dodger, buddy, you really need to put down lord of the clans and actually view the lore events
sylvanas took a last stand situation they were likely to lose and wiped out a huge amount of the alliance’s army and nearly killed their entire leadership in one fell swoop
(none of which negates perroy’s point, that in this setting if you push for the moral action in all things, even if that wouldn’t necessarily be the best thing to do, you will succeed - idealistic desires for an ‘honourable life’ are never punished or exploited, as they often are in the real world, and it makes things less interesting when there’s no conflict to always doing the ‘right thing’)
She had everyone killed (except the very first ones to turn back after being rejected by the living), even the ones running back to her rather than towards the Alliance. She only trusted the ones clearly broken and bitter.
if the choice is between evil methods and a bad outcome or lawful good muh honour and a 100% easy win, why would anyone but falseless NPC threats be evil? Not an interesting story IMO
Paraphrasing the loyalist ending, though Sylvanas felt nothing for most races, she pitied the Forsaken and tried to teach them, but they stubbornly clung to hope and life. Even from her perspective in 8.2.5, she doesn’t make it sound like they ‘mattered most,’ they’re just a step above the other races, in her opinion.
Although the best part about that is that it finally puts the “SYLVANAS HAS THE FORSAKEN UNDER HER MIND CONTROL” argument to rest.
I’m really not. Are you willfully ignoring the part where I’m saying I don’t like how they handled BTS epilogue with Calia?
The Dark Iron civil war storyline got even less of an explanation. We never see it happen, other than them saying in a foot note that hey some of them didn’t follow Moira, and that’s why we’re not removing them in Cata.
Big agree. Time will tell. Glad we agree on that I would just rather stay optimistic because otherwise might as well just switch to another game if I’d hate this one so much I’d have no hope for it to ever recover.
I think that MoP stood out pretty well as a standalone expansion even if you were to take out it as a sequel to Cataclysm out of it. If you were to isolate the MoP faction war story into a vacuum and it still carried itself better than some expansions in my opinion.
My overall points aren’t aimed at Calia in particular. I don’t like her very much, but I’m willing to be optimistic because it’s the healthier thing to do.
I look at Loyalists getting punished for their idealism towards Sylvanas
A goblin leader who believes in better working conditions for his work force out of principle because better paid workers have a better incentive to work harder when their time is compensated properly. Investing now in better equipment leads to more effective and most importantly safer operations which maximizes his profits.
Less deaths = less he has to pay in settlements for their families, and knowing that their families are properly insured in the event of the worker’s death leads to them in turn being more willing to accept a risky job for bigger paychecks.
Which is a shortcoming on Blizzard’s behalf where they had no other alternative to prop up as a replacement for him when they should have deposed him last time. Now they do, and I am optimistic for what they do with Gazlowe going forward.
And going forward the roles can be reversed as Alliance has Genn being sneaky (tried to assassinate the Warchief) and Tyrande trying to sabotage peace by going after the Horde even after the armistice.
And I think Vol’jin was a pretty cool character over all. It’s just opinions, isn’t it?
I’ll post things here in clarity after you tagged me already in Discord over this. What I meant with the “characters heaving realistic and humane responses” thing in the earlier post from couple days ago was that in real life, people generally aren’t good at killing other people just like that. There’s a reason why in war there’s a lot of propaganda efforts to dehumanize the enemy to make it less morally taxing to kill them, and even then many veterans who return from war never really resettle properly. When I did my armed service, we had a lot of mandated lectures on the ethics and mental toll of warfare.
If we make WW2 allegories here, the national socialists (the word’s banned on the forums apparently) invented the death camps to make it easier for them to persecute their victims during the holocaust. They stopped shooting people and dumping them in the ditch because of how taxing it started to get for the executioners as the war dragged on. They had to rotate people out because of the toll of personally mass murdering people up close until they invented the gas chambers.
So to go back to
I’ll say that the second world war shouldn’t have happened in the first place because it was started for inhumane reasons in mind. Normal people don’t do that.
Time traveling Baine out here causing Rastakhan’s death by undermining her after Rastakhan was killed . Sylvanas came out on top because she didn’t commit to Nazjatar, and the campaign against Azshara is what quelled the Alliance/Rebel forces. The reason she didn’t commit to Nazjatar is because she specifically made sure only people she wanted dead were deployed there.
Casualties on both sides will be substantial. Consider this an opportunity to weed out the disloyal.
https://www.wowhead.com/item=168867/queens-orders
What did she mean by this?
My bargain with Azshara will yet bear fruit. The armies of Azeroth will fight her master, and he will line their streets with corpses. In the end, he too will serve Death.
Her goal’s to have as many people killed as possible. Do you think she’s some nihilistic person who just wanted them dead for the sake of it with no interest in raising everyone after they’re killed by N’Zoth? Shame how she dropped the whole necromancy schtick that quickly!!!
Figure of speech. What would you call someone orchestrating an event that will lead to as many people as possible dying so that she can swoop in to reanimate them?
And then she shot people who were also retreating, but were too confused by the sudden chaos before deciding to return to Sylvanas because she wasn’t sure whether or not they loved her enough for such confusion.
Take Elsie Benton who specifically tried to argue with Calia to not do this, but got shot when she staggered in confusion as the chaos erupted around her. The only choice she made was try to stop Calia, and she got shot all the same.
Consider this alternative:
Call the retreat for the troops like Saurfang suggested. What’s the worst that could happen? The Alliance had no cover to hide behind because they had just destroyed Brill and the blight spread all the way back there. They were stuck on an open field with no cover from the incoming Blight, even if she lost the element of surprise by calling the retreat.
Worst case scenario, the Siege is broken and the Alliance is forced to retreat. Thanks to her recalling the troops first, she saved the Horde while denying the Alliance a chance at Lordaeron – a move she was very comfortable pulling in the end as we see.
Best case scenario, she wipes out the Alliance army and potentially takes out the leadership without losing any Horde lives. She listened to Saurfang’s tactical advice instead of eliminating him by making some weird threats about raising him as a slave. No rebellion ever happens and Sylvanas is hailed as the hero of the Horde for defeating the Alliance in a swift and decisive manner while minimizing the Horde’s losses like a good Warchief would.
If you don’t like Calia the character / her implementation then what exactly are we disagreeing on?
I am all for the Forsaken getting any thematic character (or council) that doesn’t do a 180 on their selling points / draw
Moira got a decent amount of content at the end of the day - a dungeon, quests, a number of stories, some quests
I’m not saying she had a massive multi-expac intro but compared to Calia? I’d rather have Moira lead the Forsaken lol
Well, the strength of AD has never been in Blizzard’s storytelling anyway IMO
It could have been very good and it had a good faction war story but I feel like they did Garrosh in purely because of fan outrage against him in Cata
Thunder King should have been the big end boss
When I say “idealism” I mean idealism towards honour / good. My point is it’s very: bad guys bad good guys good with both factions slowly moving towards sharing identical values and interchangable leaders
As I mentioned on AD/D I would say that calling him a socialist is a stretch - I think it’s just him being the “good version of gallywix” aka. a really successful salesman who also somehow makes loads of profit despite overpaying workers and not cutting corners
Why does Gallywix bother cuitting corners if in this universe being nice is more profitable? He’s meant to be kind of a cunning character isn’t he
I don’t share that enthusiasm tbh, he is another “Anduin, but [race] and [fluff]” in my eyes
The in-game version of him was the dullest thing ever. I understand he was cool in some book, but come on. Would you really rate him highly as a Warchief
I think the lesson of WW2 was that normal people do / would absolutely do that if they’re subverted in the ways you’ve described above, unless you’re making the claim that every Axis country was just manned by Urukhai created by Saruman
Though I guess that’s not a discussion for a 8.3 thread
Why oh why would Sylvanas take Saurfang’s advice after he spared both Malfurion and then Anduin (the latter only minutes earlier?)
She should have DBZ shadowblasted him there and then
Oh, those lads. Well yeah idealism towards naughty zombie always loses, duh.
Thought you were talking about tink tink and the rest of the wallers of the Siege
I guess we’re more disagreeing on whether it’s destined to be 100% . Maybe it will be. I’m open for having Blizzard prove me wrong.
That’s true. In hindsight, Moira got a better deal even if it felt weird at first that the Bronzebeard Stockholm Syndrome Princess is suddenly leading the Dark Iron and guiding them away from a life of deceit and trickery. She got a civil war (which was more of a foot note, but still) as a result, and I hope Calia’s ascension will lead to a conflict in ideology among the Forsaken. Time will tell.
True. Cataclysm Garrosh was a good Warchief and they shafted him because some smooth brains didn’t like how he wasn’t Thrall. He was taken from me and all the Eastern Kingdoms could not fill the hole he left behind.
Yeah
And if they truly do become just one faction but different colour, they might as well just disband the factions and let the sub factions within continue the conflict. I’m pretty tired of the huge Horde v Alliance world wars and would rather go back to the pre-Cata cold war where the conflict’s confined between the “loose cannons” as it were. Does the entire Alliance need to be dragged into it when Tyrande wants to defy the armistice?
His original characterization was that while he’s ruthless and cunning, he acts that way to give the widows of his workers a scapegoat. Someone who can bear the burden so that others don’t have to. His biggest commodity was his work force as he states in Blank Scroll that all the money in the world is useless if you don’t have any people loyal to you to carry out your will. That’s why he was both successful and a bad guy at the same time, because everything he did was for the cartel’s bottom line.
He’ll sacrifice Goblin Tim and Jimbo if it means everyone else gets to enjoy the success brought by their sacrifice. They phased him out of that to turn him into a Marxist caricature of a capitalist. I don’t like that they did that, but it happened all the same. I hope they won’t do Gazlowe dirty this time.
I’d rate him highly as a character, but not as a Warchief in hindsight.
People with good intentions can definitely be pushed to that if their enemy is dehumanized enough which is a real lesson to be learned from WW2. The original comment was inspired by the amount of hatred there is of the faction leaders not acting like that, as though it should be the norm. Turning it into the norm just misses the whole point and cheapens the impact imho. Conflict, and all that. But also not making light of serious topics like the atrocious Alliance war campaign in BFA where you commit like 7 counts of mass murder and laugh it off as a zaney Uldum quest.
While that’s true, in that particular instance he made a genuinely good strategic suggestion. As the alleged master strategist we’re told she’s supposed to be, she really ignored that in favour of an emotional outburst.
We agree on the core concerns. The difference comes in how we’re approaching it atm. I’m willing to be more optimistic because again otherwise I’d just pick another game to play and make long winded posts about King Emeric’s economical policies that nobody asked for.
Is Calia an appropriate leader for the Forsaken, given how the Forsaken have been written the past 15 years? No.
Would it be interesting to see Blizzard try to change the Forsaken direction in a radically different way by actually making her leader? Yes.
Are they actually going to make Calia leader for any length of time? No.
Are we getting our hopes up only to have them dashed against the rocks of disappointment once more? Yes.
Just this, really. I’ve said it for years but I feel the two-faction system holds the game back rather than add anything we couldn’t have better with more numerous, more distinct factions.
I still don’t buy that Blizzard are going this way because the harder I deny it the more fun it’ll be if it’s true.
… also
You’re both traitors! MAY THUNDA KING REIGN TEN THOUSAND YEARS!
I am inclined to agree. Both within the Horde and more recently the Alliance, you basically have two camps. One who gets along with the opposing faction fairly well when not actively engaged in war, and another who has been kicked one too many times to consider anything resembling peace. Splitting those up and having both the warfaring and cordial angles between factions would be brilliant.
It would also just… you know, give a sense of cohesion to the factions at that point. Especially the Horde.
Not sure how to feel about this. On one hand I’m glad, as now such a guild will be able to become a reality, but on the other hand, I feel like this cheapens the Phoenix mounts we got from doing the challenge modes.
I would just rather stay optimistic because otherwise might as well just switch to another game if I’d hate this one so much I’d have no hope for it to ever recover.
. Sylvanas came out on top because she didn’t commit to Nazjatar, and the campaign against Azshara is what quelled the Alliance/Rebel forces. The reason she didn’t commit to Nazjatar is because she specifically made sure only people she wanted dead were deployed there.
. Maybe it will be. I’m open for having Blizzard prove me wrong.