Remember this from Christie Golden? Apparently doesn't mean anything

So Shadowlands’s story so far has been nothing but all likable male characters dying, getting brainwashed, etc. Well, you’d think that at least Christie’s golden boy is safe since they want to send the message that soft, kind male heroes can prevail. Apparently not, that was a load of bull.

Also, calling it now. Sylvanas will turn on the Jailer in 9.2. And not because of any remorse about her actions, from Gilneas to killing her own people at the Reunion, to Teldrassil to the torture of Derek Proudmoore, and to Anduin, but probably because the Jailer will blurt out the truth that he hijacked Sylvanas’ fate in the Shadowlands after her suicide in WotlK. And Sylvanas will kill the Jailer (not the player or any even remotely likable character, making it more annoying than Thrall finishing off Deathwing) and take his place.

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Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. And the story will tell again how amazing and correct he is.

When it comes to Sylvanas - who knows. She might have a soft spot for Anduin. After all, he’s more impactful that all the previous ones in Gilneas, Teldrassil, Southshore, etc. combined. Because reasons.

I am not sure if a mortal could take a role of the Jailer, but I guess time will tell.


gl hf

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Honestly, her damning Anduin despite him trying to reason with her would actually be a good writing for a change, because if she felt nothing after all the lives she’d ruined and all the terrible things she’d done, then it would be incredibly cliche and out of character for her to suddenly have second thoughts just because Anduin gave her a pep talk. She certainly didn’t have any second thoughts with Delaryn.

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What likeable males? Likeable for who?

Because Horde-wise, i can say that both Baine and current-Thrall, are at the rock bottom regarding the popularity contest amongst their target audience (a.k.a Horde playerbase).

What other “male character” has died?
The ones that were solely introduced in SL to have such end? The tearjerker Joe’s whose only function in the story was to put a sad face in front of the camera, and then die for it for shock value?

Besides, wasn’t it sort of consensual that what Anduin offered to the faction was in fact seen as detrimental to it?
What’s this big fuss now about his potential demise (Note how i bolded “Potential”, as it remains but a POSSIBILITY)?

Because to me it seems as the first alarm sign for the same players that in the past seemed all to willing to let this story unfold for Horde characters, and are now just sensing the looming presence of the villain bat over the character.
An occurrence they cheered so much at, when it was focused elsewhere…(mainly in the likes of Garrosh or Sylvanas).

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It’s not so much likeable, as about posterboys for non-toxic masculinity. And it would be an interesting observation if those characters are victimized by the narrative.

Not that surprising though, since being a survivor of victimization of any kind seems to be a badge of honor for the people who care about that, so they’d probabl feel they are improving on those characters by making them go through horrible stuff.

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Yeah, but the key word is “survivor”. Blizzard just keeps killing the characters.

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…who? I can only think of the one Ardenweald side-character.

It is seriously the best thing that could happen with lil wrynn he was an angle so boring and a character so weak, good riddance !

Don’t tell me you people kind of get to like him now , he was a very boring character.

We don’t want peacefull characters and especially characters helping and being friendly with the horde we want the horde downfall and more characters like Tyrande !

There was also that dude in Maldraxxus. And one is Bastion too, but he was pretty bland so whatever.

But even thinking back to BFA, there were the two tidesage guys, the Order of Embers captain, Derek Proudmoore, Rastakhan I guess. Except in BFA it did’t seem so bad because frankly, it had other things going for it unlike Shadowlands.

Why not both? Also, btw I always liked him (at least since Legion), and he kept developing. Even in the otherwise boring book Shadows Rising he had a dilemma about using torture for intelligence. It conflicts with his ideas on paper, but did produce results, and there had been many losses under his peaceful patch. It looked like it’s going somewhere. I guess not.

You’re not exactly listing the same kinds of symbols Golden did here. If you’re listing people like the Margrave, you are certainly not listing “non-traditionally masculine” males.

I’m not gonna lie, even as a Feminist SJW commulist who wants to look at Shadowlands and think “Well, this is reparations for Kosak’s years of “Women be dumb, Wrynn Supremacy!””… It does feels just a little bit on the nose.

And that this is either a really dumb idea for getting Anduin out of the story, or another way to give Anduin “a struggle”, only to make him more stupidly overbearing. Anduin’s problem was being both Overbearing to the Alliance story, and a total wetwipe when the Horde’s concerned. He just needed a talking to, not this.

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He shouldn’t receive a different fate , arthas, the banshee, etc… they all had a great destiny awaiting , life ain’t fair even in fanatsy games like it wasn’t for the kaldorei.

I am sick of saving the prince awaiting in another castle :wink:

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh… I get that Blizzard’s got a huge eggplant for the MoRaLlY GrEy nonsense they have been awkwardly trying to peddle. I get that they want to set up the Light as a future antagonist because oh wow, energy that everyone considered pure and good is actually PoTeNtIaLlY eViL, what a twist!

…But damn, are they ruthless at cutting through the ranks of Light-aligned characters. If they try anything weird with my boy Alonsus I’m gonna riot. :disappointed:

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I play horde and alliance, Bane is among my favourite horde characters because he isn’t the one dimensional warmongering caricature they always end up with. He actually has a set of principles and sticks to them. Instead of the usual braindead follow the leader mentality, is he the best? No Vol’jin filled his niche better but out of all the horde leaders that are actually relevant he’s among the best.

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My guess is its less about Anduin and more about giving people that nostalgia feeling. I mean the Anduin/Arthas simmilarities are everywhere and it did work like magic when they dug up Illidan. So i guess we´re in for a reunion with the old LK or Anduin serves as retell with a little twist.

Either way my faith in Blizzard to write a good story is so low they can hardly disappoint me anymore.

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The difference is that, Legion (in many players’ eyes) fixed the lazy, bad writing of TBC when bringing back Illidan.

Here, it’s repetition for repetition’s sake (at best, even if I give you that there aren’t any sinister agenda here) which is stupid.

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But people always judge it from todays point of view. Both BC and Wotlk were very successful Expansions in their own right. And the critique that is thrown at Bc for the poor story writing has really surfaced after WoW developed into a more story driven Mmo.
And the same Critique was also thrown at Wotlk. Arthas just twirling his mustache all the time and never taking action against the player. Relevant Lore Characters like Jaina, Sylvanas and more only seeing little exposure in the Dragonblight Scenario and the very last Raid tier and the list went on.
So i think reheating old proven Concepts for the sake of improving past mistakes applies here aswell.
And honestly the Illidan thing worked not because they finally fixed past mistakes with him they work because hes a character that people recognize. Same goes for the mass of old character we see in Shadolands because not all of them need their story rewritten or fixed.

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But if nostalgia was the factor, then people would have LOVED Warlord of Draenor. I mean, alternate versions of beloved characters, that’s fanfic material. But people didn’t really care for it because the execution wasn’t very good.

On the other hand, Legion had legit good storytelling. Not saying it’s Oscar material (whatever that means anymore), but it worked, made sense, was effective and satisfying.

Shadowlands’ writing is on par with the worst of the worst of Disney sequels. Yeah, it brings back the characters, but does it poorly, telling uninteresting stories and accomplishes nothing other than screwing up the status quo and characters’ fates.

(and what really pisses me off is that Blizzard’s writers seem to be REALLY proud of their worst work by the way, given how, for the first time in WoW’s history you absolutely HAVE TO finish the main campaign to unlock anything in the endgame even if you ARE level 60, and they also disallowed non-Shadowlands means of leveling from 50 to 60 such as timewalking dungeons)

I’d much rather they have a less story driven experience which made the subpar writing of TBC / WotlK more tolerable too.

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That’s just proves how deep the Horde has fallen…

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guess so. Blizzard WANTS to “redeem” Sylvanas and therefore needs a story to defend Sylvanas. Sylvanas will be “redeemed” inside the story, but all the bad things she did will continue to exist.

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