Why I look forward to Calia's rule (if blizzard does anything with this)

[matrix123mko]

Golden will un retcon her retcon, making it so forsaken are no longer so brittle and are proud to be citizens of lordaeron. But then her brain short circuits when someone points out that’s how they were under Sylvanas before she retconned them.

As long as Alliance players enjoy that story, this will be perceived as good writing.

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They still do have a top notch Alchemy department.

Producing lab-grown body parts/organs would be child's play to them.

That would make Calia look dirty. They will go for Calia lightforging her people.

[schwank05]

The Horde should be able to be good without needing to be taken over by the Alliance, or have its religion replaced by light, or anything like that.


The Forsaken should be able to keep their shadow/alchemy themes and NOT go all golden-perfect-pretty marble and ALSO not be genocidal Scourge-Lite.

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We need Forsaken characters developed. Bethor Iceshard, Oran Snakewrithe, Helcular, Gunther Arcanus, Lady Cozwyn, High Executor Anselm, etc...

Not Nelfs like Delaryn or Sira, not Calia who was never forsaken by anyone and is just a new cult of personality, not more ALLIANCE characters

I don't want to be good. I played the Horde to be part of the evil monster faction. I am a human why would I want to play one in a fantasy game.

[matrix123mko]

I don't want to be good. I played the Horde to be part of the evil monster faction. I am a human why would I want to play one in a fantasy game.

Because Golden wants you to do so.

[Super Dickmann]

In regards to the second bit being of no particular relevance, It actually is very relevant to the very thread we are in, that being a discussion on whether Calia makes sense as a ruler. Creating a second Desolate Council will just cement the fact that the Forsaken are lost lambs who will passively waste away, since the idea of the OG Desolate Council is that the Forsaken should naturally die at some point.

It's irrelevant in the sense that while there can be in-story explanations for a certain plotline, what's being debated here are Calia's impact on the Forsaken as they have been presented up to now. The OP does not even attempt to explain how Calia fits with the Forsaken, that's not what's relevant to him or what's being discussed, but rather that she can provide more variety to the undead and that they were previously an unopposed monolith under Sylvanas. When it comes out that that isn't the case until retcons are in, it means that the solution is to a problem that had to be created and didn't exist a priori.

In that regard though I'd agree with you that a Council of NPCs for the forsaken, including Voss, Calia, The Dead Guy Proudmoore, and possibly Summermoon (and maybe more I am not aware of), will be indeed better than a single Bright Lady and uniform worhsip of the Light as you mentioned. That said we still don't actually know what WILL happen and we may be jumping to conclusions.

These characters are all associated with the Forsaken as of one expansion, which is what I'm getting at. All prior characters, from various big name executors like Wroth or Anselm, apothecaries like Lydon and Faranell, memes like Helcular or Deathstalkers like Belmont have either totally vanished or appear as one-offs. There's an entire new cast placed on the Forsaken that not only isn't reflective of what they were before, but they muddy the already poor message. The Forsaken in BTS are perpetually lied to victims who are no different from regular people save for their cosmetic condition - they are forced by an orwellian police state to follow a certain political line under a personality cult. When that figure ditches them, then, the Forsaken do not decide to reestablish separate identities or gauge what was real or not, nor do they elect leaders amongst themselves, as the Desolate Council was, but they instead have to have someone who just joined them this year (Voss), decide to import a dynastic leader to solve all their problems and become their new object of worship. It shows them to lack initiative and identity outside of whoever is in charge. I.e exactly the criticism pitted against their prior incarnation.

[bullseyed]

There's a huge ocean of difference between being evil and being unkind.

I don't want the Forsaken to be toothless or remorseful, but I also think they're far from what I'd ever call evil. I'd like to see them grow in a way that isn't as two-bit villainous as "undead guys who are bad".

I mean, the Forsaken aren't even a little bit evil. They're past victims of human genocide, who are current victims of human racism, rejected by their own families. That's as non-evil as they come.

They're also immortal, as undead don't age. They can give the gift of immortality to the rest of the humans, which will serve the dual purpose of defeating the human racism against undead, reuniting their families.

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I look forward to her becoming a raid boss after she tries to forcefully convert all the Forsaken into Lightforged as we saw with Xera and Illidan.

Too bad the kiddies here will still parrot "light = good because light" despite the fact that WoW clearly shows the light to be a fascist evil entity.

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It's all about whether the altered identity of the forsaken is still an interesting one and whether the road we take to get there is a fun story. That's on Blizzard.

Right now, Calia feels like an awkward fit for exactly that reason: the forsaken are well known as sycophants to sylvanas who blight the living and hate life and all that jazz. A holy priest for a group of vengeful edgelords? A strange pick. But if you're paying attention to the leaked dialogue so far, they seem to know this and are drawing player attention to it. I particularly think to Calia trying to relate to Voss by mentioning "listening to her father's sermons", the father that she strangled, bashed against the walls of a tower and dropped his broken body onto the stones below.

Calia has been gone a while, and doesn't have experience with what the forsaken have become in her absence, and Blizzard seems to want us to notice this.

Maybe tone down the bigoted language here?


Calia hasn't been mistreated by racist humans the way the undead have, due to her light privilege. BFA was clear with this, drawing the contrast between Zelling being rejected by his wife and kids versus Jaina accepting Calia and Derek. Neither Calia nor Derek are Forsaken, they're just undead.

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The Horde should be able to be good without needing to be taken over by the Alliance, or have its religion replaced by light, or anything like that.

The Forsaken should be able to keep their shadow/alchemy themes and NOT go all golden-perfect-pretty marble and ALSO not be genocidal Scourge-Lite.

The Horde has traditionally been the good guys in WoW. Even in BFA, the story is "we just want to live here, but we can't because the Alliance keep trying to genocide us for being green skinned, so we'll have to wipe them out so they'll leave us alone."


But hey, once the Legion mind-controlled orcs and made them attack, and once an old god mind controlled Garrosh and the Horde and made him attack. Let's victim blame the orcs for that!

[Skytotem]

The Horde has traditionally been the good guys in WoW. Even in BFA, the story is "we just want to live here, but we can't because the Alliance keep trying to genocide us for being green skinned, so we'll have to wipe them out so they'll leave us alone."


But hey, once the Legion mind-controlled orcs and made them attack, and once an old god mind controlled Garrosh and the Horde and made him attack. Let's victim blame the orcs for that!

Where on earth are you getting this at all? No one in BFA attacked the Orcs for being green skinned, the orcs attacked the nelfs unprovoked (Basically cause Sylv claimed the alliance attacked her unprovoked in stormheim but Saurfang should know better than anyone the desire to get revenge for your son) and committed a genocide, how do you get 'lets wipe them out so they'll leave us alone' out of that? How do you get 'alliance just wants to wipe us out for green skin' out of that?

Also, the legion didn't mind control the orcs, and the old gods DEFINITELY didn't mind control Garrosh. Garrosh bombed theramoore well before he started dabbling in old god juju (Though I think it was a writing mistake for blizz to make him evil it doesn't change canon lore)

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I don't want to be good. I played the Horde to be part of the evil monster faction. I am a human why would I want to play one in a fantasy game.

I think there's a middleground between being a human in a fantasy game and orcs being baby-eating monsters which is just boring and unsustainable to me.

[schwank05]

Where on earth are you getting this at all? No one in BFA attacked the Orcs for being green skinned, the orcs attacked the nelfs unprovoked (Basically cause Sylv claimed the alliance attacked her unprovoked in stormheim but Saurfang should know better than anyone the desire to get revenge for your son) and committed a genocide, how do you get 'lets wipe them out so they'll leave us alone' out of that? How do you get 'alliance just wants to wipe us out for green skin' out of that?

Also, the legion didn't mind control the orcs, and the old gods DEFINITELY didn't mind control Garrosh. Garrosh bombed theramoore well before he started dabbling in old god juju (Though I think it was a writing mistake for blizz to make him evil it doesn't change canon lore)

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I think there's a middleground between being a human in a fantasy game and orcs being baby-eating monsters which is just boring and unsustainable to me.

Im fine with middle ground on that, it is what WOW has been since release. Now its all supposed to be everyone loves everyone and lets all hold hands and sing together.

[Powerogue]

Maybe tone down the bigoted language here?

Calia hasn't been mistreated by racist humans the way the undead have, due to her light privilege. BFA was clear with this, drawing the contrast between Zelling being rejected by his wife and kids versus Jaina accepting Calia and Derek. Neither Calia nor Derek are Forsaken, they're just undead.

I'm not sure what was bigoted. I love the forsaken, not despite, but because of the edge and heavy metal motifs. Have you seen their warfront armor?

And you make a good point on Calia seemingly being well received so far by Derek and company, further demonstrating that she hasn't gone through what the forsaken have to truly understand them.

[Mehrunes]

In regards to the second bit being of no particular relevance, It actually is very relevant to the very thread we are in, that being a discussion on whether Calia makes sense as a ruler. Creating a second Desolate Council will just cement the fact that the Forsaken are lost lambs who will passively waste away, since the idea of the OG Desolate Council is that the Forsaken should naturally die at some point.

Except it wasn't the idea of the OG Desolate Council. When Nathanos relayed that information to Sylvanas he clearly said that only some disagree with her on the idea of making the Forsaken immortal.

In that regard though I'd agree with you that a Council of NPCs for the forsaken, including Voss, Calia, The Dead Guy Proudmoore, and possibly Summermoon (and maybe more I am not aware of), will be indeed better than a single Bright Lady and uniform worhsip of the Light as you mentioned. That said we still don't actually know what WILL happen and we may be jumping to conclusions.

So a character that joined the Forsaken only in BfA despite being resurrected in Cataclysm, a guy that never even joined the Forsaken and a Night Elf that joined the Forsaken for no tangible reason only to do nothing but sulk afterwards. Yeah, between this council and Calia I'd actually take Calia.

Fair nough, coup was a coup after all. Still does not explain why she'd kill the forsaken loyal to her at the forsaken/human meeting, just because they would be a bit more open to the idea of peace, in regards to the argument that there isn't violent cleansing of different opinions within her faction. After all as we know, she most benefits from death and violence for whatever her plan is.

But they weren't loyal to her. 11 out of 12 were defecting to the Alliance. That's the very antithesis of loyalty. And the only one who wasn't defecting, Elsie, still broke Sylvanas' explicit orders about the order of retreat should Sylvanas sound the horn and instead of retreating like she was supposed to she kept arguing with Calia out of all people. Which she knew about because not only did Sylvanas tell them that order twice, but one of those times was upon Elsie's own inquiry. Which was followed by Elsie herself thinking how there'd be significant repercussions for not following Sylvanas' orders given the Gathering's delicate nature.

[Yuugumo]

She is just a puppet. High King Anduin Wrynn is real leader now.

TBH she may be a puppet per the last Il Gynoth whisper: The Golden one claims a vacant throne, the crown of light will bring only darkness.