You are right that she (and other content creators of WoW) get caught in the crossfire, so-to-speak.
You aim for the content, and end up hitting a person instead.
To DF (and potentially, Golden’s) credit, the writing is a massive step above BFA and SL, and in terms of content delivery, character development etc it surpasses WoD and a good chunk of Legion, too.
Additionally the portrayal of dragons is leagues above Cataclysm, which was sold to us as a “dragon expansion”. And I am not as naive as to deny Christie Golden’s credit here.
However, DF still has flaws, flaws that threaten to turn into another SL expansion when they will be placed into the spotlight.
Very much so - I don’t think WoW shouldn’t have a moral or inspiring message around its stories, but when it becomes the vision of the writer, it will harm the natural flow of the story.
As for the Twitter I don’t think it’s a big deal. It harms nobody, and doesn’t affect anyone.
Even worse, watching people treat any Warcraft 3 developer’s words as gospel for decades. Ah yes, I absolutely care about what this Warcraft 3 developer said about Warcraft lore! After all, he did such invaluable additions to the storyline, such as…
[reads notes]
The 3D model for one of the civilian NPCs and the coding of how sheeps explode when you click them too much.
There is a moment in Rise of the Lich King where even Arthas wonders if Jaina was actually right, if there had been another way. But once he killed his first victim – a young boy – he had to double down because the thought of being wrong was too terrible for him to bear in light of what he had done. At that point even if there had been another way, he couldn’t accept it anymore.
And once the people of Stratholme started fighting back when they realised what Arthas and his knights were doing, he felt a grim sense of relief internally when they were fighting. He was crying through out the cull, but kept his helmet on so his men couldn’t see it.
He thought it would get easier. It didn’t. It just got worse.
His hammer’s glow dimmed and it grew heavy in his hand, which was a recurring motif to represent his waning faith in the Light. The Light made the hammer near weightless in the hand of a Paladin, but by the end in Northrend it was dead weight holding him back which contributed to him discarding it for Frostmourne.
Even the book constructs the narrative that maybe Arthas hadn’t been right. It was a difficult situation because the plague began to turn its victims “within hours” of infection, and they had no idea when the infected grain had arrived. A decision needed to be made quickly and once Arthas made his, he couldn’t back down even if he was wrong.
The only time we know of the Forsaken did this and those envoys ended up never returning, we do not know what their ultimate fate was even if them being killed on sight seems very likely, was right after the Third War had come to an end.
I can’t blame the people of Stormwind and the plethora of Lordaeronian refugees they housed for being angsty about undead trying to be diplomatic with them.
But as for Golden herself? I think she would be a better writer if she didn’t consistently have her characters make cameos in every book she wrote.
Which is a way better way to handle it and leave it nuanced than to just say ‘nah mate he should’ve just abandoned them and let the entire city get turned into an unstoppable undead army’.
Much of the city wasn’t infected yet, but in-universe culling Stratholme might be seen as the right decision. But most characters who reference these events disagree and out of universe we know this isn’t the case, because we know the Culling is exactly what Ner’zhul wanted Arthas to do. It was part of the ploy to turn him into his champion.
The Scourge can also use the bodies of the slain and the spirits they left behind, we see what kind of effect the Culling had on Stratholme as a whole given that it so corrupted the city it still burns to this day.
Kinda based, but the “Great Glorious Alliance” is a very silly name.
Those characters should be silent, because there was no choice. Uther and Jaina both opposed but they didn’t give better or more humane alternatives either.
Either way the city would’ve fallen to the Scourge, wether the Purge happened or not.
Yeah, but when has Blizzard ever been good or original with names?
Lightbound, Lightforged.
A million different Hordes of orcs.
I could never bring myself to fully condemn Arthas for what happened in Stratholme because by the time he arrived events had begun to spiral out of control for pretty much everyone present in the region at the time.
I’m also not really a huge fan of writers changing their intent later on - it’s precisely the nuance of such situations that caused a lot of people to invest in the setting in the first place. The doubling down on Arthas supposedly being a bit of a bad apple all along felt very forced to me since I always thought characters like Arthas and Kael’thas were incredible examples of how even those with pure intent can be led astray largely through no fault of their own.
It’s easy to judge such characters with the benefit of hindsight rather than in the moments where split second decisions affecting numerous lives have to be made.
That’s actually the best thing Golden does, because unlike her liberal wine-cat-mom stuff, I can 100% relate to and understand including your OCs in the novel you are being paid to write.
Also it never detracts from the books, it’s usually just one-off side mentions and if you didn’t know she was referencing her OC it would just be a little snippet of flavour description.
The names of these dudes are ‘Great Glorious Alliance Paladin’, ‘Gadrius Orcbane’, ‘High Inquisitor of the Great Glorious Alliance’, and 'High Interrogator Kilandrelle '(whom is wearing an eyepatch), and ‘Warlord of the Toxic Wastes’.
It’s meant to be ridiculous.
me when enemy faction revived from the dead and irrelevancy for the fourth time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNr7nXvntO8
After decades of constant war, the horde learned to consistently aim for the enemy’s right eye. Sadly, it did little to diminish alliance fighting capacity as everyone got to wear a rad eyepatch and felt extra grizzled and tough going into battle.
