So having done the quests in Classic and Cata what I found interesting about the Eastern Plaguelands is that they seem irrevocably cursed.
It doesn’t just apply to the land. The Argents note that maintenence on their outposts has to be constant because even fresh man made buildings wither with preternatural speed.
And of course there’s Stratholme which has been burning for decades. And Tirisfal which definitely isn’t plagued but is perpetually cursed.
And then you get to the Dead Scar and Ghostlands and it’s all been fixed up. There’s still problems, the Farstriders have to cull wildlife near Deatholme if they show signs of infection but ya know it’s manageable.
And this isn’t unprecedented the Western Plaguelands of course show signs of recovery. So much so Stormwind tried to start a farm in walking distance of the Bulwark and that went exactly how you’d expect it to.
But like what’s the severity of these things? Because my understanding was Scourged territory had their ecosystem essentially raised into undeath. A weald of mushrooms and giant carnivorous worms where even the buildings rot and decay.
But apparently it’s not that hard to completely reverse it? You can turn something called The Dead Scar into the 100 Acre Wood, complete with friendly yellow bears, with just some elbow grease and environmental rehabilitation?
Man if that’s the case then the Argents really need to put their back into it. And the Forsaken apparently need to work harder to keep their territory perpetually spooky.
Well, EPL is that way for now, until they feel the need to retcon it. The lore stated Dead Scar is incurable in TBC and it was still a thing in that awful Windrunner comic we got in BfA. Midnight basically retconned it, claiming Sunwell healed it (?, might have been in some interview, I don’t remember it being touched in-game at all).
Forgot about that Windrunner comic. Granted that region is still around 30% spooky. It’s dark and there’s big spiders. But uh. Kinda implies this whole restoration thing happened over the last, what, like 5 years?
The short answer of it is different devs telling a different story without foreknowledge or understanding of the creators before them. The dead scar, despite us being told of it’s near irreversible state in BE heritage quest, is cleansed because the modern Blizzard team want to restore it.
This is all the more telling with the near eraser of Deatholme. Seemingly there is no real legacy left of the Scourge (or the perhaps thousands of corpses that lay in the scar). For whatever reason they wanted an evergreen Quel’thalas; perhaps for future content.
But I’m sure you knew that already. Who knows? I guess elves are betterer and coolerer at gardening than humans.
Regarding the Argent Crusade, it is in a haze of either being completely dismantled by the Burning Legion, disbanded by the Silver Hand, kind of around in Northrend or here and there for random quests similar to it’s originator the Scarlet Crusade. If Blizzard were smart about it, that would explain why there have been setbacks in the Plaguelands.
As for Tirisfal, Stratholme and so on. I like the supernatural idea of curses and fate-bound outcomes that these places are so tragic they will never recover. Neither should they. Lordaeron is interesting because it fell, not because it was.
that be neat, btua ctual reaosn stratholme burns ,it made sense still in classic and plot even cata hasnt mvoed forward and currently is over city since its from pre cat and is very much 2D so they cant let you fly over it
Actually, if you want to go even deeper, there was that second (yep, that’s what being the most played race by far gets you) blood elf heritage questline in Shadowlands, 9.2, where you save Tranquillien from some San’layn prince and his scourge minions, and the zone looks like normal TBC Ghostlands. So I suppose the place started healing and got fully healed somewhere during the SL to DF timeskip. It’s weird.
The best explanation is actually the Sunwell. In game seems to reinforce this.
The Lightbloom thing is not exactly new. It is just significantly increased. They talk about the light infused growths as having been there for a while. They just started growing crazy fast and making the effected life turn super aggressive. But they talk about it in the questing as Light infused growth having been there for a while.
Additionally, as you get further and further from the Sunwell there is less and less effect. It is the far end of Ghostlands that remains the most effected from the plague. And it is progressive as the restored lands become more and more hostile.
Which means the Plaguelands are technically fixable as well. We just need to plop a well of power infused by a Naaru in the middle and we are good.
The TLDR is that when the Sunwell was reignited, it sorta messed with the region’s water table (makes sense, the Sunwell itself is fed by a natural spring), and started subtly infusing Light into the water, which then started to fight off the death magic still present in the Dead Scar and Ghostlands’ soil (and as a side effect, it started making benign patches of Lightbloom which went berserk when the Sunwell got hypercharged)
The Western Plaguelands was a joint effort between the Cenarion Circle and the Argent Crusade, druids and paladins working together to heal the land. Also, the Western Plaguelands were not as badly hit as the East. They seemed to be “lagging behind” in terms of corruption, so much so that the Cult of the Damned were using plague cauldrons to spread the corruption further (I don’t believe those are present in the East). Also, we see as early as Cata that some areas in the East ARE recovering, mostly around the Light’s Hope Chapel and the towers, although the Scarlet Enclave doesn’t look too bad either.
The lore is clear, the Plaguelands can be healed but it’s through great effort of druids, priests, and paladins; and will also take a lot more time (and be much slower) for the badly-hit East. Also, the Scarlet enclave in the east quite clearly survived the worst of the Plague unscathed.
Arguably the bad writing comes from Midnight because the Dead Scar shouldn’t have recovered so quickly. You will note that, while the Western Plaguelands are healing, scars and remnants of the Plague are still evident on the land. It’s not just magically overgrown with grass.
Another zone that seems to be perpetually cursed is Duskwood. The curse of that land was a result of Medivh’s corruption and death + the Scythe of Elune. It’s been many decades since the First War, yet the land still doesn’t show any sign of healing. And hopefully it won’t, because it’s such an iconic and memorable zone. I’d hate for it to get the “Ghostlands” treatment in Midnight.