I dunno, Cairne managed to thread that needle very nicely.
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If Baine had any balls left he’d grab his totem and smash Derek right infront of Sylvanas.
That’s the Horde way
Which is apparently what the Jailor wants. Anduin unleashes a vicious assault, Orgrimmar scales up it’s response… more death on both sides. And given the state of the Alliance forces, they would have lost all the marbles. There’s no cut scene about the Horde running out of soldiers to draft.
The Alliance wasn’t “winning by a mile”. Even joined with Saurfang’s forces, Anduin was in doubt that they could take Orgrimmar. The Alliance had only done it last time with Orgrimmar’s help and this time it was reinforced by the improvements that Saurfang had made to it’s defenses.
Which is why I question the killing of Rastakhan.
Which is why Genn and the Alliance were lucky their initial sneak attack in Stormheim didn’t work. Imagine if it had. The Alliance just killed the Horde Warchief along with valuable troops during an invasion that threatened the entire world.
Not only have you just angered the Horde, the Forsaken will be crying out for vengeance. You gave the Horde casus belli for war when the Burning Legion was defeated. None of this silliness that pre-BfA brought us. But true cause for war.
What did the Horde have left? What would they been able to do after Anduin unleashed his assault? What ever he did it would have crippled them.
The Alliance forces or Stormwind forces? There’s a difference.
The Horde was self admittedly losing and they were weeks away from defeat.
May I remind that this took place after the huge hit the Alliance took in Nazjatar and the Horde had split. So of course he had doubts.
In my mind Sylvanas would have used Derrick prior to Nazjatar, assuming she still would make that deal, in an effort to cripple the Proudmoore’s. Jaina wound have seen that fire what it was and the plan would have failed. The next moved wound have been to deal a death blow to the Horde. At that point they probably could have. Darkshore/Ashenvale was all but won for the Alliance, Arathi was nearly there and Zandalari was crippled.
No argument here. But it’s a damn good thing he did or we’d have a larger problem on our hands.
Baine is no longer a character after his initial interesting arc in the starting zone. Now he is just a cheerleader for Anduin and the mouthpiece of Golden to scold the Horde for not being more like the Golden Boy
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And yet a good chunk of Alliance fans say Anduin is some Horde cheerleader/bootlicker. Maybe the answer is these characters are interest in keeping casualties to a minimum, FOR EVERYONE. Both of them champion their respective factions but also both realize that maybe their respective factions interest lies first and formost in avoiding sending their people to wars that seem to have no end or if they have to as an absolute last resort.
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Except Anduin let the Alliance into a trap at Lordaeron killing tons of their soldiers, then sacrificed a huge chunk as a distraction to assault Dazar’alor. They all died for nothing because after retreating the Alliance could have pressed on to end the war but Anduin said no which prolonged the war and made more people die because once again he fell for Sylvanas trap because of her deal with Azshara.
All because he cares more about the Horde than the Alliance.
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I feel as though people who call Baine an Alliance sympathizer forget which race he’s the leader of, and thus supposed to be the embodiment of.
His own father, whom the people who hate Baine seem to venerate in some odd dichotomy, came back from across the veil to tell his son to not destroy the very spooky possibly evil dark spirit because it wasn’t the Tauren way.
The main reason his characterization suffers is because they railroaded their plot through and at the same time condensed it heavily. As a character he’s exactly what the Tauren leader would be, who the Tauren would logically want leading them. The only group in active and total opposition to him are the Grimtotem, aka the actual Alliance sympathizers.
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Actually he tells the Alliance(most of them) to stay behind. He asks Gelbin to lead them back to Brill.
Except they did press on! Just not at Zuldazar. In fact you are even told the Alliance was winning on all other fronts and was weeks away from victory.
No one could have know Sylvanas had managed to make a deal with Aszhara. I’d also point out Genn was the one most gunho about pursuing her when the remaining Horde fleet set sail and he had no idea as well.
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I think Baine’s problem isn’t the way he’s been written (in a vacuum), but rather his seeming utter lack of being represented in any other situation except when he’s wheeled out to be one of the good ones, which themselves are only situations that exist because the horde was being villain batted in the first place. He’s a symptom, not a cause. But because that’s basically all he’s ever used for, he’s developed a perception of being the sort of character that goes against the horde and the player character until the latter two are finally allowed to revolt and take his right and proper side. And that side only exists because the horde was written to have yet another fall, or else there wouldn’t be a noble victim role for him.
Edit: In my opinion, he doesn’t exist to be a sympathizer. He exists to be abused. And that’s why I think nobody was really surprised in the SL beta when his original reintroduction was being thrown away like literal garbage because the big bad guy found him worthless.
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If that was the case, then Baine wouldn’t have allowed Sylvanas to blight his own troops in Undercity or Anduin charge like a person with low coefficient tactic.
Plain and simple those two characters are just a mess because are more mouth-pieces for Golden to spread her ideology(and for worst are gary stues as there is always a plotline about saving these two princess from the mean main villain and nobody says a single negative thing of them)
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Baine was put in a horrible position. After what happened at Teldrassil he knew the Alliance was at a point where they might not give ANYONE any quarters, even with Anduin leading. He was given a choice, tend to the living or possibly die fruitlessly and ultimately not deal with Sylvanas later on.
As for Anduin’s decision to charge Lordearon, it was a high risk, high reward deal. Kill/capture Sylvanas and the war effectively ends.
Except people have said alot of “mean things” about both of them. As for saving them, we save people all the time and our characters are in turn saved several times by outside entities.
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Quoting myself from another thread:
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Don’t forget the part where he basically told Tyrande to piss off when she asked for help in retaking Darkshore. Even Grandpa Genn got mad at Anduin and took the worgen with him.
Anduin is so unwilling to admit when he’s wrong that it ended up costing the alliance more than it should have during the latest war.
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What’s a real shame is that we had a real opportunity to see Baine be that imposing monster that gets described every now and then in Shadowlands, but… Nope.
There’s a scene where you find Baine in the Maw, who presumably escaped his cage again, getting yanked through a portal by a Forsworn. You then pass by the corpses of dead Mawsworn and pick up his mace, which claims it smashed many of the spooky minions.
Cool. Why didn’t we see that?
Baine is a character who suffers from the perception of being spineless, so a simple scene of him actually doing something may do wonders for him. Imagine if instead of watching him get caught again, we witness him giving the Forsworn one last chance to stand down. They don’t and he starts mowing through them, shaking off the chains they try to entrap him with until they finally manage to overwhelm him. Even if he still gets caught, LET US SEE HIM STAND UP AND FIGHT! Show, don’t tell and all that.
All Blizz is doing is reinforcing the helpless damsel in distress meme Baine finds himself trapped in, which only causes us to become more detached every time we interact with him.
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If I recall correctly, on the PTR Baine was more or less discarded and irrelevant to the Jailer. Which begs the question: What was the point of abducting a worthless character? That was recently changed to the bit where it claims he didn’t go down without a fight to make it seem like he has a spine. I imagine that was the best they could do with the limited window they have until release.
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There’s a writer that just loves to tag him alongside Anduin for some reason
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The semicompetent writer would do it because even if he’s worthless to the Jailor, he’s a strong proponent for lasting peace like the others and he’s better just taken off the Azeroth playing board. Or, that should be the reasonable excuse to finally give the big cow a chance at escaping his token good-horde plot device status and perhaps for the first time have his own characterization put first. Have him get some distance from Anduin, and get maybe some Huln time.
The bad writer will use the prior route’s excuse, but along with Thrall intends to use him as a token Horde rep for a story not designed to be inclusive for the Horde faction. I’m guessing one more fixated on an Arthas redemption than they would like to admit. Like Lor’themar, Thrall, Thaly, and I’d wager Calia, Baine is a horde character safe-space Blizz writers can lean on; since they seem to lack any real vision for what the Horde should be, and thus no idea how to include them.
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