The Arathi Tonal Disconnect

Lore Story Forum
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Honestly, the reason they made the Arathi “welcoming” or at least even keel is probably to balance out the fact that the Oathsworn are stand-offish when you first meet the Earthen and even the friendly Nerubians are pretty much openly racist to anything bipedal. Blizzard probably just wanted the Arathi to come off as more normal or… more specifically put, similar to Stormwind.

I’m sure the long term purpose of this is to make the wider Empire’s attitude more of a surprise. Though they have forshadowed them being hostile a few times already.

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Because he needed to make things look good. And if Arthas was going to be a worthy vessel, he had to be tested.

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This. Exactly this.

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I just hope that future, non-Hallowfall Atathi are starkly different and at the very least have non-Hallowfall referencing voicelines.

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Im hoping they werent meant to return, that certain happenstances were because a sacrifice was needed, and its a very “uh oh,” moment for the empire whencthey return. Maybe even a “we sent a true heir away as a stowaway to kill/hide them” moment and it starts escalating things in the Empire.

Im not invested either way, but seeing someone close to anduin accept a leadership role similar to one he has avoided might be neat. It could go to their head and ruin them, or it could inspire him further to be the best whatever he is, that he is.

Or he could come face to face with a cold group of Light weilders who’ve had some sort of Titan or some other device, under their control. Either way, its been five years and something more should be done with Anduin if this is all were ginna do with his “trauma.” (Feels like its been drawn out and nothing was done with it and it would be better put to rest).

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You know, that is a very level headed response. And one i can agree with.

Regardless of what we have been dealt as lore enthusiasts, whether we look forward to dealing with the fall out of Metzens absence now that he is back, or cringe at what we ended up with and how it poked massive hooes in established lore…it is what it is. We can only move forward now that the story team isn’t in freefall.

I personally have faith in Metzen, that what he writes will feel right to us as players. Because his sense of story is special. So even if we end up having to go dig Sylvannas out of the maw (probably not), or travel to a new Zerith-something (haha, but seriously, i wanna see them all), it’ll feel more like wow and way less like torture.

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These are not contradictory qualities.

There’s a lot of unknowns about the Arathi Empire. How far away are they and given the nature of the golden light that transported the Armada underground, the question might also be “how far back in time?” Originally this expedition was a mixed bag of Humans and Quelthelan Elves… now they are one uniform group of Humans with Vulcan ears.

We lack a lot of the context that might bridge these two. We are only in Part One of this story. That may well be for us to discover in Parts Two and Three in the following expansions

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Let me clarify. I don’t think he was mistaken that at the time it was intended to have been Sylvanas desperately trying to kill the Lich King, collateral damage be damned. The vanilla lore had Sylvanas plotting to blight the rest of Azeroth.

The horde was an alliance of convenience.

But by Cataclysm they had officially reframed that as a Varimathras plot. Maybe That was bad narrative, but the third person omniscient narrator is generally not supposed to be mistaken when making authoritative statements.

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Plus it would be weird if Sylvanas was truly behind the Wrathgate as Varimathras was summoning demons of the burning legion. Sound files even say that the voice we hear through the gateways during the battle with Varimathras was Sargeras himself (Battle of the Undercity). We know Sylvanas has no love for said demons. After all she rejected to join the Dreadlords back during the Civil War in the Plaguelands arc of WC3. So why would she aid in a Burning Legion plot to do what? Undermine her alliance with the Horde? To have Kor’kron watching their every move? Which became worse when Garrosh became Warchief.

The way I view it is that the Forsaken would unleash the plague / blight they developed on the world AFTER the Lich King was killed. Not do it at the same time as them trying to kill the Lich King. Which of course always had the chance of failing. And what do you know, it did.

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Even WoTLK had the narrative that Varimathras and Putress plotted together to betray the Horde, it’s not until Afraisabi comes out and say “Yeah. Remember the Wrathgate? That was Sylvanas” that we hear anything to the contrary.

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This exactly. I did the “poison the tauren” quest many times and always felt weird about it. But the fact it was in the game made me think that for sure Sylvannas was guilty of the Wrathgate situation. Him talking to Sargaras, i always felt like he was just cursing, so to speak. (Paraphrasing) “Sargaras, give me the power/minions to smite these fools”, or something of the sort. Being able to actually contact the Big S while on Azeroth is a pretty big deal. Summoning a bunch of demons is just summoning a bunch of demons. Sort of a bread and butter of being a dreadlord.

But that is my interpretation. I always, long before anything went down with Alex or Metzen or anything, was absolutely convinced Sylvannas gave the order (behind the scenes) and thought Varimathras got a raw deal. I mean, he’s a dreadlord, but he also gave me my favorite pair of pants from Vanilla, and i find it hard to hate him. (Lol)

While Cata updated to make Sylvannas seem like the one betrayed, her behavior in Cata and then Legion was absolutely a reasonable level of escalation for a villian. To use the blight again in Gilneas, despite pretending not to know anything about it and stating she would never do something like that…i mean, strikes me that she is a flaming liar at that point and certainly not at all interested in what the Horde wants.

Im not fond of the Cata 1-60 quests, though i did do them all, and it sticks out to me that much of the Seplucher quest chains are more about jamming Garrosh into places he didnt belong.

I’d have written it to be less from the orcish point of view, but from the forsaken pov. Where Sylvannas is respected, and you learn the history of the wrsthgate and her version of what happened…and then have you learn that you are building the blight machines. And that she’s going to use them. And let you stew with that.

Instead we got this weird treatment where we are shown orcs asking too many questions and seeing them run to daddy to snitch. We are removed from the crime.

The crime happens regardless. Sylvannas is part of the Gilnean quest chain. But in one case we get Garrosh calling her a b- to her face, and a whole lot less culpability on behalf of the player. Less emotional connection, way more “wow, they said thralls balls and he called her a NAME”.

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I think Afrsiabi probably felt that his head canon trumped everything. To the point that his views trumped even what has actually been written.

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The most likely scenario is that Sylvanas did give the order, but to only fire on the Lich King. Putress then decided to unleash it onto the Alliance and Horde at the same time as he was in league with Varimathas.

Given what happened to Varimathras post Wrath, I believe he was indeed trying to summon Sargeras (or at least another Avatar) but failed thanks to the Horde (the voice being named ‘Sargeras’ in the sound files also supports this). Demons fail all the time, including ones like Archimonde and Kil’jaeden, yet they were not tortured and torn apart like Varimathras was. Well except Goroth.

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It’s not an easy situation to parse. From another point of view, Garrosh is pullling a Garithos on her, having her Forsaken bleed themselves on the Gilneans while depriving them of their most effective weapon for doing engaging them. After all, what logical reason does this Human-hating Orc have for forbidding her the Blight? The answer might be is that he hates Humans of all types, living and dead, and wanted both sides to decimate themselves.

From that angle it would be sheer suicide for Sylvannas to have obeyed his restriction, and nothing came of her defiance in the end.

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Legionnaire Nazgrim is sick of fighting Naga.

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We straight up know garrosh’s plan was just to kill the forsaken off with a war and then claim their land after the gilneans decimated them, he didn’t ban the blight out of some sense of honor, he did it cause withought it the forsaken would all be killed off in the war he forced them into

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That’s an interesting interpretation. Not denying that’s how it went down. I simply presumed he forbid it for two reasons. 1. The blight gave the forsaken a chance to reproduce. Up until this moment, all forsaken were “born” of a single event (the scourge in Lordaeron plus Arthas taking a nap). He couldn’t know how strong the Gileans were, but he couldn’t give the forsaken the ability to make more of themselves, especially since he hates everythingbut brown orcs. 2. He saw what happened at the wrathgate and knew Sylvannas was behind it. He forbid her from using it because he knew that the more time she had to perfect the concoction the more likely she would use it on the horde (brown orcs).

I never interpreted it as “without it, the gilneans will have the advantage”. That happens to be correct, of course. I am going to have to go and play all these quests again.

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No, the Valkyr did.

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Only blight at its most potent and perfect self was banned by the Horde, the Forsaken were still allowed to use a lesser strain of it. Said lesser strain barely affected the Gilnean worgen.

There was no goal of banning the Forsaken from using the blight to kill them off, it just doesn’t make sense to use the blight on land you want to conquer and settle. Garrosh also simply didn’t understand how Forsaken fight in war or didn’t care and sought to use them as he would his orcs.

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That wasm’t the goal… the goal was to eliminate the Alliance presence that was right next to Lordaeron. Garoosh simultaneously wanted it done… or else and tied Sylvannas’ hands on how to accomplish it.

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