Blizzard fell for their own shoddy writing (Horde)

[Soeroah]

Arthas in the book was a psycopath with daddy complex the size of the moon...

And Blizzard approved it, if not requested it. It's not like they said "hey, write a book about Arthas for us", she came back with that and Blizzard went "oh FUCK I guess it's canon now, damn it" then hired her to write another five books.

Everything Golden writes is approved by numerous writers at Blizzard, and they constantly make suggestions and requests for things to be included. The most we've gotten out of Golden is Anduin having a bigger role in Mists of Pandaria, and arguably the rest of his arc.

[Mehrunes]

And Blizzard approved it, if not requested it. It's not like they said "hey, write a book about Arthas for us", she came back with that and Blizzard went "oh FUCK I guess it's canon now, damn it" then hired her to write another five books.

Everything Golden writes is approved by numerous writers at Blizzard, and they constantly make suggestions and requests for things to be included. The most we've gotten out of Golden is Anduin having a bigger role in Mists of Pandaria, and arguably the rest of his arc.

Which is relevant to the sub-topic in no way, shape or form.

[Khaza-R]

Arthas in the book was a psycopath with daddy complex the size of the moon...

What were people expecting from his persona in RoC?

It was very clear that Arthas wasn't some fabled prince but a sociopath unable to admit any form of defeat or failure.

[Soeroah]

Which is relevant to the sub-topic in no way, shape or form.

How so? From what I can tell the subtopic is "Golden writes characters poorly and Blizzard can't stop her".

[Arrashi]

Give examples of both and you might do a better job at winning me over than making generic statements.

Jainas pet gnome (kinky or whats her name) was definately a david cage move.

[Oneirophobia]

The main problem is that the humans are the very center of the Alliance but they're the most boring race story-wise in WoW.

Every human faction is figureheaded by a small handful, or more often ONE human, be it Anduin, Greymane, Whitemane and Mograine, the Trollbanes, Tirion Fordring, etc. These leaders become the face of their entire people and it seems like every single citizen is on board with the ruler's agenda 100% and there is no inner turmoil whatsoever. The closest WoW ever got to showing what the human citizenry is like in ANY human faction was Gilneas with Crowly's attempted revolution, but you only ever get to hear about the revolution because it was prior to Gilneas rejoining the Alliance.

Why aren't there scheming nobles trying to dethrone the rulers? We only barely explored that with Onxyia and the Syndicate, but that story was never fleshed out, it just went full-blown black dragon arc and we never hear from any of these rebellious nobles whipped up by Onxyia ever again, and the disenfranchised militia of poor people in Westfall just ends with Deadmines. And the pirates? They never do anything worth mentioning until Kul Tiras. They only ever attack other random NPC settlements like skirting around the coast of Bootybay or lurking around the Speedbarge in Thousand Needles. They're never a threat to supply lanes, they never attack Stormwind's port, they don't even show up in Vashj'ir when a new island surfaces off the coast of Stormwind. Imagine if the pirate groups had also shown interest in being close enough to raid Stormwind.

There doesn't seem to be any discontent people in Gilneas, either. We never see anybody question Greymane anymore. Gilneas never seems to have anybody dispute their close ties to the Night Elves. These strange, exotic creatures sweep out of nowhere, announce they're at fault for the worgen curse, and everyone just accepts their apology and forgives them? What the hell? A lot of people were murdered by the worgen over the years before the Night Elves bothered to show up and help fix things, and everyone just forgets that and happily agrees to live in their tree in harmony.

Thank god Kul Tiras wasn't waiting with open arms when we got there, I would have had an aneurysm.

[Bangdingow]

Let the Horde be the "bad guys" with some redeemable qualities. It makes them much more interesting than either pure evil or some group of pansy orcs that just want to hold hands and frolic in the sun. Id much rather the Horde faction err on the side of aggression than the side of passivism, they are comprised of orcs, trolls, undead and goblins after all. Those races don't exactly conjure up images in my mind of some utopian society.

[Soeroah]

Jainas pet gnome (kinky or whats her name) was definately a david cage move.

I've never looked at any David Cage media. That just seemed like a generic we-need-a-character-to-kill-off-for-another-character's-development trope that's common in a lot of stories, but at least it was written well enough to show why Jaina temporarily lost it.

They definitely could have used a character that meant more to Jaina or Theramore in general for that purpose, or just gone with Theramore itself, but that's still not something I understand targeting Golden in particular for given how common it is.

[Mehrunes]

What were people expecting from his persona in RoC?

It was very clear that Arthas wasn't some fabled prince but a sociopath unable to admit any form of defeat or failure.

The comical levels of his complexes was a new addition though.

[Varodoc]

Actually, that outpost was slaughtered due to the Crusade as well.

Lillian Voss was a member of the Crusade, daughter of an Archbishop. She ended up dying and was reraised as forsaken - When she returned to the outpost, her father planned to kill her. She killed him and ran so she wouldn't die again.

Ex-member of the Crusade, thus it doesn't count.

In this case, wouldn't Lillian be the innocent one? She didn't choose to be raised.

She chose not to go back to the peace of the grave, which was an option.

who had been attacking them for years.

The same is true for the Forsaken.

Those civilians had ample chance to leave, and had been getting attacked for years. The Scarlets have been enemies of the undead for the entire time. They knew it was not their land anymore and that the Forsaken would come for them.

It was still very much their land, they were Lordaeronians too who had bled to defend that land, so why should the undead led by an elf have a more valid claim than them?

[Mehrunes]

How so? From what I can tell the subtopic is "Golden writes characters poorly and Blizzard can't stop her".

The part about Blizzard being unable to stop her is your addition. Which makes little sense given how now she's in the writing team and doesn't have the same constraints she had when she was writing Rise of the Lich King.

[Powerogue]

This is why BfA's story sucks. Alliance has no shortage of morally dubious moments but Blizzard never wants to explore what would happen if Alliance reverted to its WC3 days. Instead, they sweep all potential Alliance conflicts under the rug and put the most lawfully good character ever conceived in fiction in charge. Give us Garithos' racism. Give us stupid Alliance princes falling to dark whispers. Give us Alliance infighting. Anything but another round of orc genocide.

They had a pretty good opportunity to do more of this in BFA, with an entire country of people utterly loving a racist old warmonger in Daelin Proudmoore, but even in there they only show his perspective of the story, where he's the valiant hero killing those dirty green skins to save his daughter, and not the context where he tries to assassinate Thrall at a political meeting and continually attacks the horde, disregarding a pact of neutrality between them and Theramore.

By removing the context in the Alliance questline, they portray him as, at worst, tragically stubborn. "You couldn't save him from himself."

I'm on board with more alliance douchebags. If Yrel and the lightbound joined the alliance proper due to positive vouching from the lightforged that'd be pretty hilarious.

[Rafoel]

And Blizzard approved it, if not requested it. It's not like they said "hey, write a book about Arthas for us", she came back with that and Blizzard went "oh FUCK I guess it's canon now, damn it" then hired her to write another five books.

Everything Golden writes is approved by numerous writers at Blizzard, and they constantly make suggestions and requests for things to be included. The most we've gotten out of Golden is Anduin having a bigger role in Mists of Pandaria, and arguably the rest of his arc.

Her Arthas book was the biggest "fuck you" to Warcraft lore that ever happened before Cataclysm.

[Archmage Alodi]

She can write when she writes humans.

And that's the biggest gripe of many w/ her books about the Horde and orcs, leading chars, Thrall, Durotan, etc are basically green humans, the rest of the orcs are shown as bloodthirsty maniacs. I mean, it's understandable why Thrall is so human-like, he grew up among them, but it doesn't explain the rest...

Grizek and Sapphy's story was pretty good in before the storm, way better than Anduin's. I'm not a fan of her work but i don't think she can only write humans.

[Tabrotar]

WC2 Alliance presentation: noble, heroic and just.
WC2 Horde presentation: bloodthirsty, warmongering and genocidal.

WC2 ends. Orcs get put in internment camps until Moses comes along to save them and absolve them of their sins.

WC3 Alliance presentation: hypocritical, self-righteous, easily corruptible (Arthas, Garithos and Daelin).
WC3 Horde presentation: misunderstood, outcasts, trying to atone for their past sins.

WC3 ends. Orcs earn their redemption and begin to build a truly honorable society.

WoW comes along. Blizzard sticks to their WC3 portrayal of Horde and WC2 portrayal of Alliance. The problem is, they need to make baddies for players to kill and while Horde and Alliance aren't in a state of war. Easiest solution? Make use of WC3 baddies and revive some WC2-era baddies. That's how the problem was created. With factions such as Dark Horde, Blizzard hammered it in that those baddies were *PREVIOUSLY* Horde. They also hammered it in that this is what Horde *COULD* become without Thrall's guidance. But in the minds of players, when you're killing orcs who are affiliated with a "Horde", it matters little whether it's Thrall's honorable Horde or Rend's Dark Horde. Blizzard's portrayal of orcs started to regress to its WC2 roots.

Meanwhile, previously Alliance-affiliated baddies such as the Scourge (former humans of Lordaeron) and the Scarlet Crusade (also former citizens of Lordaeron) were explicitly portrayed as being NOT Alliance. Moreover, baddie groups that consisted primarily of Alliance races (Bloodsail, Syndicate, Freebooters etc.) were given token representatives of Horde races to drive the point home that those were baddie groups. The result? People started to associate Horde races with being bad, amoral and evil while Alliance races kept their squeaky-clean lawful good image.

Come TBC. Blizzard takes another dump on Horde races by giving us another round of evil Horde (Fel Horde) and evil elves. Inspired by their resounding success with red orc genocide, Blizzard finally forgets the entirety of WC3 and decides that "hmm, maybe there are evil orcs in Thrall's Horde that want to go back to their WC2 warmongering days". We get Hellfire Citadel style orc architecture and a noticeably more aggressive Garrosh. Cataclysm happens and Horde is completely reverted to a lite version of its WC2 portrayal.

Other than rendering WC3 and its supplementary materials completely pointless as far as Horde's redemption arc goes, this was fine in itself. Horde struggling with its identity makes for an okay story. But instead of letting it go and moving on to other stories after MoP, Blizzard decided to give us round 4 of orc genocide. And now we are getting a retelling of Horde struggling with its identity even though we've already had this arc in Cata-MoP and explored the theme of "evil orcs" in just about every expansion.

This is why BfA's story sucks. Alliance has no shortage of morally dubious moments but Blizzard never wants to explore what would happen if Alliance reverted to its WC3 days. Instead, they sweep all potential Alliance conflicts under the rug and put the most lawfully good character ever conceived in fiction in charge. Give us Garithos' racism. Give us stupid Alliance princes falling to dark whispers. Give us Alliance infighting. Anything but another round of orc genocide.

How did they got absolved of their sins exactly btw?

[LuminaL]

Could be worse, you could have gotten Knaak :P

I dont understand the hate for Knaak, IMO he is one of the top writers of warcraft books. I enjoyed his books more than any other.

[Orby]

I dont understand the hate for Knaak, IMO he is one of the top writers of warcraft books. I enjoyed his books more than any other.

Well credit to you, you like what you like, but for me getting through that crime of a retcon called The War of the Ancients Trilogy was like getting my eye balls waxed... (Yes I said eye balls).

Day of the Dragon and Night of the Dragon were pretty good though.

[Soeroah]

The part about Blizzard being unable to stop her is your addition. Which makes little sense given how now she's in the writing team and doesn't have the same constraints she had when she was writing Rise of the Lich King.

Yeah, that's recent. People seem to hate Golden for all her books, all her input, even before she became a Blizzard employee, and BfA's story direction so far was already plotted and in the works at the time she started working at Blizzard. About all we know that she is directly responsible for since joining Blizzard is the Elegy novel and writing the Jaina/Azerite cinematics. She may have more creative power by 8.2, but doubtfully enough to be able to direct the actual plot noticeably, considering the writing team is a team.

Her Arthas book was the biggest "fuck you" to Warcraft lore that ever happened before Cataclysm.

That's an interesting view, any examples of what you found egregious? Besides young Arthas liking his horse and feeling guilty about the first time he ever killed something he loved?

[Zandalariprelate]

The Katherine part makes sense though. Its shown in "The Daughter of the Sea" that the Kul Tirans have a twisted perception of the events that took place in Kalimdor. While the reality is revealed to Katherine in Thros. So she switch is perfectly logical. Lets also not forget that you have to deal with numerous Kul Tiran desenters over the course of the story. All that's left by the time you complete a Nation United is loyalists.

He is portrayed as some moba player that yells: YOLO!!! instead of him being reasonable with his daughter but wants to make sure the orcs doesn't build any city nearby? He was a truly grey character because he was very hurt by losing his son in the second war, the orcs run rampage and they nearly won the war if Gul'dan didn't betray them. He knows they only win by sheer luck and ambition of another leader and from his own wife to says: Don't worry sweetheart he was just stupid in that moment, not your fault, despite of the background it felt like an insult and more like a whitewash.

What were people expecting from his persona in RoC?

It was very clear that Arthas wasn't some fabled prince but a sociopath unable to admit any form of defeat or failure.

Is that some joke or something? Paladin Arthas and DK Arthas are different as day and night. Also his familiar issues are way exagerated for my taste.

That's an interesting view, any examples of what you found egregious? Besides young Arthas liking his horse and feeling guilty about the first time he ever killed something he loved?

How about the fact he felt more attraction to that horse than with Jaina and even loved that animal more than his own father and sister(that is never mentioned again after his childhood chapters). Arthas was basically a medieval brony in the book of Golden

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Well the whole premise of this argument is false, so I'm not sure its worth arguing.

-Alliance quests generally treat "alliance raced bad guys" as problems they feel responsible for and must resolve, so your perception is wrong.
-Quests don't treat Old Horde as the Current Horde - for instance, Orcs in Blackrock Mountain are never referred to as being the same as the Horde, as far as I recall, so again, your perception is off.
-I'm also confused as to why you think the Horde (more specifically Orcs) earned redemption during WC3? Like, the massive genocides, etc? Perception issue?
-So red Orcs - Blizzard is shitting on the Horde? Are you just implying that bad guys should never be Horde races, as to not offend you? Like, get real dude.
-And inner faction conflict is what builds story and character. The first threat you see when leveling a Human is fallout for Stormwinds past misdeeds. You are literally lying to yourself about this story to play the victim card. I doubt you have ever really leveled as Alliance.
You say "...if Alliance reverted to its WC3 days ..." but cite three random dudes as if that was everyone in the Alliance. If you even played WC3, you should know better. Your perception is just plain off on what is happening.