In fairness that’s not so random, they were allied with/were being manipulated by the Argus Wake back in Vanilla, which in turn worked for the Shadow Council.
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Have you considered dying for Alterac is cooler.
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You’d think they learned from it after the first time, lmao
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Oh to bleed out in the snows of Alrerac upon a stone staircase…
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I’m only wearing red because I like the color.
Scarlet? No this is more of a… burnt auburn…
But yeah my take away from all this is that the two factions aren’t allowed to do anything that might be objectively morally questionable anymore. Subjective ethics are banned. So the Scarlet Crusade is dragged from it’s mass grave to be the villain again.
Can we just go back to the Cold War of vanilla so we can have our RP cake and eat it too?
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Even when you take a step back and detach yourself from the setting, it isn’t a great story. Always hate how Blizzard wibbles from one extreme to another.
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Always loved Warcraft based on vibes more than the moment to moment storytelling, which was a nice addition when it was fairly non complicated.
But the vibes have been off for me for a while and more and more I need to walk around with blinders on that ignore certain things
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I’m gonna keep it real with you, a lot of the people who want Cold War era conflict RP don’t know how to RP out the Cold War aspect of it and instead keep trying to escalate into a full blown war with increasingly escalating acts of cruelty and war crimes to the point any pretense of so-called Cold War is lost.
The point of Cold War tier conflict is to not let those hostilities escalate despite instigators, which is exactly what happens in this storyline. Back in Vanilla, the Horde warned Stormwind of Onyxia because they were afraid of what would happen if Onyxia gets deposed by a military coup and Stormwind is ruled by a war hawk who isn’t interested in peace.
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T.B.H what people actually want is Vanilla’s sense of scale, where Stormwind is still literally just hearing that the entire northern eastern kingdoms is a hellhole now. Or that the Dark Horde has been instigating attacks upon the Alliance and Horde to push them into a war of attrition against one another (successfully) and you don’t uncover the plot until the beginning of your level 50s.
What people actually want is just a consistent, congruent story that you slowly uncover through tens of levels, rather than the race through 5-10 levels with minimal questlines that Retail has become.
Northwatch and the Crossroads drawn into a war because neither is receiving any news because everyone is still busy dealing with the just-happened apocalypse of wc3 so they’re assuming its open season. etc. etc. etc.
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Wouldn’t we be able to call the current truce a Cold War, anyways?
A truce does not mean an end to the war, only to current hostilities between both the factions and a Cold War implies a War were no direct hostilities are being conducted between the 2 major powers?
Yes I wikipedia’d the terms
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Yes. And there’s conflict simmering under the surface—Mag’har and the 7th Legion already clashed in the Highlands, and this is a continuation of it as Marran wants a new war at any cost to reclaim the glorious mythologised past of the Arathorian Empire. Lacking an army loyal to her after the last time, she instigates the conflict by allying with extremists who are willing to kill people without much moral issue, staging false flag attacks framing the Horde and making the people’s lives more miserable in order to gain their support for a coup in Stromgarde by painting herself as their saviour who’s willing to deal with the Horde, even though she’s the one responsible.
Kul Tiras is currently gearing for a new war, having spent the years since the war working over time to recover from BFA, and they are currently the first and only nation that has fully rebuilt from the Fourth War. Katherine Proudmoore showed the new fleet they’ve built and the cadets they’re training to Lor’themar as a warning to the Horde Council—Kul Tiras has not forgiven, and they’re watching them for any slip up, because they’re ready now. They abide the armistice, because they need a cassus belli to attack the Horde. At the end of the war campaign, public opinion regarding the Alliance soured with the signing of the armistice and secessionist sentiment is popular in Kul Tiras.
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That would be fine, if they actually pushed that route in the storyline. Disgruntled Alliance members with legitimate grievances rattling the sabers and occassionaly stabbing orcs with them. But instead we get factionless villains in the form of Defias and Scarlets playing the role of enemy.
It’s not a story of internal dissent in the alliance. It’s a story of Scarlets and Defias attacking Horde and Alliance. It’s like the blizz writers are afraid of the faction war and the factions not being internally unified. This is an opportunity to tell a story of real internal division in the alliance but no IT’S SCARLETING TIME! I’m disappointed to say the least.
Or to put it in a more jesting manner. Horde gets 2 Civil Wars. Alliance isn’t allowed to have even 1 Civil War.
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Hey now they had 1 civil war that wasnt really a civil war it was more of a civil scuffle between wrath and cata among the dwarves that happened wholely off screen. Thats something!
I think this is pretty much the gist of it.
I don’t know why the Scarlet’s are becoming the de-facto bad guy for everyone in northern EK. Tirisfal? Scarlets. Gilneas? Scarlets. Arathi Highlands? Scarlets. But now they’re in league with southern Dick Turpin and “not the real Syndicate Syndicate”. Half expecting to see them in Midnight, at this rate.
There’s a perfectly valid story to be told in how the people of Arathi are still bitter about whatever. And yet it’s simply displaced onto the comically evil faction that are somehow still going (Blizzard wont expand on where they’re all coming from. The common Scarlet Crusader spawns in the frothy waves at high tide alongside seaweed and driftwood). So the story loses it’s momentum.
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I imagine its because over time Blizzard has fully diluted the pool of internal villains for the alliance races. Dark Irons? Fully integrated. Theres no disident night elf group. Manari are now in the alliance albeit loosely. Leper gnomes are less and less of a thing. Lordaeron and Gilneas are at an uneasy peace with neither currently looking to rock the boat. Discounting the allied races a moment the human supremacist group with a history of seeing everyone not scarlet makes them the easiest dead horse to beat. Its boring. Its done to death. And its all from Blizzard pidgeonholing the situation.
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At this point I just take it at face value, whether it’s Scarlets, Primalists, Defias, Twilight Hammer or Legion cultists. A vast majority of mortals, particularly humans and orcs, are just really keen on becoming extremists or are in need of an outlet for their violent tendencies.
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I’m not really after a graph showing pull factors to the crusade from the disparate human kingdoms. Something as wooly as “underground recruiters in the fringe ends of Stormwind” would work. Alas, they’ve become Team Rocket/Dick Dastardly tier of villains.
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Yes please Blizzard can we talk about this?! Where do all these Scarlets even come from? Or the Primalists?!
Are the Scarlets Lordaeronians? Are they converted Gilneans? How is it possible they made an army that occupies a whole nation? In WOTLK they were defeated and had to migrate to Northrend… Sure, sure, some might survive in the monastery here and there, but where the heck did they come from in such numbers that they’d occupy a whole nation, and that they would move there basically undisturbed? And what happened to the fact the forsaken wanted ports in Gilneas?! Eh whatever. Don’t care anymore, whatever they come up with isn’t convincing.
What of the Primalists? I have no idea why humanoid races in the Horde and the Alliance, the same Horde and Alliance that toppled the Legion and forced the god of death and kinky domination on his knees with a slap, would suddenly ditch their whole faction to help a dragon nobody ever heard of. “Fools, don’t you see what Tyr has done!” how’s it so obvious why can’t even tell me…
Like, with the Twilight’s Hammer, we have seen the doomsday recruitment; with the cult of the damned or the shadow council, we have seen Warcraft 3 and had multiple RPG explaining us their values and so forth.
But the latest expansions have treated villains as stand-ins for boars: just hit them until they’re dead. Oh, and they’re evil, by the way.
As it was said before, they are afraid of anything resembling an inner conflict for the Alliance, especially in the cases where different sides simultaneously aren’t completely and stupidly in the wrong. For example, Stromgarde citizens have all the reasons to resent the Horde presence in Hammerfall, starting with the days of Doomhammer and going all the way from the Forsaken incursions to the Fourth War and now a full-scaled mag’har resettlement, but with how utterly devastated Alliance human resources currently are the peace through gritted teeth can well be a reasonable if temporary alternative. So either devs themselves can’t think this deep, or they think the audience is unable to comprehend more than one point of view. Neither sounds too good.
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Like High Elves, Void Elves, Draenei and Dracthyr; there are exactly as many of X, alive or dead, as the writers demand of the steadily more strained setting. They-
Hm?
“Sir, a second Scarlet Crusade has hit the towers.”
Oh for the love of-
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