I liked the cutscenes and basic storyline (esp the call backs to the worgen starting zone quests). It all made sense but Im severely underwhelmed with the Gilneas you get at the end!
I was hoping for abit more life. A flightpath or portal maybe (although worgens do get a HS type toy). A few more vendors, some NPCs you could talk to and interact with.
It honestly just felt like the same ghost town after I finished the questline!
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Really silly that there is no flight point.
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What I want to know is, afterwards, can you actually use Gilneas as a city? Is it actually an Alliance city now, or is it still abandoned immediately after the quests?
Well the Forsaken abandoned Gilneas after Sylvanas went off the deep end because of lava eel vore. (Her actual justification for siding with the jailer in the book). Plus they’re led by Queen Calia now, who is peace-driven. Gilneas Reclaimation happened after the Forsaken kinda lost their empire there was no reason for them to fight over it.
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It’s full of NPC’s and there’s a bank but it’s not treated as a true capital. It’s more of a RP spot now.
It really is ridiculous to me that the Scarlet Crusade is being exploited - yet again - as a supposedly irredeemable villainous force.
I can’t get on board with that. The Scourge were an incredibly horrifying threat who rampaged through much of the Eastern Kingdoms. The lucky victims were either displaced or killed outright. The unlucky ones were defiled and raised into undeath.
Worse yet, every attempt to reclaim the lost lands has been foiled by yet more undead as well as some of the former inhabitants who chose to flee rather than stand their ground.
Cutting down yet more people who want nothing more than to wipe out the undead in all its unnatural glory is just…really tone deaf. The Forsaken are not innocent misunderstood victims. They actively sought to sabotage and defile the living at many a turn and the only way they can replenish their numbers is by defiling the dead (be it scavenging corpses to replace rotting limbs or using necromancy…) but one of the first quests to reclaim Gilneas consists of criticising the Scarlet Crusade for destroying buried corpses so that they cannot be arisen into undeath.
I miss what this game used to be…
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I expected nothing, and still got disappointed.
It was also ironic as I had to first finish the Forsaken vs Worgen Cataclysm storyline to get some zoning issues out of the way.
Moving from guerilla warfare, outwitting the other side, kidnapping, plague bombardment, and betrayal to…this… was pretty tedious. And of course, every disney trope is checked.
-Playing kissy kissy with the enemy faction for no reason whatsoever
-Having a threatless threat being the enemy (seriously, the Scarlet Crusade should be dead by now, how the hell are they supposed to be taken seriously?)
-Genn bending the knee to let his daughter lead because seeing a bunch of undead makes him shakey, just so we can have our strong woman™ leadership moment
-“Racism bad, personality good”
-“Oh noes my religion is not helping me kill these monsters I don’t understand” “That’s because you are the monster, fanaticism bad!”
-Boohoo my feefees boohoo my heart
-Blabla the world is changing
-Genn leaving his daughter to lead because she has proven her worth a thousand times by killing the whoopin 50 remaining dudes in the Scarlet Crusade
-The end
Special mention for whoever wrote “Misssive” with a triple S and whoever animated Tess doing the /train emote.
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I agree with almost everything aside that stuff about Tess. She’s actually one of the better characters out there that got developed over time instead of beicoming the 50th girlboss in a row.
Other than that, it feels like this whole ordeal should have been Worgen vs Forsaken. I would not have minded playing a losing battle quest. Can’t win them all. Or any as Horde. But having forsaken fighting FOR the worgen because Calia winked at Genn, that’s pure idiocy. Whoever wrote this crap either did it so they wouldn’t bother to work on a more complex quest line for the Horde or they have pink hair.
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I actually do like Tess myself, I played Rogue in Legion, when character building was still relevant. But why the hell did Genn just cower away? Each time you hear the word “Gilneas”, you have a 95% chance for Genn to be around, but now that he can have his city back, he just takes a step back because he sees Forsaken? Seems extremely shoehorned just so they wanted to make Tess look good as the new leader.
This whole charade is the incarnation of “win without risk is to triumph without glory”.
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If you also did Bel’ameth you should notice that Tyrande and Malfurion are stepping away too. Looks like they are semi-retiring and passing on roles to the next generation, though of course they will still be relevant big lore character NPCs and crop up time to time. Genn is handling things in Stormwind with Anduin’s absence, despite Turalyon in charge, and the other two just want a break.
I am disappointed that Gilneas is not a proper City but maybe that will come in the next patch, much like the village of Bel’ameth came around. They need time to repair.
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Ok done. It was cute but too short.
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No I haven’t done that, and yes it might be what they are doing, but boy is it badly done.
I never played Alliance, so I can’t know, but I remember seeing Cataclysm pictures of Gilneas during the worgen questline. Surely the “gates of Gilneas” aren’t that 4 meters long doors that we pull during the questline, right?
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Cause he’s old and tired and a crappy character. All his spiel was really hating Sylvanas. There was nothing else to this character. He tried to be Anduin’s daddy but he was like a decade too late. It’s better that they retire him and let his daughter, who, as opposed to most girlbosses has earned her keep.
But I’ll be honest, the most annoying character to me at this point is Lilly, she’s going for the title with her becoming buddies with Alliance leaders, Baine will be jealous. Not to mention that the Forsaken are supposed to be a council but it’s mostly Calia running things and Lilly running around and shaking everyone’s hand and trying to be their best fried. We are becoming what I dreaded for the span of this game - the Alliance’s ugly buddies.
You can tell most of dev time went to Bel Ameth because Gilneas is so underwhelming. I hope there will be more to it because its just literally a ghost town.
The quest was very lame considering it was one of the major points of the patch. Done in 10min. Horrible story made even worse just so it would make sense that horde players could complete it. Because they Cleary couldnt be bothered to do two different quests one for Londareon for the Horde or something different. So the quest just doesnt even make sense but whatever.
I really hope this is the first chapter of more quests and story for Gilneas and a rebirth of the city. I thought it would be like Bel Ameth but no it feels completely empty and dead.
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This is really the crux of it. The forsaken needed to be the ones to defend it. Instead of the scarlet cleansing the graves it should have been forsaken death knights raising undead zombies from the gilnean corpses to fight the worgen. With thier reasoning of holding the city being pure depressive spite in that they. You could have even included that calia did not want to do this but got out voted by the council.
This setting needs faction conflict damn it, the story just doesnt work when you try to hand wave away military conflicts as just old men being silly. Tess should also not have been made queen she hasn’t done anything, she’s not a worgen, and her forgiving the forsaken throws away the core of the gilnean theme.
This new direction of forgiveness is boring and tasteless. When it comes to the factions wow needs to be about people not letting go, it needs to be about those nelfs that murder every undead they can becuase they keep having nightmares about seeing their family burned alive. Or old orks that still hate the alliance for enslaving them in camps for the invasion of their parents. And forsaken that hate themselves and humanity for rejecting them due to being undead. These are interesting themes becuase these are human themes. Real people dont forgive within a half a decade, they hold onto things like this for their entire lives and it makes them darker and bigoted in a way that is incredibly tragic but very understandable.
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I just played through it and… there ain’t much to is there?
12 quests or so? Half of them kill quests. Takes about 30 minutes resulting in a Gilneas that’s sparsely populated with some NPC’s and no further adventures at all.
If you travel around Gilneas afterwards you’ll find an NPC or two here or there and they’ll have some things to say about rebuilding it, but the place still feels exceedingly barren… everybody’s got a problem but nobody wants me to help.
The city itself - half of it’s empty, half of it’s got people in it. This is to be expected as they did suffer a genocide after all… there’s a couple of people in the Graymane Manor and you can tell them to go away if you wanna use it for some RP.
I’d have liked a little more Gilneas adventure. Some 20 quests spread around the zone or whatever.
It’s… fine? I guess? It doesn’t live up to the hype for sure, but it’s not a harmful addition to the game either. It’s just kindda… there. Which is better than before where the map was literally completely barren. But I think there are a lot of worgen players who hoped for more.
And then there’s the continuing themes of hugs and no fighting except against old enemies nobody cared about any more anyway. I’m getting a little fed up with the hugging.
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It makes sense to me that Bel Ameth got more attention as it was central to the entire expansion.
Also makes sense that Gen stepped down as leader as he knew he couldnt reconcile with the Forsaken…and the Forsaken Council helping makes sense too as they are on a big PR kick following SL.
In fact I would of liked to see some Worgen and Forsaken in Gilneas afterwards. Not in the general town but maybe a very shady shantytown on the outskirts where dodgy wolves and zombies get up to dodgy things!!LOL
All in all though Id rather they hadnt reclaimed Gilneas if this is it…
of course there is always the chance that its just the first phase in their storyline and things in the Eastern Kingdoms will develop further.
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wdym she has barely done anything for the worgen and most of her involvement in the game has been in the rogue campaign.
The entire theme of worgen is centred around hating undead, one faction hating another is the fundamental building block of this games lore.
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Might not have done much but still did something. Asid the fact that she’s better than her dad by virtue of him being so bad at leading it’s amazing the crocks form the gilnean swamps haven’t taken over Gilneas, she’s one of the more informed characters in this game, her presence throughout the game usually complemented with a plan that actually makes sense aside killing 5 demons and 3 imps. She’s a very good infiltrator and seems to be very focused on being informed well, unlike Genn who didn’t give a crap and which led to Gilneas being caught with it’s pants down when the Forsaken showed up.
Tess is better and more established than may of the girlbosses out there who have done nothing aside get angry at stuff and bark at people and that counts for something in my opinion.
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I kinda hoped Gilneas would be turned into a real functional city like Stormwind, Ironforge ect.
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