In their own current story the Arathi have been attacked by the nerubians since the day they arrived down there. And i see no expansion into nerubian territory or other lore reason for this than the Nerubians being savage warmongers way before the time of this new queen.
So riddle me this, why are we getting escorted around their city and seeing “oh my god they are actually just people doing people things!”
If we didnt have the pheromones of their highest ranking members they would eat you alive on the spot.
Writers, not everyone needs a sob story or a grey area. They can be nasty monsters. its ok. You didnt have to make them more humanoid and try to make cute versions and all that. We could have had a proper warcraft story but nah.
Im not even saying this story is the worst thing ever btw. Im just irritated that we have to go on a pity field trip through their city and be told “they are actually good and people just trying to live!” when they have been nothing of the sort at any other point throughout history.
Dont even get me started with that stupid cinematic with the street rat spiders begging the guards for food with the old queen in charge. If she actually cared she would be opening negotiations for trade with the other races down there not indiscriminately attacking them.
They are ultimately creations of the old gods (humans are too technically I guess).
But I was getting sick of the “here’s this evil race/faction but ACKTUALLY half of them are good and don’t want this and want to ally with you”.
I think it works for kobolds. But nerubians I wish it was strictly they are not good guys, maybe some dubious/neutral ones that work with us only for their benefit, but never full allies.
The fact that the primalists were strictly the bad guys with no defectors (that I can think of) is kind of funny.
People complain when villains are one dimensional, who are evil for the sake of being evil. People want villains who at least have a motivation and a reason for doing what they’re doing, and that they aren’t just a hivemind.
"we want to flesh out the antagonistic forces to make the conflict more interesting, but our players can enjoy some guilt-free spider stomping on a massive scale in our story campaign
its not even that, its like “we are nice peace loving hippies, its just this one leader who is terrible and making us do evil things”. I could accept the fact there is a single faction of them maybe not that bad but they are overall terrible people. Kind of like the Orcs, most are bad, unless you are a frostwolf, those guys are the exception.
There would have to be some whole conspiracy to make that the case because Faerin lothar was there when it happened. I dont see a reason for why she would lie with how goodie two shoes she is.
This is one of those “the enemy of my enemy” things. Kinda like teaming up with Uncle Joe to put down the other mustache man. Sure, Uncle Joe was going to be hard to live with in the long run, but the other guy was impossible to live with in the short run.
I have no illusions about long-term prospects with the “friendly” Nerubians. Nor does our alleged friend, who consistently refers to me as food.
I think it’s a good thing to be reminded that evil creatures who will kill you without a second thought are, still, sentient beings with their own cultures and quirks. These aren’t contradictory ideas, and it’s not a recent thing, look at the Mantid in Pandaria. They were clearly Very Bad but we still allied with them out of mutual interest. Then later on we killed them, but while we were allied it was super interesting to see how their culture worked and how different it was from ours.
Also that quest with the wife eating her husband and all the other nerubians being like “oh that’s so old fashioned” definitely makes me think someone on the writing team read Children of Time. Great book, give it a read if you haven’t.
There is no civilization in history or fiction that are just drooling blood thirsty psychopaths.
When those traits show themselves, they are only a piece of the overall civilization.
This will likely get me banned on these forums because there are too many people that lack common decency here, and I know real world propaganda has convinced billions of people that there are entire ethnic groups in the world that even their children are not even considered to be human - but that is just that - it’s propaganda.
No civilization exists in a vacuum. They didn’t just fall out of the coconut tree.
It’s actually bad writing to not show the other sides of an enemy.
