I hate how this is making me think about the AU where this was a thing; the Horde returning to shamanic and Druidic route, becoming one with the land while still having to pick up axe and bow frequently, never entirely allowed to Just Be At Peace.
And an Alliance that, while still mostly with good intentions, has to deal with the internal strife and old wounds, repairing the damage of QT/Eastern Kingdoms, and the ‘necessary’ industrialisation and expansion that brings them back to worrying parallels to the Stonemasons, etc.
No ‘good vs evil faction’ and a ton of shades of grey, ‘needs must’ and ‘are we the baddies?’. It coulda been so good…
I know no one likes to talk about the Purge of Dalaran again, I know. But I just did the quest Alliance side for the first time last night and I wonder if people defending it as “Jaina is bugged, she’s not supposed to fireball civilians in the street” have read the quests. Because “How dare that guy (who was not involved in the thing with Garrosh) try to take his own money out of the bank before we murder him” and “how dare those merchants not side with the SC, kill them” (not event “they sided with the Sunreavers” mind you, litteraly “they did not side with the SC”) sure are a Look.
On a positive, somewhat, I admit that playing MoP as Alliance make me not dislike Anduin, so far. I’m still not interested by the next expansion shaping up to be Alliance and token Thrall (maybe) but I wish for his early disappearance less. A little.
I still maintain that Anduin was/is a good character, ruined by the devs hamfisting of Faction/Plot dynamics, and putting the spotlight on the wrong characters at the wrong time and wrong place
Edit: Like, I didn’t even know these were a thing, in the past? Obviously back when they at least pretended to care? https://x.com/Portergauge/status/1796461767713067280
It doesn’t help that most of my contact with him as a character were from a Horde point of view mostly and starting from Legion. I know Alliance main players have an attachment from having seen him grow and all that (man, I wish Horde got to see their characters grow. Sure would be nice) while for me he was a non-entity 'til maybe Legion or BfA with the whole… Well BfA had potential. Had. And since Anduin had been put in our face with how sad a boy king he is (I intensely dislike that “little lion” thing with Sylvanas, it’s weird) so, hives.
But I find him… Fine? In MoP. I get why Alliance main players got attached to the character even if he’ll never be one of my favorites.
Absolutely understandable, and I do agree as someone who’s played both sides.
Yeah, BFAs handling of Sylvanas and into SL was nothing short of atrocious, no question
Honestly I feel that’s the downfall of most characters.
Where indidually they’re great, they have their own goals and agendas, I tend to feel that it all goes out the window as soon as they’re picked as the Character to push the plot.
Then you get weird jarring moments like Jaina and Lorthemar shrugging off the hostilities between them in 8.2
Genn not flipping out in Gilneas reclaim quests.
And so on.
Their individuality, what drives the char gets handwaved away so the writers can progress the plot.
Forsaken in Emerald Dream or Voss being pushed as the main forsaken char, anyone?
I would go as far and say similar to what I’ve said in regards to Lilian Voss. Sylvanas storyline should have ended with WotLK.
It was very clear they had a proper arc and story building up for her to that, it was meant to be the big thing for her. Its what her entire undead time had been progressing towards.
Ever since however, she’s only gotten progressively worse as a character, gradually getting more Mary Sue moments(The Val’kyrs was always a mistake) and just ending up an absolute mess of a character.
I know Blizzard needed something for the Horde to attach to for the Emerald Dream, but why pick a Forsaken(the least Emerald Dreamy group) over giving some Tauren spotlight?
Sylvanas getting the val’kyr as her followers in the wake of the LK’s demise was honestly very cool and it served a purpose of moving along the Forsaken story in how they meant to continue after their ‘ultimate goal’ of merking the Scourge had paid off.
Ending the emblematic character of a race’s story after an expansion can’t really work in a continuous story like WoW’s. Especially not when they hadn’t put in the legwork to establish any other characters to pick up her mantle (I agree on Voss joining the Forsaken and Calia just being Calia aren’t suitable replacements).
Because lets be honest, Blizzard loves doing the Tauren dirty.
Literally the first non-Kaldorei students they taught, Hamuul is leading the Cenarion Circle when Malfurion is away…
Lmao, why would they be included? Lets throw in Voss. (Etleast Delaryn and her squad of Dark Rangers makes a little more sense, but Voss has literally no reason to be there nor is it ever explained why she knows everybody suddenly or how she got there)
I personally never really liked them, because near almost immediately all they served to do was being used as “Extra Lives” for whenever Sylvanas needed to be put in a situation where she would normally die but the writers didn’t want that.
They could have done alot more with them beyond this. But atleast initially, there was the looming thing of “She only has X of them left” (until the devs in BfA went on interview and said she had unlimited numbers of them due to reasons).
I think that shows an issue though, because I never saw Sylvanas as a character that would endure past her revenge on Arthas. But Blizzard does have a severe issue with not knowing how to continue character stories and also a lack of “Next generation” characters to pick up after the original ones eventually go away.
See I also wonder why they made Shandris and Voss the team-up do, when Delaryn and Voss would have made more sense if they needed Voss there.
They actually have a bond over being raised against their will and becoming something they both hate or hated. Shandris and Voss share next to nothing.
I may not necessarily like it, but it did serve a narrative purpose of the Forsaken trying to build a new, less-supremely-evil legacy for themselves after the Banshee Queen era. They’re trying to atone for all of the problems they caused (e.g. Teldrassil and Gilneas).
Could/should the night elves have told them to get stuffed and fight the Primalists elsewhere? Yup. I even think it would be cool for their contingent to get ejected, then they determine to prove themselves anyway by hitting some major centre of Fyrakk’s power elsewhere on the isles.
But they were there for a reason in the story.
It’s okay for us to disagree on it, even if disagreeing with me = you are wrong.
This would have been really good character development for the Forsaken as a whole. “Everyone hates us now and refuses to trust us anymore. We should prove that they can.”
Also a literal tauren tribe and village in the next zone over.
Instead we get Forsaken in Emerald Dream and Gilneas!
I think Shandris and Delaryn would make more sense, it would give the Forsaken a presence, sort of, but also give a way for night elf Forsaken to be able to return amongst their living kin!
Interesting character, but like with Darkshore overall(I still got peeves with it), they botched her quite a bit.
I don’t like when developers actively lie to preserve narrative secrets when players are figuring them out. In this case, them out of character in interviews claiming that Night elves in Darkshore(Sira included) all willingly chose to return as Forsaken, which is why they immediately turned hostile).
Only for them to explain later in Shadows Rising and future interviews that they were forcefully resurrected and mind-controlled/warped.
