While checking the playable races tab due to a different thread, one thing I noticed is the tagging for “Undead”. The problem with using said tag is, it is no longer correct. Undead as a state is no longer exclusively Horde/Forsaken. The Alliance has had undead in their ranks since Wrath. So maybe it is time for a rebranding and just have them called “Forsaken” for branding purposes.
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For most casual purposes, it is better to be effectively evocative than it is to be precise.
Forsaken: What the hell is a ‘Forsaken’?
Undead: I know exactly what this is.
And the labeling matters most for the newcomers.
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“Forsaken” is the name of the organziation. “Undead” is the name of the race. This would be like calling humans “Stormwindians.”
I don’t think the existence of Death Knights warrants a change, personally.
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This argument could be used for the use of the term worgens as oppose to just werewolf. I mean, unless you knew what a worg was you would have no idea a worgen was a werewolf but once you saw the model , you would know exactly what it is.
I’d probably have them called “Stormwind human” and I would expand the page to note that Stormwind was once the last bastion of human power and humans from ever nations went to seek refuge there, making the people of Stormwind a diverse group of people.
Except they are not the only ones now. We now have Undead void elves/night elves and blood elves.
Forsaken is not a race its a faction. We do have “Zandalari Troll” though.
The original idea is you are just a free willed undead. The Forsaken are the ones that raised you because they could raise people until Cata said they couldn’t. It is up to you to decide what to be.
That is the thing, as of BfA the term “race” is alot muddier nowadays.
Mechagnomes are just gnomes with cybernetic enhancements and yet they are a separate “race”.(would say Sojourn /Genji from OW2 not be human anymore because of their cybernetic parts? No.)
Similarly, free willed undead can be used to describe Death Knights, certain void /blood elves and nightborne.
It’s splitting hairs tbh - I think it’s fine as is. I mean there’s elves on both factions too, they just look a little different from each other. When someone actually plays them and learns the lore they’ll understand the nuance. Done.
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Sure could.
They just didn’t.
Though there’s the key difference that Undead is an actual term in WoW so it is both clear and accurate and werewolf is only clear.
And the Alliance has had goblins (well 1) in their ranks since vanilla. You don’t see the Goblins on the ‘race’ tab being called ‘Bidgewater Goblins’ (goblin dk’s are steamweddle)
Forsaken is a political faction. Undead is a state of being. Hence why it says undead instead of Forsaken.
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Said goblin is not playable. Undead death knights/void elves etc are.
So is Kul Tiran.
It’s also pretty much more irrelevant. Warcraft has the same pet peeve for me that I get from Star Trek Online. In that game when I visit Vulcan as a Vulcan I get the exact same basic dialogue on logic that they give the Human tourists. The same exact problem is in this game. Only one single night elf NPC ever spoke to me in Darnassian and he got wiped out with the rest of Auberdine.
Personally I’d want to classify the PC race as a specific type of undead.
Personally I’d call them ghasts. That’s an undead from D&D that’s essentially an alpha ghoul. The PC undead race share some similarities with ghouls though. Particularly on the original unintact models as their spines showed spikey mutations. They also can consume flesh to repair themselves and their hand to hand animations are pretty feral looking and surprisingly acrobatic in the case of female models.
So my own little hypothesis is the PC undead were the Ghoul 2.0. Still blood thirsty, clawed creatures of the grave but decidedly less mutated. So while they could use tooth and claw, they also had enough capacity for independent thought to use weapons, spells, build fortifications, etc. This of course backfires tremendously when Illidain trys to speed run Global Warming as that momentary break in the Lich King’s wifi let a lot of them snap out of it.
I figure Geists were a 2nd attempt at something like them from the Scourge that clearly didn’t pan out as intended. So by Wrath Arthas, in true thundering dumbass fashion, figures he’ll just make a metric ton of Death Knights instead.
I think that’d be cool. But unfortunately Blizz seems to be getting even vaguer with the Undead descriptions. Darkfallen used to presumably just be English for San’Layn, who were distinctly Draculas. Bat wings and all. And now that just refers to any undead elf, far as I can tell.
I at least think it’d be cool to be more specific with undead subtypes. Nathanos has a line in Drustvar which suggests at least he personally looks down on ghosts as not being properly undead. Even though there are decidedly non corporeal undead in the Forsaken.
I think you could have some fun rivalry between the different types of undead. I imagine moist undead and dry undead like say skeletons would also bicker.
still holding out for that bolvar fire undead allied race
The thing is that technically you can actually play a Forsaken by rolling a Blood Elf, now that the Dark Ranger customization has been added… When you’re playing a Blood Elf, you’re playing a character whose nation/subfaction is Undercity/The Forsaken, rather than Quel’Thalas.
So at the end of the day it’s for the best that the playable races are named after the… well, the races, rather than the subfactions. Makes it easier to picture your character as hailing from another nation, as long as it’s consistent with the lore : that way your Human might be from Stromgarde, your Jungle Troll might be a Shatterspear…
we prefer elwynnites actually.
Honestly sounds like too much work to be worth it since you’d have to rebrand a lot of things if you wanted them to be super literal about race names.
However, if they did ever go for it, I move that Forsaken be rebranded as “The Undead Citizens of Lordaeron”.
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