Apparently you can’t read, or you are delusional, because I did not use the word “never”.
I played WC 3 a ton before WoW was even a thing. I am aware of her story. I just didn’t think about her much as I played WoW.
Even if they hadn’t made the Wrathgate a thing, Sylvanas’ presence there with an Alliance raid and a bunch of Alliance characters would still have been really awkward given her conduct in the Eastern Kingdoms in Vanilla.
I think an argument can be made that Sylvanas and the Forsaken’s goals regarding the Scourge were doomed to fail the moment Sylvanas decided to burn bridges with people like the Argent Dawn and the Alliance. They had no strong anti-Scourge allies by the time WotLK came about, and as a consequence they lacked the power to attack ICC.
I still don’t see anything wrong with an awkward temporary alliance, and the forsaken not being strong enough on their own isn’t an issue in my mind because that’s what that awkward partnership is for. And since my complaint is about the writing, I feel pretty comfortable saying “just change the writing so they could contribute more” in that regard.
But they went with the Wrathgate instead and everything seemingly went to pot and it feels like it never really pulled up horde-side.
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I don’t completely agree with this. I think it only feels this way because of the attempted retcons to go back and make it an “she knew all along!” thing, because I didn’t think about the Wrathgate at all by the time we were knee-deep in the Garrosh saga, and didn’t even really consider it much in Legion either.
They’ve started going back and drawing a throughline with the aid of retcons in an attempt to cudgel their absurd story into some sort of order.
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That line was more of a criticism from me about the horde at large, not Sylvanas-specific. Like, it feels like the last time I remember the horde as a faction being genuinely heroic was the first half of that cutscene.
Part of it is because “revenge on the Scourge” was only half of the Forsaken theme in Vanilla. The other half was the development of the plague and their overtly stated goal of cleansing both the Scourge and the living.
I remember going into Wrath that there was a lot of enthusiasm among the playerbase for the fact that we’d finally get to see the completed Forsaken plague deployed. And at the Wrathgate, the Forsaken did exactly that and they targeted exactly who they said they always planned to use it on, namely the Scourge and the Living.
Of course that “and the living” part is a pretty big problem, and the Forsaken were unceremoniously booted out of major operations in Northrend as a result. But the reason the Wrathgate happened isn’t because the writers in WotLK decided to do it on a whim. The Wrathgate had been being telegraphed by the Forsaken since Vanilla, and if you take issue with the Forsaken’s writing in WotLK it’s rooted in that.
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Oh, I misunderstood what you meant, then. My mistake.
It was incredibly obvious even at the time that she knew all along because Forsaken NPC’s kept telling players while they were questing that they are developing a plague to destroy the living at Sylvanas’ order. It’s not a retcon.
I still find everyone’s collective shocked pikachu face after the Wrathgate when the Forsaken did exactly what they said they were always saying they would do to be incredibly funny.
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Probably. Which is why I remember hoping that there’d be a more positive turning point after WotLK but lol that didn’t seem to happen.
I just wanted to feel like I could play a “good monster” since I found the concept appealing when I first started the game. 
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For what he did to Kael’thas and the Blood Elves… he is. His unfortunate origin and all that, the choices he made… were his. He literally drove Kael’thas and his people to seek alliances with the Naga and Illidan by deliberately setting them up on missions designed to kill them.
No one can help being in a helpless position exposed hatred. However whether one chooses to rise above it or be consumed by ones past IS a choice.
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The Forsaken could have been doing such as part of the standing Cold War between the Horde and the Alliance. They would be extremely foolish NOT to prepare for an eventual Alliance assault, given that the Human desire to retake the city was not exactly a secret.
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Obviously he should have been killed and raised into undeath before trying to kill the Blood Elves, as this is apparently the only tragic background that serves as a post-facto justification for doing terrible things.
The Alliance’s focus was on the Scourge. Even the Scarlet Crusade had adopted a largely “Scourge first, Forsaken later” approach.
I heavilly disagree with this. Just making it so you don’t flat out forget a full part of your fanbase in favor of another is realistic, it’s not like they had to add all 10 races at the time to the actual Siege, just have the 3 or 4 that care about arthas above anything else play an active role in the LK’s fall. It’s really, really bad when your favorite race is supposed to entirely be devoted to fighting a single person, then that person is defeated with little to no involvement of said race. I’d also say Arthas is more closely tied to the Forsaken then Humans do to how they’re entire culture was dedicated to putting his head on a pike with that being one of their only major plot threads, but arguing who deserves it more kinda defeats the point.
I don’t need Sylvanas to get the last hit on Arthas, I just want to feel like the forsaken were involved in his defeat beyond accompanying one character for a single dungeon. Same with Argus, you can keep the majority of it the same, but have more Horde races playing bit roles and maybe not force horde players to sit through Alleria talking about how much the horde sucks.
Allianceside I think the Gilneans were completely and utterly robbed from their lack of involvement with Deathwing since so many of their issues with the other nations of the Alliance was do to his manipulations. Like, just have some Gilnean Druids be a quest companion for a bit, I don’t even need Genn. The sheer fact Gilneas was uninvolved in Deathwings defeat is insane. In general I think blizzard has a nasty habit of forgetting some groups existing when they are doing things that really should involve them. It’s just not a fun experiance to have the entire thing your guys are supposed to do be done by someone you don’t care at all about.
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You’re going to pretend that the ongoing battles in Alteraac Valley and the Arathi Highlands weren’t a thing?
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Alterac Valley didn’t involve the Forsaken, and Arathi Highlands was Forsaken aggression.
This is less a problem with WotLK and more a conceptual problem with the Forsaken, namely the fact that their lore is comparatively thin next to human lore and the fact that they were Horde, and thus seperated from all the other groups that would overlap with their “kill Arthas” motive.
Because of this, it was effectively a dichotomy. Either the Forsaken get presence at the expense of the Alliance, or the Alliance gets presence at the expense of the Forsaken. They went with the latter, because the latter gets the most bang for its buck narratively since you can have Jaina, Muradin, Varian, Darion, Tirion, Bolvar, Terenas etc all realistically involved, whereas a Forsaken lead basically just means Sylvanas and maybe Lor’themar (who nobody cared about at the time)
They also clearly went into WotLK with the intent of playing up Arthas as a tragic fallen figure, an overarching narrative that clashes with the Forsaken’s goals but fits nicely with the Alliance’s.
And at the time, this is in fact what the playerbase wanted. WotLK was the Arthas Show featuring All These Characters From His Life because that was what players wanted. It was about Paladins and Death Knights, Light battling Darkness, and generally had a very reserved and somber tone that emphasized who Arthas once was rather than who he became. None of this meshes well with the Forsaken even if you ignore the problem of the faction divide.
So yeah, if the Forsaken got done dirty in WotLK it was because of inherent problems that had been built into the Forsaken from their inception. Fighting the Lich King was never, ever going to be a Forsaken only thing but they missed out on the opportunity to play a believable part of an anti-Scourge coalition because they were enemies with the rest of the anti-Scourge coalition.
Never said that, I just said i wanted them to be decently involved.
Which is because of blizzard writing. Wrathgate was trash, i’ve made an entire thread about all the ways Wrathgate sucked like a year ago. I do agree that I wish the forsaken had something other then Arthas though, since after he died the forsaken were kinda… aimless in a way? I don’t think when they made the Forsaken they expected to be doing big expansions that would actively move the story forward like Wrath.
Blizzard decided that since the forsaken lacked an obvious direction, they were gonna be nuscourge (in the sense they raise people unwillingly into undeath), which sucks.
Vengeance Landing is one of two horde starting points for the assault on Northrend. The wrathgate was a thing. Sylvanas escorts horde players through the Icecrown 5 mans like Jaina does the alliance players. Sylvanas goes toe to toe with Arthas in ICC.
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If i recall, I think jaina and sylvanas were recovering.
I would only add that Sylvanas and the forsaken got TONS of development in wrath and following in cataclysm. Sylvanas wasnt only present for one dungeon. She was equal to Jaina for horde characters in the ICC 5 man dungeons, leading the horde assault on the citadel. In the raid she has a considerable 1 on 1 with Arthas for a portion of the instance, being cut off and robbed of her vengeance (will they maybe try to touch on that with Tyrande?) The Wrathgate is deeply tied to forsaken lore (being the main purpose of development of the blight or a betrayal by Varimathras and Putricide, depending on your take on Afrisabi’s side commentary as retcon) and the Forsaken forces led the charge in Howling Fjord from the start.
A new Forsaken aesthetic emerged in Northrend, as they needed to build their own structures instead of inhabiting the decrepit shells of buildings erected by the living. When the Forsaken returned from Northrend, instead of losing purpose they reinvented themselves with architecture and public projects, rebuilding much of the lands around the Undercity in the new Forsaken style.
The Forsaken experience continued to be one of outcast rebels, as Korkron guards were stationed in the Undercity to keep an eye on them after the Wrathgate. The devotion to their Zombie Dominatrix was increased by increasing her power to almost Godlike immortality and power over death via the Valkyr. While this is cringey to some it was also extremely attractive fantasy to others. I think they gave a very appropriate level of attention to the forsaken fantasy in wrath and cataclysm.
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