Do you think she will be a villain again? And if not what should Blizzard do with her instead? Is there a chance she leads an uprising to replace Baine before he is able to marry Mayla? Discuss!
Back in classic, almost every race had some sort of antagonist who was a more street-level political/societal threat. Some of these were more dangerous than others - like the orcs’ being the Burning Blade who worked for the Legion vs the night elves’ Fandral who (at the time) was just kind of a dick - but there was still one for every race in some form or another.
Over the years, a lot of those groups have either been reformed (as in the case of the Defias and Dark Irons) or just outright killed (like Fandral or Zalazane). Magatha and the Grimtotems are the only ones who are still left. So I like that Magatha still remains as a reminder that these societies aren’t monoliths, or at least that they shouldn’t be in theory. I say keep trotting her out every now and then when they need another street level threat, but not to the point they overuse her and just make her a joke like what happened to the Scarlet Crusade.
5 Likes
Magatha is the only other contender for Tauren leadership at large and a constant threat to Baine himself. Because unlike him she was married and has many heirs.
I’m not sure she has any descendants. Her marriage was an arranged one that many people think she herself arranged, and her mate later died in an “unforseen climbing accident”. Worth noting it was her mate who was the leader of the Grimtotem, and it was how she came to power.
Honestly, I’d just like them to close the book on her as a character, either by having her die as a villain, sacrificing herself as a hero, or just outright retiring and staying in exile forever voluntarily.
She was always just a hatesink villain at first, and now she feels directionless. She’s just sort of been helping but also not helping and whatever and quite frankly, it’s a wearing pretty thin. It just feels like yet another overlooked unresolved plotline in a sea of them.
3 Likes
Didn’t know she was still around. Meh, anyone is better than Baine at this point. I’d stand by her more than him.
We already met some of them. Now her actual children need to come out too.
I like her a lot as an antagonist we sometimes have to grudgingly work with. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell she’ll ever lead the tauren without some major character development.
1 Like
I could see something like what Moira got with the Council of Three Hammers. Baine, Hamuul and Magatha? Council of Six Horns? Six Hooves?
Baine not killing her after what she did to his father was the writing on the wall for how pathetic Baine’s character would end up being.
4 Likes
I feel like Magatha’s biggest problem is a lack of context.
Like, why are (most of) the Grimtotem such bastards? What exactly led to them diverging so radically from the other Tauren tribes? What’s the actual root of the conflict there, beyond “We made a group of bad Tauren for the sake of enemy variety.”
I feel like if the Grimtotem were actual people with actual culture then there would at least be room for Magatha to make sense as a person in that culture.
7 Likes
I know a lot of role players who play Grimtotem who feel the Horde is a genuine threat to their culture, survival, and environment.
One of the biggest mainstays about most of them is they really do not like goblins.
If you look from their perspective there’s a lot to hate about them too.
They frequently pump oil out of oasis’s, willingly destroyed the environment for capital gain, and just about everywhere they go they decide to desecrate nature.
Combine this with a past of the orcish tendency to use Tauren as fodder and you can see where a lot of the Grimtotem sentiment could come from.
I just think Magatha was a very poor vehicle to drive legitimacy of tgese complaints.
Don’t get me wrong. She is a very strong character. I absolutely love her because she will save the world her own way, to hell with everyone else.
But she is just one focal point of the massive problem with taurens in general: The highmountain tribes gained a wealth of lore and actually have detailed descriptions of what each tribe does.
Unless you are Bloodhoof or Grimtotem, you really don’t have that wealth of information to expand and build a story upon.
You could probably go on about your favorite of the two tribes but if I ask you a question about what the purpose of the mistwalkers are, you will probably ask who the hell I am talking about.
Despite them being the most prominent tribe outside of the three of the Bloodhoofs, Grimtotems, and Sunwalkers.
1 Like
If I had to speculate, I’d say they hardened up as a result of the Centaur emergence and threw away a lot of the traditional Shu’halo values to survive, and think the general Tauren mindset is weak and a hindrance.
And at points, they’re not wrong. The stonespire tragedy happened because they were extremely accommodating to a group that ended up being murderous sociopaths. The Bloodhoof went out of their way to try to foster good relations with Theramore and didn’t treat them like a potential enemy and got heavily burned by it. They tried to foster peace with the Nelves and lost their legendary leader over it, and a nelf tried to doom them all years later due to the sitdown being ambushed.
But also we’ve seen with Garrosh what the endgame is of such a mindset, and being too far towards the pacifist side of the spectrum is far more preferable. Magatha has been chasing external sources of power to give the Grimtotem a boost when simply making allies and being considered trustworthy is orders of magnitude better than having a magical Mcguffin or two.
1 Like
Magatha has an actual personality which is why I love her so much.
As I understand it, the Grimtotem are sort of tauren cultural fundamentalists.
They resent the confederation of tribes submitting to the authority of The Horde. They view the permanent settlement of thunder bluff as a betrayal of the traditional nomadic lifestyle of the tauren.
The changes that came with joining The Horde were sudden and sweeping. We
can forget just how recently The Tauren joined The Horde before the start of vanilla. Their whole society was reordered over night, the Grimtotem represent an inevitable kick back against that change.
3 Likes