Why was Theresa, the "Mindslave" of forsaken Gerald Abernathy retconned to not be a "mindslave"?

Yeah but she also just, fits the general aesthetics and lore of the undead in vanilla?

Is Blizzard only finding out now they wrote Forsaken as pants on head evil and THE reason for all faction conflict post Wrath?

So what is the reason going to be then? Varien discovering Thrall knew crazy experiments on Humans were being conducted in Undercity is why the war started.

“But, to Varian’s horror, they also discovered dozens of mutilated and defiled human corpses, on which the Apothecary Society experimented to create the New Plague; realizing that although the Alliance and Horde agreed to a small truce over the years, the Forsaken had been secretly creating a means to kill them all.”

I doubt that would be a useful defense if they were sued.

Varian’s declaration of war was retconned. (Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Varian just assumed Thrall knew? Early WoW had the RAS being very secretive.)

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It was?! O.o
Then…why did the war happen??

Simple, in the face of the Lich King having a war between the factions was suicide. So, the war was either put on hold or outright ended (it’s not clear which) with flare ups from time to time. The faction conflict heated up again just before the Cataclysm and only intensified from there until MoP.

That was his assumption yes. In Varian’s defense he had no reason to believe Thrall didn’t know. Varian was wrong in that assumption of course and Jaina was right to teleport the Alliance forces out of the Undercity. One more reason to despise the direction they took her character for a while.

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But this would have been during Battle of Undercity.

It did, but remember what else was happening during and after the Battle of Undercity. The Battle of the Wrathgate had just happened. Skirmishes in Grizzly Hills and Wintergrasp were common. And the Lich King was still active with both Alliance and Horde Forces deployed throughout Northrend. With the majority of both armies still actively fighting the Scourge fighting a war against each would have been foolish. Which is why there was a retcon of Varian’s declaration of war.

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Varian’s declaration of war was handwaved with a vague reference to a peace agreement (the details of which were never specified) in a novel. Then the blame for hostilities reigniting was placed on Garrosh.

I guess you could quibble as to whether that technically constitutes a retcon, but the practical effect is the same.

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Yes, unironically. Exploring EK implies the leper gnome sweatshop got exposed and closed down.

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Wow…i didnt think i could dislike this story anymore then i did.
So now the war happened because “well they just didnt like each other.” Which i mean, yes that’s true and both sides had strong reasons for it…but i dono, just seems bland.

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The Zandalaris millenias of imperialist, slaving, sacrificing, and genocidal ways were handwaved because the Black Panther movie was entertaining.

I am full expecting the Man’ari to be retconned out of existence in a cultural level as well.

Whatever wizards of the coast fanatic is on the writing team who lacks the capacity to understand and implement “theory of mind” and create the existence of cultures and identities they cannot relate to needs to be thrown to Bioware already.

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not really. literally nothing became of any of the characters removed, and they just didn’t have all that much going for them in the first place. not all forms of evil worthily exist as simple. it didn’t actually do anything for the forsaken lore but look like a tasteless redundancy

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A lot of stuff was removed just because Afrisiabi had been responsible for it, regardless of whether it was offensive in itself.

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At least Theresa did not get replaced by a picture of fruit!!

… Did Theresa get replaced with a picture of mindslave fruit?

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yeah if you look closely in the canals you’ll see an apple with its stem cut out and a bandage wrapped around it for some reason. it patrols every so often
/s

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I didnt notice the dialogue changed but the mind slave still seems to be a mind slave
they just made the dialogue less weird and kinky

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To address the question in the thread title :

Indeed. I heard tell of as much.

To further treat in rumor:

I heard it was an intentional insult towards a female employee. So, changing it would have been particularly pertinent to the legal action/settlement.

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But her name was never changed? She’s still Theresa?

Also there’s a blindfolded character in Fable named Theresa…

It was just one of many stupid, useless, empty, performative and counterproductive changes to “clean up” Blizzard’s reputation during Bobby Kotick’s massive, repulsive and utterly humiliating sexual harassment scandal. Tons of completely harmless and innocent jokes, lines and gags were carved out like an icepick lobotomy. Not to promote good values or fix any actual problem, but to make Kotick and his band of corporate parasites look like they were the good guys who were shocked by all the evil stuff happening at the company and were working diligently to fix it.

Then it came out that Kotick had cameras up all over the office, and actively worked to intimidate and silence SA victims, and that’s when the company bottomed out and Microsoft swooped in to buy it up. It’s one of the few times in history a giant corporate monolith bought a company and made it less evil.

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This is really the biggest thing. Forsaken holding free will up as an ideal was not really a thing Blizzard did. The community around came up with it and Blizzard later embraced it. So, there are things that were created prior to that which do not fit with the free will narrative that now exists. Those things tend to be quietly retconned out.

I think you are reading to much into the game events, chronicle, or both. The goal in game and in Chronicle was rounding up the Sunreavers. Those were the orders and Jaina’s goal. And that is what happened to most Sunreavers. Thus Chronical does match in game events. Also, the Silver Covenant absolutely had some Sunreavers killed. There is no question.

Both things can be true at once. Overall, the Sunreavers were imprisoned and then later removed from the city, making Chronicle correct. Also, the Silver Covenant had some Sunreavers killed. Those things are not in conflict. Both are true. Both have remained true since, no retcon.

A retcon is a changing of a past event in a way that directly conflicts with past established lore. Varian’s declaration does not fit that. There has been nothing stating it didn’t happen, so as it stands it absolutely happened. The peace that followed was not something that was later changed, it was established at the time. From a story point of view he absolutely said it, but a state of tenuous peace was almost immediately restored. It was not a retcon.

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