That dev was before the whole changes. That was the good lore. But in Catacl8sm she forced many of the reawakened to fight in Gilneas which was already odd then. Many Forsaken player (as I was) went into the forums confused because of their instant loyalty and battlereadiness after they were raised. With shadowlands and Domination Magic it felt like a “let’s fix that plot hole” scenario… By amateurs
It wasn’t. There were no new Forsaken being ressurected before they got the Val’kyr in Cataclysm, so the question couldn’t even be asked before that.
Ok let me clarify. I mean with new changes the Shadowland lore.
But like stated even in cata that statement doesn’t really fit. It fits in the starting zone. Later, in Silverpine, there is instant loyalty. I mean what? Gilneas fighting for their murderers? Makes no sense if they had free will. Only the named Gilneas npcs from the dungeon go against Sylvanas.
Not to mention the scarlet crusade undead… Lilly had a whole arc, but the other are just like “undead? Cool, I serve you”.
In BFA Sylvanas even tries to dominate another Forsaken with strong will. Derek Proud ore. With what? The Valkyrs.
It seems they themself don’t know anymore what was, should have been and totally is misplaced. It’s really convoluted
Now you’re the one saying that the lore can’t be like that, because it makes no sense. As you stated above, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense, the lore is the lore.
Which suggests that she might have the power to do so (in BfA at least, which is already post-deal), but has to actively work on that, doesn’t it? That doesn’t help your case about the Frosaken misdeeds as a whole being attributable to domination.
I’m not even sure that that is what is happening with Derek, though. As far as I remember she was just torturing him into submission.
The lore is still the lore. I stated doesn’t matter if I like it. It’s just official. The Domination seems to be a quick fix to that whole plot hole. It makes no sense for the non scourge Forsaken to even stay alive if they were in the Shadowland. Why would they leave? Why don’t they remember? Except if they are somehow controlled by 4d chess domination mastermind by taking only a part of their soul.
They called it brainwashing which is really kept neutral. Could be just torturing or submission like Anduin. She was already talking with the Jailor at that point and doing his bitings.
The whole Jailor plot was Domination. If you go through his soulstone chamber there are many named npc souls tone, hinting in them not being themselves cause half soul.
Another plot hole is the Kyrians taking the soul of the ones killed by scourge and later reanimated. If they become Forsaken, does that soul or anima just go back? How did Noone notice in the Shadowland that soul went missing?
The whole Shadowland convoluted the Undead lore too much. But it is what it is. Official.
And “seems to” is not lore. That’s headcanon.
How do you explain the Darkshore dark ranger?
Lillian speaks about their rage was amplified /was the thing left. Doesn’t sound like free will to me, sounds exactly what was done to Uther and Sylvanas.
With it seems, I meant, blizz seems to use that as plot cover device. Not that it’s my head cannon.
I don’t have to. Blizzard does. And it’s only lore, when they do it. But apart from that, explaining the Darkshore ranger would n’t necessarily explain the normal Forsaken trooper anyways.
If you want to claim something is lore, source it. Headcanon is fine and can make a lot of sense. But you can’t beat other people over the head for not accepting it, you can just try to convince them of its plausibility.
In this specific case I am quite sure that even in the dev’s minds domination magic wasn’t a thing before BfA, and thus was not meant to be the driving force behind the Forsaken villainy.
It’s seems more that Domination Magic was already being hinted in BFA but not a thing really before. The whole Darkshore + Derek stuff was about control.
It felt like a prop for Shadowlands. Even in legion the whispering loa making Sylvanas the warchief. Her lantern to submit and control the valkyr queen. Does seem like there was more time invested in that plotline. It’s just that that plotline collides with vanilla, Forsaken have free will, just to show us: "hey their queen was BTW controlled and manipulated cause missing the crucial part of her soul lol. Uther too BTW. Lmao, have fun n with that kids. " doesn’t seem right.
Do have free will or are they influenced? Blizz: yes.
To be fair, with undead it has long been established that undeath changes them, and that was only reinforced in BfA and SL. In the pre-SL DK short story Nazgrim even directly states “Undeath stripped certain parts away from every soul”, while older sources talked more about the soul being “imperfectly attached” to the body. Lillian Voss spoke of everyone going a little mad on ressurection.
Considering that… I don’t really think there is much of a hole that you need domination magic to fill here. Forsaken are just not the same persons they were in life, because they don’t have the same access to their soul, so they act differently. I never found that hard to accept. So reuniniting the pieces of the soul repairing some of that damage doesn’t seem implausible to me, either, though Sylvanas’ and Uther’s missing soul parts just being available and unused by the soul-forging Jailer seems pretty cow poo to me.
Anyways, if Forsaken have free will, it obviously isn’t the free will of the person they were before they died, and that’s not necessarily bad world-building here. The Forsaken going all gooey-eyed over Calia and playing nice all of a sudden is way more of a violation of established patterns.
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Is that then really free will if you are missing parts of your will?
Problem is, it doesn’t apply to all Forsaken. There are some that are like their living self just undead and other missing something, and others being the total opposite.
Are they even the same person then or a total different individual?
Tbh fair there should be strong emotion with her. For some she is a piece of a long lost life (the daughter of the good king of loarderon) they dearly miss, or a reminder of their death(sister of the butcher). She should be stirring something in them. Well , the scourge Forsaken atleast.
And she wasn’t just welcomed with open arms. The later counsel members were very suspicious.
I don’t see a problem there, either. If the ressurection is an imperfect process, why wouldn’t it change some people more than others? Raising undead armies just wasn’t created to keep the soul fully operational, just the body. So the guys behind the magic just had no reason to optimise that part, and the results will vary.
As I understand it, they’d essentially be a different individual. Build from parts of another individual, glued over with dark magics. And this new zombie has free will, making it free to hate and genocide of its own accord.
From the people who are more like their old selves, I guess, yeah.
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The living, who the Forsaken repeatedly showed nothing but contempt for and repeatedly sought to murder, desecrate and raise into undeath against their will. They’re not exactly innocent little lambs who were unfairly persecuted.
Furthermore, a lot of people who played them or at least liked them did so because they were very close to being morally black due to all their scheming and general attitude, morally grey at a stretch.
The game is attempting to rewrite history because it does not intend to follow through on any meaningful consequences. It is understandable to an extent since they cannot remove an entire playable race from the game. On the other hand, though, they are attempting to disallow any push-back whatsoever.
Couldn’t have said it better . They are who they are and there is no need to white wash them .
And Yes i have played an undead . My first character in vanilla was an undead warlock .
And what were the first quests like ? Oh look some humans trying to farm pumpkins . Lets kill them , take those pumpkins , poison them and feed them to other humans . The first three zones were about developing a world ending plague that will kill all living and killing any living that remained in that zone , be it humans , animals or even trees .
Domination Magic was not the cause of them acting the way they did . They did it because they wanted to .
What is Domination Magic ? It was implanted in the Helm of Dominion and Frostmourne . Those hit by it do not retain ANY personal will or desires . They simply toil away until they are ground to dust .
The whole topic of Warcraft 3 TFT was that the magic was weakening and undead were escaping from it’s grasp .
Sylvanas escaped from it’s grasp and so did the Forsaken .
Later the same happened to the Death Knights .
Could it be recast . Yes , but when that happened it was fairly obvious , especially if they were fighting it back . Those that are forced under it , become blank eyed and move without any emotion or will . Think zombies here . Think how Anduin looked when he was forced under it in the cinematic .
That’s why when the Undead player goes to the Maw they do not get instant MC-ed . Because they are of free will and can fight back .That’s why the Jailor wanted to cast his magic on the whole freaking universe (multiverse?) . Because most were actually not under his control and logically speaking we had Forsaken fighting against him at his peak power .
So yea Domination Magic is not that excuse . As Whimbert said maybe the process is imperfect . Maybe they are different being all together . Or maybe they were just murderers to begin with . The choice was not made for them by some grand cosmic power , but by each Undead individually . The Forsaken as an organization however have always been working in a shady way . AND THAT IS FINE . It brings realism to the game . You can love them or hate , but they are much closer to humans that way .
And I can’t skip one comment about the “they were chased out by their relatives and so on”
So yea they were chased out and scared . Is it not normal for people to be afraid of walking corpses . Some could take it , some couldn’t and got a mental brake down . Is this an excuse to kill everyone ? It is a personal choice . Thomas Zelling got chased out , but he chose to protect his family non the less because he loved them .
The above is a coping mechanism. When one does something bad , they blame the victim for it , to feel better. ''Edited by moderation* No The perpetrator is to blame , because he chose to do it .
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Eh Velen is safe. He is already depicted in a comic showing compassion for an old and broken Anduin way in the future. So yeah with how Anduin is right now that comic seems to be comming true.
Also Velen is kind of inexchangeable. The only other real lore character from Draenei points with leading capabilities are High Priestess Ishanah of the Aldor and Yrel. And while the fomer is basically so obscur that I did not even realized she is now and innkeeper on the Vindicar, the later whas made by Blizzard into a villain of “You pray to the light or Die!”
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I find it about impossible to imagine WoW’s writing team to actually have planned out things more than a decade in advance, and I really don’t see why the ever-changing story leadership would feel bound to make this specific outcome happen. Indeed, the devs already stated in an interview that they just saw the end of the comic as a possible future they had brainstormed about, not something that they saw as binding or inevitable.
So… leave me some hope that Anduin won’t return to kingship, will you? You wouldn’t think I’d still be invested in that, but it seems I am.
On the changing of the guard in general… I sincerely hope that they actually are doing this for some story reason, and they either have something in mind that requires the new characters in positions of power, or the old characters to be free of their leadership obligations. Changing the rulers wouldn’t necessarily change the protagonists, either. I would argue that a lot of WoW’s character writing was inhibited by the fact that the characters often couldn’t act as themselves, but were always also representatives of their peoples. “The old Wolf” might have some interesting and personal storylines that “King Greymane” could never have had…not that I expect Blizz to write them, but you never know.
We are officially entering a new era, with new story leadership, and a professed long-term plan here. Ideally we would expect everything that happens now to be a neccessary or supplemental part of the grand plot.
Actually they where but it is only said between the lines on the first quest every Forsaken got. Death Knell is because of this the starting zone of the Forsaken. Because there they controlled tried to raise via good old necromancy another undead and if after some time has been gone they burned all the corpses so they may not rise as mindless undead.
This is also the reason why Sylvanas whas so scared of losing every Val’kyr. Because before the most forsaken where those that got free during the initial weakening. Afterwards they may have got some more but those where more tries to just get every possible person then a real way to raise numbers. Only with the Val’kyr they just had finally a way to guarentee more forsaken.
You can ask this question to all the person who got a totally different personality thanks to a head damage or stroke. One of the famout examples here:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23523-mindscapes-stroke-turned-ex-con-into-rhyming-painter/
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Are you sure? I mean, it’s a bit beside the point, I guess, but on the first quest in Classic Deathnknell they explicitly say: “About time you woke up. We were ready to toss you into the fire with the others, but it looks like you made it. I am Mordo, the caretaker of the crypt of Deathknell. And you are the Lich King’s slave no more.”, and " We have been freed from the control of the Lich King by our new leader, Lady Sylvanas. The Dark Lady guides us in our war against the hated Scourge and the holdouts of humanity who dog our every step.", which would imply to me that the player character was the Lich King’s slave before his “awakening” in Deathknell. I don’t really see a hint of Forsaken necromancy in that.
Could you get more specific about your source on this?
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Which as I said, it is told between the lines. Especially about the first sentence with waking up. IT could also alternativly imply that the forsaken somehow are able to use techniques to break connection to the helmet but there are no further connotions during the questlines. Meanwhile in Brill there are questlines that the gnolls are continue using necromancy so we. So with the second sentence about that they where ready to toss you into seems like you where just laying there.
But if we go by the now uncanonic WoW RPG it seems that your interpretation is right as it is said there that necromancy could also be used to free someone.
Like a mindless undead whose connection to the Lich King was to weak to compel him, but whose own will hadn’t asserted itself, yet? Or like you suggest by pointing towards the at the time Metzen-approved RPG, they might have done something to break them out. If there is writing between the lines, it isn’t clear, which is why I wouldn’t accept it as the only source for Forsaken being raised by normal Forsaken necromancers.