I thought that this was always pretty clearly the case? The Ashbringer comic made it pretty explicit.
Doublechecked their Wowpedia articles and it sounds like you’re at least half-right. They were in contact, but neither page seems to say that the goal was to keep a wedge between the living and undead. So unless it’s explicit in the comic, it functionally doesn’t exist as far as I care.
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Balnazzar used his position for several ends.
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Use the Scarlet Crusade to keep Scourge power in check until the Legion could reassert control
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Make the Scarlet Crusade as extreme as possible so as to sever them from Alliance support, thus weakening the Alliance’s position in Lordaeron and the Scarlet’s abilities to function independently of him
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Make sure that neither the Scourge, nor Alliance, nor Forsaken could gain full power in Lordaeron, as keeping them all divided was in the Legion’s interests.
Essentially, he and Varimathras were using their control of their respective factions to manipulate the balance of power in the Eastern Kingdoms to their liking, and what they wanted was for Lordaeron to remain a ruined warzone where none of the 4 major powers in the region (Alliance, Scarlet Crusade, Forsaken, Scourge) could gain hegemony.
I’m curious to learn why they did this instead of covertly supporting the Scourge though, now that we know that Denathrius was their true master all along.
I don’t know why people have such a hard time grasping this. The simple fact of the matter is. The forsaken have either never made sense OR have always been hypocrites.
Even worse is the fact that the forsaken lack baseline reasoning skills as they who themselves were absolutely terrified of and killed by the undead in life somehow still couldn’t understand why humans would now be afraid of them who themselves were undead… All while knowing the only experiences humans had with undead were negative because they themselves were the exact same people who went through those circumstances.
The fact that they didn’t make moves to clear their names instead of instantly betraying the people who re-took Lordaeron only cementing themselves to be no different from the scourge (in the living’s eyes) is mindboggling. I mean, they’re undead who don’t need to eat, sleep, or drink. They straight up don’t need resources. They could have given the humans Lordaeron and built their own undercity in the shortest time possible because they don’t need to stop working for any reason. Nor do they need to construct any farms or secure any food or drinking sources. They can just build a wooden or stone dome and they’d have everything they would need other than maybe weapons. But magic takes care of that anyway.
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I’ve thought that the identity of Forsaken has been broken since Before the Storm. Putting Sylvanas aside.
‘Some of the Forsakens still have their human good heart and want to join the human society.’ is one thing,
‘The Light raised a person from death and she became one of co-leaders of Forsakens.’ is another.
For me, the latter is worse.
But that’s just me. I know Forsakens only from books, wowpedia, or quests (with my Horde character) and didn’t really able to play the race, so… yeah.
As long as they can live with it
No.
If you capitulate, if you even humor the thought, it gives the feedback of: “Yeah, I like Calia, let’s see more of her.”. The message has to consistently be; “No Calia Menethil”.
As for what to do with the Forsaken; continue surviving? Sure, Sylvanas went off the deep end and now their roster consists of characters that could have story development won’t, and the characters that shouldn’t are somehow even being considered, but, Sylvanas wasn’t integral to the Forsaken experience.
I think the Forsaken experience should be one of self discovery.
Who are you, what matters to you, what line will you or won’t cross? What part of yourself will you willingly betray for survival?
There shouldn’t be a uniform answer to this. It should seem confusing. It should feel as if there’s nothing there- because there isn’t. It’s a philosophical question, and the answer can only fully be answered from within. There is only the fact: They are trapped in their own corpses and the world has become hostile. Survival is why the Forsaken exist as a society. Survival is what will continue to drive them for as long as the Forsaken continue to exist. Individual purpose in existence is for them to find out.
In a story context, I’d say: If there isn’t a future for the Forsaken without Calia Menethil, then I say let there be no future. Put them on the back burner. Don’t write for them. Stagnation is better than bad writing.
Occupy Lordaeron more than just the outskirts and resume survival.
If the Forsaken should see a population boom and not have the curse finally end with them, have the dust-up in the afterlife cause a disturbance in the balance between life and undeath. Without an afterlife to go to (or the means to reach it have been obstructed), many of them find themselves trapped in their bodies and rise from their graves.
With more Undead to care for, the Forsaken has a purpose to continue existing as a society.
As long as the Horde still gets military reinforcement, I see little to no reason why their relationship would change with the Horde.
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No. Never ever.
Let Horde soldjer’s sign a document with a simple question on it.
In the case you fall in battle, are you fine with you being resurected as a Forsaken.
Yes
No
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No. One, where are they going to get that “population boom”? They have no Val’kyr left, and where exactly are they going to get these bodies from? Because even if Sylvanas screws up the afterlife, souls are still going to go there. And if you think the Jailor’s plan will result in some forced exodus of souls into long dead corpses, you have another thing coming. Because clearly, he has uses for mortal souls himself.
And “survival” isn’t enough anymore, because that “survival” they’ve been operating off of till now continues to come at the expense of the Faction shackled to them. The Forsaken actually need to develop into a “people” that are at least more symbiotic with the other Horde races. Even if they are never symbiotic with the Alliance, so much of their prior Racial Fantasy essentially operated off of “We’re in an Alliance of Convenience with the Horde, that can never be allowed to become inconvenient for the them because game mechanics”. And no, them bringing military strength, while simultaneously being a main point of contention that requires that strength, is not a “bargain”. And hell, they don’t even bring that much to the table anymore.
One, the Forsaken don’t have the ability to “resurrect” anyone any more. And culturally nearly all Horde races would be opposed to it. So at most, even if they could, they’d get scattered individuals.
And I mentioned this to Glad as well. The Forsaken DO have to change to some degree. I am sorry, but they do. They can’t JUST be a tool. They can’t just continue to depend on game mechanics protecting them from ever becoming too “inconvenient” in their “Alliance of Convenience” with the Horde. They bring so little of value to the table in their currents state that they actually need to self-assess and rebuild enough that they are at least more symbiotic with the other Horde races at least.
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Especially now that they’re refugees, the forsaken really do need to drop or curtail that antagonistic behavior of theirs or someone is going to eventually decide to finish the job sylvanas started and end them for good. 
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This too. Like, they bring so little to the table, and are so dependent on the Horde atm, that there does need to be a shift. And even before then, essentially what they brought to the table was military strength … for conflicts they and their leader were major escalation factors in. Even with Garry egging them on. Hell, Sylvie didn’t even provide that one advantage half the time, with her only bringing herself near the end of the Darkspear Rebellion lol! She committed none of her own forces to that Joint Faction military op! 
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I do like how these threads generally end up being people who don’t really like the Forsaken discuss among each other what should happen to a race they don’t care for.
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That they consider themselves ‘Forsaken’ is itself a problem. A certain Mary Sue authoritarian has convinced them to cast away their own humanity. To embrace the worst aspects of their curse and, indeed, relish in spreading that horrifying malady to as many other souls as they’re able to.
The identity of the Forsaken is poisonous. It prizes the worst traits of a person and elevates those who display them to the high honors among society.
Gerard Abernathy.
Say what you will about Calia— I think the whole “Lightforged half-undead” thing is stupid too, but the Undead desperately need a new beginning. A new identity, something that doesn’t prize open sociopathy and a disregard for life.
Calia, whether you love her or hate her, seems to be leading them in that direction. For that reason, I almost want to see where this is going.
But after what Blizzard did with the Night Elves I’m sort of afraid to see where this is going, too.
The problem is the last time these people saw the forsaken was in Darkshore going full supervillain.
So they might feel certain opinions.
Ask a similar question about the Tauren or Horde Pandaren i doubt you would see much of the same phenomenon.
Or is it that some of us are finding ways to make Blizzard’s bad story less bad because we are aware that “No Calia Menethil” is not useful feedback and we see the writing on the wall
We’re either getting
- Calia with development
- Calia without development
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Sorry for a wall-o-text, but I really do not know how to tell those things shorted. Maybe did not try hard enough…
TL;DR: split the forsaken, let those who want to change - leave, and focus the horde side of them on reconstruction of what made the forsaken interesting to begin with, in the older day.
While I do agree that the way plenty of night elf fans were antagonistic to other players was a bad thing, I have a different take on it: the way blizz handled their story (manipulating emotions, fail in continuing the story, making convenient choices over things that make sense in-universe, ruining things for cheap shock value without considering the pay off) highlighted the problems that are plaiging all of WoW narrative, not just night elf part.
If I could go back in time, I would try to convince the elf fans to focus themselves on the devs instead of fighting forum wars with other players, to be more thoughtful with language used, because offensive language would be easy excuse to ignore their feedback. But also to try to showcase the other players that there is no difference in the underlying problems between NElf story arc handling, what was done to forsaken, horde, orcs, currently shaping up with alt-Draenor draenei, etc.:
deconstruction of what people like, shock events to attract sales short term without considering a decent pay off, convenience in the narrative for what to do now, regardless of the consequences, etc.
They are not the first “victim” of terrible writing approach, but the first to really cause long-lasting effects, including the devs. So, if that would be turned in productive direction instead of bashing each other, that could’ve been the 1st real chance to influence the narrative and push it to be better.
But oh well, instead a bunch of NElf players were insulting the others, and a bunch of other players tried not really to silence, but to tone down the pressure of night elves. IMO which was bad. They could’ve been the frontier of making story better with being the first group to actually push hard enough so that the devs could not ignore it.
Perhaps, should there be the 2nd wave, lessons will be learned, night elf players (I do not mean all, I mean those who were labeled NEFPA or whatever) will focus on discussion about pushing for the better story, and the other players would recognise that the symptoms are the same, and support the push for the better narrative. Oh well, one could dream.
There are always some. But the problem is, we have no idea what are the dev plans, so finding a compromise is not an option - the players are simply not given the tools to do so.
IMO I see the current direction as a rather typical, and not perticularly good in execution, deconstruction story. The devs take a thing, example of recent time would be Uther and his “I hope there is a special place in hell for you”, replace it with what they would like “oh no! That is not what I meant!11”, and in the process say how wrong it is to like / sympathise with the old take. Repeat, everywhere.
This “you think you like it, but we can take and re-tell those stories so much better!” approach is not unique to the forsaken, it can be seen in WoD+ time especially strongly all over the place.
So, the long intro aside, what I would do, would be to actually look for info about why people made a choice to play the forsaken to begin with. What made them good in the eyes of the players. And focus on reconstruction of the story, of the things, that were pulling people in, during the W3 - TBC days (to a degree, WotLK).
There is a lot more to tell (last time I tried to write every note I had surrounding just Calia Menethil, I had a 24 page doc), so trying to be at least somewhat brief, I would start with the question of “how to keep the forsaken who they were”. Because it’s rather clear that in the modern worlds, ever since Varian started his change into a proto-Anduin, there is no world justifying the whole “survive in a world that wants to destroy us”.
And to me the esiest way to do it, would be to use Calia Menethil. There 2 ways I can see it:
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Calia being an ambassador in the alliance that the forsaken / horde try to use to promote their interests.
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outright split among the forsaken, so that those who could change, who cares about the living, etc. - could just leave, so that the horde side would remain not only fully pro-horde, but also to get a new spark of tension against the alliance.
Although in the 2nd option there is a freedom to pick a direction: it could be a way to respectfully part their ways between those who accepted their undeath and all for who they became, and those, who values pre-undeath time more than what they became; or, it could be a split, where those who could leave, see what happened to their loved ones in the battles against the horde, and those who stay would see them as a horrible betrayers, leaving those who helped them in a hard time, in favour of those who supposedly betrayed the forsaken, who forsake them to begin with.
Not to mention, that in the discussion of “procreation” there is a big missing element - without forced raising, and brainwashing, if free will in important, why would somebody go against the alliance? Where to get new corpses of those who would be willing to joing the horde after all that happened?
And it offers a simple solution:
- since Calia has the highest chance to be accepted undead in the alliance, by being there she could erode the idea that being undead is only a bad thing in all cases
- those who think they can take this new path, for variety of reasons, might end up not being able to stay with the living: maybe the living relatives could find out that it’s too hard for them to stay together, or the undead could be constanly reminded about who they can never be again; regardless - they would have a place to go - horde.
[oh, and undead paladins, of course: palandins could see that it’s possible to be pro-light in undeath, some could consider continuing their charge after death, and some - see that the horde also has those who needs protection from injustice, etc. Without undead on both sides - I have no idea how to justify them]
Such is the most simple overview, that does not take into account other story threads, other characters, reactions of various races, etc.
gl hf
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Big oof.
Giving the Alliance an undead AR would literally strip yet another central aspect of a Horde race/the Horde in general to give primacy to the Alliance.
- The best mages in-universe are apparently humans, thousands of years of elven study be damned
- The best shadow/void users are void elves, Forsaken and MU Shadowmoon and Trolls be damned
And now give the Alliance undead, led by the only undead character with a unique model left meaning only she and her Alliance Undead get any development?
If we were in situation where Velonara or Lilian had unique models sure fine, but we aren’t.
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Funny how that works out, isn’t it? Almost like folks have a hard time separating fantasy from reality and just want to punish a faction of players for the things the writers made them do.
But another part is that there just aren’t that many die hard Forsaken fans around anymore. Most of the big fans of the s forsaken either quit at the start of BFA when they could see which way the wind was blowing or finally had their spirits broken when Sylvanas left the Horde. They weren’t even around anymore when Nate got 86’d as a lousy world boss - (I know I wasn’t at least.)
This is the most accurate and correct statement on the lore forums in a long time, and I wish I could upvote it twice.
The fans that this discussion would actually matter for aren’t here any more. The ‘discussion’ is the same echo chamber of ideas that revolve around sanitizing the Forsaken either through the ‘gift’ that is Calia or some other means involving the Shadowlands.
There are no original ideas here and even if there were, there are none who would appreciate them.
Consider that someone who plays and enjoys the Forsaken probably does not find them boring, and does not welcome them changing from how they have been into something that they may not recognize or be able to identify with anymore.
Also consider that the current writing staff is not trusted by many players, for good reason, and even if the Forsaken do need fresh development, that the current writers may not be trusted to deliver anything that anyone would remotely like.
I can’t tell you where the Forsaken will go - I can tell you where I think things will go and where I want things to go.
What I think will happen
The Forsaken and their plight will be more or less ignored until we get to the ‘Light’ expansion. The Forsaken will be explored as a vector of the influence of Light and the dichotomy of Shadow, most likely through Calia.
More than likely Calia will find a way to use the Light to ‘stabilize’ the Forsaken and take away the pain and misery they feel, but something will go wrong. Either the Forsaken’s more shadowy nature will re-assert itself causing them to go berserk or the Light Will hollow them out and make them nothing but husks - robbing them not just of their free will but of all agency, rendering them perfect foot soldiers in the Light’s eternal war with the Void.
Eventually this will be resolved, probably by having things revert to the status quo by some sacrifice by Calia that gives them excuse to have a cutscene where the Forsaken cheer her and accept her as their new leader. Then the Forsaken will be shunned and ignored again - probably for the remaining life of the game.
What I want to happen
I want the divide in the fanbase to be reflected as a divide in game. I want the Forsaken to be on uneasy terms with the rest of the Horde and outright hated by the Alliance. I want this to result in Calia being shunned by the Alliance and her and Voss being hunted down and captured by a resurgent Scarlet Crusade.
In the meantime and unapologetic Lily loyal sub faction of Sylvanas Loyalists retake the Undercity and drive out any remaining Alliance forces from Tirisfel, using technology and magic stolen from the Shadowlands. (There is no official alliance between the Forsaken and any of the Covenants, but the Brokers are more than happy to supply the Loyalist Forsaken their new weapons for profit.)
The Forsaken that support Calia try to mount a rescue but fail. They approach the Loyalist Forsaken for help and grudgingly they set aside their differences and work together to save Calia, not to be their leader but because with their numbers so low her unique brand of ‘light’ resurrection may be their best bet at preserving and increasing their numbers.
While in the care of the Scarlets Calia and Voss are tortured, Voss in particular getting special attention from the new Grand Commander who unsurprisingly turns out to be a Dreadlord and takes particular delight in tormenting her by removing her soul from her body so she can watch as he destroys her remains piece by piece.
The second rescue attempt almost succeeds, but at the last minute fails and Calia is executed. However, Voss’s severed soul is able to take possession of Calia’s body and she rises, using a combination of the Light magic inate to Calia and her own shadowy rogue skills to dispatch the Scarlets in a vengeful banshee frenzy.
Lilian Voss, in the body of Calia, is the new leader of the Forsaken - working to keep Calia’s promises to the Forsaken who believes in her, but not above allying herself with (and using the tactics and weapons of the) Sylvanas Loyalists.
The Forsaken set out with a new mission to once again wipe out the Scarlets, retake their lands, and absolutely crush anyone who opposes them… friend or foe.
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Question is how to take the current situation, and rebuild what made the forsaken interesting originally (in my take). I have no idea how to do it without removing the heavy pro-alliance element. And reunion with the living is a big push for a whole since pre-BfA.
So, IMO the choice currently is either to let it further remove what the forsaken were, or to use it to reinforce the concepts that made the players like the forsaken. without ret-cons.
Alliance has a slightly older history on Azeroth and overall (except zandalari). So, not much would be all that different.
Besides, that would also push the in-alliance tension which some people think the alliance lacks. Trying to place them in could be a source of a lot of drama, rather than everyone huggin each other and making the alliance instantly better than before.
It’s all about the execution IMO.
Other forsaken characters need progress and evolution. You know lore well enough [edit: that was not an attempt to say that I am awesome when it comes to lore, but to say that you know obscure details most players do not]. You know what the Light does to the undead.
If the devs will be consistent, exposure to the Light that Calia inevitably will provide (as a conduit of naaru power) would change the forsken forever. And not randomly, but in the direction of rejecting post-death state, to get back their old emotions and feelings.
IMO the current departure of Calia to the Shadowlands is not just “she is not with the forsaken”, but more so, could give the forsaken a chance to feel that their emotions, way of thinking, and feeling, could be altered just because Calia was nearby, without asking their wishes.
There should be more, and for different characters. From Velonara / Voss, to Arcanus. IMO.
gl hf
Whatever blizzard has planned is going to piss fans off. That much is true.
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