Blight is bad because Forsaken use it. That’s it, that’s the argument.
You’re allowed to do the things blight does, but only if you don’t use blight. You’ll never see Anduin wring his hands over the thousands of fire mages he employs to burn peoples flesh off their bones, or his soul-eating warlocks, or his death knights that infect their enemies with horrific wasting diseases, or his shadow priests that rend peoples minds with the void, or etc etc
It’s the same reason necromancy and plagues are evil, unless the Maldraxxi or Ebon Blade do it, in which case its good.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I believe a lot of the hand-wringing over Blight comes because both the devs and anyone who went to school in the US has the particular message that “poison gas = evil” hammered home in the history curriculum. Blight is fairly analogous to IRL poison gases (it always gets that sickly greenish coloring) and thus that lesson of the evils of poison gas from the WWI unit of history class is already in most US students’ heads, waiting to be activated.
Flamethrowers and other sorts of fire like napalm or white phosphorus are horrible deaths as well, but they don’t receive that particular lesson highlight that poison gas does. It’s often accompanied by pictures of the horrible facial disfigurement caused by gas injuries - hell, I’ve used galleries of such images myself.
The point being, whether they realize it or not (they might not - the Blizz devs all obviously went to school and learned these same things), whenever they write about the Blight they are probably accessing that knowledge and it colors their writing to paint the Blight as evil above all else, in a way that they don’t for other horrible deaths like being burned alive or banished to the void, because those things are not highlighted like poison gas is, or are too abstract to really prompt a reaction without the narrative explicitly pointing out what is happening.
Pretty much. Like truly, within this setting, there are far worse ways to go than Blight. And many that will take far more time on you to do it (or hell, in some cases, wont even be done with you after it kills you). Its just that Blizzard doesn’t often frame those alternate modes of “deceasing” someone in the same negative light.
You don’t seem to understand Colonialism very well.
The only real time the Forsaken really ran an offensive War against the Alliance, was in Cata. And Garrosh had no interest in EK. He was just using the Forsaken as a means to split EK Alliance forces while he focused on Kali; and had genuinely hoped to weaken or wipe out Sylvie’s power base in the process. And Cromush was supposed to be there to keep Sylvanas in line, not to “oversee an invasion”.
The Forsaken approached the HORDE to join, and it took a hell of a lot of finagling to get them in. Most Horde members were opposed to the notion, and it was ONLY due to Cairne’s goodwill (and Magatha’s likely agenda) the race was allowed a chance. There was no Horde “Proxy” forces in EK. Nor intent to invade EK. The Forsaken also brought the BEs into the Horde, and oversaw that union.
As for “indigenous minority”. Here’s the thing. I DARE you to actually give me the numbers about how many living Citizens of Lordaeron still exist, and how those numbers compare to those of the Undead Citizens of Lordaeron. Because you can’t. I also betcha you can’t point out how many of those remaining living citizens haven’t already resettled to the south in the 18 years since their escape? Or what percentage of them have ANY intent to reclaim Lordaeron at this point? I’d wager not as many as you’d think in all that time.
Here’s the thing, I think you are right that it is possible co-habitation of those territories could happen. I just don’t think it could happen as cleanly as you’re suggesting if the Humans of this setting were written in any way “Human”. And such an arrangement could ultimately result in the systematic pushing out (or outright eradication) of the Undead of Lordaeron (just like Garithos and the Scarlets wanted). However, it is also true that if you want to play a citizen of Lordaeron in this game … you can only do that on the Forsaken. No matter how much you headcannon this grand army of surviving humans of that dead kingdom just waiting to claim their Manifest Destiny. To reclaim the Human Holy Land and purge that annoying stain from their records.
Technically Hillsbrad was an offensive, but I think the Scarlets, who weren’t so clearly disliked by the Alliance until their living person murdering came apparent, heavily reinforced the sense that the living weren’t going to respect their claim to Lordaeron. This is the era when Dwarves casually massacred a Tauren tribe just for an excavation, and the Alliance heavily supported a similar action in Alterac Valley so I am not keen on assuming the Hillsbrad humans wouldn’t help the Alliance march on Forsaken holdings even if they acted strictly defensively.
Just so we are clear here… if we assume the hillsbrad peasants could potentially be a risk to the Forsaken due to dwarven actions in Barrens and Alteract then they are in their right to do what they did in Hillbrad.
So as long as something could be a threat then its ok?
Hillsbrad as of Vanilla really had nothing to do with the Scarlets, Alliance or the Dwarves really. Most of the Horde conflict was with the Syndicate. Alteract was weird far removed from really anything there.
I think one thing that supports the view that peace could have been possible, is how a lot of Forsaken have been shown to be genuinely integrated into general Horde life. You’re telling me they couldn’t have gotten along with their living relatives, but they are able to get along well with orcs and trolls that were their enemies a generation ago?
It was an alliance of convenience. Getting a work relationship with people who are empathetic to their condition (the Tauren) or know what its like to get abused by evil (the Orcs) is presumably easier than people who primarily see the Scourge that destroyed Lordaeron who also get weirded out more by walking human corpses than the Orcs do. The Forsaken were also inconvenient to the Alliance who would prefer a living human controlled Lordaeron but convenient to the Horde in providing a foothold there.
How the Forsaken actually initiated their relationship with the Blood Elves is not shown, but a bunch of guys suddenly helping you with the actual Scourge when you are desperate to not be overrun probably helps ease out initial shock and distrust.
Its entirely shown. Level a blood elf. The whole point of ghostlands is the forsaken coming in and helping the Blood Elves, and then vouching for them to join the Horde.
I think the point was that that’s a bit after the fact. Forsaken are already partly integrated by the time you start working with them. The Blood Elves know who they are, their deal, etc. There’s no initial meeting that takes place. I think the first time you run across them you see a Forsaken over a poisoned Blood Elf and immediately know it is all chill.
We don’t see the first few Forsaken / Blood Elf meetings. We come in after that’s happened a bit back.
In-game book: “Old Hatreds - The Colonization of Kalimdor.”
The mighty fleet, under the command of Grand Admiral Daelin Proudmoore (Jaina’s father), had left Lordaeron before Arthas had destroyed the kingdom. Having sailed for many grueling months, Admiral Proudmoore was searching for any Alliance survivors he could find.
As well as his dialogue in the campaign:
" Jaina. Bless the stars, I’ve found you at last! When I heard that Lordaeron fell, I despaired. But I knew you’d find a way to escape. I… what is this? An ogre?
Having been at sea during Lordaeron’s fall, to have learned of it and learned that there were survivors to find, he had to have returned to Kul Tiras at some point after Jaina’s departure with the refugees, and it’s outright stated that his reason for setting sail again was to find the survivors of the Scourging, hoping Jaina would still be among them.
This is the only portion I disagree with. I doubt he would have been on the “same standing mission”. Because it probably would have been at least half a year, a year before he actually went to look for Jaina again. By that point, I don’t think the Horde was even on his mind when he tried to search for Jaina.
Even longer, actually. Playing WC3 and TFT back-to-back can feel like only a few months went by (mainly because in the other, campaign-oriented missions that’s actually the case), but Chronicle III indicates that a few years of peaceful, at-arm’s-length coexistence between Orgrimmar and Theramore had passed when Daelin’s fleet arrived and broke the peace. Meaning the events in The Founding of Durotar actually occur two or three years after those of WC3 and the rest of TFT.
Which makes sense insofar as the two cities’ dispositions; Theramore was a serious fortified settlement by that point, and Orgrimmar’s construction was well underway. Technically neither was ever said to signify the original landing points of either factions’ fleets, so they had to basically start from scratch building them after departing night elf lands and marching east across half the breadth of the continent, likely foraging and fighting locals the whole time before staking out the cities’ locations and building them from scratch.
We are in agreement at least that Daelin didnt go to Kalimdor to try and wipe out the Horde(initially at least). Arguing with Tammy about this particular point was exhausting.
Correct. He had no real reason to think the Horde had survived that storm, let along expected them to be in Kalimdor at all. Really as far as the Alliance knew (other than probably the Silvermoon government, who had a bad habit of keeping the larger world a secret from everyone else), Jaina was taking a shot in the dark by sailing with all of those refugees to a mythical continent that may or may not have even existed.
Between the Maelstrom and the veil of mist that shrouded Kalimdor from passing ships, hardly anyone in the Eastern Kingdoms really knew the other continent was there. They only knew about the EK, Northrend, and the larger islands like Kul Tiras, Zandalar and Kezan.
Nope, we simply will keep in mind she has unresolved anger issues and that WoW´s Horde is maybe the media she´s using to achieve catharsis -not a proper way if you ask me; people playing Horde have nothing to do with her personal stuff-.
Better yet, most people don´t get defensive and try to blame third parties for the reasons the weird passing thoughts happened in the first place, period.
If we wanted to be terribly academic, it would be the ancient home of the Forests Trolls indeed…
The Humans and the elves were both invaders in this case.
Valko!!! you made me sputter my drink onto my monitor, wtf!!!
Hilarious, go girl!!
Which comes as hilarious when you go and discover that same guy was totally in cohoots to kill other allies of him like Kael et al. Which means the “worst” of the Alliance is indeed NOT above betrayal (the fact Modera et al ended up going with his brilliant ideas reinforces this notion).
Those are part of the plot of the Sunwell trilogy manga… that´s were the first deals between Forsaken and Blood elves are portrayed (back when Blizzard wasn´t interested in making Sylvanas the poster child for psychopathy).