The power imbalance only matters if the writers have the courage to actually create a situation where Calia has to raise a hand against the Alliance in defense of the Horde. Which, as I’ve already stated, I honestly doubt they do. Mostly likely they’ll probably have renegades who don’t actually serve the Alliance but merely claim they do, like the Scarlets, do any attacking so that Anduin Puregood the Everright’s* hands remain perfect and unstained. The BEST we could hope for is Turalyon or Tyrande personally decided just to wipe out all undead, and that if Calia doesn’t immediately bow to them she has to go too. THAT would be interesting and exciting and not even terribly out of character and I have little to no hope of it occurring.
*I don’t actually dislike Anduin, just how they’ve been using him. He was better when Varian and Genn acted as foils, but one died and other has been mostly, if you’ll pardon the pun, neutered.
I little spark within me hopes that Turaylon’s current position is a precursor to the Light cosmology expansion. And since Calia, Jaina, and Anduin are all conveniently locked away … who knows? We could get a fun little rift going there with Calia depending on how the Blue Hawks play while the Blue Doves are away. Regardless, Calia doesn’t need to aggressively powerful, she just needs to show she can defend her people … and is willing to. Voss can cover the aggression … being the bizarre Rogue, Warrior, Mage hybrid class she is. Seriously, she is weird.
Well, “locked away” in that she seems to have followed Bolvar into the Shadowlands with Taelia. Not so sure yet that she’s not able to leave, but as far as I’m aware the PC character is supposed to canonically be in the land of the dead for the duration of this story. I had sort of assumed that with the very small selection of “living world” characters, they too would be under a similar penalty. But … who knows for sure yet?
That is an interesting part. Her people. I am cautiously optimistic, since at least for now the devs seem to acknowledge that “her people” are not only in the horde. And not only undead.
I don’t know where will the story take Tyrande, but Turalyon was ok-ish with at least Faol.
Plus, I am not really sure how people imagine the conflict between Turalyon and Calia. Like, Turalyon was serving the Menethils. And so it happens, that she is one. I don’t even see a reason for her to fight and risk any lives, when she can just order him to turn around and go back. Now, that would not work if she would fully join the horde, since the horde can’t give orders to anybody in the alliance, but still, it’s not too hard to fix.
Alternatively, they could go with the more obvious route: Voss, being representative of most Forsaken, leads with her knowledge and experience of the Forsaken condition, while constantly dragging Calia around with her wherever she goes as a walking symbol of the legitimacy of her rule. “Look, the heir of the royal family of Lordaeron works with me, so my rule can’t be questioned.”
As it stands, Calia is completely detached from Forsaken culture, so the best she can contribute at the moment is to throw her official support behind someone she trusts as a symbolic gesture of granting that person “legal” right to rule. Calia can grow and be important eventually, but for her to be believable, she needs to go through this arc first.
Once Calia is up to speed, though, the concept of dual leaders representative of the two aspects of Forsaken culture is an excellent idea. So good, that I’d like to trick myself into thinking that was Blizzard’s intent.
Wouldn’t really be the first time you have a character locked into a facsimile of death. Even though Bolvar isn’t undead, he’s not exactly alive either. It’s nothing new that characters end up in weird limbo states. Magni might as well be counted among them too.
I want Natalie Seline to be a Forsaken, dag nabbit. I need my Cult of Forgotten Shadow.
If the Crusade was part of the Alliance, as was originally intended, then the prisoners weren’t “innocents.” They were active participants in a brutal war of extermination against the Forsaken.
By severing the link between the Crusade and the Alliance, and turning the Crusade into a rogue group of crazy people, the Forsaken’s psychotic hatred of the Alliance becomes a sort of weird, misdirected, nonsensical rage. It no longer makes sense.
The Forsaken were originally written to be a cruel, angry people who also have clear >>>External<<<< motivations and reasons for why they’re cruel and angry. Blizzard took away the latter while leaving the former.
Without any external reasons for being cruel, we’re left with only the internal ones: undead are just inherently horrible. This is garbage, from a storytelling standpoint.
If anything this is a natural progression, as the entire point of the Forsaken was to distance themselves from the Scourge, not just be a playable version of them.
The human supremacy angle was a very late addition to the story, as clearly evidenced by the massive statues of non-humans they proudly display in the room where you fight the axe man.
I think I was pretty clear in my post, honestly. I’m talking about the original development of World of Warcraft here, when the organization was first being invented.
I don’t get why you think Calia is Alliance. She has no connection to any member of the Alliance except Anduin, and they’ve only interacted once or twice to my knowledge.
While she does not have the alliance banner above her name at the moment, I think it’s not too difficult to see why people think so.
To avoid turning it into a wall of text, I’ll just say that she is the raised by the Light (commonly worshiped in the alliance) daughter of the founder of the alliance. So, given that Turalyon was serving Menethils when Lordaeron kingdom was a thing, if Calia would take the crown, she would be his leader and one and a half step away from being the leader of the alliance during Anduin’s absence.
Also, she has friends in the alliance (Anduin, Jaina), part of her nation (Lordaeron refugees), and, given that she is still alone after all the time around the horde, if her family is alive, they would likely be in the alliance too.
I think that is enough to explain why people associate a character which furrpectly fits into the alliance (visually and story-wise) with the alliance. Even if she had to distance herself from that faction not to lose her chance to seek for the missing family, if they would be among the forsaken.
Do a quick search on Calia in the forums. It’s been argued quite a bit. Her literal last act in life was attempting to get Forsaken to defect to the Alliance. Her presence alongside Voss makes zero sense.
