Datamined race intros shows Blizz set on whitewashing Horde.

[Mehrunes]

There is non-good and then there is omnicidal.

And? Is that supposed to relate to @Xilurm's commen about normal human beings IRL? In Blizzard's own other IP you can play as the Zerg who were omnicidal on an interstellar scale.

[Ersula]

Two kinds of people should be banned from all Warcraft lore conversations:

*) People who have only played Alliance so they only have half of the narrative's context

*) People who see a lifeless corpse & an undead person and says "These are the same to me. I see no difference between these two things"

[Mehrunes]

The only one of these that has significantly changed is the Forsaken, whose new direction makes sense if Derek, Calia, and Lillian are now the influencing factors rather than Sylvanas's cult of personality.

Two of these aren't even Forsaken and one of those isn't even the same kind of an undead as them (and the third joined the Forsaken only at the start of BfA) so that's kinda a problem.

If the new company line for the Forsaken is akin to the Ebon Blade's in that they work to protect the living, Average Joe who just wants to make his way in the world is going to buy it, especially when Sylvanas totally abandoned him at what felt like the hour the Forsaken needed her most.

Putting aside the Forsaken, since when is that even the Ebon Blade? They slaughter their enemies because those are their enemies, not because of some great moral aspirations about protecting the common folk. They are the faction that outright attacked two other anti-Legion factions that were actually about protecting the common folk just because it'd give them a tiny advantage. They are the faction that pursued their vendetta against the Scarlets when they weren't really a threat to anyone and while there was still a Lich King to kill. Not to mention that they are the faction that looked at pre-castration Forsaken and compared themselves to them and decided that Forsaken didn't go far enough.

[Friendlyimmolation]

you should be thanking me. really. this hurts me more than it hurts you.

Accept my protection! The Forsaken screams as he bashes the twitching human once more with a shovel.

[Eapoe]

Rebuilding some of these low-res ruins wouldn't be that bad. Calia will.

- - - Updated - - -


I think there won't be more hate than there is with Baine, who is really shitty.

Granted, but Baine is still Horde. People just call him Anduin’s pet, and it is infuriating.
Calia is straight up Alliance. It’s a tiny bit different, and even that aside having 2 racial leaders, 1 that people dislike and 1 that is actually Alliance, might be too much for some players.

[Yarathir]

Two kinds of people should be banned from all Warcraft lore conversations:

*) People who have only played Alliance so they only have half of the narrative's context

*) People who see a lifeless corpse & an undead person and says "These are the same to me. I see no difference between these two things"

That's hilarious.

[Mehrunes]

Strange whenever horde members go against orders they are normally trying to do the right thing with the least amount of death.

Koltira Deathweaver
Zellig
Bain
Saurfang

Its almost like the default state of the horde is violence the undead in peticular

Yeah, this is BS. Koltira wasn't motivated by "trying to do the right thing", he was motivated by his friendship with Thassarian. And it bit him in the ass once humans broke his truce. Which only resulted in more deaths because once Sylvanas got involved the humans got wiped off the face of the earth anyway and it only incurred pointless deaths to Koltira's own side. The same goes to Zelling and Baine. The purpose of Derek plan was to perform a surgical strike on Jaina to take Kul Tiran leadership out of the picture. Zelling and Baine in their grand moral indignation killed more people than that and it was also on their own side. And continuing the theme, the same applies to Saurfang. He refused to kill one person because of muh honor (that changed five seconds later anyway) only to admit to Nathanos moments later that Malfurion will kill scores of Horde members once he recovers. And when Sylvanas burned the tree, he even agreed with her reasoning to do so as that would indeed salvage his fuck up with Malfurion.

All of your heroes only increased the death count and did so to large degree to their own faction.

[Combatbutler]

Accept my protection! The Forsaken screams as he bashes the twitching human once more with a shovel.

Like this?

https://youtu.be/spagPS2VVXo?t=260

[Super Dickmann]

I don't see that as development, what you describe is just Forsaken related stories. The things you listed never changed who the Forsaken are.

Forsaken as a whole have always been in the dark working behind the hordes back and using them as a means to an end they have been seen as mysterious and shifty people, and they have been nothing but that up to the ending of BfA.

Now they have developed past that in a huge tonal shift. They are no longer in the dark and you can not like that, that's fine. But its still development. Its better than Forsaken still remaining the same undeveloped race from 15 years ago. As a race they have taken a huge change in development and thats good. WoW is 15 years old. Warcraft has always and should always have an ever changing world and that includes the people and culture in it.

To go from moping in ruins and just wanting revenge to wanting to exist as a people, from avoiding your homeland to establishing your claim on it and from viewing undeath solely as a negative to its possible upsides are all major changes from one side to another. This is so unsubtle there's even a quest literally called The New Forsaken going on about all this. Are they still the darkest part of the Horde? Yes. Are their core themes still undeath, the struggle with the living and their dubious place in the Horde? Of course, those are the core stories the race is a vehicle for, much like the essential surface levels of mad science, black humor and so forth. Remove these and the race is no longer the race. But it is a change, and a major one in the storytelling focus. There's a reason people debate whether they prefer pre or post-Cata Forsaken, me being in the latter camp, and it's because the race changes.

Can you spot me a similar change for the tauren, except perhaps that they're bigger pussies now than they were at their inception? What about the Darkspear, how much have they developed? The Draenei have been following the Light since inception, I think it's high time they begin doing human experimentation. How many times have the worgen dealt with internal dissent? Because the allegedly monolithic Forsaken have had traitors and internal struggle in every expansions they've been in, several times in regards to Cataclysm. The criticism that the Forsaken are somehow underdeveloped invariably falls apart under scrutiny and amounts to wishing the race was something else than what it exists to provide. The people who speak blanketly about the positivity of change and how this is a great step forward don't actually believe this as you prove at the end of this very post, they only do it when it comes to things they don't much care about. Which is fine, I also would prefer that the tauren be more like the Grimtotem and less like the Teletubbies Variety Hour but I'm not the tauren target audience and tauren posters, in as much as there are any, have very different views from me.

Societies grow and change, sometimes for the best and sometimes for the worst, and with Sylvanas now gone the Forsaken need new direction in their lives, you cannot expect them to remain the same in constant static flux, without growth and without change.

The Forsaken changing in the absence of Sylvanas does not require them to become the Ebon Blade: Extra pitiful edition. More than that, they were changed prior to her departure during BTS where the aforementioned Cata shift was dunked entirely and they were turned into a parodic Orwellian society of self-pitying sadsacks to facilitate this change here. An organic development for the Forsaken, to mirror the one they had from Wrath to Cataclysm would be that they would reject all personality cults and form a council setup from their existing cast, becoming skeptical of authority in general and renewing focus on the Cult of Forgotten Shadow, which is all about individualism and self-actualization and went badly unexplored. It would not involve them learning how bad it is to be part of a personality cult by becoming catatonic wrecks the second it's gone and then pivoting to another personality cult except this one lead by a woman who was getting fucked by footmen in a village they gassed while they were fighting for their lives and who runs contrary to every further facet of their characterization.

I want to see more races take this change too. With no intent from the writers at Blizzard the Night Elves have become soft punching bags since WoW started and now Blizzard might be giving them back some of that edge they had from Warcraft 3, I say good, go wild. Altohugh Night Elves a different barrel of fish, they went from developed and interesting to underdeveloped and boring :P

Case and point about how change without regard for characterization and without preserving what makes people like the race is bad. The Night Elves did change, and I think virtually everyone, yourself included can agree that that change has made them uniformly worse and has continued to do so throughout the entirety of their tenure. This despite them technically having major screen time in almost every expansion it's all been greeted mostly poorly. The one time there was universal like for something Night Elf-related was in the Darkshore intro cinematic when they were as close as they possibly could to their original WC3 concept. The concept is what makes the race engaging and attracts its playerbase. You can play with the concept - the way it was done with the Forsaken with what I described, or how the orcs are still recognizably orcs whether Thrall, Garrosh, Geya'rah, Saurfang or whoever is involved because they have the same throughline, but when you depart from the concept - like the undead are now and the Night Elves have done since Day 1 of WoW, you fail because the main consumer of them doesn't like it and those it does cater to don't want it.

Anyone who will be rolling a nu-undead would be served just as well rolling a worgen or rolling a human. But anyone who rolled an old Forsaken has to go Maldraxxus or roll a Death Knight to get an experience even vaguely similar, lacking much of the depth involved.

[Mashanerz]

They should just make the leveling process some chromie bullshit, "Do you remember when this happened?"

And then at the end of it you hit max level and she's can give a throwaway line like "Those were crazy times that helped mold you into the Champion™ you are today"

[Tarba]

Yeah, this is BS. Koltira wasn't motivated by "trying to do the right thing", he was motivated by his friendship with Thassarian. And it bit him in the ass once humans broke his truce. Which only resulted in more deaths because once Sylvanas got involved the humans got wiped off the face of the earth anyway and it only incurred pointless deaths to Koltira's own side. The same goes to Zelling and Baine. The purpose of Derek plan was to perform a surgical strike on Jaina to take Kul Tiran leadership out of the picture. Zelling and Baine in their grand moral indignation killed more people than that and it was also on their own side. And continuing the theme, the same applies to Saurfang. He refused to kill one person because of muh honor (that changed five seconds later anyway) only to admit to Nathanos moments later that Malfurion will kill scores of Horde members once he recovers. And when Sylvanas burned the tree, he even agreed with her reasoning to do so as that would indeed salvage his fuck up with Malfurion.

All of your heroes only increased the death count and did so to large degree to their own faction.

You also forget when Baine warned the alliance that the horde was retaliating against the attack of Theramore. Wich lead to a shit tone of alliance soldiers being brought on the field. Enhancing the number of horde casualties. The alliance fleet falling in a trap and the death of many neutral kirin tor people and their leader who where neutraly helping the alliance against the horde.
That Baine killed more horde members than sylvanas. By far.

[Bigbazz]

The biggest enemy of the Darkspear were other Jungle troll tribes that forced them on exile

My point was the Zandalari (the biggest tribe) are now part of the Horde.

[kansor]

So who do they think wanted this?

Where was this great player outcry about the Horde being too toxic and violent and evil?

Who, except the writers, felt that this was a pressing problem and that the Horde needed to be nicer?

Isn't the fact that the Horde is made up of the primal and monster races the core of its appeal?

Normally I would dish on Blizzard for being TOO commercial, but this seems like it's not commercial enough. The pet issues of the writing staff should not be dictating the direction they take the game.

[Eosia]

Fun fact: we are talking about Shadowlands where what you've written is not true. New players starts right before BfA and after lvl 10 they go to BfA.

For the first time only because, which should be obvious to just about anyone, they want people to have enough context going into Shadowlands so they're not wondering what Sylvanas has done and so forth.

And you go right into BFA.... Did Sylvanas burn the tree or commit a massacre in Legion? Nope. All those events are in BFA. So if the new player experience is shifted again and not just the updated starting area quests that came with Cata, they *STILL* are starting in the past before those events.

[Nnyco]

3.) Whitewashing things the Alliance do has always been something the narrative has done: For example, everyone comes together for deposing Sylvanas, and then there is peace, but absolutely no conversation about the Alliance assassinating Talanji's father for no ethical reason or strategic purpose.

Not to mention that they sacrificed hundrends of their own soldiers to even pull off that half-arsed plan in the first place.

[Feanoro]

Two kinds of people should be banned from all Warcraft lore conversations:

*) People who have only played Alliance so they only have half of the narrative's context

So:
1) People who have only played Horde so they only have half of the narrative's context should similarly be banned? OR
2) You're admitting the Alliance story is only reacting to the Horde? OR
3) You don't remotely see the problem in the resulting Horde echo chamber you want to create.

[Tarba]

Not to mention that they sacrificed hundrends of their own soldiers to even pull off that half-arsed plan in the first plan.

Mostly worgen and night elves were put on that suicidal mission part also. Probably because Tyrande bitched to much to Anduin.
But sacrificing troops for strategy os only evil if it's horde or sylvanas.

[Mehrunes]

Well......not to put fuel on the fire but Blizzard is doing the same thing with these lines lol. Literally making it look the other way so the horde looks less evil lol.

They've been doing the same thing with Alliance for over a decade. For example, not one character ever mentions the fact that Varian started the previous faction war and it's all always pinned on Garrosh despite the fact the war started a year (in-lore) before he even became Warchief.

[bowlink]

Yeah, this is BS. Koltira wasn't motivated by "trying to do the right thing", he was motivated by his friendship with Thassarian. And it bit him in the ass once humans broke his truce. Which only resulted in more deaths because once Sylvanas got involved the humans got wiped off the face of the earth anyway and it only incurred pointless deaths to Koltira's own side. The same goes to Zelling and Baine. The purpose of Derek plan was to perform a surgical strike on Jaina to take Kul Tiran leadership out of the picture. Zelling and Baine in their grand moral indignation killed more people than that and it was also on their own side. And continuing the theme, the same applies to Saurfang. He refused to kill one person because of muh honor (that changed five seconds later anyway) only to admit to Nathanos moments later that Malfurion will kill scores of Horde members once he recovers. And when Sylvanas burned the tree, he even agreed with her reasoning to do so as that would indeed salvage his fuck up with Malfurion.

All of your heroes only increased the death count and did so to large degree to their own faction.

first Humans broke the truce? i resently played through the aldorhall questline on horde. the horde started first by attacking human farmers by first blighting them and then turning them into forsaken against they will, all under the guise those farmers are "definitely" soldiers. Sylvanas propoganda if i ever saw it.

and the zellig baine and saurfang being responceble for more deaths argument holds no water since Sylvanas soul goal is flush as many souls down the Maw. and lets not forget that she is the one who Started this freaking war

[Schattenlied]

Eh I side with the trolls. When a bunch of monsters show up and start messing with stuff I think you have free reign to wipe them out or drive them off. If they were the same race or even natively born races like the cows I’d say they have a claim but when abunch of aliens show up waving there magic at you I say it’s fair game.

Same reason why I think the orcs should have been wiped out to the orc I don’t put any stock into the natives putting up with alien invaders.

Difference between the elves and the orcs is the orcs immediately started killing humans when they showed up, the elves did not lift a finger against the trolls... There was no "waving magic" in the faces of the trolls, the trolls just immediately started killing them at first contact.


When clearly civilized people show up and start trying to make a city, and you immediately jump to all out war with them instead of at least first trying to communicate that they are trespassing and need to move on you kinda deserve whatever you get in response...