Why A Forsaken Player Is Frustrated

Lore Story Forum
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I’m going with a here and not trying to generalize. I’ve encountered enough other Forsaken players here to know we have different opinions. But as someone who’s mained a Forsaken with few exceptions since '04, here’s why I am dead and I am pissed.

Legion started off with a lot of promise. There were so many new and returning well characterized Undead NPCs. Alonsos Faol, Meryl Felstorm, Tehd Shoemaker, Jubeka Shadowbreaker, and look Lilian Voss is, well not alive, but well and being awesome! This is great!

And hey look at that! Windrunner is the Warchief now! Plus the cinematic and art shows her fighting side to side with Varian- even saves his life! The Alliance attack the Forsaken and are portrayed as ignorant villains! Greymane even ruins Windrunner’s side quest to secure more Val’Kyr citing spite for her and her people as his motive for doing so!

Man I tell ya. I hadn’t played since Wrath and I was so thrilled. My beloved Forsaken had not just decided to rebuild Lordaeron in their own image but Undead NPCs running the alignment gambit had prominent roles in many quests. Our blue enemies come off as just straight up bad guys which is so refreshing. Plus look at this! Windrunner is so cool and appears to be a real leader now! I can’t wait to see what comes next!

And then came Before The Storm.

Now, in fairness, as prose goes it’s well written. I’m not going to pretend Christie Golden isn’t talented just because I disliked the story she told. It also introduced one idea to the Forsaken that I loved so much I stole it for this guild I made. I so adore the idea of an undead democratic republican revolutionary shadow government. That is awesome.

But, well, I like RPing and writing short stories for my characters. It’s a great outlet for stymied creative energy that I highly recommend but I digress. I had to move Benedikt to Thunder Bluff because I could not square the character I’d written being present for the events of BtS.

If you don’t partake in writing let me give you some perspective. The vast majority of other WoW stories concerned the machinations of hero characters that were mostly irrelevant to the day to day of your average PC. Even stuff like Varian’s Orc Odyssey could be squared away as an aspect of society your character knew little to nothing of. This, however, was a rewriting of Forsaken culture at odds with exisiting portrayals. I had to literally move my character to another continent to another race’s land as his presence in Lordaeron no longer made any sense. It changed existing precedent so thoroughly I had to hastily rewrite my own damn story.

Whoever okay’d the book did not know or care to know what had been established for the Forsaken in quests and other stories. This was a story that portrayed the Forsaken as frail, sad humans bereft of purpose and incapable of self actualization. Slyvanas goes from not personally caring about the Forsaken but still respecting them to burning their history and murdering them en masse for being exposed to the concept of life outside her rule.

Are you still with me here? It went from,

“Wow you know, I think they might make Windrunner a good Warchief and the undead are getting so much varied characterization”

To

“Windrunner is Darth Adolph Stalin and the Undead either live and die for the Banshee queen, want to die or want to live in Stormwind with their niece or whatever”.

That’s how BFA started for me. But I was still hopeful. Legion had done such a good job. Then came the War of Thorns which was really promising. Until it really wasn’t. But hey at least there’s this rebel storyline! With so many seeds of mistrust planted in BtS I’m sure they’ll be some interesting old undead characters coming out of the wood work to help out Saurfang or something. But that never happened.

In fact, I got the feeling the Devs didn’t want me to play the rebel side. Here my Priest is, a hero of the Forsaken practically knighted by the Banshee Queen herself for actions against the Alliance in Legion, having to kill Forsaken soldier NPCs. Then again. And again. And again.

Even outside the rebel campaign the Forsaken acted like weird cartoon villains. Stealing the free will of a Forsaken is described as the ultimate crime in their society but Windrunner does it and only Baine cares. Zelling, the first consensual non Scourge undead does too but he dies immediately afterwards. Voss expresses dismay if you ask her. That’s about it.

And that was just the Horde side. I thought we came off as one dimensional idiotic canon fodder there. Only to put on a blue lense to see Forsaken being portrayed as, in one case literally, puppy murdering stupid evil bad guys with no personality.

But I kept waiting for some dramatic reveal. I’d assumed Nathanos Blightcaller was due to turn against and replace Windrunner. He’s shown as given pause by her actions in BtS, the Warbringer cinematic and the Battle for Lordaeron cutscene. Him joining the revolt would make even the most die hard servant of the Dark Lady realize she was a false savior. He has to, right? We’ve like two characters who’s going to represent the Forsaken otherwise?

But that never happens. The cinematic comes and goes. Nathanos is just ride or die for his bae no matter what. And the only satisfaction I get is from more Forsaken misery because at least I get to say ‘I told you so’ to the other undead fans who apparently thought EoN was fan fiction.

So who leads the Forsaken? Voss I guess? I like blue eyed girls with a wild side and daddy issues as much as the next guy but she’s the spokesperson now? She just got here. That… okay… fine… at least she’s written with more nuance than Skeletor.

So that’s where we’re at. Forsaken culture was rewritten overnight. The Undercity and Tirisfal are gone. The Banshee Queen has quit the guild and was so toxic I don’t want to give her another /ginvite. The only one suited to and kinda set up to replace her is also gone. The status of the rest of Forsaken’s holdings is uncertain. The status of the rest of their military command is equally uncertain. The entire Forsaken population is tempest tossed, abandoned and in their darkest hour since the Third War with nothing much to say about it.

And the only story development we’re promised is a talk with Calia and Derek in the shadow of the Forsaken’s ruin about how sad undead Nelfs are. Maybe next they can have an Alliance quest where Nelves make hand stitched umbrellas for the sun bitten Forsaken refugees stuck in Durotar. Sure everyone would just love that.

But weirdly, I’m still here. We’re getting more customization options. I’ll take the option to cover up bones as them throwing us one.

But coming from the perspective of someone who loves to write stories and characters around Forsaken society I feel like I’m having to contend with someone else’s writer’s block. I’m kinda reluctant to put anything down as firm character canon as evidently the world building I’m working from can be demolished and restructured on a whim. It feels like I’m playing a game of Dungeon’s and Dragons with a GM who suffered traumatic brain injury.

I love the Forsaken more than any other medieval fantasy concept I’ve encountered. I love playing them and writing about them. But Blizz is making that a lot harder to do. Right now we’re staring down a lot of uncertainty with no reason to trust in what’s next. It’s not fun, and if your product is a game I think not fun is probably the last thing you want it to be.

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Completely agree - absolutely jarring having a whole rewrite of your race’s society and of Sylvanas’s previous more heroic deeds. Makes the Forsaken substantially less interesting and exciting as a race.

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So essentially Blizz is pissing on the Forsaken without having the courtesy to call it rain.

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I was always really interested in seeing where Forsaken culture could go, even under Sylvanas. Human souls twisted and distorted while still fundamentally themselves, trying to reconcile their very existence and find some purpose to their existence with a radically changed perception of the world around them.

And now they’re… what even are the Forsaken anymore? With Sylvanas gone, Undercity lost, their most developed characters literal "who?"s, they have to recreate their entire society for the third time.

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The question becomes, why did they even include us as a playable race if they only want to use us as NPC villain fodder?

Why keep breaking us down, instead of building us up with the Horde? I guess we drew the short straw.

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They’ve turned the forsaken into the scourge when they were supposed the be the opposite of the scourge which makes them less interesting.

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Worse, after Sylvanas abandoned them, they turned into the Scourge that was under Bolvar’s reign in Legion where he told them to just sit around and not do anything.

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What a telling prediction! I agree. The Forsaken are going to sit around and fume from afar while Shadowlands is “Sylvanas’ Story.” I have extreme doubts that the Forsaken will be represented in the coming expansion, while at the very least, Tyrande and the Kaldorei will have a moment. (And we can all hope to the creator that it’s not as bad as this expansion was for them.)

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I mean hard to expect anything else when most of the forsaken players wanted to be the scourge. People like the op are the expectation. I feel like most who wanted to be evil only got upset when they realized oh wait that means I am gonna lose. I feel bad for the op but I disagree that blizzard wanted him to be a loyalist they wanted everyone to be a rebel but I don’t think they wanted forsaken to choose the rebellion cause some known forsaken characters was there, they wanted you to pick it cause you believe in a honorable honor cause you agree with Saurfangs ideas

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I don’t think that’s what most forsaken players wanted. They certainly wanted a story that wasn’t entirely focused on arthas because that wasn’t relevant after wrath but I don’t think what they have got since has been anything close to what they wanted.

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I dunno I see awful lot of them wanting to keep things like blight and there aggressive expansionism

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Truth be told, everything about the Forsaken has always been “Sylvanas’ Story.” It’s always been about her, how SHE overcame the Lich King’s control, how SHE came to the lost Forsaken in their greatest time of need and how SHE lead them to their new home…

It’s always been about her. I think this is probably the BEST time for them. To discover their own path, one not dictated by the “Dark Lady” and break free from the Hate and misery she’s been keeping them confined to.

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We want to keep what we were given from the beginning just as much as the Night Elves want to keep Ashenvale and Darkshore.

That’s all. Blizzard made the Blight one of our main themes, so we expect to keep it, if we can’t keep it, they better give us something to compensate for the loss of it which is just as rich of a story resource.

I want the Night Elves to get their forests and Ancients and Wild Gods back, it’s no fun watching the narrative slowly take things away from you without replacing them or developing new ideas.

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To be fair, the Forsaken (at least their military and the RAS) have been the Scourge for quite some time now, what with the whole blighting the land (Southshore, Gilneas…), raising their victims, cruel experiments the living…

Though I guess BfA did stomp out what little mitigating factors there were, like letting people choose to die after being raised. The Alliance’s dead went from being possible recruits (which still feels pretty absurd…) to being resources to be used and discarded.

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Unlike blight our ancients or nature hasn’t been framed as a war crime

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Seriously.

A foreboding green fog that melts people? -Sure sounds like something out of a horror movie. Why ever would we want something like that? The undead wanting to be scary? That must mean we want to be the Scourge.

There is a middle ground. Voss is the best written character we have at hand and, in general really. She murders and destroys with dark magic and enthusiasm. Her methods are so depraved that Rexxar, a half ogre, half Orc barbarian that lives in the deadly wilds of Kalimdor is disturbed by it.

But she’s also portrayed as caring, honorable, ethical and someone who thinks for herself. You can in fact have both. It’s not too much to ask for.

Well, maybe it is for Blizz. Look at the Worgen. Their character screen is dripping with gothic Victorian atmosphere. They were supposed to be the horror movie race for the Alliance. Now they’re uh, well humans with a cockney accent and a fursona. So… let’s not just be humans with throat cancer accents and emo hair cuts. That is not the solution.

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I think they should replace the blight/plague and Val’kyr with rehabilitating more Forsaken style undead from Northrend after the helm is broken.

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But Saurfang orchestrated an unprovoked war then personally led the invasion force to seize the lands of another people and slaughter any who opposed the conquest. That doesn’t sound like “a honorable honor” to me.

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I sympathize very much with the OP.

But I really don’t get people calling Lillian Voss a well-written character. She is essentially a brand-new character who’s been created for BfA and given the name and appearance of a previous character.

The crazed anti-necromantic free agent and the nurturing undead transition counselor are not the same person, no matter how much Blizzard tries to pretend they are.

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I’m not really sure how much they can be rehabilitated. It’s shown in Tirisfal that not everyone takes to a free mind well. Those who are for one reason or another too broken to handle it will snap. They were free of the Lich King, but also all thought. That’s who all the mindless undead you put down are. They’re not hostile - not always- but they’ll wander about aimlessly forever. It’s a kindness to put them down.

I’d actually really wish to see Zelling expanded. That quest bothers me. I wanted to stop him. Go;

‘Okay. Calm down. We’re going to send Voss. She’s going to tell your wife you’re Forsaken now. We’re going to let her process this. You’re going to write her letters saying you’re still you and you still love your family. If and when she’s ready, and she readies your children, you’ll meet’.

But of course you cant do that. So he runs screaming to his family. The kids, of course, freak right the hell out then he gets aggro and the whole things ruined.

Approached with ten seconds of consideration though and maybe that could work out.

Pie in the sky here but I’d like a necrocratic Lordaeron. Humans are allowed and can do whatever. The Forsaken would guard them and perhaps offer mindless undead as free labor. They’d be encouraged but not forced to become undead upon death. If they say no, you put them in a sepulchre deep in Lordaeron where we guarantee you won’t be touched by lesser necromancers who’d turn you into a monster. But the right is reserved to conscript you in times of national emergency.

And hell say they can pay taxes in like farm yield the Forsaken can trade or blood/flesh/puke - something gross and Grimdark. Also imply some are only there for lack of better options. Horde can’t be wholly benevolent and reasonable afterall.

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