Claiming to be something doesn’t mean you are that something, so our hypothetical Orc wouldn’t bring the Scarlet Crusade back from extinction.
No but a human claiming to be a part of it would, and funnily enough all the people shown have been human
Not if that human was, say, a Light-hating warlock who didn’t care about Lorderaen.
Yea but none of them are, so like ???
My point still stands, you’re just trying to save face at this point.
You haven’t made a point, i’v made a point and then you’ve just said “well in this different scenario you’re wrong” But we aren’t in that scenario, we are in the one where a bunch of light worshipping humans who want lordaeron are claiming to be apart of the scarlet crusade.
I pointed out a hole in your argument, and you’re denying it by saying it hasn’t happened, which doesn’t make my argument wrong because it’s saying how things work; whether it’s occurred yet or not is irrelevant.
No you’ve said that an orc who hates the light claiming he is a member of the crusade wouldn’t revive the crusade, and if that had happaned i would agree that’d it would be weird, but it didn’t so here we are
I didn’t say the hypothetical orc warlock hated the Light, I said the hypothetical human warlock did. You’re getting so much wrong, you’re getting my arguments mixed up, step back and chill out.
Meh. They’re a good villain group and one of approximately two OG human ones. With the other being the “We’ve nothing but legitimate grievances” Defias.
And the Crusade represent an extremely human evil. They’re a theocratic racist supremacist organization. There isn’t a scrap of this Earth that hasn’t being terrorized by that sort of ideology.
My only issue with them is the devil made them do it. No, no, can’t have a group founded on solid values decay into a terrorist group due to paranoia. It’s gotta be Dreadlords.
Additionally the enemies of creatures like the Forsaken and Worgen would be, ya know, Paladins. So having a whole group of weird zealots we are obliged to massacare without any moral hangups is quite nice.
Though I do think we could get some broader characterization of their movement from human Scarlet defectors and the undead Scarlet Risen respectively.
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Yeah. But if they added those I’d be fine with it.
There’s more to it. Joseph the mad wasn’t being driven mad by the Light. The Church of the Holy Light had Archbiship Benedicktus who was the leader of the Twilight’s Hammer, he was secretly recruiting for the cult until he was killed. Anduin’s Vision of N’Zoth attacking the Cathedral in Stormwind. Deathwing as a servant of N’Zoth masqueraded as an Arathi nobleman and even tried to manipulate Terenas and Calia into Calia marrying him.
if Calia did secretly marry and have a child, the Archbishop of Lordaeron would have performed the marriage, aka Benedictus would have known of her marriage and child.
Joseph the Mad sent unanswered letters to Captain Nials, a captain in Arathi who helped reclaim Stormguard. If Calia’s daughter is still alive, that’s who I bet it is. Nials is an anagram for “slain” as in killed [presumed] it would be neat if Calia’s daughter was right under our nose the whole time.
It goes back to how Blizzard tried to advertise the factions when WoW started, coming off of WC3.
A common take on the fantasy genre, especially from Tolkein on, are humans and adjacent races taking on monstrous forces of evil, etc. WC3 turned that on its head with the gimmick of “what if the monster races weren’t necessarily bad, and the stereotypical shining human prince was a big villain”. It’s one of the reasons why WC3 became popular.
With this in mind, WoW set up the factions where both sides could be protagonists, with villainous aspects of the other side to fight. The only one of these to really stick was the Scarlet Crusade, taking the western medieval themes of Stormwind’s humans and turning it into a, yes, religious supremacist crusade against outsiders, starting with undead and building up to exclude anything non-human at all.
Primalists don’t work specifically as an especially meaningful villain for the horde because they’re a multi-racial group (and it’s shaman-coded anyway). Druids of the Flame are specifically the horde’s victims lashing out. The Defias Brotherhood’s target is Stormwind. The naga are a monster race too and don’t play into the “normal VS monster races” trope inversion because of it.
And of course, the alliance itself can never work now because Blizzard decided in all of its wisdom to make the horde into genociders who will be forever justly hated as a result, betraying the horde’s advertised theme that you’re not a monster just because you look like one.
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The Scarlet crusade are like the fleas on Crash Bandicoots fur. They keep coming back.
But who was the villainous aspect of the Horde back then? The non-Darkspear troll tribes? Because iirc they’ve been a pretty long-lasting villain group too.
There is one problem with that “what if the monster races weren’t necessarily bad, and the stereotypical shining human prince was a big villain” concept. The Forsaken, at this point, have been bigger villains than the Scarlet Crusade ever were. Everything the Scarlet Crusade has done… except for fanatical Light worship, the Forsaken have done, and more. Racism, wanting to kill everyone who’s not them, torture. Both sides have done that.
But it wasn’t the Scarlet Crusade who poisoned lands, destroyed cities or tried to turn people into zombie slaves. The Forsaken are literally cannibals and it gets treated like a joke. If the Scarlet Crusade were cannibals, people would be horrified; double standard much?
Doesn’t the Forsaken’s greater rap sheet screw up that dynamic?
Face it, the Scarlet Crusade are a lesser evil compared to the Forsaken.
Wouldn’t the broader characterization get in the way of the “bad guys we can kill without moral hangups” trait?
And the Forsaken, at this point, have been bigger villains than the Scarlet Crusade ever were.
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But they aren’t hated, and we are actively being told hating them is wrong.
Lilian in Amirdrassil for example, she mentions she is hated, and the dryads don’t trust her but by the end we all learn a lesson that Forsaken are good people.
I would agree if it was true but the game is doing its best to make sure we understand that blaming the Horde for Horde actions is wrong.
And it’s poor writing. Forsaken are people, capable of good and evil (and very blithe about the latter). They’ve produced Knell and Lilian Voss, as well as Putress and Belmont (or whatever that war criminal’s name is).
Lilian Voss isn’t some random Forsaken accountant on a stroll getting hated on by wayward dryads. She is one of the leaders of the Forsaken and there for responsible for all their actions.
She is there as a representative of her nation, and we are being told blaming them is wrong.
I agree that is dumb writing. I’m no fan of this whitewashing of the Forsaken, especially since there’s been no reparations or even apology from them to their victims. And having them help retake Gilneas feels like a sick joke.
In chronological order from what I can remember:
Vanilla: The Grimtotem tribe, the Blackrock orcs trying to rebuild the old horde, some aspects of the forsaken
TBC: Kael’thas’s forces if you want to count them (I’m wavering on that), remnants of the old horde again, the Amani as another part of the old horde
WotLK: Putress and his defectors
Cata: The horde itself as a faction, the Amani again
MoP: The horde, continued from Cata
WoD: The old horde again
Legion: Gul’dan, though he wasn’t a big part of the expansion.
BFA: The horde, yet again
SL: Sylvanas as a traitor to the horde
DF: Kurog Grimtotem, though admittedly he barely existed.
The horde’s as a whole does, unfortunately. It’s why I consider the faction irreparably ruined. It’s extra frustrating that the worgen make more sympathetic targets for the SC at this point.
It’s just that the Scarlet Crusade is unique in that all of the above has never really mattered to them before, because to that organization, the horde’s “mortal sin” is simply that they aren’t human. It sucks that pound for pound, the horde’s rap sheet goes way beyond the crusade, but it’s the only “fake alliance”-looking villain group that targets the horde with an unjustifiable reason, and I think removing that would only make the setting worse than it already is.