I mean, then isn’t the difference between these groups just those that had no choice but to relocate because they knew they could never reclaim what they’ve lost; and those that have no intention to relocate … because they still intend to reclaim what they’ve lost?
On a meta level perhaps, yes. But I am talking from an actual in game content level, what Blizzard has actually designed and shown. Certain races are shown as homeless and others are not. And atm there are a lot of races on the Alliance side that are specifically shown as homeless, and spoken about being homeless.
This isn’t even inherently a bad thing, it can actually even be good, if they get development and story from it, and their narrative advances. The problem comes from Blizzard just leaving them in this homeless limbo forever. Homeless Stagnation. 16.5 years for the Gnomes and counting. With no movement on that front in 11 years.
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Though this is true in some cases, there are players like myself who criticize Elegy, in favor of A Good War, when A Good War put Sylvanas’ scheming, wickedness, and the fact that she had a hidden agenda for the invasion on full display.
It is too often glossed over that under the watchful eye of Chris Metzen, Sylvanas underwent significant, positive character development. She no longer saw the Forsaken as simply arrows in her quivver. She continued to raise dead and use weapons of mass destruction. She was like the horde version of a really scumbag CIA spook in a political intrigue show, effectively serving the country in horrible ways, while also setting up his own drug empire, but secretly having a kid he sends money to. Its not a redemption, its just humanizing. She continued to persue her selfish agendas but put the majority of forsaken forces at the disposal of the PC in Legion.
The problem with BfA isnt that they told the story of Sylvanas web of lies unravelling. The problem isn’t that they showed what happens when someone like Sylvanas rises too high. That there was a comeuppance. That they showed her as her evil self. The problem is that they did so poorly and retconned very recent developments to do so.
They rushed things like the gathering. The Gathering could have been great, and really could have revealed to people who may have forgotten, that Sylvanas is extremely insecure. That she hypocritically preaches things like abandoning hope and forgetting your past life and loved ones, while becoming extremely emotional in regards to her own past and loved ones. How much is that her just lying to herself? There could have been more lead up to the Gathering, so we could be reminded why this was happening at all, and what has happened in forsaken culture, and with Sylvanas in particular to get us to this point.
Things like Three Sisters didn’t need to be taken separately. They are relevant to the narrative. I’m all for developing the story across multiple media, but major plot developments need to be adressed and delt with in game before we move on to related plot points. Before the ink dried on Three Sisters, Sylvanas was fighting Alleria in Lordaeron and many people hadnt even read BtS. You cant rapid-fire a rollercoaster like that across three different types of content appealing to different sectors of your fanbase, without leaving various people confused for different reasons, and even more confused by the reactions of other fans.
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Even that is a retcon, though.
Are you sure? Im pretty positive that her development from vanilla to wrath, and that of the forsaken was along that line. Denying your old life, tossing away trinkets of marriage or family. Only killing your former wife’s new lover because of spite, not love.
Meanwhile, stone faced sylvanas loses her effing mind when you show up with a blood elf necklace.
Yes. For those paying attention, her current situation is not really a surprise. There was a lot of fore shadowing.
Not sure I would agree with the ‘significant’ part. But yes, she did have some positive development. But also a fair amount of negative. Having both is actually good. It shows a struggle and is also more real.
This is the part I don’t think it is true. I don’t think they retconned recent development to do it.
True. But I think a lot of that is limitation of media. The information was really out there and had been for a while. But, it was scattered over years. To really consolidate in a clear and concise way would have taken a lot of focus on Sylvanas, who was already arguably getting a disproportionate amount of time.
Well, yes. They put out a lot of story in different media types and close together. Yes, a lot of people missed it. I agree timing could have been a lot better. But, it was there. So, even though a lot of people may have missed it, the development was there. Her actions were not inconsistent. It was just that a lot of people were relying on how they filled in the blanks of what they had not seen.
In general I think we agree. Blizzard absolutely could have done a better job of presenting it. But that failure doesn’t actually make the writing ‘inconsistent.’ The pattern was there, just in a way a lot of people missed.
Have you not listened to her voice lines? The ones she has had since Vanilla. Heck, go listen to what she said in WC3. She has always seen her existence as a cursed one without joy.
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Afrisabi’s ill-conceived wrathgate comment was clearly not cannon originally and its not even clear that it is now, though was probably an internal possibility from the beginning. Danuser stated in an interview that Sylvanas planned to abandon Varian at the Broken shore, and orchestrated her rise to warchief to an as yet unrevealed end, contradicting her own inner monologue in BtS, which seems to have been scaled back now in SL where Muehzala claims to have orchestrated it all. The only in game hint at Danuser’s take being Varimathras. These are just a few examples of retcons or story flexibilities probably meant to facilitate on the fly changes to appease the playerbase, but making for a confusing narrative to the discerning fan.
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Right … she saw them as a “Bulwark Against the Infinite”. And given her reason for ultimately not abandoning them, that transition in role for them was not promoted by some newfound love of her people. But out of a fear of her own eternity. She returned because she found a new reason to need them. And that “No fool orc would squander them”. She even outright says she intends to use them in that same short-story for goodness sake. Yet, people twisted and twisted to make those intents “positives”.
Her expansion of them in Cata could easily be seen as her simply enhancing the strength of her Bulwark. While their failure to protect her in Stormheim is truly the greatest sign that that Bulwark had failed in its core purpose. Thus, like their arrows, they were primed for abandonment or being repurposed. She never led her “Mongrel Race of Rotten Corpses” against Arthas by yelling “You’re all my ammunition for my revenge”. She didn’t expand her Forsaken in Cata by shouting “You’re all my meatshield against my afterlife!” She certainly wasn’t the type to rally the troops at Lordaeron by screaming “FOR ME!!!” And what little internal dialogue we do have from her that seems contradictory due to her recent actions, has not yet actually been proven contradictory (until we know whether she knew the Jailor or Mueh were behind her becoming Warchief. Which seems unlikely given Mueh’s reluctance to reveal the details of that truth).
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Gnomeregan shouldn’t have returned as a dungeon and should have been a big questing zone for the Gnomes instead of just half of it.
I don’t know who wanted it to stay as a dungeon but it wasn’t good from a lore standpoint to keep it as such.
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And I’m pretty positive that from Vanilla to Wrath, when Forsaken did those things, it was implied to be because they wanted to, not because Sylvanas directed them to. Granted, it’s been a long time, and many of those quests aren’t in the game anymore, so I’d appreciate it if you let me know if there’s evidence to the contrary. But I don’t remember any hint in the game that Sylvanas was trying to control how they viewed their former lives. She didn’t give speeches about it. There weren’t mandatory renaming registration stations, or propaganda posters about throwing away possessions. You didn’t see Forsaken slipping up and referring to their old lives and then looking around to see if anyone heard.
The way it was presented, it seemed like it was the Forsaken themselves who wanted to break with their pre-death existences, or in some cases genuinely forgot them (fishing quest in Thunder Bluff). Sylvanas actually affirmed their identity as citizens of Lordaeron. And Undercity was one of the best sources of in-game history books—still is, as far as I know, if you take the Bronze dragon option. They’re just sitting around openly on tables, not hidden away lest the Dark Lady see them.
Except when she suddenly decided that being undead was better than being alive, and she should give that gift to everyone. Although she seems to have gotten out of that phase pretty quickly. And she also never “preached abandoning hope” before the BtS/WoT era. At that point, she suddenly retroactively developed this raging hate-on for hope that she never had shown before and just as quickly abandoned.
Anyway, even before that flurry of retcons, she wasn’t shown to be micromanaging the Forsaken’s lives and thoughts. It was BtS that changed Undercity into an Orwellian state complete with thought police. There were a ton of threads about it on the old board at the time, which I wish I could link to.
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There was definitely a lockstep progression for Sylvanas and the Forsaken. They were not directed to do anything or forced, but they also were not just left to their own devices. The cult of forgotten shadow was essentially a state religion, and although Sylvanas was not a member, and membership was not required, it reinforced the cult of personality around Sylvanas. Sylvanas is not just figuratively worshipped by her people, but literally. The culture reflects that and people adopt mindsets and outwardly project those mindsets to please their god. This isnt a criticism of Sylvanas or the Forsaken, I think it is one of their most interesting features. She’s a Santa Muerte or some kind of Anti-Madonna. I really like that aspect.
They really started to develop Sylvanas in game by BC, and one of the earliest possible glimpses in game of Sylvanas internal conflict is “The Lady’s Necklace”. Wowpedia describes the event thusly…
Lady Sylvanas’ necklace would ultimately be found by [blood elven] adventurers several years later, at Sylvanas’ own former place of residence, [Windrunner Spire] The blood elves, who had found a strange kinship in their former [Ranger General’s] people, returned it to her. Lady Sylvanas was shocked to lay eyes upon it again, though quickly composed herself and stated that it, like Alleria, was a long dead memory; dropping the necklace and dismissing her visitor.
However, in a rare moment of emotion, Sylvanas summoned a choir of [banshees] and began to sing a [melancholic tune] for her homeland. At its climax, she knelt down and picked up her necklace once more.
This is exactly the kind of inner conflict I think they attempted to explain exists in all undead. Longing and lonliness, regret and sadness are negative emotions, just as likely to be magnified by undeath as hatred and vengeance, but more likely to lead to undead trying to reunite with their past loved ones.
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They were presented as sharing goals (revenge on Arthas) and attitudes. BtS was a big change, making out that those goals and attitudes were imposed from the top down by Sylvanas.
However, that’s not evidence that she forced or even encouraged the Forsaken to see things in ways they otherwise wouldn’t have. Again, not until BtS.
Maybe that inner conflict is individual and not meant to be read as applying to every Forsaken.
Yes, but the fact that she feels this way isn’t evidence that she “preached” getting rid of reminders of past life. She never gives any speeches about it, either in the game or in novels. The evidence actually tilts in the other direction, IMO: see for example Poshken Hardbinder, who hangs onto his engraved ring (a reminder of past life) even though he can’t even remember why he keeps it.
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Moreover, that sequence is evidence of a more nuanced and complicated relationship with her past life, not “GRR HOPE BAD ME SMASH”. Could she have eventually come to that conclusion after years of pain and regret? Sure. Did they show her doing this in the narrative? Not whatsoever.
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Yes, and it also doesn’t make her a hypocrite who’s trying to force her people into something she’s not willing to do herself, which is the description I’m pushing back against.
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Would love nothing more than for this to happen tbh.
I think Turalyon makes a much more interesting leader. Not just as a “High King” type but i like Turalyon as the King or Highlord of Stormwind. He’s a good racial leader for the humans.
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Honestly, I feel that while Anduin is exacerbating the issue … he is is not the root cause of it.
Blizz has been increasingly non-committal when it comes to Alliance “grey” or “aggression” since Cata. This was also the period where they started (increasingly) succumbing to the kneejerk impulse to whitewash, invalidate, or bury under justifications what few things they were allowed to do that did fringe on grey. Its as if Blizz started feeling the need to create and maintain an artificial purity test … resulting in an entirely reactionary faction. One that is highly restricted in how it could even react in that role.
Removing Anduin wont solve much if the core issue he’s augmented isn’t also resolved. Turalyon hypothetically could do something to offset this, especially while so many peace-niks are in the SLs (including Calia & Feathermoon atm), but the issue never was whether Blizz “could” do something. But whether they’d actually commit to it when they do. Or will they get skiddish again and make a half attempt … before running back for the safe space of artificial Purity Test as fast as they possibly can.
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Turalyon’s never been a warmonger and I don’t get why everyone treats him as though he is. One of the things that made him distinct in Warcraft 2 is that of the original 5 Paladins, he was the least aggressive (and the only one that had begun as a Priest and learned warrior things, rather than a warrior who learned Priest things)
I suspect it’s because he is extremely devout and talks like someone who is extremely devout, which weirds people out in 2021 because religion isn’t as central to our society as it once was, and we only ever see him fighting things instead of doing Paladin things like blessing civilians during Church services or helping refugees and whatnot.
But his beliefs and behavior isn’t really all that different from any other martial Paladins that you’d find in something like the Argent Crusade, and nobody seems to be chomping at the bit for Argent villains.
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He’s also a man out of time with current Azeroth; Returned to see his home in ruins (and in the hands of people he’d normally interacted with as Enemies); and he almost killed even Faol on sight (who only got off like he did because of who specifically he is). He’s also known nothing but constant warfare for the last 1000 years (from his perspective). No one is saying he’s a warmonger, but of the Alliance leadership he is one of the few remaining that could be goaded into some form of aggressive action. With the right catalyst.
For example, the Lightbound showing up (a group the Alliance has no reason not to trust unless they oust themselves). Their whole MO is “saving us from ourselves”, after all. Far less disturbing on paper at the very least. Giving the Alliance the means to act, while offsetting the costs several of their leaders hinted at being worried about when signing the armistice. The opportunity is nearly every single peacenik on both sides being shuffled away into the Land of the Dead (including Feathermoon and Calia atm). All you need is motive, which the death of say … Faol, Genn, or Velen (and pinning it on easy Horde targets like Belmont of the Forsaken or Geya’rah of the AU Mag’har) could easily provide.
The trouble is that with the Forsaken position in the Eastern Kingdoms being pretty much completely annihilated, there isn’t really a whole lot left that the Alliance wants but the Horde has.
A point of conflict could be set up in the form of Lightforging like we saw with Calia effectively being a “cure” for undeath
This is precisely what I tried to say. But even in that sequence, her mouth says “hope bad” but her actions say “maybe not”.
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