I get people don’t want Horde leaders villain batted, but I mean this dude was never good…
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Do you see the circular reasoning there?
We are tired of Horde leaders being villain-batted and killed.
Yeah, but X was a villain so it is okay to kill them.
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Not really, besides Sylvanas and Garrosh none of the Horde leaders were villains. You still have a lot of Horde characters alive that are just not in the spotlight which I think is a much more pressing issue.
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I don’t expect that will be their last contribution to the expansion.
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No we don’t.
Really?
I mean, that would be cool if it’s true, but yeah, given blizzard’s history with adding races and then kind of forgetting about them later…
I was really hoping that big crystal thing was going to be explained, but I kind of gave up on that.
Bro, for real, don’t talk to me.
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This is a public Forum.
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I don’t care. I’m telling you right now.
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Only three of our leaders.
I would say the issue tends to be about how lackluster the replacements are, but there is already a Gallywix thread and Calia has been thoroughly eviscerated for years now, so I’ll just let it rest.
I do find it hilarious that when Undermine was first teased I joked (I thought I was joking, anyway) that the raid would end with us killing Gallywix.
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We know Blizzard abusing the Horde is a trend.
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My interpretation therein was that the chain set out to handle two issues: 1) Why Baine and largely (with exceptions, which is good) Tauren in general are very willing to work with Alliance and be diplomatic and avoid war, and 2) Baine never getting a ‘Doom music starts playing’ moment despite it always being said how he has rage simmering under the surface.
To that first point, we see the sheer cultural trauma inflicted on the Tauren by the war with the centaur. It showcases that the reason the Tauren and Baine bat for the Alliance is because objectively the Alliance has flat out not done nearly as much to the Tauren as the centaur clans did. You have Taurajo and before that Dun Bael, and the Dwarf diggers (who got killed by angry rocks, ironically) in Mulgore, but the centaur wiped out entire tribes systematically, relentlessly, over the course of who knows how long. In the chain you see that impact, the Taurens’ primary enemy has and always will be the centaur, and this is explicit in that we see the strongest reaction from Tauren NPCs than we’ve seen them react to anything else. Baine, as the Tauren leader, would thus do pretty much anything, make any ally, mend ties with any other foe, to avoid slipping back into that status.
The Alliance has fought alongside the Tauren before, and they have close ties with the Night Elves besides (given Moonglade). And while the Alliance did war against them, it was because they were at war with the Horde at large. The centaur? The centaur tried to wipe them out because they were there.
And the second point, well… during the fight he’s warstomping so hard that centaur around him explode. That’s a level of destructive crashout Orc warriors dream about.
Well, I mean, I could say the same thing about the replacement for the night elf city.
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As far as I can tell from not reading too many spoilers, the Undermine plot revolves around Xal’atath getting Gallywix to repair the Dark Heart, Gally pulling a sudden yet inevitable betrayal by not returning it, and us players and Xal’atath trying to steal the Dark Heart from him.
So, it looks as tied into the main plot as anything has been this expac.
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They like Baine because he betrayed his own faction and multiple opportunities. It is a wonder at large that he wasn’t executed yet by any warchief.
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Well, here’s the thing. Pre-Cata, neither of them were true villains.
Garrosh was overly aggressive, but that’s the worst you could say about him from Wrath. Heck, even Cata Garrosh wasn’t portrayed as explicitly evil; his worst actual crime was wanting to attack (but not attacking due to dragons) Alliance boats en route to Twilight Highlands, while the Horde and Alliance are actively at war.
Sylvanas was certainly ruthless, but at the time most of the real sketchy Forsaken stuff was done by the RAS and it was abiguous whether she knew it or not.
So it isn’t that these Horde leaders were villains and therefore had to die. It’s that they became villains, so that they could be killed.
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I think the Baine scenario would have been well-received if it had happened years ago, before his BfA and SL appearances. I think those appearances poisoned his character badly enough that a back-to-fundamentals story wasn’t enough to rehabilitate him - and I’m not sure anything can, at this point.
Unfortunately, I feel like that questchain would have gone over better if it was Baine who was the centaur victim, and the story was about characterizing his successor - because the successor wouldn’t have the same baggage that Baine himself does. The story was fine for fleshing out a tauren character, but was not enough to dig Baine out of the hole he’s in.
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Not being a villain also does nothing to save you from being killed in a bad way. Just ask Cairne and Vol’jin. Blizzard has no respect for the Horde ant it shows.
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I don’t think that was the intended message. It struck me more as Baine having PTSD about being abducted by centaur as a child, and being a broader lesson about racism, prejudice, and blind hatred being awful.
It was nice for Baine to have a moment of martial prowess, but it was cast as misguided and impetuous.
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You could, and fair enough, but what does that have to do with anything?
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