We literally have confirmation that Blizzard’s internal dynamics are rife with misogyny, racism, homophobia, and various types of abuse from multiple devs and ex-devs multiple times over.
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I will bet you at least 3 shiny silver that the overt thought process with forsaken was “death metal zombies haha”.
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We literally have confirmation from Metzen that he intended them to have a deep and nuanced story and that the rest of the team just wanted them to be Scourge Part 2 and it was like pulling teeth.
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they used to be human, and they are rejected by the society they were once a part of. they honestly have a very nuanced story it isn’t just “i zombie i eat ppl and is edgi naow”. The uhhh one tidesage (forget their name) that was turned into a forsaken is a great example of the story potential of the race…shame that blizzard decided to make him fodder for baine to feel bad.
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I’ve read enough of Metzen’s writing to also three silver bet that he meant them to be nuanced like the orcs, which is to say “white American teenage boy rule of cool centric viewed by a nostalgic middle class dude”.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nor is there in reading the forsaken as an allegory for queerness. But saying that that’s the only possible interpretation and anyone who doesn’t like that is wrong and probably a bigot to boot (not that you or anyone in this thread has done that; I’m arguing the generalization here) feels like a disservice to what nuance there is in the story, and, of course, real people.
Because while I do like a nice pet spider, I’ve never owned one or sold anyone a cockroach.
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I literally didn’t say that.
Mawthorne didn’t understand why people, and a lot of Women and Q/T people specifically, relate so strongly to the Forsaken and Sylvanas.
I explained why.
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Don’t knock it till you try it.
well i doubt they like shadowlands, the entire kyrian zone is practically a giant symbol for cult-like religious behavior lol.
In part because the devs ignored it completely and it was a different time. And thats kind of what Im talking about. Granted, the entire expansion revolved around that race and the devs were powerless to appease the vocal minority, even if they wanted to, but the fact is the same fanbase howled in protest to the pandaren as a race as those who howled about the burning of Teldrassil and BFA in general.
And the complaints about the burning have been consistent only in their persistence. Even at the time, they were inconsistent from player to player. “It’s out of character!” Or “Blizz hates NElves!” Or “OMG this better not be Garrosh 2.0” or “Sylvanas better not get away with this!” Not only should an MMO avoid the storytelling pitfalls of a serial narrative more vigilantly than other types of serial media, but how does one even begin to appease that playerbase, in retrospect?
The burning was not only in character, but was the only logical choice given the situation when the order was given. The only thing wrong with the continuity of that story was when the devs embraced the nonsense genocide narrative that didn’t even fit with Golden’s Elegy when she established it.
Hence the bit in parentheses.
Though I suspect the handful of posts I was reacting to initially are going to the great post graveyard in the sky.
As was the tree, until the devs changed gears and embraced Golden’s use of “genocide” because they didnt want the angry “victims” to feel gaslighted.
Take out the genocide and everything makes perfect sense. No one would ever believe the Alliance would choose to leave a tree full of hostages, nor than Genn would have issue with them saving Nelf souls, over recovering an empty Gilneas. Only the empty tree narrative makes sense.
That would actually reinforce my point.
“Why is the last patch of Shadowlands all voiceovers with pencil sketches?”
‘The Community’ is a chaotic amalgam of millions without any true consensus on what ‘it’ wants. There are many groups who want many, often contradictory, things. The Devs have to pick either trying to give everyone a little bit of everything, or knowing do something that’ll please one certain group while disappointing others. Sometimes, orders come from above/marketing that force them to do something a certain way that only the bosses really want, not the costumers.
Sometimes I think the people who make the game want us to hate each other, instead of ganging up on them, and keep us divided on purpose. But, given the nature of ‘The Community’ as outlined above, this is unlikely and unnecessary.
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Yes
That is literally what Afrasiabi would regularly brag about
Which is why I regularly remind everyone to stop with the in-universe arguments and critique the wizards behind the curtain pulling the levers
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The story that we got presented that Alliance tried to evacuate but were not able to do it fast enough.
Secondly unlike Garrosh who just dropped a bomb while the rest of the Horde were unaware of his plans the Horde actively participated in killing the Night Elves in the tree.
Then they proceeded in following Sylvanas for an entire expansion.
Nope. It does not.
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Because the community of MUDs and MMORPGs tend to talk a lot about their living and actively developed worlds, they often do come to consensus about where the games should go, and they are almost always cracked. Devs really do, very often, know what their players would want better than their players do. If the devs are wrong 50% of the time, you better believe their fans will be wrong 70 percent of the time. If their fans knew as much about game design, they would spend their time designing games. And those communities are very often victims of mob mentality. It only takes one person who has the charisma to make an idea sound good, to convince a vocal minority that the idea is what they also want.
“Why is this scene of Sylvanas burning the tree a bunch of drawings and not animated?”
It’s like prison. Racial gangs are in prisons partially due to prison guards encouraging racism. It keeps the prisoners in conflict against each other. Otherwise there’d be a higher chance of the prisoners coming together, and trying to overthrow the prisons they’re in. Blizzard wants us to argue with each other instead of against them.
I was definitely entertained yesterday and it kept me occupied.
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Oh absolutely.
Joke’s on them tho, we are perfectly able to do both at the same time 
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Every perspective presents an active evacuation. Even Golden’s. Yes, Golden gives anecdotes of the horrors during the evacuation, and those who failed to make it out in time, but it references a great many more refugees who did evacuate.
And that takes us back to the plan. Sylvanas wanted the Alliance to fight over retaking Teldrassil, or Gilneas. They needed to be equal for that to happen. Gilneas was not full of civilians, and Teldrassil couldnt be either. What’s more, for Teldrassil to be a hostage nation, instead of simply a group of civilians under an occupation force would completely ruin the plan to cause infighting among the Alliance leaders.
Teldrassil was mostly evacuated in both of the novellas (despite Golden’s irresponsible use of the term genocide) and in the WoT cinematic (unless the nelves evacuated defenders first and left behind the civilians).
So has mine, but not during BFA. During SL. SL is soooo much worse than BFA.