix.
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It’s not that they didn’t wave her in anyone’s face beforehand. It’s that they barely waved her at all. If I had not taken special steps to seek out info on her, I would never know she was a thing or why she mattered. There’s not enough build up there to suddenly install her in such a prominent position as the leader of a faction she was only just introduced to.
There should be, but just the reactions one sees around HERE is enough to support the idea that Blizzard wouldn’t risk angering half their subscribers.
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