I think the solution is to have Baine lead the Forsaken.
Then the inevitable uprising can kill him with nu plague, and Sylvanas can reanimate him as a miniboss, and Anduin can sacrifice himself to rescue Baine’s soul, and then they can go into the Afterlife happy together.
Ah, another Alliance poster who thinks they know what is best for the Horde.
How new and original. 
Eh, after playin’ FFXIV and WOW: Classic I just want to go back to the days of the faction leaders sittin’ in the capitals doin’ nothin’. I’m the champion of the horde, Baine, sit down and let a real hero handle this.
Also, give my Tauren your totem. You ain’t usin’ it and I want a baller 2-handed mace.
I got this feeling too. It harkened back to MoP, except they gave you all of the pieces in Cataclysm leading into MoP that Garrosh didn’t deserve to breathe, so any fan of orcs should want to kill him.
They didn’t really give you that this expansion, short of murdering the horde at lordaeron and enslaving their souls. But they made the forsaken complicit in this??? instead of abjectly horrified by it???
blizzard, what???
After thinking about it more, Baine doesn’t even need to do some amazing combat feat to make me warm toward him. He just needs to flex his strengths, diplomacy, patience, and all that, in a way that benefits the Horde without benefiting the Alliance.
With the Council, and all of that… have Baine work with Ji Firepaw to reach out to the Tauren’s traditional enemies. Show that ‘peaceful’ desire in a way that shows him bettering the day-to-day Horde lives. Negotiate a ceasefire with the Quillboar, or get the Centaur to stop attacking Caravans. Let him show his rise from WC III campaign where he was a prisoner to those same forces. Have him work hard to settle disputes in Horde lands with the other races that occupy it. Working with Ji would let the two characters have a good back and forth, and help develop the two characters and explore their personalities.
Then, at some point, have one group who refuses all efforts at diplomacy, all efforts at peace. Show Baine and Ji taking action when no peaceful recourse exists. Show that Baine desires peace, but he is willing to fight for it.
Well as Al Pacino put it;
“You don’t have the guts to be what you wanna be. You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your duckin’ fingers and say, 'That’s the bad guy”
What amuses me is some Forsaken even now will profess enduring loyalty to the Banshee Queen if you approach them on a loyalist character. They never did go into detail about the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow’s message so maybe unrelenting denial is a pillar of belief.
So long as it’s a quest for me, champion of the Horde, to do what I do best, then that all sounds pretty good to me.
Ji - “The centaurs still refuse the offer. The even sent our negotiators back with no heads!”
Baine - “Welp, guess we’ve no choice. Champion! Your skills are required.”
Me -
The biggest enemy the Horde has had as of late is Sylvanas.
Begone Forsaken. The Horde is no longer in your Lich Queen’s clutches. Baine might not have had an epic fight for the Horde, but he stood up to the traitorous Banshee when no one else would…
Boi…he sold us out to the alliance, this man didn’t care about anything going on in the war until his friend jaina’s brother was captured. We are now pawns under the alliance with anduin pulling the puppet strings on his “Friend” baine.
All anduin has to do is preach and wave some light around and baine is on board.
You just stirred up the hornets nest.
disgonbegud.gif
I mean…did he, though? He snuck around behind her back and made secret plans with the Alliance.
That’s the point of this thread. Blizzard seems to want Horde players to like Baine, but what they actually show is that he’s either a victim who needs to be rescued, or kind of a sneak. If they want Horde players to like him, they have to give Horde players reason to like him. He needs unequivocally epic moments “for the Horde!”
Yes, he did. He said directly to her face that she had violated the tenets of the Forsaken. That’s why he was arrested and Zelling killed. It is Saurfang who had apparently been making plans with the Alliance while in jail.
Yeah and it remains bizarre that Baine had to do that. That’d’ve been an excellent moment for a Forsaken character to have. The opportunity was right there to have the heir apparent have a cool spotlight moment.
But instead it’s Baine, who holds Slyvanas to task for violating her people’s free will, after waffle stomping his way through a bunch of Forsaken to get evidence for this charge.
It’s very clear they had the ‘Thrall, Jania and the PC rescue Baine’ set piece idea planned before they’d figured out a way to get there. That pretty much summarises BFA though.
I reckon voss or some new forsaken shouldve done this while baine was spearheading the rebellion but alas this is what we got.
Much to the fosaken chagrin maybe that was a task calia shouldve done since theyre already pushing to put her as new forsaken queen anyways.
The Alliance wasn’t our true enemy here, so don’t give me that sh%t. Anduin just wanted to end the war and have peace. That’s no enemy of mine. The enemy is the one who plunges us into an honor-less war against those we just fought side by side with to defend our world. The enemy is the one who commits genocide in my name all in the service of some death god.
And who is this “us”??? You no longer speak for the Horde, as your kind never should have. Oddly enough it’s Baine himself who promotes forgiveness for those who betrayed the Horde by following Sylvanas, because if it was up to me you’d be hanging from the spikes at Orgrimmar’s gate…
OOC: I wish there was a third faction for people who want to follow Sylvanas. Maybe in Shadowlands those that sided with her can continue to work with her in secret. That’d be pretty cool for them I think.
I will agree with some of what you’ve said, although sneaking around is always part of starting a revolution. I will concede that I wish Baine got some more heroic-action battle moments, but I still think he was courageous in telling Sylvanas to her face that he was the one that freed Proudmoore, and let her know that she was destroying the Horde.
But, again, I agree that I want more from him…
You want to take this to WET, bud? You’re not an Orc and he isn’t the living dead lol
Edit; So we’re just randomly RPing at people now to make OOC points about story structure? Neat, can I cast Silence next time I see a Blueposter making a topic about the Forsaken?
Well, as for the last part, we didn’t know that until Shadowlands announcement. And the npcs in the game still don’t.
As for the first part, sure you’re right, but that’s the thing, Baine doesn’t challenge Sylvanas after Teldrassil. Or after Undercity.
Or when Sylvanas raises new Forsaken left and right against their will.
He only acts when a family member of his personal alliance friends comes into play. Only then it’s “too far” for him.
Not to mention it happens directly after the attack on Dazar’alor and murder of Rastakhan, ordered by Anduin who, as you say, “only wants peace”.
That is what people have a problem with. Not the “what” but the “when” and “why”. And it is made even worse given Baine’s track record for putting the needs of his alliance friends over his own people.
My frustration with Calia is chiefly that they left every opportunity for her to be established within the Forsaken narrative zoom on by.
Her status as a Light Undead was weird enough. But if they’d shown her as a legitimate champion of the Forsaken I think public opinion would’ve seriously improved.
I legitimately believed for the longest time she’d turn up and reveal to the Forsaken the truth about The Gathering and what was done to Derek Proudmoore. But that never happened. They say they’re not trying to make Calia a Horde leader anymore which is just as well they failed at that build up in an almost cartoonish fashion. But it really is a shame they didnt even try when that was clearly her point at some draft.
As it stands the weirdest Forsaken development for me was that, evidently, most of them took their oaths to the Horde seriously- as encapsulated by banner bae’s side eye. And fair enough - the alliance of convenience angle was becoming absurd at that point. A Forsaken who was raised young has now spent as much if not more of their adult life hanging around Orcs than Dwarves.
But I was waiting for some big reveal that’d sway the Forsaken. It’s just odd that, at least a lot of them, immediately turned on what was basically their god queen the second she had some unkind words about the Horde.