The comment that you need to to “believe” in the “realness” of Azeroth is quite weird — it’s not the player’s job to basically rewrite Blizz’s lazy lore; you can only judge what the story dudes are doing / will do and the prognosis isn’t good.
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The point is that you shouldn’t read about some dark rangers being glad for getting guidance by Calia and concluding from this that all Forsaken are now like that. The setting is 
(and has been for a long time) and if you want to roleplay in it you will have to do some work. There are gaps and ambiguities everywhere in the current lore. The last really comprehensive overview over the setting that we got were the RPG books and they are not even canon anymore. You won’t get around having to keep past events and lore in mind and try to reconcile it with new stuff. The alternative is to just take a few NPC dialogue lines and base your understanding of the world (of warcraft) on that.
Yeah, stuff you get given by the owners of the setting is how we understand the setting. That’s how that works.
Everything beyond that is, explicitly, headcanon and in this case not the “building on gaps” headcanon but “actually their culture is the reverse of what the devs say” headcanon.
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Derek? he’s like that
every kaldorei dark ranger who previously CHOSE undeath for “their own reasons” are now “forced into hatred and darkness by the banshee”
Voss <3 Calia
Maybe it wouldn’t be interpreted as every Forsaken being a peace-loving mommy-seeking Calia fanboy if it wasn’t shown as every Forsaken being a peace-loving mommy-seeking Calia fanboy?
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What we explicitly get with NPC dialogue are the views of the people talking. A number of Dark Rangers saying they are looking up to Calia for guidance isn’t the same as an authoritative statement that all Dark Rangers look up to Calia for guidance. They could be lying about their opinions regarding Calia or they could only speak for their small group. Of course you could also take what they say as the full truth, but then you would just adhering to your own headcanon.
To put it in another way: The only canon info you get from NPC dialogue is that some people said something. This is a pretty situation, but since Blizzard is bad at developing their setting this is all that we have. You might be using headcanon as some sort of dirty word, but in this setting that is all that is left to us. And personally I find it unconvincing that all (or a majority of) Forsaken would be making a 180 degree turn on their prior beliefs. Unless there is an actual, authoritative statement by blizz that they do I would simply say that your headcanon stinks.
Yeah except we’ve got Voss explicitly “speaking for” the Forsaken when she seeks out Calia. Voss is, both implicitly and explicitly, the representation of the “Common Forsaken” as a whole, and thus the culture.
Yeah maybe it’s all a lie but once you start going down that route why bother trusting any dialogue at all?
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the only one with a name is there (that one from the cinematic of burndrassil). Other than that, it makes no difference if there’s 4 dark ranger nelves or 20 dark ranger nelves, the message is the same.
they’re uwu so sad and just want a mamma
It’s the same problem as I said before: They are still not authoritative statements. You have to hold the headcanon that they don’t lie.
Exactly. Part of the reason why the WoW setting is so 
is that we only get dialogue and not actual, reliable lore. All we get to do is to just infer things instead of just being told how they actually, in fact, are.
Well…yeah? I mean, what, do you want an omniscient narrator?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/561287824964452363/633277758734336000/unknown.png
You think you do, but you don’t.
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What I want is to have my old RPG books back! Books where you have clear and concise information about the setting, including cultures and customs and some clear character bios for the big characters. Just actual lore for once instead of just tons and tons of bad writing.
In the absence of that I do still prefer my headcanon to yours regarding every Forsaken changing completely who they are because of Calia.
leans in closely and whispers
all canon is headcanon
That’s a destabilizing Old God whisper directly into the mind of the PC if ever I saw one. I had to check that was real I thought you edited it for a joke.
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/284360431684812801/633291835653226496/unknown.png
This is the one I edited as a joke.
Or did I…?
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How did Sylvanas betray Calia, anyways?
Its Calia who “betrayed” Sylvanas by not agreeing to the terms of the Gathering and trying to make it a political event, instead of a family reunion as it always was meant to be 
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The writers realized Calia wasn’t flawless enough so they had to quickly rewrite history
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One line out of context in the first build of the PTR does not really say all that much. Calm your breasts.
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I thought the same about Tyrande’s incredibly boring voice acting back in that Darkshore patch 
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The context doesn’t change anything, for the record. Full vid of quest here:
I hope they change it, but tends to be that kicking off about stuff is how it gets changed.
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Could be her general betrayel of that gathering and its intention, but yes… That the narriation is related to that nasty abomination is beyond mind-boggling 
The funny thing is that I am actually seeing quite some paralells between the Forsaken and the Dark Iron Clan.
Both of the races have a history of scheming, plotting and backstabbing, and both have that same mentality of ‘doing what is necessary to win’. Whether that is by dropping blight on top of an enemy, or by using a giant fire elemental as a bowlingball on multitudes of goblins.
And now the both of them are at that point where they get an opportunity to forge a new path by respectively getting a new leader/finally joining the Alliance formally. And I think that that allows for interesting rp in which characters can try and move away from their troubled past, or cling to it, because as was said earlier in the thread, the nature of a race does not completely change overnight just because of one event.
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