the point was more on sadsacks. them being smelly humans, their lack of any undead feats (like hate or jealousy) that blizzard itself set even in the chronicles it is the bad part.
I think I’m largely with you here. I feel like the line lay for a lot of people somewhere between Cata and BFA, but for me it was all the way back in Cata and honestly I feel like you can trace a lot of it back to the fact that they decided to focus on a new conflict that arose from Sylvanas’ second death in Edge of Night - something that I feel Kosak and some of the other writers felt was a good direction for her.
While Edge of Night is fine, I feel like this is where a facsimile of Sylvanas was born, one who was no longer multi-faceted, but rather defined by her second death. This bothers me for a number of reasons, but foremost is how little time they really devote to looking at how she feels about the aftermath of the Wrathgate and the Battle for Undercity. That she showed very little regard for what was one of the most defining events for the Forsaken apart from mild annoyance whenever someone brought it up often bothered me. That she was treated so harshly and distrusted, but still struggled to show she was worth the trust and the second chance, that’s what I think everyone had been expecting. Especially given she was the victim of the coup in Undercity, all signs pointed to her being a force for good among the Forsaken.
Instead, she was the complete opposite. Any notion of character progression was thrown out in favour of her being the very thing Varimathras was made to help excise from her character. She had to take responsibility, but how responsible she was for the Wrathgate was pretty up in the air before Cataclysm, with the game taking pains to try and provide the benefit of the doubt for Sylvanas. Why this plot thread was thrown out, which could have provided some much needed complexity and justification for Sylvanas’ actions as the result of struggle and not willful malice, I’ll never know. I guess I just wish it hadn’t been.
i can’t do links but if somebody could post i.imgur dot com/jB078S1.png
that’d be neato
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ta very much
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It’s funny, I swear there was some context to this picture. Like maybe that it was perpetrated by the lieutenant of the renegade faction lead by an arch-demon in a bid to turn the Forsaken into a puppet-army of slaves to use as a weapon in the name of the Legion(in much the same ways as his bro used humans to do the same) and wasn’t representative of the general populace of the Forsaken at the time it happened.
I guess that could just be me expecting contextual awareness though.
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you’re right, i’ll do my best to provide contextually aware memes in future.
for now, though, here’s a screenshot from the stormsong valley quests!
.imgur.com/KeSbGTN.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/309015474811830274/702677632617283634/af5b99d2807dae24d6ac30ab1287cceb.png
Blizzard has removed… Literally the entire beginning of BFA from BFA to accommodate the new descriptions for the Horde, it seems.
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LOL they removed Teldrassil…
Now we deffo know they won’t continue that part. Gonna make Tyrande look like a right proper villain to for wanting to kill the Horde because they just wanted some wood 
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Soon Umbric raising that dinosaur skeleton and controlling it, will becoming using the void to lovingly restore it to life - the greatful animal will then fight honourably for its saviours.
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Shame the Horde missed the chance at these peacefull loving Void Elves who only want to restore everyone back to “live” lovingly! 
I dont play Forsaken, but goodness me that lore is terrible. Forsaken are loved for their original lore. Thats what makes them stand out.
Also RIP no mention of Teldrassil for Nightelves. 
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I get the forsaken wanting to turn over a new leaf (in a world that begins to run short on more pressing matters, many probably begin to look at the past shenanigans of the forsaken with less patience than usual) but I do agree that they ought to keep an individualistic side.
The lore has implied for so long that Sylvanas has been what has been keeping them organised and united, that I feel like having the forsaken splinter entirely might be more accurate to their character - a substantial enough number remaining in the Horde to adequately serve as a member species, but others heading elsewhere in the world, joining cults, neutral organisations like the Argents, becoming pirates etc.
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This is perfect, incredible-… fantastic! Thank you for this gem.
Forevermore it shall be my desktop background
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The game has always specified that the plyable Troll race is Darkspear. We’re just seeing more variation in Darkspear skin color.
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I feel that, in general, the Horde as a faction have lost (or will be losing, soon) a lot of their identity in recent expansions. Not only are the Forsaken just being completely re-written in a way that completely dismantles their purpose in the setting, but so too are the goblins losing their morally ambiguous racial leader (Gallywix), for another who can essentially be described as a generic friendlyman (Gazlowe) - somebody who only superficially represents their race’s themes of avarice and hedonism. We’ve already seen similar with Garrosh’s ousting the more supremacist orcs (leaving Saurfang for BfA, who was similarly transformed into an Alliance-loving simpering idiot) and Blood Elves becoming generic, boring paladin good guys post-TBC, etc. Tauren wholly represented by Baine (another zZzZZzzzZZZ peaceful leader), and don’t even get me started on trolls.
At this point, tbqh, why shouldn’t Blizz just axe the factions? Clearly they’ve run out of ideas on which to base the Horde’s lore because seemingly their current roster of writers don’t understand how to write moral ambiguity or even characters that aren’t just a non-human shadow of Anduin. At least they won’t even be able to regurgitate the rebellion plotline for a third time if they’ve sent every morally gray character spinning into the abyss, lol.
It’s honestly shocking that I’m now of the opinion that Night Elves might unironically have the most interesting racial leaders. What a world.
As an added point, I think Blizz’s interpretation of racial lore boils down to thinking that the frivolous, cursory details like appearance, architecture and fashion are the only things that matter. Like, in their eyes you can have ten different races that all think and act the same (as generic friendlymen), and have some funny catchphrases or quirks, but they’re still somehow meaningfully unique as long as they have blue or green skin, as if that’s what makes them interesting (it’s not).
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So after the entire expansion concludes blizz finally reach the same position a large amount of playerbase reached regarding how dumb it was to ignite the faction war on the basis of a random spasm sylv experienced causing her to burn a tree.
But their solution is to engage in Teldrassil denial? So what, is the tree burned down or not? I’m super confused now.
If it’s burned down, what, the horde just engages in stalinist propoaganda erasing all mentions of it? The Alliance just “let it go” because they’ve since changed their leader? Nice of them to forgive the horde on behalf of the Nelf.
I’m assuming that’s why Tyrande is currently going whacko in SL. Good old Andy boy has made the official line to “overlook it for tuh peeze” because it’s just a tree isn’t it? I mean come on now. And Tyrande being unable to let it go, is being painted as the anomaly we need to “talk round” so she can realise that her 10,000 year old self is still making mistakes in her judgement compared to the humble and most powerful perspective of Anduin “Teen Dreams with a Philosophy Major” Wrynn.
Unbelievable if this is so. I thought we might see a chance for Nelf to become an outlier and rogue faction within the alliance whom generate friction. Seems like that’s not going to happen now, and Tyrande’s rage is being presented as her inability to get some perspective or something. Be interesting to see where Malfurion factors in all of this.
My bet is he’ll be the one representing the face of the “we need to get past it because it was all sylv’s fault, not the horde, just sylv”.
Seems in Azeroth “I was just following orders” is a pretty airtight alibi. Awesome.
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Exactly this
Every major character is slowly (or rather extremely quickly) becoming Anduin, but [race/gender/quirk] - ie. Gazlowe (Anduin but funny goblin catchphrases), Baine (literally just Anduin but more embarassing version that is also a tauren) Jaina/Calia (same character but one is a mage and other is vaguely undead but not really) and so on
Where’s the nuance / room for conflict that isn’t “champion… the jailor is siphoning anima from the shadowlands open woons! we need to #UNITE and stop him (but also the factions remain for some reason hehe)”
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You gotta give it to Blizzard.
First you think “They can’t make this worse” and then boom, they go ahead and prove you wrong.
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Absolutely. I’m firmly in the “Gazlowe, I love you but honestly you have done the goblins a disservice by stepping in.”
Gazlowe is cool because he has some sass and becuase of his acheivements. Honestly though he’s very middle of the road and unoffensive and compared to Gallywix not very interesting and just becomes a conduit for the horde to begin making 100% super unified hand-holding decisions about everything because Blizzard feel the need to repent over what they did in BFA apparently?
I mean yeah BFA was a bit overboard in the “morally grey” department but there’s this thing called moderation. The solution is not to completely all erase all traces of nuance because “morally grey and tension bad”.
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