Why?
Liandryn is no better than sylvanas or the rest of the horde, she spits on the value of true paladins by helping the genocidal maniacs in the horde.
She is also a liar,when she talks in argus she says “the belfs helped save the world while the nelfs hidden in trees”
why she likes to lie?
She also didn’t act or do anything versus sylvanas and was loyal until the very end.
Sadly, i think that she was ruined for helping sylvanas or the horde.
While i believe that sylvanas was always evil, i don’t believe that she had a secret plan all along. that is simply BS.
and when they tried to imply that she had a plan, they didn’t say why or what it was, that is simply bad storytelling.
this is 100 % correct, i don’t have any problem vs horde players.
and i am sure that IRL we could get along.
The problem with the “arrows in the quiver” line people reference is that its point was to have the metaphor turned upside down later in the story. She starts out thinking that way because whatever, they’re just arrows, you grab them by the bulk and go back for more. It’s only after her post-post-death experience that she realizes each one is precious and they shouldn’t be sacrificed willy-nilly.
Unless that’s actually what you meant and I misunderstood why you mentioned it. A lot of people use that line to say Sylvanas always thought everyone was disposable.
Earlier you also wrote about how you wondered how awkward it must have been for horde players to fight against alliance heroes right after we finished working with them in Legion, since you felt that way with Liadrin. One of the unfortunate things about this expansion is that that’s the feeling of this faction war in a nutshell. The prepatch opened up with being told that the alliance is going to wage a war of conquest against the horde (despite never being shown this) so we need to kill Malfurion (after having saved him in Legion). Then we move on from that to genocide a playable alliance race because now we’re on a mission to “kill hope”.
Genocide’s not an exaggeration, either. WoW material explicitly refers to it as such twice. Patch 8.1 was also going to feature night elf concentration camps run by the forsaken before player complaints changed it to a lumber camp or something like that. The horde became WW2 Germany overnight
It really, really sucked. It completely ruined the impression that the horde player can be a good person (which was a big appeal of playable horde in the first place) and it amounted to two more horde characters being ruined and removed.
The fundamental issue is that if you are looking at her description of the Forsaken in EoN the Forsaken were always sort of disposable.
A lot of people point to her coming back from to hell to save the Forsaken as something altruistic, but really … she literally states what she’s doing in that short story. She is simply re-purposing a tool that once ceased to have value, her “Arrows” against Arthas, into a tool with value to her, her “Bulwark Against the Infinite”. They’re still tools, with a designated purpose … and should that purpose ever cease to be relevant … their value also ceases with it.
As for the rest of your point. Oh yeah, it sucked. Like, Blizz didn’t just go overboard with the villain batting of the Horde; they seemed to revel in it this time around. To the point where I am convinced there were two teams of writers. One for the Alliance who gets to kill off unrepentant monsters; Undead who thank them for killing them; and Goblins who make make jokes as they die. The Horde is something to kill without mercy, because we’re portrayed as vile monsters.
The Horde in contrast gets to kill off those attempting to obtain justice, or simply those that push shame and guilt upon you as a player. We are not meant to feel good about what is happening. Those amazing lipservice cinematics further reinforce this. But, we also still have to go along with it, because Sylvie’s personal narrative setting up Shadowlands … was more important than the entire Horde Faction; its identity; its Racial Fantasies; or the characterization of its Reps.
Liadrin fighting the Alliance in Arathi makes perfect sense. Any headache she can give the Alliance in the Eastern Kingdoms keeps them away from Quel’thalas, there’s nothing wrong with her fighting for the Horde there.
Pretty sure Liadrin’s only appearance in BFA is in Arathi. She didn’t participate in anything but defending her home and people. Fits a paladin pretty well imo.
I am wondering how the Forsaken are going to be involved here. They’ve all without exception died at least once. So do any of them have some vague memory of the Shadowlands?
Not to mention Slyvanas. Understanding why she did what she did is probably on every deader’s to do list regardless of if they hate or still love her.
Thing is, you don’t sacrifice arrows in a quiver willy-nilly either! You have a limited number of them, so you want to be sure you use each one to its greatest effect.
Yeah, she’s defending the innocents on her people’s lines. You do understand that there is a political element to this conflict as well; one which Blizz did a very poor job of portraying … but it was hinted at several times. Lor’themar is one of such characters that mentions that the fear of Alliance reciprocation and need for vengeance is what is kept him in line as long as it did.
He mentions this at the gathering, where he sympathizes with Baine’s motives … but feels that Baine acting the way he did … when he did … endangered the BEs to retaliation by the Alliance; by weakening the Horde during a WW the Horde was already losing on all fronts. No one is going to risk the extermination of their own people out of guilt for an enemy; especially when there were no alternatives presented to those that would rebel at that point … beyond putting unfettered, unprecedented faith in that same enemy … the Alliance. Even Baine’s act wasn’t one of rebellion at that point, it was one of a conscientious objector who just had had enough.
Also, Liadrin’s only presence in all of BfA up until the Sylvie regime fell was in Arathi. Every Rep locked in the Warfronts has their dialogue cranked up to 11, to cringe inducing levels.
a true paladin does not defend monsters, because that is what the horde is, a bunch of genocidal maniacs.
The alliance? a threat of extermination? under anduin? ghandi incarnated?
are we being serious right now?
and he is not like he doesn’t know who anduin is.
i think that you gave me pretty bad examples, Arthas literally betrayed everything what he stood for
and the scarlets went 100 % villain. does that means that liandrin is a villain? probably, considering who she was defending.
The problem with Liadrin, which goes for pretty much all Horde characters except a few, was lack of interaction. I think BfA faction war storyline would’ve been more enjoyable if they focused on this part more.
We couldn’t know thoughts, intents and reasoning of characters except for few. All Liadrin got was pretty much Arathi lines which was pretty poor work. Maybe Blizz can delve into it later even if BfA is finished.
My point was that Paladins demonstrably do not need to be lawful good.
Frankly I think Liadrian was fine. Regardless of her opinion on Sylvanas she still had a duty to lead and protect the soldiers of the Horde.
Besides everyone’s weird in the war fronts. Danath Trollbane comes off like somebody’s racist uncle. For his next appearance does he make Pilgrim’s Bounty feasts extremely uncomfortable with hot takes on Nelf refugees?
Yeah, the Horde is not available to the Meta Knowledge that we the players are; and nothing during the war from the Alliance side suggested to the Horde that they weren’t every bit as invested in a War of Extermination against the Horde; as the Horde was against them. At least not until Saurfang’s rebellion kicked in. The Raid on Dazal’Alor especially would have been a sign that the Alliance was still very invested in the conflict. Worse, to most Horde, the Alliance would be perceived as having justified reasons in wanting vengeance after Teldrassil.
Honestly, it is one of the more frustrating elements of BfA’s writing that Blizz did not more fully embrace this concept. The fear of the alternative, without alternatives, keeping the Horde in line; and the idea that the act of Teldrassil was a means to enforce Sylvie’s control over the Horde through fear of Alliance reprisal long enough to get what she wanted out of us. It exists, but … lets just say that it is very clear that Blizzard has never been concerned with justifying or highlighting motivations for the Horde; especially in this story where we were just a plot device to set up Shadowlands and push Sylvie’s personal narrative.
The story wouldn’t have to be experienced on both sides. The horde story could simply move on to the next thing while the Alliance story dealt with horde redemption strictly through the involvement of Horde NPCs (but would still need to be handled with tact).
I don’t think they will apologize either (which is why I said near impossible to pull off). There is too much ego running unchecked. But it is something simple involving little to no work.
I don’t think a fight would occur in a coffee shop but just the online environments.
I am not a PVPer so I will gladly concede no knowledge of balancing or any such stuff. I was glad warmode locked it in a box over there and I threw away the key.
That said I do believe they intended for Alliance frustration with Teldrassil and the story overall to get channeled into warmode and the battlegrounds. Clearly that was a no go given the amount of bribing that was attempted to get Alliance players into warmode during the course of this x-pac.
LOL. So it would have been more Paladin-like for Liadrin to abandon her people in Silvermoon to the Alliance because Sylvanas is mean. Gotcha, I can now discard your opinion of her safely in the garbage.
Maybe, but those paladins are portrayed in the wrong.
danath always has been like this, he kinda hates trolls and orcs the most.
not sure why the hell they would think that.
and yet they had in their way to try to avoid needless death.
If the alliance wanted, they would have nuked the place.
No, the belfs could have tried diplomacy with the alliance and realize that they are not their enemy.
there is no need for them to abandon their people, they could have abandoned the horde. (now of course this cannot happen due to gameplay but i am talking about story)
i don’t think that the alliance is interested in silvermoon at all.
At least in that way, liandryn would not have become a defender of maniacs.
We could have used a mid-expansion novel or something like that to know what the hell some characters are even thinking with the nonsense they are doing.
Jaina Proudmoore taking up a position of Authority of a World Power, then using that power to attack a capital city of a Horde Race? She tried to wipe out Org with all the citizens in it, and is one of the chief architects of the Purge of Dalaran. Her character development wasn’t actually known by the Horde … and she and Tyrande alone would have been sufficient reason not to trust the Alliance.
Also, of course the Horde shouldn’t think that. Blizz goes way the hell out of its way to make sure the Alliance and its races are flawless paragons of virtue; every virtue conceivably known to man. Any time they do something even remotely gray, Blizz goes to extremes to whitewash every single act they ever commit with justifications; excuses; and dilutions. Since the Horde as a Faction is a plot device, they could care less about doing the same for us. Ever. After all, for the Alliance to be the Antagonists in the Horde story … they’d actually have to be portrayed as Antagonistic.
Which is why when you do most Alliance quests in BfA: Goblins you kill make quippy jokes when they die; Forsaken thank you for killing them; and the Horde in general comes off as slavering, rabid monsters who want to skin Alliance children alive and feed them to their parents. But, when your doing anything War Campaign oriented as a Horde PC … its one massive, giant, guilt trip.
