That’s only blight in name. Functionally, it’s completely different from the Forsaken blight. what you linked is what we now call the scourge plague, which is what turned Lordaeron into undead. The Forsaken blight doesn’t turn the target undead, it simply disolves the target whether it’s living or undead. One is a disease, the other a biochemical weapon manifactured in labs.
Also, since I can’t link stuff, later on that page it says “the R.A.S. searched for a way to effectively spread their new plague, so that no living thing would remain on the entire planet…leaving all of Azeroth as one big plagueland, ruled by the Forsaken.”
Is that enough to convince you of the RAS’s, and by extension the Forsaken’s intentions during vanilla?
Blight and Plague were used interchangeably. The Forsaken Blight was also called the “New Plague”. It was based on their studies of the original Scourge plague/blight. Both are big green cloudy/mist stuff. The differences between them are that the Scourge version harms the living and is harmless to the dead, while the Forsaken version was originally intended to be the opposite, but ended harming both.
You can link the page by placing ``` before ad after the link. Like so.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/New_Plague
And what that link actually says is…
And in order to lay it all o the Forsaken as a whole, you have to ignore the fact that this was done ins secret against their wishes and that when Sylvanas and the other Forsaken found out about it, they joined the rest of the Horde in kicking Putriss and his allies out and deeming the Blight too dangerous for further use. Sylvanas would later go on to kill herself because her whole goal was defeating the Lich King, not taking over the world.
But then Cataclysm happened and Blizzard retconned all that so Sylvanas approved the whole time. This is what I mean when I say Blizzard has made a habit of changing the more nuanced/complicated conflicts of WC3 and earlier WoW to the point where the dynamic now is that the Horde races repeatedly end up committing ridiculous crimes and being made to feel bad bad because they were born innately bad, while the Alliance increasingly ends up being these put upon goody goodies who can do no wrong .
Right, and both has an opposite purpose. One to create more undead for the Scourge, and the other to destroy everything, whether living or dead.
And underneath that, it says what I put within quotations, that being that it was intended to first get rid of everything that lived on Azeroth and the Scourge as well, leaving the Forsaken the last men standing. Go on, it’s right on that page, under History: creation.
No it wasn’t. The RAS had the full support of the Forsaken right up until they used the blight at Wrathgate, at which point the rest of the Forsaken ahd to act against the RAS in order to save face. They knew what they were creating, and they knew what it was intended to be used for.
Look, I know for absolute fact that the RAS intended to create the blight to be used against both the living and the undead. And that’s not a retcon, that is old lore. There was someone who tried to warn the rest of the Horde about what the RAS was doing, and they killed him in order to continue their research. Rather, they had an adventurer do it for them.
Edit: I remembered who the whistleblower was. Infiltrator Marksen.
You understand that to “usurp” something is to take/replace it illegally or by force, right?
What Putriss did my making the Blight deadly to undead and the living was not sanctioned. He and his allies had to do it under secrecy because they knew if Sylvanas and the greater Forsaken/Horde found out, they’d stop them.
And when what Putriss did was revealed, Sylvanas and the Forsaken/Horde stopped them.
So stop trying to act like this was originally part of some plot by Sylvanas and the Forsaken to take over the world for the Forsaken.
Right, in how he used it. Not that he changed it or anything.
He didn’t change it. I don’t know where you got this idea from. And yes, it was sanctioned by the Forsaken, or atleast they never cared to stop them despite the RAS operating in broad daylight in Lordaeron and it’s surroundings. They did keep it secret from the rest of the Horde, but not to the rest of the Forsaken.
Because of wrathgate, not because he made the blight better or anything.
But it was. This is old as dirt lore, when the Forsaken were sort of scourge light. They had this evil plan to conquer the world, and used the Horde as a means for this end. Now this plotpoint got dropped down the line, and then it sort of resurfaced during cata, but that was the Forsaken’s original lore. They weren’t what you think they were.
You are right that the Horde as a whole weren’t evil in classic, and neither was the Alliance spotless good. But the Forsaken was the exception to this, in that they were really evil from the start, and if anything are less evil now at the end of bfa than they have ever been.
The Blight sanctioned the development of Blight to destroy Scourge. Not the living. They didn’t know Putriss was doing experiments to make something effectie against the living because -and you too acknowledge it- he was keeping it under wraps. They didn’t know he had developed Blight capable of harming the living until Wrathgate because it hadn’t been used before.
Sylvanas and the Forsaken’s goals in were originally the ultimate defeat the Lich King. That’s why, after the Lich King was defeated, Sylvanas didn’t go on a campaign to rule the world. She committed suicide.
Cataclysm didn’t revive an old storyline. It created a new one for the purposes of making Sylvanas and Forsaken into the baddies. That’s why it brought her back. That’s why it brought back the Plague even after she and other Forsaken fought Putriss. It’s why they went back and later said Sylvanas had secretly planned the Wrathgate and coup agianst her the whole time.
This is what I mean when I say Blizzard has made a habit of changing the more nuanced/complicated conflicts of WC3 and earlier WoW to the point where the dynamic now is that the Horde races repeatedly end up committing ridiculous crimes and being made to feel bad bad because they were born innately bad, while the Alliance increasingly ends up being these put upon goody goodies who can do no wrong .
No, also the living. That was the goal of everything the RAS was doing during vanilla, to create a plague that could wipe out both the Scourge and the living. I feel like i’m talking to a wall.
But it wasn’t him who was doing the experimenting, he merely overloked the work. The whole RAS was obsessed with creating the ultimate blight, it wasn’t just him. And the rest of the Forsaken supported them, because they were bastards.
They were indeed keeping their research secret. But not from the Forsaken, but the rest of the Horde. Look up Infiltrator Marksen on wowpedia. He had information for the orcs at Stonard, and the Forsaken sent a Deathstalker to make sure he didn’t reveal anything.
That was one of their goals, yes. The other one was to wipe out all life.
Yes, they dropped that plotpoint after vanilla. But it was there. It existed.
The RAS was developing Blight capable of killing people because Putress had secretly and illegally taken over the goals of the project and said efforts from others. Why bother to point that out if everything he was doing was according to plan?
The Forsake that wanted to cover up the information Infiltrator Marksen has is Deathstalker Zraedus. He’s not just some random Forsaken. he’s working alongside Apothecary Faustin, who’s with Putriss and his lackeys to make the Blight. This is not a Forsaken-wide conspiracy.
If what Putriss was doing was sanctioned by Sylvanas and the Forsaken, why’d he have to keep it under wraps from them?
Wanting to kill everyone and take over the world wasn’t the Forsaken’s goal until after Cataclysm. That’s why they started retconning things after Cataclysm to be that Sylvanas and all the Forsaken always knew what was going on.
He didn’t. He didn’t keep it secret from them at all. All he kept secret, was that he was actually working with Varimathras, and wasn’t loyal to her. The Blight itself was well known within the Forsaken, or atleast we can presume that since the RAS worked at perfecting it out in the open in Lordaeron, Hillsbrad, Silverpine etc.
Yes it was. I’ll admit that early wow lore is weird, but one of the Forsaken’s goals in vanilla was to get rid of both the Scourge and the living, while using the Horde in an uneasy alliance. This plotpoint fell off the map after vanilla, and was never really heard from again, but it did exist, that plotpoint.
The Blight as a tool against the Scourge/Lich King was well known among the Forsaken. The RAS only “worked in the open” the same way any other conspiracy does in WoW i.e. the player has to be able to see and interact with them, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is aware the conspiracy exists.
That it wasn’t meant to be used on the battlefield against non-scourge and was meant for them and the Lich King is why it was never actually used in Vanilla -where is supposedly existed to wipe out all the non-undead- and only actually got used in WotLK. Against the Lich King.
The Goblin starting thing.
Jaina trying to sink Orgrimmar.
Well essentially (from what I see), the events happen, but Blizzard always tosses a rope for people to cling onto.
‘Well, not that many people were actually killed in the Purge! And all the involved people deserved it! Technically innocents were let go after a while of imprisonment despite having property seized and dead friends.’
‘I mean, the Stonespire thing wasn’t necessarily official, we don’t know for sure!’
‘Even though Taurajo was fire bombed, they vaguely tried to help some civilians!’
‘Even though Dealin, a leader of an Alliance nation, tried total genocide, at least the rest of the Alliance didn’t agree!’
‘Jaina might have tried to wipe out all of Orgrimmar, but she was really upset and not in her right mind.’
‘Night Elves were torturing Horde in the War of Thornes, but because they were dealing with an all-out offensive after so long.’
These kind of ‘outs’ aren’t really extended to the Horde’s actions.
Garrosh waged a war of aggression, but largely by the Horde’s own fault were they lacking good supplies.
The Forsaken do a bunch of angsty experiments and warfare because they want to.
They burned Teldrassil because they had paranoia that war was inevitable.
So while some acknowledge the wrongdoing at play, others also find frustration at the ‘outs’ that give plausible deniability. Even acknowledging any wrongdoing of the Alliance, it is ultimately swept under the idea that the Horde has done far enough that it isn’t really relevant.
Which makes it obvious that what Putriss and his allies were doing was not what they were supposed to be doing when the stated goal is developing a weapon to defeat the Sourge/Lich King.
The idea of a rogue scientist/organization developing an illegal weapon without the consent of the larger population is not that out there a concept.
But the American leadership was aware that Orange was being developed, right? It’s not like they kept their research hidden from literally everyone both under and above them, like Tammy says the RAS developed the blight.
No, they weren’t. Not every member of Congress is fully aware of what war crimes the military is doing.
It’s why when Congress when looking into MKULTRA or other nefarious 20th century programs, the Pentagon files all mysteriously disappeared or burned in a tragic and convenient fire lol
That one happened under very difficult circumstances and very different than Sylvanas ordering Forsaken to start ethnic cleansing the Hinterlands and raise any victim as undead forsaken. Very different situations.
Yes I agree, they should have these as well but I am getting frustrated that some posters pretend these outs don’t exist.
It creates the problem that it allows Blizzard to get away with their crappy writing.
If these outs are a problem, they should be acknowledged everytime these issues are brought up. Otherwise we are discussing events like they are at all equivalent.
Problem is I barely hear these outs being discussed. Actually, the only time I hear it brought up is after some Horde player brings up some exaggerated tragedy is being corrected by an Alliance player inserting context to the event.
I would be more sympathetic if they did address but they never do. Instead 75% of the discussion becomes arguing facts that can readily be read up on a lore site.
The fact that you guys can’t even muster the cojones to admit that the means and intent of the development of the Forsaken blight were, in fact, objectively bad is one of the reasons your complaints about the moral presentation of each faction is so laughable.
Death camps, non-consensual and invasive human experimentations, and omnicidal goals can’t be considered evil and yet you expect the writers to accept your moral judgments of their writing in good faith?