Sylvanas And Baine Are Both Wrong

[Super Dickmann]

how does he even have a corpse? i remember him being burned to death in dragon's fire.

You've had a little too much to think today.

[mickybrighteyes]

That's a long shot of galactic proportions. Baine did the right thing, however imo there's a strong chance this will still be a setup by Sylvannas. No matter what choice players make, she seems to know what's going on no matter if you're team Undead or team Green Jesus. She knew Baine was planning to break out Derek and allowed it to happen. I'll lose my shit and uninstall if he ends up putting a dagger in his sister's spine. I hope I'm wrong, but I can see that shit happening.

While yes, Baine acting to save Derek is a 'Good Act'. The nature of Derek's plight isn't common knowledge among the rank and file... so outside of those in the know... Baine seems to have gone off the deep end, killing horde troops to curry favor with Jaina Proudmoore, but was caught. Now despite the overtly clear stance on 'Horde is Bad' the writing has decided to go with.... his actions are hardly heroic in any capacity UNLESS we go with Red = Bad and Blue = Good as the main basis.

[Malikath]

BfA's disgusting Alliance- and human-centric morality.

i challenge this notion, the tuaren have always been hippy beatniks with their original intent for vouching for the forsaken joining the horde was being to cure them back to life.
also, for any morality to be centric it must be active, not reactive.
as is sylvanas' morality, or total lack there-of, has been front and center even to the point of setting events in motion that would unseal N'zoth.

[mickybrighteyes]

how does he even have a corpse? i remember him being burned to death in dragon's fire.

clearly the burns were all superficial... or it was red dragon's flame and he really just died of drowning? or fuck it you know too much!

[TheImperios]

i challenge this notion, the tuaren have always been hippy beatniks with their original intent for vouching for the forsaken joining the horde was being to cure them back to life.
also, for any morality to be centric it must be active, not reactive.
as is sylvanas' morality, or total lack there-of, has been front and center even to the point of setting events in motion that would unseal N'zoth.

Then why haven't they done anything earlier? Why hasn't Baine protested the war when it started? Again, why is a single son of a genocidal admiral more worthy of pity than an entire World Tree or the tauren soldiers whom Sylvie killed and raised?

[mickybrighteyes]

i challenge this notion, the tuaren have always been hippy beatniks with their original intent for vouching for the forsaken joining the horde was being to cure them back to life.

How does this challenge the point?

Tauren have been a certain way... but Boyscout Baine doesn't act to benefit the Tauren and only seems to take a stand when Humans are targeted.

[Malikath]

Then why haven't they done anything earlier? Why hasn't Baine protested the war when it started? Again, why is a single son of a genocidal admiral more worthy of pity than an entire World Tree or the tauren soldiers whom Sylvie killed and raised?

because blizzard hardly ever does constant updates for the side-race's content.
im pretty sure he did, in both the pre-expac azerite reveal horde cinematic and in the siege of undercity2.0 horde conclusion cinematic.
your begging the question inspite of publicly known facts comes off as more duplicitous then ignorant.

because he's a blatant example of sylvanas' hypocrisy, stemming from the (false since Metzen ret-conned the post-cata forsaken starting story to "join or return to the grave" keeping in continuity with her amoral characterization since vanilla) belief that sylvanas' promises of free-will are in-fact held.
further more that the tauren, mainly his father, are the reason that the forsaken are even apart of the horde to begin with exposing her as the monster she is IS defending the tauren people.
not just from the scrawny hot-topic rejects but from the ire of the other still-living horde races for vouching for them after what they've done so far.

[Soon-TM]

How does this challenge the point?

Tauren have been a certain way... but Boyscout Baine doesn't act to benefit the Tauren and only seems to take a stand when Humans are targeted.

Baine doesn't give a flying !@#& about his own people. He exiled those Taurens who were defending their own land against the lolneutral Theramore military, then defended the very guy who killed his father and was an absolute ass to any non-Orc.

Later on he just /shrugged when Sylvanas set a World Tree on fire, /shrugged again when she blighted and raised Tauren soldiers, and kept obeying (or pretended to obey, who knows...) Sylvie until she dared raise Auntie Jaina's little brother.

Yes, I must admit that he's one of the few consistently written characters. He has always been an Alliance, and more specifically Human, sycophant.

[mickybrighteyes]

because blizzard hardly ever does constant updates for the side-race's content.
im pretty sure he did, in both the pre-expac azerite reveal horde cinematic and in the siege of undercity2.0 horde conclusion cinematic.
your begging the question inspite of publicly known facts comes off as more duplicitous then ignorant.

The issue is that much of these public facts aren't spreading among the public knowledge of the lore world.

because he's a blatant example of sylvanas' hypocrisy, stemming from the (false since Metzen ret-conned the post-cata forsaken starting story to "join or return to the grave" keeping in continuity with her amoral characterization since vanilla) belief that sylvanas' promises of free-will are in-fact held.

That might be true... but is not justification to partake in the killing of horde forces because he feels bad... that makes him arguably worse than Sylvanas at the Battle for Lordaeron since Sylvanas at least has the excuse of the overwhelming alliance siege to use as an excuse for collateral damage. Baine busting into a forsaken vessel and killing the crew is a different matter entirely.

further more that the tauren, mainly his father, are the reason that the forsaken are even apart of the horde to begin with exposing her as the monster she is IS defending the tauren people.

That's a fine soap box... now about the killing of horde personnel Baine was fully committed to when he boarded that ship?

[KrakHed]

Then why haven't they done anything earlier? Why hasn't Baine protested the war when it started? Again, why is a single son of a genocidal admiral more worthy of pity than an entire World Tree or the tauren soldiers whom Sylvie killed and raised?

I think this has more to do with the Blizzard development cycle than anything else.

Let's take Warlords of Draenor as an example of this. In its original incarnations, it had a much more significant emphasis on time travel and the player was going to be stranded without Azerothian support. Yrel was going to have a dark secret. Grommash would have been the end boss. The Iron Horde was going to be more prominent. There was going to be an Ogre continent which could potentially host another expansion on Draenor. You could move your garrison around. There were cities. I get the impression that Blizzard had a lot of big ideas for Draenor. Maybe even years of ideas.

Then they realized that timetravel raised a lot of questions that Blizzard didn't want to answer and they thought using the Dark Portal was cooler, so a massive chunk of the plot got gutted. Infinite Dragons no longer show up, despite being a large part of the setup. Wrathion gets a brief mention as having been there, but we never see him.

At some point in development, the team developed the infamous "Orc Fatigue". The plot of every zone got gutted, except those with less Orcs. All these raid bosses they lovingly crafted videos for got dumped on. With all the time spent reworking the zones to erase the main plot, sacrifices were made elsewhere. Entire raid tiers gone. No Farahlon. Garrisons were made more prominent, and so customization was dumped, as were the cities.

What we see is a godawful fucking mess. The end result barely resembles the original concept. WoD as it exists is an abortion of an expansion, filled with little lingering remnants of what was meant to be. Relics of prior iterations. Ogre towers with weird time mechanics, which used to have Infinite Dragons behind them. Mentions of an Ogre continent in NPC text, a continent which simply doesn't exist. Allusions to Wrathion, who doesn't do shit but help get Admiral Taylor killed and never appears himself. Text on the WoD page about Yrel's nonexistent dark secret. Orgrim Doomhammer's redemption story only existing as he dies suddenly for no reason, instead of having a zonewide plot.

Too much effort had already been put into things to simply can the whole expansion or remove literally everything they worked on, but they could release the utter fucking mess that shoddy rewrites resulted in.

So, you ask why no one did anything earlier? I forget which interview it was mentioned, but the Saurfang plot was apparently conceived well after it was decided that Teldrassil would burn, as it took them that long to realize that it might be "dishonorable". It was hinted that Thrall would be involved in the Vol'jin quest chain, but then he wasn't. Baine was a late addition to Zandalar. Saurfang's behavior in the Stockades was rewritten pretty late in the beta. There's ingame text about Kul Tirans being slavers, beta text of a more aggressive Alliance, Earthen Ring Shaman trying to stop Kul Tiran Azerite mining replaced with near-mindless Troggs.

No one did anything earlier because no one was going to do anything in the original version of the story, and by the time they changed tracks too much work had been done to simply scrap everything and start over. Adjustments could be made, but not too many. When Blizzard insisted things were morally grey, that's because things were morally grey in the past versions, most likely.

You ask why Baine didn't protest the war when it started? He was a late addition to Zandalar. In one version of the beta, he just was randomly added alongside Oculeth. Blizzard didn't exactly spare much time or effort to insert him. Development was probably way too far ahead to do it smoothly.

Now you ask, why is Derek more important? Well, he was raised in 8.1, was he not? 8.1 wasn't as far along in development, so there was more leeway to adjust the story before they had invested too much effort into it. No need to scrap much at all. Baine cares more about Derek because that's the time the story rewrites could have had a significant impact on playable content.

You may have noticed that Darkshore is a lazily hacked together mess filled with Goblin buildings, two cloned commanders despite Malfurion and Nathanos having voiceovers for it, and so on. Darkshore was blatantly rushed to appease Nelf fans. This is not the story that was planned. This is the mess that's left over as the writers scramble to tie everything together into the new plot, which is how Blizzard writes in general.

[Soon-TM]

I think this has more to do with the Blizzard development cycle than anything else.

Let's take Warlords of Draenor as an example of this. In its original incarnations, it had a much more significant emphasis on time travel and the player was going to be stranded without Azerothian support. Yrel was going to have a dark secret. Grommash would have been the end boss. The Iron Horde was going to be more prominent. There was going to be an Ogre continent which could potentially host another expansion on Draenor. You could move your garrison around. There were cities. I get the impression that Blizzard had a lot of big ideas for Draenor. Maybe even years of ideas.

Then they realized that timetravel raised a lot of questions that Blizzard didn't want to answer and they thought using the Dark Portal was cooler, so a massive chunk of the plot got gutted. Infinite Dragons no longer show up, despite being a large part of the setup. Wrathion gets a brief mention as having been there, but we never see him.

At some point in development, the team developed the infamous "Orc Fatigue". The plot of every zone got gutted, except those with less Orcs. All these raid bosses they lovingly crafted videos for got dumped on. With all the time spent reworking the zones to erase the main plot, sacrifices were made elsewhere. Entire raid tiers gone. No Farahlon. Garrisons were made more prominent, and so customization was dumped, as were the cities.

What we see is a godawful fucking mess. The end result barely resembles the original concept. WoD as it exists is an abortion of an expansion, filled with little lingering remnants of what was meant to be. Relics of prior iterations. Ogre towers with weird time mechanics, which used to have Infinite Dragons behind them. Mentions of an Ogre continent in NPC text, a continent which simply doesn't exist. Allusions to Wrathion, who doesn't do shit but help get Admiral Taylor killed and never appears himself. Text on the WoD page about Yrel's nonexistent dark secret. Orgrim Doomhammer's redemption story only existing as he dies suddenly for no reason, instead of having a zonewide plot.

Too much effort had already been put into things to simply can the whole expansion or remove literally everything they worked on, but they could release the utter fucking mess that shoddy rewrites resulted in.

So, you ask why no one did anything earlier? I forget which interview it was mentioned, but the Saurfang plot was apparently conceived well after it was decided that Teldrassil would burn, as it took them that long to realize that it might be "dishonorable". It was hinted that Thrall would be involved in the Vol'jin quest chain, but then he wasn't. Baine was a late addition to Zandalar. Saurfang's behavior in the Stockades was rewritten pretty late in the beta. There's ingame text about Kul Tirans being slavers, beta text of a more aggressive Alliance, Earthen Ring Shaman trying to stop Kul Tiran Azerite mining replaced with near-mindless Troggs.

No one did anything earlier because no one was going to do anything in the original version of the story, and by the time they changed tracks too much work had been done to simply scrap everything and start over. Adjustments could be made, but not too many. When Blizzard insisted things were morally grey, that's because things were morally grey in the past versions, most likely.

You ask why Baine didn't protest the war when it started? He was a late addition to Zandalar. In one version of the beta, he just was randomly added alongside Oculeth. Blizzard didn't exactly spare much time or effort to insert him. Development was probably way too far ahead to do it smoothly.

Now you ask, why is Derek more important? Well, he was raised in 8.1, was he not? 8.1 wasn't as far along in development, so there was more leeway to adjust the story before they had invested too much effort into it. No need to scrap much at all. Baine cares more about Derek because that's the time the story rewrites could have had a significant impact on playable content.

You may have noticed that Darkshore is a lazily hacked together mess filled with Goblin buildings, two cloned commanders despite Malfurion and Nathanos having voiceovers for it, and so on. Darkshore was blatantly rushed to appease Nelf fans. This is not the story that was planned. This is the mess that's left over as the writers scramble to tie everything together into the new plot, which is how Blizzard writes in general.

While I agree to a large extent, the way the story is presented in the actual game can't help depicting Baine as a fawning boiking/Jaina fan. He's one of those characters which writers try so hard to make likeable, that they end up achieving the exact opposite.

[KrakHed]

While I agree to a large extent, the way the story is presented in the actual game can't help depicting Baine as a fawning boiking/Jaina fan. He's one of those characters which writers try so hard to make likeable, that they end up achieving the exact opposite.

Oh, definitely. The way the story is presented ingame, the Horde are infinitely worse than Demons and Old Gods combined.

When I look at early Cata and the leader stories and novels that emerged around that time, and how Tauren were the only race Garrosh respected besides Orcs, I'm pretty sure Baine was meant to be a partnered character with Garrosh. A moderating influence on him. The story didn't go that way, so Baine has kind of failed and outlived his original purpose and all the original plans and development for him and the Tauren were scrapped.

[Super Dickmann]

When I look at early Cata and the leader stories and novels that emerged around that time, and how Tauren were the only race Garrosh respected besides Orcs, I'm pretty sure Baine was meant to be a partnered character with Garrosh. A moderating influence on him. The story didn't go that way, so Baine has kind of failed and outlived his original purpose and all the original plans and development for him and the Tauren were scrapped.

Every time I hear that Taurajo Cata voice clip from beta-Baine and compare it to "Chop off my horn to give to a kid" in-game Baine I get a little sad.

Also good post, re the behind the scenes reasoning why no one does shit, though I'm very skeptical as to the idea that the Saurfang cinematics were a last minute addition. They're huge sinks of money and time and he's always been there in the promotional materials. Though he is conspicuously absent in BTS, which also had its blurb equally as conspicuously change twice, always in favor of making the conflict it's about more black and white.

[Soon-TM]

Every time I hear that Taurajo Cata voice clip from beta-Baine and compare it to "Chop off my horn to give to a kid" in-game Baine I get a little sad.

Just out of curiosity, what did Cata beta Baine say?

[Super Dickmann]

Just out of curiosity, what did Cata beta Baine say?

He was mounting a defense of the Gate to Mulgore against the Alliance while invoking the memory of Taurajo as a rallying cry. A bit different from exiling his people for self-defense and then tipping off the aggressor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGdJ...outu.be&t=1885

"I will not let a single human get past the gates, sound the drums! For Taurajo!"

[Soon-TM]

He was mounting a defense of the Gate to Mulgore against the Alliance while invoking the memory of Taurajo as a rallying cry. A bit different from exiling his people for self-defense and then tipping off the aggressor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGdJ...outu.be&t=1885

I see... Thanks my dude. It looks like the poor cow got castrated at some point between beta and RC

[Dagoth Ur]

"I will not let a single human get past the gates, sound the drums! For Taurajo!"

Holy shit. I've actually never heard those and now I'm beyond impressed. Despite it never being used, actually makes me dislike Baine a little bit less.

This must be the same blessed timeline where Garrosh and Garithos are having their faction war.

[Malikath]

Oh, definitely. The way the story is presented ingame, the Horde are infinitely worse than Demons and Old Gods combined.

When I look at early Cata and the leader stories and novels that emerged around that time, and how Tauren were the only race Garrosh respected besides Orcs, I'm pretty sure Baine was meant to be a partnered character with Garrosh. A moderating influence on him. The story didn't go that way, so Baine has kind of failed and outlived his original purpose and all the original plans and development for him and the Tauren were scrapped.

the forsaken != the rest of the horde.

but yes, seeing as they're all probably puppets with a shadow-magic "backdoor" that the OG can use freely means they've probably been working for the legion and the old gods unknowingly.
after-all, where did the LK GET the dark val'kyr?
like, we know he can make them. but we also know that the means of creating val'kyr can be taught and learned from legion.

[Super Dickmann]

Holy shit. I've actually never heard those and now I'm beyond impressed. Despite it never being used, actually makes me dislike Baine a little bit less.

This must be the same blessed timeline where Garrosh and Garithos are having their faction war.

It actually makes me dislike Baine more. A character who's just hot garbage 24/7 is contemptible, sure, but that's about it. A character who could've been good, but is instead hot garbage 24/7 just makes it a bit sad.

The Garithos vs. Garrosh timeline is the crown jewel of timelines.

[Soon-TM]

Holy shit. I've actually never heard those and now I'm beyond impressed. Despite it never being used, actually makes me dislike Baine a little bit less.

This must be the same blessed timeline where Garrosh and Garithos are having their faction war.

Garithos Vs Garrosh? Sign me up please. I !@#&ing hate having no choice but between the Waifu Queen and the Holy Boiking, who seem to be competing for the Idiot of the Year award.

And as the xpac goes on, it looks like there isn't even an actual choice