The Scarlet Crusade

Lore Story Forum
102

I suggest how we could explain the Scarlets swelling their numbers. My idea was they seized on Stormwind’s inability to protect it’s citizens from the Scourge. A thing we know they are unable to do at least in regards to Lakeshire. To improve their reputation with the largest population of humans on Azeroth.

I’m sure plenty in Stormwind would decry their involvement, but they’re not really a problem at the moment and moreover they’ve overwhelmingly been the Forsaken’s problem outside a few fights with the Argents.

How precisely they go about capitalizing on this is a separate topic. Because again the main idea here is to have iconic villains foster cooperation between the Horde and Alliance, specifically the Worgen and Forsaken. The Scarlets are a largely liked villain group regardless of your personal feelings on the matter. The Scarlet Monastery ranks high on best Dungeons of all time lists. They also make perfect villains for those two player factions. Facilitating a reason to update old zones in dire need of one in a way that furthers the story by building on what came before.

103

Why do you say :

What even is that? Are trying to declare your truth as known by all, or something?

I disagree.

Yrel ends WoD already putting the past aside, and working with the AU Orcs to defeat the Legion. And she works with the AU Orcs afterward. Years later, she leads an antagonistic turn for reasons that have NOTHING to do with the old personal grudges of WoD.

You want her to go out of character and hold on to old grudges. While canonically, she has moved passed those, and on to new grudges.

Blizzard is not ignoring Yrel’s character. They are building on what was there.

That seems rather short sighted, and biased.

You seem to hold your Holy Perspective as Gospel, while you accuse Blizzard of falling short of your glory.

If Xera is Awful Good, what is wrong with finding a better way? Maybe the Light rights itself - with help.

What if instead of the dark edge lord black hole stuff you lament… we find a better understanding of the Light, and its good aspects when opposed to its worst.

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104

Lightbound Yrel is a straight-up terrible idea because it demonstrates how poorly the writers understand persecution and revenge. I struggle to think of plausible examples where within a generation, an individual that underwent incredible persecution and then heroism is the individual that immediately foments the exact same kind of blatant persecution in the same measure and magnitude and kind. It’s just the villain bat hitting left and right, I hate it, period.

That is not to say that heroes do not enact their own cruelties and evils, but it’s usually not so blatantly “this is the same situation but the colors changed”.

As far as “I’m tired of Lordaeronian survivors being painted as evil” and “I’m tired of this iconography being used to write ‘subversively’”.

You know what? I’m sympathetic. I don’t like the Light’s conversion into just ‘willpower beams’, where we’ve gone from a cosmic force with a will and purpose that could be subverted in individual instances to colored light beams. There are settings where that works well, like Dragon Age, and I think foisting those metaphysics on a setting that didn’t have them is bad.

I’ll go one step further: the Scarlets are snazzy, in my book, at least superficially. They use fire and light, white and red is a great combo, the loss of Lordaeron is a tragedy, I eat this kind of iconography and symbolism up. I love heroic fairy tale fantasy and I make no apologies for the fact that I do. I always feel a little sad when I’m fighting Scarlets, I mean, outside of the times I would mass murder them for pieces of loot for my guild and they’d take literally hours to give me anything

But I fully support Benedikt’s suggestion in this thread nevertheless, and the reasons why are:

  • We already have unabashed heroic fairy tale fantasy at home. No matter the lightbound nonsense, we’ve got basically Stormwind and Silvermoon firing on all cylinders to deliver that to the masses. Maybe the writing in Stormwind isn’t great and maybe the writing in Silvermoon is… weird, but they’re the two most consistently represented cultures in the game as well as the two most played cultures. And that’s to say nothing of original recipe Draenei. The chance they’re going to villainize the casual player player-cultures is low.
  • WoW is sorely in need of lower-scale threats. We cannot just keep escalating into nigh-infinity until we’re facing Pun-Pun the Kobold God (look it up). Some would say we already reached this point.
  • It re-establishes core themes for a player race that’s taken one in the chin for two straight expansions and represents an opportunity to expand another.
  • Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: subversions are powerful stories not because they are original but because they speak to deep parts of us. They speak to our deep fears, sometimes realized, in how things can go wrong. If you’re walking into it with “gosh, how can we villain-bat the light” and never think a step deeper, that’s how you get the Lightbound crap in the Mag’har story, yeah, sure.

It is more than okay to care about what is in what you write. It is more than okay to try and send messages. I don’t know how else to say this, but like… writers have agendas. We/They always have agendas. Not in the sense of conspiracies, but they all have personal preferences, fears, morals. The success of any piece of writing is not dependent on not having an agenda. There are writers with morals in deep opposition to my own who can still write terribly engaging stuff because they’ve thought about it long and hard and can put forward the parts that really make your brain tick, even if only temporarily.

The essence of writing is always two factors: do you understand what you are writing about, and do you understand who you are writing for? Great writing always inspires emotions in us and intrigue our curiosity; we may conclude ultimately that their morals are not our own (though I would hope we could get behind the morals that stand against the Scarlet Crusade…) but morals are a big part of doing all that.

Passion can be an aid or a hindrance in both cases, but on average I’d say it has to help more than it hurts for the very simple reason that if you like what you’re working on, you’re more likely to try to learn more about it. And if you’re passionate about a real-world situation, that’s not any different.

So as someone who is superficially predisposed to like the Scarlets; as someone who feels a little dissonance every time they’re the villains; I am all for their return in this role.

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105

It would work, though it does raise one question. Why would people join the Scarlet Crusade when there’s a perfectly good Argent Crusade right there for them to join?

That’s not quite what I’m arguing, even though the rest of your comment makes some good points.

There’s quite a bit of difference between the Dragon Age cosmology and Warcraft’s cosmology, which makes it work for Dragon Age but not World of Warcraft. There’s also the execution, though Dragon Age is not without its controversies (for example; what Dragon Age: Inquisition revealed about the fall of elvehn civilization rubbed some of the fanbase the wrong way).

I have to ask, how does bringing in another Scarlet Crusade successor group re-establish core themes for a player race that’s taken one in the chin for two straight expansions? On that note;

That’s a large part of where I think Blizzard started from with all this Lightbound stuff and even as far back as their crummy portrayal of Xe’ra culiminating in her jobbing at the hands… er, eye-beams of their possible self-insert Illidork.

Everything else you said, I either agree with or think you raised valid points. Plus I wouldn’t object to the Scarlet Crusade as much if they hadn’t been used as frequently.

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106

Blizzard should have portrayed two distinct groups of naaru, the more militant ones like x’era and benevolent ones like a’dal. I agree though that she didn’t need to die to portray a different side of the light.

As far as the crusade goes? It’s overdone, we wiped out that organization soo many times now, it’s getting unrealistic that any would still follow them

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107

Yeah, I have mixed feelings, and I will leave it at that. Inquisition has fantastic character writing imo but has left a crack in how much I like the setting in other ways. Especially when, true to form, the dwarves were my favorites and I don’t care much about elves! :slight_smile: Don’t want to bloat the thread further.

A lot of both the Forsaken theming in specific and the Horde theming in general is being misunderstood and cast out by the traditional heroes; Benedikt uses the “disobedient fairy tale” frame for that, and the term tickles my fancy. This has come very sourly in light of all the times Thrall’s organization has acted like its namesakes in general, and then there’s the Forsaken in particular.

The kind of harmonious Addams Family vibe that’s become the Forsaken holding pattern for casual writing works in the absence of conflict but given that the Forsaken were led and almost solely defined by Sylvanas, arguably the most popular character in the franchise among long term diehards, Addams Family is very arguably not enough right now. Especially while Anduin is basically a heroic force of reason. There hasn’t been anyone really casting the Forsaken out at all.

I very much understand where this is coming from, but I think a large part of how we got here has been that we tend to kill threats with finality, when finality means you’re writing yourself out a villain and themes in your digital soap opera. The SC got finality like 3 times. Maybe that was a poor decision.

Existing lore has already walked back the organization getting utterly destroyed, now it’s a question of if we leave that on the table or not when it can fulfill our purposes.

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108

I mentioned Batman at some point because for all the moral reasoning for his non-lethal methods, the meta reason is Gotham would get pretty boring if he offed his rogue’s gallery. And that’s kind of what’s happened to Azeroth.

There’s a line early on in SL I think from Baine that in retrospect should’ve let us know how crap this was going to be. He says something to the effect of;

“The Jailor’s forces rival that of the Legion!”

We’re of course told and not shown this but for once I don’t begrudge that. They could’ve had a masterfully crafted cinematic showing the staggering scale of the Jailor’s forces but that wouldn’t have mattered. Because it’s pretty obvious we’re just doing the Legion again but lame. Instead of a colorful and diverse array of demons from countless conquered worlds it’s just frowny face gray suits of armor of varing sizes. Led by the biggest, frowniest gray man who eventually metamorphose into yet another gray suit of armor.

WoW’s already done all the big fantasy apocalypse storylines. To the point where they’re redoing them but worse as something we’re just meeting can’t hope to have the creativity and impact of villains who’ve been setting staples for decades. We’re in desperate need of more on the ground threats that while credible aren’t apocalypse tier.

I was very happy to see Azshara survive BFA for that exact reason. Her and the naga are bad news but aren’t an existential threat to the world or universe. It’s just a subnautical supervillain with an army of snakebois. Could be serious trouble for one or two nations but can’t challenge the whole world or even really effect you much at all if you’re landlocked like Ironforge. Azshara has that excellent “love to hate her” villain quality, and I hope she and her serpent jamboree hang around to menace us whenever we need some enemy variety for years to come.

I think bringing back the Scarlets to serve in a similar capacity would also be a good idea. We give them a fun supervillain leader who’s very dangerous but not such a threat that all of Azeroth is going to team up to kill them. And then just keep them around to be a reoccuring threat whenever they’re relevant or we just need a B plot to keep things from feeling to samey.

I’d do this with a lot more than the Scarlets too. Gallywix could be running the Venture Co. now. They’d be a solid Captain Planet villain to bedevil our nature loving nations. Magtheridon was never destroyed so maybe he’s giving his blood to Burning Blade cultists in a bid to build an army of fel infused Azerothians to give him an edge in the Legion power vaccum wars I’m sure Sargeras’s eternal timeout caused.

And so on.

The Scarlets make for an ideal foil for the Worgen and Forsaken. They’re pretty iconic and broadly fondly remembered as villain. And we already know their whole deal so we need not waste time explaining why they want to Lux Vult the spookster races. But most importantly they’re not some end all, be all, do or die threat. They’re obviously going to fail at just trying to fight the Forsaken and Worgen simultaneously. These guys aren’t going to siege God’s 3D Printer.

And I genuinely believe that is what WoW needs more than anything. A return to fundamentals. In revisiting Classic I remembered when I first fell in love with this game. It was when I started my day adventuring in the Barrens fighting Centaur and ended it with a run on SFK.

I’d gone from fighting literal horsemen in the savanah to storming a werewolf infested haunted castle and I’d only encountered two loading screens. The world felt so massive and teeming with new and exciting adventures around every corner. One moment you could be fighting yeti in the snowcapped mountains of Alterac and the next find yourself navigating ancient temples in the humid jungles of Stranglethorn and it never felt jarring. Because this was a big world with a lot of stuff going on. Obviously different regions had different problems.

And WoW’s lost that sense of wonder. Paradoxically the bigger the threats are, the smaller the world seems. Because SL might’ve had some truly diverse regions but it all tied back to fighting gray suits of armor.

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109

That first part about Batman’s no killing code reminded me of Judge Dredd. You said it’d be boring if Batman offed his rogue’s gallery, and I see what you mean. Judge Dredd stories had that problem to a greater degree because anytime Dredd beat a foe, he’d incarcerate them for a long time or kill them.

The writer’s solution - the Dark Judges (Judge Death, Judge Fuego, Judge Fear and Judge Mortis). Four interdimensional undead judges who’d show up in spirit form if their bodies were destroyed. They were created by the writer specifically to have recurring villains in a story where a victory of the hero means villains die or get locked up for ages. Other solutions included clones or those two ghost witches.

They can do the same with Batman by putting him against foes he doesn’t have the means to kill even if he tried to (like Ra’s al Ghul - provided he has access to his Lazarus Pits or Clayface). The point is there can be solutions found that can keep the core idea - in this case, not losing villains to fight - without continually using the same formula (in this case Batman’s no-killing code).

As for Warcraft, I say that they can do this without retconning the fate of a group or character or overusing them ad nauseum. Having said that, I hope Azshara comes back, and she is one of Blizzard’s better written villains. We defeated her in BfA, but N’Zoth rescued her. Then we unintentionally freed her and she left. You make some strong points in your comments.

btw, the image of Gallywix as a Captain Planet villain was funny and clever.

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110

Is that what you took from BfA? You think Nzoth rescued her, and we unintentionally freed her?

I would say after we defeated Azshara, Nzoth absconded with her, in order to punish her and use her for dark rituals.

You call that a rescue? Perhaps in the sense that he rescued her from our more merciful justice, and he brought her instead to insane torture. And we worked to spare her from Nzoth. It was hardly inadvertent.

Wrathion says: We fulfilled our end of the bargain, Azshara. Now honor yours.

Queen Azshara says: Mind your tone, whelpling. A queen keeps her promises. Listen closely, as I will only say this once.

When we freed Azshara from under Nzoth’s torture by Xanesh - it was quite advertent.

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111

You’ve got a point there.

Side note: I think it’s quite the plot hole that Sylvanas and Wrathion were somehow in contact with Azshara and the how and why of it wasn’t explained, or why they’d trust her.

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112

“looks at MoP”

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113

They actually did, or at least I thought it was a good establishing camera shot. I want to say it pops up just a little later in the escape from the Maw

I generally enjoyed the escape from the Maw but also dismissed the comment nevertheless because it was very transparently trying to be Legion 2.0

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114

It wasn’t too bad the first time. But I’ve seen that Maw intro questline at least 5 times. Most of WoW doesn’t have a ton of replay value but quests like that really start to drag the 2nd time and get actively annoying around a 3rd.

Like the Reclamation of Lordaeron is a quest I enjoy. But it’s already stale on a 2nd playthrough. Particularly the bombing run portion. Because those are never thrilling, and it’s actively annoying trying to spot green barrels in a green fog.

Really hope they get to Tirisfal in a timely fashion as I am going to come to hate that quest if I’ve to do it everytime I just want a toon to vibe in Brill.

The SL intro though got on my nerves very quickly as its extremely long. And stuff that was cute once gets grating quickly. Like seriously Thrall we are in bowels of hell itself. What is this Godilocks ish? Did you never level another weapon skill, you noob?

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115

The Maw and Korthia Could Have have been cool, if it had a little more variation in enemies and we got to see some unique structures from some of the other destroyed afterlives that were pulled in and tied to Torghast that eventually created the Maw we see today.

As it stands, it’s a boring place with the three or four enemy types and everything is a dull grey color. Which doesn’t help things at all

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116

it has the usual aesthetics and design, as far as games go, of an endgame level you visit once for the climax when everything has gone to hell and it is serious business. beautiful, terrifying, oppressive stuff.

…it was the opening level of the expansion and the x.0 endgame daily area

honestly to go back to Inquisition again, it did the same opening in oppressive alternate reality that you went back to near the end of the game and it nailed it both times, but single player game with no dailies.

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I didn’t play MoP and still haven’t seen most of it’s content. But overall it seems to be remembered fondly.

I was referring more to content on Azeroth proper though I don’t see why we couldn’t revisit Northrend, Pandaria, Outland or even Zandalar and Kul Tiras.

Idea would be to update one to three old zones with new graphics, a progressed storyline and of course fresh max level content. Only this time don’t tie them to an expansion specific gameplay mode like what happened to Arathi and Darkshore.

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118

MoP was one of the few expansions Blizz got right. It introduced a new race, entire new cultures and such and it all felt like it was a part of Azeroth since the beginning.

Pandaria also happens to be beautiful and I really enjoyed learning about the pandaren way of life back than. :blush:

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119

I have … mixed feelings about MoP. The aesthetics were well-executed (probably the best music in the series and there’s some serious contenders), in a lot of ways it was a great ‘back to basics’ story until the Garrosh stuff. It was a de-escalation of the scale of threat and it was handled well. Lots of prior lore got brought in effectively. Almost every class and spec were in their best form. Everything felt good to play. I think every zone storyline is engaging, there are some unique quests, one of the better catch-up mechanics we’ve had, farm was fun.

But it comes off like a well-intentioned orientalizing fever dream and I felt low-level insulted the entire time.

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120

Can I ask why you felt that way? What bought it about?

121

A lot of very shallow engagement with Chinese themes and Chinese-adjacent themes. It felt like the entirety of the devs’ experience with anything in Chinese culture came through old wuxia movies, with a lot of love and thought and care but no basis for real engagement with the deeper culture.

I’m not Chinese, and hell, I’m more American than I am Korean in a lot of ways – but Korea is historically in the Chinese sphere of influence, so I have a little more depth of experience with a lot of these ideas. Jim Cummings particularly irritated me. I recognized his voice immediately, he’s a tremendously talented voice actor, and I’ve never levied this complaint before ever about a generally lauded performance, but his accent felt incredibly fake.

(Out of people familiar with the series) most East Asians I know felt disinterested; most East Asian-Americans I know felt kinda insulted.

I am used to shallow engagement with what’s being called upon by this series, but generally it’s either in an area that the devs have some real engagement with even if not much (Western religious themes) or they don’t hit personally for me. Also they usually are not 75% of the content for a 2 year cycle.

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