It just stings because Rastakhan (and Zul) was this vague presence every time trolls got any involvement in previous expansions and he was regularly treated as this menacing 200-years-old God-King. It’s what got people hyped up for him prior to BFA and then we got treated to someone who apparently had little agency and allowed Zul to set up the next world ending threat under his nose even after a false prophecy and mucking up his power grab attempts during Cataclysm and MoP.
It just doesn’t mesh well with the general expectations of the King of all Trolls and the fact it was all done to prop up Talanji as a better ruler.
Rather underwhelming when you hype a guy up for 20 years of lore as this mysterious God-Blessed King who is holding the remains of the ancient Troll Empire with all its power and mysteries and is routinely able, in every expansion, to get the Tribes to join together just by sending hypemen to go and pummel the Alliance and Horde repeatedly and thoroughly. Then in Pandaria we’re treated to a Zandalari invasion force that has 50 foot dinosaurs with artillery pieces and a massive armada filled with types of magic that are completely unfamiliar to Azerothians.
Then in BfA we finally get to see Zandalar and its…mostly an uninhabited ruin where Rastakhan doesn’t even have control of his own city, nevermind Zandalar as a whole. He’s also old, crippled, unable to take any decisive action himself until his demise and seemingly doesn’t really have a strategy for anything beyond just letting everything happen around him.
At the point of BfA I feel it may have honestly been better to say Rasta died whilst Talanji was in prison, and Zandalar (due to corruption, mismanagement, tribal conflicts) fell into disrepair and chaos in her absence with Zul scheming at the upper echelons. We come back with Talanji, she promises the Horde aid if they will help her reclaim her birthright, etc., this would’ve let us quest with Talanji through all of Zandalar whilst she explains what its like, the people, the culture, we could grow to like her as she’s helping us and we’re helping her.
Ideally, they’d have soft-retconned the Zandalari mining colony on Kezan using slaves as another sympton of a frankly disastrous century for trollkind under Rastakhan’s tenure - denouncement from Zuldazar, dissatisfaction a among Kezan’s overseers about the Zanchuli and Rastakhan not realising how incredible kaja’mite is etc.
Keeps it an anomaly and an exception proving the rule, whilst showing that the stability of the Zandalari society isn’t just a fluke or guaranteed under the Loa’s divine mandate - it’s been a constant and purposeful balancing act by the higher-ups to keep everything in line, which means inactive on a global scale, leaving the rest of the tribes to the wolves. An ambitious warlord in a mining colony away from the Holy Land seeking to upend the status quo resorting to slave labour wouldn’t have been unthinkable.
But that’d make the situation more complex, which isn’t Blizzard’s modus operandi right now.
I would. Literally the entirety of Rastakhan’s inner circle of advisors turn out to have been plotting against him for years and he was oblivious to it the entire time.
and kaytline spelled out why i cant entirely. he got burdened with the worst tier of writers wows had that stuck to the most obnoxious formula possible that he had the misfortune of being caught in. i weep for the rastakhan we could have had
I don’t think it’s fair to consider a character to be an idiot if they are written in such a way as to ignore how they were written in the past.
In other settings, for example, I’ve seen smart tacticians established as competent threats only for the writers to struggle to find a plausible way for the character to be confronted and outplayed, so they lean on the lazier tropes to justify a sudden, steep drop in intelligence and incompetence.
It’s the same with Star Wars and the Stormtroopers being a meme because they fire hundreds of bullets yet don’t hit a single target.
It’s stupid - and should be called out as such, not in the least because it screws over anyone who happens to be a fan of whatever character or faction is hit with the ‘idiot stick’.
Vol’jin should have been approached by Bwomsamdi in Legion, spared from death but bound to the Loa in a careful haggle, where Vol’jin and willing Shadowhunters were tied to Da Other Side, the exchange being that Bwom can’t very well be a Loa in a world consumed by the Legion, now can he?
Fast-forward to a fractured but still regally Imperial Zandalar. Rastakhan is backstabbed by traitors on the council, whether that be Zul or something a little more deep, and is on the brink of death much like in the Live Game.
Enter Vol’jin and Bwomsamdi, who save not only Rastakhan but Rezan too. The Zandalari are begrudgingly drawn closer to the Horde, not because of ‘but we need another Allied Race’ but because - despite being saved by their ‘Lessers’ - their gold-bound pride demands that they honour that debt.
BFA should have been 50% THE Troll expansion, and the writers were too busy turning on Sylvanas with the Villain Bat, because they are weak-
The answer boils down to “the Zandalari are not so principled that they refuse to work with slave-based societies.” Looking down on societies built on slavery and individuals who take slaves might be one characteristic of theirs, but it’s not a defining keystone characteristic that their entire society revolves around and was founded on.
But hey, here’s more colour variants for the garden gnome, goblin bruiser and neckbeard outfits.
As a Gilneas-rp’er… let the reign of the trenchcoat begin. ( Even if Des doesn’t always dress up that Gilnean, but it could be fun for Hargorin, who’s a worgen.)
