OK, then by your own argument if “The Forsaken need to get out of Northern EK to prevent future conflicts” … the NEs should get the hell out of Northern Kalimdor to ensure the same? Right?
Or is “preventing conflict” really just an excuse to shove every single Horde race into like 2/5ths of the World tops, of which is largely comprised of land so barren and corrupted that even the NEs couldn’t fix it? Oh … right … there’s the whole “The Horde can offset that by being a massively impractical import economy, placing enormous burdens on their overseas allies to provide the most basics of resources like: Food, Fresh Water, and Lumber” thing. Hell, just giving the Kali Horde less arid territories like Stonetalon and Feralas would drive the Alliance and NE players insane.
So it really is … “The Horde should get all the areas the Alliance doesn’t want”. To prevent reasons for Conflict, they should all just starve to death in a desert!
You really haven’t read some of my larger posts huh.
Yes. I wanted Night elves out of the northern Kalimdor. I wanted Darkshore to act the northern Kalimdor zone for Alliance FP not behind the Great TBC Wall, with Alterac being the same for the Horde and their Great TBC Wall.
I wanted the night elves to settle in Duskwood, and fix that place of it’s curse and convert it into a more Night elven forest, and be in a zone close to Stormwind, the heartland of the Alliance just as I wanted the Forsaken to take Theramore and rebuild it in the heartland of the Horde. I wanted as minimal changes to the map as possible to keep the flight paths more or less functionally the same, with maybe another road directly into Durotar or a boat or something because I think Duskwallow is further away from Orgrimmar physically than Duskwood is from Stormwind.
I even accounted for the Story Board’s usual whining, and included keeping Ashenvale as contested with the Army of the Black Moon staying to ‘fight the good fight’ and the same with the Plaguelands with the Defilers or whatever they would be called now to keeping up the fight. But those would be fringes and used primarily as an excuse to keep the Battlegrounds going and not a focus on the story.
I wanted these things specifically from BfA as it opened the door to some actual changes in the wake of the Fourth War where new stories could have been developed instead of the window dressing everyone else on this forum seem to prefer.
I think now would be a great time to pluck an old school Forsaken out of relative obscurity and rise up to lead.
Calia? No thanks. I could go on at length, but this thread sums it up and most Posters seem largely in agreement.
Voss? Nah. She wasn’t even in the Horde until she was conscripted into service. She likes helping newly risen Undead, and has learned to deal with Undeath in her own way. But she is so transient, and new to the crew. Having her swoop in and teach them a “new way” is just a tiny bit better than Calia doing the same thing.
Velonara? … better than the other two, but it would seem too similar to Sylvanas. An Undead Elven Dark Ranger with ties to the Forsaken and Quelthalas… we did that. She is fine, but I think she should lead the Horde Dark Rangers, and serve the Forsaken as the “face” of the new Dark Rangers, instead of the whole Forsaken.
My absolute Dream scenario…
The Black Bride!
Sure, she has very little story, at the moment. But she embodies the Forsaken aesthetic better than Sylvanas or Nathanos did. She looks like one of them. She has been around since Vanilla. She has… presumably… served the Forsaken and the Horde in the field of battle, since AB has her in it, and she was by the old entrance.
She has a position of leadership. If she strolled in and laid claim, she would have more right than Voss or Calia or anyone. Just let her rise up! Fill in her back story. Make her the new Dark Lady!
Your solution would not be appealing to anyone. You’re arbitrarily pushing for massive forced migrations from their homes, into territories honesty less suited for each race … solely because you believe such forced relocations would prevent future conflict? When minor migrations will do. You’re also not factoring in groups like the AU Mag’har, who are very unlikely to get AU Draenor back … and will be forced to start settling somewhere on Azeroth. Regardless if they get lucky enough to get another influx of refugees; which I do think they might.
On top of this, players would riot … especially the Alliance and NE playerbase. People still complain that a previously neutral zone right in the main Horde capital’s backyard was given to the Horde; its still almost unthinkable for the Kali Horde to be allowed even a little breathing space with less desolate zones like Stonetalon and Feralas; I could only imagine the explosion of rage if the Horde were to pick up all of Kalimdor. You want “changes to prevent conflict” … top 3rd of EK is Horde, top 3rd of Kali is Alliance. With mountain ranges serving as those borders.
You want reasons for peace? You don’t force people out of their homes to such an extent they’ll be accessories for the main Alliance and Horde races. Just create defined (politically and geographically) borders, and enough land for both sides to work towards stability and prosperity. Give them reasons to stay out of eachother’s hair, and move beyond “just survival”.
I don’t believe it would prevent future conflicts. Because this is warcraft and stupid war is kind of the thing.
But I was hoping it would lead to different causes of conflict instead of the same old crap.
But to appease the playerbase, it has to be the same old crap or else you’ll have threads like this, every NE poster thread, and so on, and so forth.
I don’t want peace. I want the Alliance and Horde to constantly be mugging each other. I don’t want them to be at war anymore because Blizzard has proven they suck at it, but if they are going to be at war I want the reason for it to stop being about Ashenvale and Lordaeron, so I’d rather they remove them from the board to prevent that from being a thing.
And to achieve this you really do not need Faction Exclusive continents. It would take some sacrifices, but far more minor ones than what you are suggesting. If we are even considering relocations, there are impactful, but smaller ones that would still do the trick. That could provide added security and prosperity to both sides, even if there is some pain in the short term.
If anything, I would love to see the Worgen take over Duskwood and turn into a nice gothic looking place. Can even have them push out the undead on their own and still have them continue their work with helping/curing the local worgen in the area.
I still don’t know why they didn’t have the Worgen settle hear in the first place. Would kind of fit how the Goblins settled one zone away from the factions main hub. Then again I would like to see Gilneas and Kezan get some more content and a facelift.
I would wager it has to do with culture more than anything else. The Worgen and Gilneans still fully intend to return to Gilneas and their northern territories. They still want to go home. The Bilgewater and Goblins though have never been sentimental. Kezan is gone, its become a mining town on top of an absurdly volatile material called Crapopolis. The Undermine underneath it is likely in far worse shape. There is no reason to look back.
The Bilgewater have no intention of “returning Home” … home is where they make it. Thus they just built a new city and continue to move forward. The Gilneans still intend to reclaim and return to their homes, so as a result they’re future requires they reclaim the past first.
If they’re apart of the Horde, and offer their armies to remain in the Horde, then they have both their standing army and the Horde’s as well, in the event of conflict. Nothing in the ideology of anarchy really puts this at conflict. The absence for government, in a civilian environment, is highly communal but without written laws or elected officials to decide on things.
This is the Forsaken we’re talking about, in this context. They don’t really need much. They don’t eat or require anything such as clothing or medicine, so there doesn’t have to be any distribution of goods. They don’t sleep, so any private property is simply a luxury and not really required, everything else can be put towards fortifications or a workhouse for production of goods. They don’t require representation, as the law of the land has basically collapsed since the fall of Lordaeron and there are no Lords to govern them.
Sylvanas, while an iconic war hero for them during their formative days and instrument to building their armies, was more of a General than a Queen and not really needed for the functions of civil society. Of course, the military will always require arms, armor, siege engines and the like, and in an ordinary society, taxes would be raised to fill the coffers that would be spent on a military budget, but this is a society that has nothing to buy. They have no basic needs of survival as a human might, only shelter against their enemies. It’d be easier to turn to craftsmen and say “We need this, produce X and Y.” and, naturally, since their existence depends heavily upon their (and the Horde’s) success, it’d be in their best interest to get on with it.
While there is certainly the human aspect of wanting these things, like new clothes, private property, a bed (in which they have no use for it besides maybe lounging), it’s ultimately second to the function of the machine.
It doesn’t have to be a long term plan. As far as I understand it, and I could be wrong, the game plan isn’t world domination, or to create an empire, but to exist long enough to live out the entirety of their unlives until the mindless state takes them all and the Forsaken curse ends with them.
Which might change, if Shadowlands ends with a massive swarm of the undead rising from their graves and with nowhere to go, but, as it stands now, it’d be a fool’s errand to plan for the next generation, if there won’t be a next generation. The Forsaken can’t procreate. The generation raised in Cataclysm might be the last ones out, but, the time window isn’t that big of a gap.
So the forsaken will basically be the hordes version of the Undying Army from Maldraxxus…the concept sounds cool in theory, especially if they recruit enough rogue scourge and rehabilitate them
That’s not completely accurate. Parquel told Calia that they needed her and began, along with the Felstone brothers, to slowly make their way to the Alliance. They were using Calia to stay with their living family members and she actually thought they were siding with her as the Last Menethil, their Princess/True Queen.
This incorrect belief motivated Calia to try and recruit Velinda, which did involve revealing herself. Velinda rejected her, but one of the priests saw the confrontation and rushed to inform Sylvanas when she recognized Calia. Cue Sylvanas lashing out over the sister of the man who brutally murdered her being present and thus ordering the deaths of the Desolate Council on the field for the crime of defecting and the paranoid belief that she couldn’t count on the loyalty of the ones returning. It was seeing Sylvanas and the Dark rangers fly into the field that caused Calia to call out for all them to defect to the Alliance.
I however am in complete agreement that Calia should have never been there. Anduin could have used the Gathering to help foster better relations between the Horde and Alliance, but willing and knowingly risked it blowing up in face by allowing Calia to attend. The fact he was worried about Calia being recognized during the Gathering shows he was aware of it and yet he still let her out on the field instead of doing the sensible thing and pulling her back at the last minute.
Anarchy by its very nature is oppositional to authority. As for military strength, what military strength? The Forsaken’s back was thoroughly broken in BfA. They just do not bring enough to the table to justity them constantly serving as an antagonistic force; dragging the Horde into the very wars they themselves claim they’re useful in. They need to prove themselves compatible enough with the Horde at least to justify the Horde’s continued support of them.
As for reproduction, it seems that current Blizz doesn’t know how to do subtle approaches anymore, but I would assume that if the Scourge were well and truly freed (from the Helm of Domination, and I suppose the Jailor) there would surface minds and souls that can still be saved. That nearly endless mass of tormented people could be a resource the Forsaken could use. And it would be a pretty noble way to continue and grow their population by getting back to their roots.
Save those that can be saved, harvest those who are too far gone for parts.
At no point does that conflict with remaining in the Horde. I’m talking, strictly speaking, civil society not having any formal governance that orders them around, rather than an oligarch at the top wielding power they are not prepared to wield.
It’s often thought that anarchy means ultra chaos but it’s by no means anywhere close. Anarchy does have themes of extreme individualism, but there’s also themes of collectivism, which I used previously to describe the scenario. There’s a lot of potential overlap and if you want to get in on the nitty gritty, there’s plenty of sub-catagories of anarchy, such as collectivist anarchism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, classical marxism, et cetra, et cetra, which can be similar but also have different ideas on societal function, ranging from slight to drastic.
By the 1500’s definition, it is purely defined as “an absence of governance.”, and can be observed in motion throughout our history. Heck, you can even see it in motion during major historical events before the 1500’s, such as the War of the Roses, where the kingdom was separated in two for a civil war and as a result, smaller communities became a lot closer knitted as the position of the throne became uncertain, with no answering from up high, and between the Barons and Dukes mustering their forces to fight, they couldn’t spare the men to quell peasant rebellions when they stopped sending taxes, food and men to the fore.
Even moreso, you can see more noteworthy depictions of life without rule from up high during a War in the 1100’s called, literally, “The Anarchy”.
An anarchistic society can have a standing army, and it’d especially work for the Forsaken, since they depend on each other to ensure their survival. Given both their original and standing situation, it absolutely encourages no half-assing, since it’s everyone that stands to reap the consequences.
Which leads me to what I wanted to touch on:
Yes. As was everyone’s. No-one walked out of BFA looking good, and it’s about to get even worse with the Scourge rampaging across the world. With every known power in the world about to revert back to square one in military readiness, and the Forsaken having a natural extreme grudge with the Scourge (formerly for the reason they died, now because of Sylvanas exploiting a real pain and turning them to fight a war that didn’t need fighting), this is a perfect time to both cement their place in the Horde with their expertise on fighting the Scourge, as well as build their arsenal back up, so that when all the armies of the world are recovered and, if so inclined, resume any wars, the Forsaken are ready to fight again, and, if all goes well according to plan, they’re fortified in such a way that attacking would be far more costly than its worth, potentially disarming a fight before it starts.
In terms of conflicts the Forsaken has dragged the Horde in, as opposed to the Horde calling upon the Forsaken, it’s 1 for 1. Garrosh ordered Gilneas (and specifically without the blight, so that they’d go extinct through both the initial battle and the retaliation that’d come without support) and Sylvanas ordered a pre-emptive strike after the events of Stormheim.
In terms of tit for tat, they’re about square with each other.
They offer a lot bring to the table, though, they’re not beggars looking for scraps at the table. The Blight is the world’s most deadliest chemical weapon. Just the same, the Forsaken offer a lot by their very nature, as well as the taboo powers they’ve come to master in their pursuit of survival, such as strong insight into the practices of warlocks and the like. The same reasons why they don’t need such formal governance is the same reason why they make good soldiers: they don’t eat, so they can’t be starved out during a siege (attacking or defending), they don’t sleep, so it’s more difficult to ambush them by means of sapping watchmen, they don’t breathe so neither pestilence or smoke will kill them, and they have to be physically destroyed to be killed, so they don’t need medicinal treatment or special needs while on campaign.
I’d be down with the idea, really. It might be good for military assets, since a large chunk of the population just died in a war, but it ultimately begs the question if what they want is military assets by mindless undead, or a civilian populace that can also be a military asset, and in doing so, demand longer-term planning for another generation that’ll have to live in the same conditions they have.
Yeah spitting on Calia is the right thing to do. She is not Forsaken and never will be one. She is just here to bring some light redemption nonsense into the fault which will just ruin the Forsaken and their themes. The Forsaken don’t need that since they are good just the way they are. Give Calia the boot and call it a day-
It’s also not bad for a character to have flaws, and it can be good for their growth that they’re capable of admitting to them. It’s just up to the story to make sure that they actually do grow. Or if they have to regress, not to do it like they did with Sylvanas.
