The fall of Jaina Proudmoore

[Deleted]

Seeing that Jaina's crazyness was caused by something external, as weak of a plotwtist that would be, would make me WAY HAPPIER than the current situation with a Jaina completely OOC...

[DeicideUH]

In other words it was every fascist state ever. Wow, what a revelation.

What you don't seem to understand is that what damns the Horde is that Garrosh could get into power, do the things he did, and still maintain enough political power to strong arm anyone. You know that shit Vol'Jin talked to Garrosh ages ago, about how everyone would come to despise him and his "power" would become meaningless? That didn't happen. Garrosh was the one who turned on the others. Their "rebellion" was nothing but self defense.

There's a version of this story where the Horde aren't the villains. It's a version where Garrosh orders a nuke dropped on Theramore and his soldiers refuse. Or a version where Garrosh nukes Theramore, and a horrified Thrall challenges him for leadership the next day, beats the shit out of him, and executes him for war crimes. Or a version where Garrosh orders a bunch of Theramore refugees tortured and everyone in the room just plain doesn't do it. Not the version we actually got.

Garrosh may be a strong warrior, but the only thing that made him powerful was that fact that people inside the Horde were willing to listen to him and do what he said. Without that he'd just be some big strong monster with no power beyond the reach of his axe.

If only a few people inside the Horde were willing to obey him, he'd have ended up isolated, a poser "Warchief" like Kargath Bladefist or Rend Blackhand and their little false Hordes. He'd have ended up the joke Vol'jin predicted. Instead he was able to get enough people to listen to him that everyone else had to whimper and be whipped so badly that they only finally rebelled when Garrosh came directly after them and they had the Alliance to help.

A king no one will obey is just a guy yelling orders in an empty room. The Horde, as a whole, always had the power to leave Garrosh yelling orders to an empty room, but too many of them chose to listen to him instead.

Awesome post. I agree with every word.

Seeing that Jaina's crazyness was caused by something external, as weak of a plotwtist that would be, would make me WAY HAPPIER than the current situation with a Jaina completely OOC...

Jaina is not crazy. How many people need to die before she'd need to take action? She's not asking for genocide, she wants the end of a political organization.

[7seti]

In other words it was every fascist state ever. Wow, what a revelation.

What you don't seem to understand is that what damns the Horde is that Garrosh could get into power, do the things he did, and still maintain enough political power to strong arm anyone. You know that shit Vol'Jin talked to Garrosh ages ago, about how everyone would come to despise him and his "power" would become meaningless? That didn't happen. Garrosh was the one who turned on the others. Their "rebellion" was nothing but self defense.

There's a version of this story where the Horde aren't the villains. It's a version where Garrosh orders a nuke dropped on Theramore and his soldiers refuse. Or a version where Garrosh nukes Theramore, and a horrified Thrall challenges him for leadership the next day, beats the shit out of him, and executes him for war crimes. Or a version where Garrosh orders a bunch of Theramore refugees tortured and everyone in the room just plain doesn't do it. Not the version we actually got.

Garrosh may be a strong warrior, but the only thing that made him powerful was that fact that people inside the Horde were willing to listen to him and do what he said. Without that he'd just be some big strong monster with no power beyond the reach of his axe.

If only a few people inside the Horde were willing to obey him, he'd have ended up isolated, a poser "Warchief" like Kargath Bladefist or Rend Blackhand and their little false Hordes. He'd have ended up the joke Vol'jin predicted. Instead he was able to get enough people to listen to him that everyone else had to whimper and be whipped so badly that they only finally rebelled when Garrosh came directly after them and they had the Alliance to help.

A king no one will obey is just a guy yelling orders in an empty room. The Horde, as a whole, always had the power to leave Garrosh yelling orders to an empty room, but too many of them chose to listen to him instead.

Bravo, good sir. You've said it better than I ever could.

[Deleted]

Jaina is not crazy.

Any other character of the WoW universe wouldn't be.
Jaina? They made her look like she is, even if the game treats her as she isn't. And this because of badly written dialogue lines and badly orchestrated events.
Their only goal was to fuel the war between Horde and Alliance.
That was their goal.
They thought about how to achieve that and among several actions they took one was to create a horde-hating character inside the Alliance.
Which did they take? Jaina.
This is all that mattered to me.
All the rest is an attempt to make it look realistic and possible, which my opinion failed utterly because of the already mentioned bad dialogue lines etc.

She's not asking for genocide

I think she kinda is, to a certain extent.
The Jaina we grew to know over the years would have never reacted THAT way, THAT much, even after the events of Theramore.
This is exactely the reason why a lot of people consider her OOC, because she is from this pov :P

Blizzard of course doesn't care. Their main focus has always been and always will be gameplay.
Plot and lore come after, and in this case they were an "instrument" to reach a gameplay goal (fueling enmity between the 2 factions).
It's no surprise that sometimes they do these choices lightly or without overthinking every single possible details, it's because for them plot/lore, while cool and everything, has less relevance than gameplay.

This is no surprise, it's always been like this, it's not like it's a recent change.

[Yarathir]

Not this again...

Jaina is not crazy, she is not corrupted, she is not berserk or consumed by the desire for revenge. She is simply (and justifiably) pissed and distrustful of the Horde.

The Kirin Tor will remain Alliance as it once was and should have always been.

Exactly this. Stop trying to make Jaina evil and a raid boss just because you don't like that she is not a fan of the Horde. The Kirin Tor is Alliance as it should be, has been, and as it always should have been.


In short: stop trying to make Evil Jaina happen. It's not gonna happen. [insert 'not gonna happen' meme pic here]



Oh, and ya. Before Jaina ever gets the guillotine, Sylvanas should and will have gotten it ten times over. Because she deserves it ten times as much.

In other words it was every fascist state ever. Wow, what a revelation.

What you don't seem to understand is that what damns the Horde is that Garrosh could get into power, do the things he did, and still maintain enough political power to strong arm anyone. You know that shit Vol'Jin talked to Garrosh ages ago, about how everyone would come to despise him and his "power" would become meaningless? That didn't happen. Garrosh was the one who turned on the others. Their "rebellion" was nothing but self defense.

There's a version of this story where the Horde aren't the villains. It's a version where Garrosh orders a nuke dropped on Theramore and his soldiers refuse. Or a version where Garrosh nukes Theramore, and a horrified Thrall challenges him for leadership the next day, beats the shit out of him, and executes him for war crimes. Or a version where Garrosh orders a bunch of Theramore refugees tortured and everyone in the room just plain doesn't do it. Not the version we actually got.

Garrosh may be a strong warrior, but the only thing that made him powerful was that fact that people inside the Horde were willing to listen to him and do what he said. Without that he'd just be some big strong monster with no power beyond the reach of his axe.

If only a few people inside the Horde were willing to obey him, he'd have ended up isolated, a poser "Warchief" like Kargath Bladefist or Rend Blackhand and their little false Hordes. He'd have ended up the joke Vol'jin predicted. Instead he was able to get enough people to listen to him that everyone else had to whimper and be whipped so badly that they only finally rebelled when Garrosh came directly after them and they had the Alliance to help.

A king no one will obey is just a guy yelling orders in an empty room. The Horde, as a whole, always had the power to leave Garrosh yelling orders to an empty room, but too many of them chose to listen to him instead.

Oh, and this too. The Horde isn't somehow redeemed or awesome and nice because the player-base and Blizzard wants them to. They didn't stop Garrosh from the kindness of their hearts. If Garrosh had done his job without being a pain in the ass of the rest of the Horde, he'd still have been rampaging around and murdering anyone in the Alliance he could, including the innocent civilians. They only did it because of their own best interests.


And Sylvanas is still worse than Garrosh pre-shaification.

[Aquamonkey]

What you don't seem to understand is that what damns the Horde is that Garrosh could get into power, do the things he did, and still maintain enough political power to strong arm anyone. You know that shit Vol'Jin talked to Garrosh ages ago, about how everyone would come to despise him and his "power" would become meaningless? That didn't happen. Garrosh was the one who turned on the others. Their "rebellion" was nothing but self defense.

Vol'jin was about to leave the Horde until Thrall convinced him to stay to try to keep the Horde together.

There's a version of this story where the Horde aren't the villains. It's a version where Garrosh orders a nuke dropped on Theramore and his soldiers refuse.

Because Garrosh went around telling everyone he planned on nuking Theramore beforehand?

Or a version where Garrosh nukes Theramore, and a horrified Thrall challenges him for leadership the next day, beats the shit out of him, and executes him for war crimes.

Thrall had the Velen dilemma of having to deal with a bigger problem. What was one city when Thrall was trying to keep the entire planet from falling apart?

Or a version where Garrosh orders a bunch of Theramore refugees tortured and everyone in the room just plain doesn't do it. Not the version we actually got.

Those refugees were hidden even from the Horde. You mean by the Kor'Kron Garrosh specifically recruited to be loyal to him. Garrosh went outside the Horde to the Dragonmaw and defunct Blackrock for that kind of devotion.

Garrosh may be a strong warrior, but the only thing that made him powerful was that fact that people inside the Horde were willing to listen to him and do what he said. Without that he'd just be some big strong monster with no power beyond the reach of his axe.

If only a few people inside the Horde were willing to obey him, he'd have ended up isolated, a poser "Warchief" like Kargath Bladefist or Rend Blackhand and their little false Hordes. He'd have ended up the joke Vol'jin predicted. Instead he was able to get enough people to listen to him that everyone else had to whimper and be whipped so badly that they only finally rebelled when Garrosh came directly after them and they had the Alliance to help.

A king no one will obey is just a guy yelling orders in an empty room. The Horde, as a whole, always had the power to leave Garrosh yelling orders to an empty room, but too many of them chose to listen to him instead.

Garrosh had the support of the main body of the Horde, the orcs. He had their support from the very beginning. It was for that reason Thrall made him leader. Then he recruiting ruthless orcs from outside the Horde to follow him exclusively which he could use to impose his rule over the others and crush dissenters. While not all orcs sided with Garrosh in the end, he still had his diehard supporters from the Blackrock and Dragonmaw.

Look up the Milgram experiment for an example of the power of authority.
The Stanford prison experiment shows how intelligent and good-natured people act malevolently when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social/institutional support.
There's also mob mentality and fear of reprisal.

[7seti]

Any other character of the WoW universe wouldn't be.

Honestly, I don't get this. Jaina may be dedicated to peace, but she's still human. Like any human she has a limited supply of goodwill and forgiveness, and the Divine Bell incident used up the dregs. She's learned the hard way that the only route to peace is to keep the Horde on a short leash.

[Omgarsh]

Only if the Horde first spend an expansion getting their butts kicked by the Alliance, followed by a patch delivering them resources, then finally hand the city back the the Alliance and walk away with nothing to show for it.

It's only fair.

Nah, the only fair thing to do in this game is to create a system where if you're Alliance and you die in PVP, you die in real life as real life orcs pillage your home.

[Deleted]

Honestly, I don't get this. Jaina may be dedicated to peace, but she's still human. Like any human she has a limited supply of goodwill and forgiveness

A strong reaction could have been understandable.
The full extent of the White>Black reaction we saw was too extreme, too fast, too strong. Too out of place for how the character had been portrayed until then.
Imho.
This is the thing, that change was too big, too extreme, too sudden.
They could have reached similar results by building tension with better orchestrated events and dialogue lines than what we got.
It was highly disappointing see a character violated that way of their personality just because they needed to fuel the ward between horde and alliance.

She's learned the hard way that the only route to peace is to keep the Horde on a short leash.

I'd say that up to before the Theramore incident, in spite of all the several bad things she saw happening, she learned very different things about "the only route to peace", and she professed them quite blatantly.

[Yarathir]

She's acting kind of dumb, though. Varian himself gives good reasons for why Jaina's Palpatine routine in SoO was misguided, and her actions in general aren't terribly rational. She's just doing damage to the Alliance at this point, especially with the bell fiasco.

They should make a point of a restoration to what she used to be, rather than trying to poorly slot her into some kind warmonger role.

A withering piece of dry wood that would thank the Horde for pissing all over her face and do anything to remain peaceful, even if the Horde were to kill all she cared about. Because remaining calm after your friends and family got blasted out of existence is apparently very realistic.


This is the Jaina Horde fans want, huh? It's horrible for someone to oppose the Horde's actions, instead of brown-nosing them and fangirling over them being the supah-coooool underdogs.

[Evilfish]

In other words it was every fascist state ever. Wow, what a revelation.

What you don't seem to understand is that what damns the Horde is that Garrosh could get into power, do the things he did, and still maintain enough political power to strong arm anyone. You know that shit Vol'Jin talked to Garrosh ages ago, about how everyone would come to despise him and his "power" would become meaningless? That didn't happen. Garrosh was the one who turned on the others. Their "rebellion" was nothing but self defense.

There's a version of this story where the Horde aren't the villains. It's a version where Garrosh orders a nuke dropped on Theramore and his soldiers refuse. Or a version where Garrosh nukes Theramore, and a horrified Thrall challenges him for leadership the next day, beats the shit out of him, and executes him for war crimes. Or a version where Garrosh orders a bunch of Theramore refugees tortured and everyone in the room just plain doesn't do it. Not the version we actually got.

Garrosh may be a strong warrior, but the only thing that made him powerful was that fact that people inside the Horde were willing to listen to him and do what he said. Without that he'd just be some big strong monster with no power beyond the reach of his axe.

If only a few people inside the Horde were willing to obey him, he'd have ended up isolated, a poser "Warchief" like Kargath Bladefist or Rend Blackhand and their little false Hordes. He'd have ended up the joke Vol'jin predicted. Instead he was able to get enough people to listen to him that everyone else had to whimper and be whipped so badly that they only finally rebelled when Garrosh came directly after them and they had the Alliance to help.

A king no one will obey is just a guy yelling orders in an empty room. The Horde, as a whole, always had the power to leave Garrosh yelling orders to an empty room, but too many of them chose to listen to him instead.

That's all fine and good but don't forget one thing - MOP was the exapnsion that the Alliance have been whining for which included the lore-butchery of several characters.

Garrosh was one character in Cataclysm and he became something else in MOP (same with Jaina and Varian). So yeah if the Horde acted like they did under passive-aggressive Thrall, Garrosh would have been spanked and sent back to Outland by the middle of Cata.

Bring up godwin's law as much as you want, but it's obvious that Blizz bent reason and lore to create MOP to make the Alliance feel better about themselves. And WOD won't be any different... where the Alliance Heroes go back to get that "Warcraft 2" feel, where the Draenei get a second chance to make right the things that were done to them.... well the Horde goes back to it's "roots" which is kinda funny cause I wasn't aware the Horde = Orcs only and we'll be forced to watch more Thrall family emotional moments....

Bottom line, don't try to make any sense of an expansion that was primarily meant to assure the Alliance Blizz still loves them.

[Yarathir]

A strong reaction could have been understandable.
The full extent of the White>Black reaction we saw was too extreme, too fast, too strong. Too out of place for how the character had been portrayed until then.
Imho.
This is the thing, that change was too big, too extreme, too sudden.
They could have reached similar results by building tension with better orchestrated events and dialogue lines than what we got.
It was highly disappointing see a character violated that way of their personality just because they needed to fuel the ward between horde and alliance.



I'd say that up to before the Theramore incident, in spite of all the several bad things she saw happening, she learned very different things about "the only route to peace", and she professed them quite blatantly.

Too sudden? How about the fact that she got her own father killed to make peace? Or everything until the destruction of Theramore that she had to suffer through for the sake of peace, just to get spat on by Orcs and laughed at for her efforts?


And no. Before Theramore, she did nothing. She was passive, bland and unrealistic. She was a stone who would accept anything from the Horde. That's not a compelling character, but it is somehow the character the Horde wants her to be. Why? Because "how dare anyone oppose the Horde?".

[7seti]

I'd say that up to before the Theramore incident, in spite of all the several bad things she saw happening, she learned very different things about "the only route to peace", and she professed them quite blatantly.

And Theramore plus the events that followed convinced her that she had been wrong.

You have your view of the character, and I have mine. Personally I find it a bit insulting that finally refusing to take any more crap is considered "violating" the character. I'd consider it a flaw if her perspective did not change after all that's happened.

[Aquamonkey]

And Theramore plus the events that followed convinced her that she had been wrong.

You have your view of the character, and I have mine. Personally I find it a bit insulting that finally refusing to take any more crap is considered "violating" the character. I'd consider it a flaw if her perspective did not change after all that's happened.

The problem is that it changed. Then changed back. Then changed again.

She was super hippie pro-peace when Anduin went to Dalaran to get the Kirin Tor to join the Alliance. This was bookended by rawr genocidal maniac and rawr Horde can't be trusted. Then she realized at IoT that Garrosh was the real problem and the BElves weren't all that bad, kinda calming down and hoping for peace. Then after Garrosh is defeated, she spews venom into Varian's ear for him to dismantle the Horde completely.

[DeltrusDisc]

Enough with the damned corrupted characters! Why does every character who becomes evil becomes evil for the sake of the Old Gods/Sha? Why can't anyone be pissed off because they are pissed off? Fuck the Old Gods for once and let some human emotion show, genuinely.

[Enosh]

So what is it exactly that makes people think Jaina Proudmore is corrupted/insane/on her monthly. I'm pretty sure most Alliance leaders feel the same way she does about the horde.

not worshiping the horde and capitulating to them like anduin and varian do is the biggest sin one can do in warcraft

[7seti]

The problem is that it changed. Then changed back. Then changed again.

She'd just been zapped with the Focusing Iris as well as losing almost everyone she knew and cared about. I'd say that warrants a temporary loss of temper.

Much like Varian's hasty words in the Undercity, in response to the horrors he'd seen there. Words spoken in anger may not represent a character's true views.

[Aquamonkey]

She'd just been zapped with the Focusing Iris as well as losing almost everyone she knew and cared about. I'd say that warrants a temporary loss of temper.

Okay, that covers the genocidal maniac Jaina. Then she went back to super hippie pro-peace when Anduin went to Dalaran to get the Kirin Tor to join the Alliance. Then the Bell happened and that flew out the window with all Horde can't be trusted. Then she realized at IoT that Garrosh was the real problem and the BElves weren't all that bad, kinda calming down and hoping for peace. Then after Garrosh is defeated, she spews venom into Varian's ear for him to dismantle the Horde completely.

[7seti]

Okay, that covers the genocidal maniac Jaina. Then she went back to super hippie pro-peace when Anduin went to Dalaran to get the Kirin Tor to join the Alliance. Then the Bell happened and that flew out the window with all Horde can't be trusted. Then she realized at IoT that Garrosh was the real problem and the BElves weren't all that bad, kinda calming down and hoping for peace. Then after Garrosh is defeated, she spews venom into Varian's ear for him to dismantle the Horde completely.

Uh, no. She was willing to give the Horde a second chance, but the Divine Bell was the last straw. After the Divine Bell incident she's consistently seen the Horde as untrustworthy. She just knows to pick her battles.

[Yarathir]

Uh, no. She was willing to give the Horde a second chance, but the Divine Bell was the last straw. After the Divine Bell incident she's consistently seen the Horde as untrustworthy. She just knows to pick her battles.

This. Aqua, it seems like you are intentionally being obtuse here.


The only discrepancy is during SoO. She'd been a bit calm during it, until the end cinematic, where she went Palpatine. Admittedly, this was never fully explained, but I'm fairly sure it has to do with.. y'know. The surviving Theramore civilian boat being captured by the Horde, with those on it being tortured and killed, as you could see during the Dark Shamans encounter.


I think Blizzard could have done well to show Jaina reacting to that, because it would have made her Palpatine act a lot less sudden. But it's still a good reason nonetheless.