Icecrown (Spoilers)

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I find it endless amusing and endlessly sad that the horde leader ship has an alliance spy counted as one of there members for this.

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could she go to shadowlands to find anduin? yes. but she does not have to do it together with the alliance, she only follows orders from Anduin and from no one else in the alliance, without Anduin she can go along with the horde.

If she was going to go with any one she would likely try and get broll to go with her as she doesn’t have any actual connections to the horde.

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She certainly plays both sides, doesn't she?

She only ever plays one side she’s true blue all the way and always has been. Her only friends are/were varian anduin and broll and she serves anduin she has no ties to the horde and never has.

[Syegfryed]

read the dialogues right? i am worried about tyrande. furthermore blizz said that the era of evil leaders in the horde is over.

it's time for the alliance to have internal problems

yes lets believe in blizzard said, like "calia will not lead the forsaken" and other bullshit they said that we literally got the opposite

[Super Dickmann]

I keep saying, none of Sylvanas' actions make sense if we're looking at this purely from a "kill as many people as possible" scenario.

It's going to be awful, but watch this be used as a reason why she isn't 'completely evil, totally morally grey.' (She's not, but we know it's gonna be called that way.)

As @Vakir and @Jastall point out, what gets me is that you'd think either she or the Jailor would get sacrificed on the altar of characterization for the other baddie. But they both keep giving generic villain dialogues.

Also, I'm putting it out there that the reason the Jailor wants to kill the World Soul on top of being an angry, small-headed dude sad about how standard his model is, is also to stop the Old Gods from taking it over, and this expansion will introduce the characters in story to the void lords.

[Vakir]

Like, even if you strip away the generic villain dialogues - and oh boy is it generic and villainous - the entire crux of any kind of alternate keikaku plot is predicated on "Why the actual fuck didn't Sylvanas/The Jailer just tell everyone something was going down?"

Scenario #1 - If the hypothetical worse evil described on the game site is somehow omniscient, and the Jailer and Sylvanas are working together for a benevolent end, they already know about her deal with the Jailer because they're omniscient, so the act has no reason to continue.

Scenario #2 - If the hypothetical evil is the Jailer, and Sylvanas was merely Good All Along to set us free, why go through elaborate theatrics to deliberately harm characters on an unnecessary level? Many of the events in-game were predicated on her failing, so why would she set up a situation where there was no win-state? She had no reason to believe the player character could use the rune to get out. All the extra sadism and the gut-decision to fuck shit up even worse in response to Delaryn calling her on her crap wouldn't have factored into any pragmatism. This is still plausible out of writer incompetence, and the most enraging, and therefore probably due to be true and fuck my shit up.

Scenario #3 - The Jailer and Sylvanas are both evil, but there's an even bigger evil connected to the Maw a la Void Lords, as Dickmann observed. The most plausible, but still not sure about this one. The Shadowlands have been confirmed, unless they made yet another damn change, to predate the Titans and the Titans are aware of the Void Lords by virtue of Chronicle being their take. The rune to leave the Maw is implied to be not-Titan in origin by Anduin (which his knowledge of is absolute bullshit) and "The First Ones" are the ones described as the ones who made it by the Jailer, who must have a decent amount of knowledge by virtue of being known by at least one evil lieutenant contact in each Covenant zone.

Sooo...honestly, I think Shadowlands is setting up a giant hail mary for how much Chronicle took the mystique out of Warcraft by probably introducing a bunch of extra batshit cosmology the Titans, and we, are unaware of. The Jailer might be part of that puzzle.

It stands to reason it may be the case when they're promising a "conspiracy to unmake the cosmos." I really hope they're aiming for something more exciting and labyrinthine than "a big troll whispered to another troll to put an angry elf on the throne so she could start a very stupid war."

It's also completely possible that this is a simple filler story about fighting an evil spikey death entity and his elf Dragon and the actual important shit is 10.0 with Void and Light. So essentially making this the WoD 2.0 to our Mists 2.0, followed by Legion 2.0.

[Kwento]

I’m a little happy to not see Talanji holding hands with Jaina along with the rest of the Horde.
Other then that, I’m “looking forward to” saving Alliance characters on my Zandalari. It would feel “amazing” and perfectly “fit” the story.
Obviously there’s nothing we can do to make it more satisfying at this point, BfA kinda fucked us over on that, but at least give me an ability to talk to Jaina and promise her that the next time I have a chance, her head will roll. Same could be done for the Alliance who aren’t happy with peace.

[DemonHunter18]

so much bull***t in just introductory quest line.

oh and prepare for some major clusterf***

https://twitter.com/ChristieGolden/s...61700724228097

[Super Dickmann]

@Vakir

To clarify what I'm getting at - I don't mean that the Void Lords are connected to the Maw, but more the tendency Blizzard have, with both Sargeras and N'zoth, to have them be antagonistic towards the next enemy and to have them succeeding in their goal being also screwing the following villain over. Ergo, Sargeras would've stopped the Old Gods if he'd successfully stabbed the planet some place people actually cared about and if N'zoth had won, Sylvanas's plan would have fallen apart because he'd successfully turn Azeroth into a void titan and/or rule over his Black Empire forever in the absence of competition and tell his patrons to suck it. The latter is pure headcanon, I'd just find it cool.

The version of this here would be that Sylvanas and the Jailor killing the world soul, especially if this somehow 'unmakes the universe' would fuck over the Void Lords, and so they'll allude to that in-story. This isn't the reason they're doing it - they're doing it either because they're dicks or a Final Fantasy villain style motive to keep people from suffering or what have you, but it would be a consequence of their success. See also the reference in the Three Sisters comic that Sylvanas wants the end of all possibilities, which is why the Void got so salty at her. Even if she only achieves a portion of her goal - that being killing the world soul, the Void Lords are screwed since now they can't manifest into reality. It's that this is just Phase 1 of her plan to kill everyone for no adequately explained reason that is why we stop her.

[Vakir]

oh and prepare for some major clusterf***

Outside of direct expansion announcements (WoD, BFA, Mists to a lesser extent), Blizzard has never directly subverted expectations successfully. To paraphrase and modify Luke Skywalker, it is always going to go the way you think it is.

People called Death Knight Bolvar literally the moment the Wrathgate cinematic happened, even before someone could read Draconic via a Scepter questline bug. And the moment Uther explained everything in Halls of Reflection? "Gee, wonder who it could be."
"Seven manifestations of vice? Gee, wonder who is the most blusterous and outwardly antagonistic character to maybe utilize them."
"That Gul'dan fellow sure seems important. Wonder if there's any unforeseen consequences of freeing a time echo of the scariest orc ever."
"Boy, we're suddenly spending a lot of time with Saurfang. I wonder if he's going to spontaneously die?"

In this case, her knowing gif smirk is probably self-satisfaction about the precise moment Sylvanas betrays The Jailer and becomes the final boss, because of course they're not putting that slot on a character we have way less investment in. That or Calia's evil, which also feels potentially telegraphed and only held back by her being a pretty big writer's pet.

@Vakir

To clarify what I'm getting at - I don't mean that the Void Lords are connected to the Maw, but more the tendency Blizzard have, with both Sargeras and N'zoth, to have them be antagonistic towards the next enemy and to have them succeeding in their goal being also screwing the following villain over.

Ah, so it would be a convenient side-effect rather than the means to the end. Yeah, sounds very possible. I still have a gut feeling, especially with this "First Ones" talk and predating the Titans, that we're due for some shit to shove into Shadowlands that expands the final threat beyond Void Lords and throws what we know from Chronicle out of whack.

The scenarios in question were more for the people still simping, but I might as well be talking to a wall.

[Super Dickmann]

@Vakir

To be fair, both would be good story choices, so I can give her some credit there. Sylvanas definitely has more claim to the end boss spot after fifteen years than some small-headed bald dude with no motive. And Calia being evil is about the only direction you can take her character that wouldn't be bad.

Which is why I don't think the latter will happen - it's not just that she's a huge writer's pet, it's that it's telegraphed very, very heavily that she's a positive figure and previous foreshadowing of this kind, like Anduin and his three lies, have ended up red herrings. Sylvanas meanwhile can't usurp the Jailor until 9.3 for gameplay reasons, that being that Torghast has to remain a thing up until then since we've already been told it'll get seasonal changes, which if BFA's mythic affixes are any indication, will be based on the plot at the time.

When it comes to Sylvanas and the Jailor and having somewhat more depth to their motives, I think it's a crapshoot who gets to have one. With the Jailor it's already implied that the Maw wasn't always the Maw, so I'd have said you could have him want to replace the Arbiter and redirect everyone to the Maw as part of a genuine vision of the afterlife, complete with the comment about from Thrall about people in the Maw being tested, but given that he wants to destroy the world I don't see it.

Sylvanas you can go a similar route with - she wants the power involved so she can 'set us all free' from the mechanism of death and the Arbiter's design, making the afterlives a free for all, while incidentally also securing herself as God-Queen and thus staving off death for good. To get the power necessary to pull this off once it's revealed to her she needs to be able to come and go from the Maw freely, which the Jailor provides, but she also needs power, which she'd do under the cover of working for him. She didn't tell anyone about this because they might interject around the 'I need to loan several tens of thousands of innocent souls from this tree to burn in hell so I can get a power boost and pull this off, I'll free them later, honest, fam." portion of the plan.

This has several benefits as an evil plan - for one, it doesn't randomly make her selfless, she's still all about not dying, there's just benefits for others as a side-effect, for another, it's a scenario where there's a reason she can't just communicate her idea to others since not only would the means to get there be terrible, but no one, us included would have any reason to believe what she'd be trying to do would be any better than the cosmic order of things, it also preserves her as a character by having her still ultimately want to transcend all available hierarchies. Oh, and since it's still evil every step of the way and arguably evil at the end as well, she can still be the end boss and we can punt her into/tie her up in the Maw and wrap this story up.

[Vakir]

I see the latter scenario as extremely likely and I'd dig it. I'm mostly just against the idea of "Sylvanas wants to fix the afterlife, honest!" Her doing this for selfish reasons to preserve herself is 1000% in line with Cataclysm onward Sylvanas and still reconciles with the petty or sadistic things she does. "Well, this wasn't part of the plan, but FUCK IT, you still die anyway." And as you mentioned would completely fit the lack of communication.

While I can't claim to know what the intended themes of Shadowlands as an expansion are, I can venture a guess that direction would probably tie up some decent ones in a nice bow. "Death can't and should not consume all (Jailer defeated) but it's folly to make it something to fear or avoid forever (Sylvanas defeated)." Or as Bolvar puts it in the trailer, "the end is only the beginning."

Calia has the "Light has made a bargain with the enemy of all" but it's a tough read since pretty much every single cosmic aspect is due to be or has been an enemy of all at some point except maybe Life. Though the idea of a Life-aligned antagonist that's DEHTA meets the Azeroth equivalent of a pro-life clinic bomber would be hilarious. (Plus the Old Gods/Void Lords are, you know, liars. Hence why those whispers infuriate me.)

[Vakir]

You know what's the best part of Calia being Horde and a Forsaken leader now? When she inevitably goes Light crazy and we get to kill her in a few expansions' time, that's another Horde leader we get to kill!

"The more things change, the more the Alliance stays the same."

...wait, that's not how that's supposed to go.

[Super Dickmann]

I see the latter scenario as extremely likely and I'd dig it. I'm mostly just against the idea of "Sylvanas wants to fix the afterlife, honest!" Her doing this for selfish reasons to preserve herself is 1000% in line with Cataclysm onward Sylvanas and still reconciles with the petty or sadistic things she does. "Well, this wasn't part of the plan, but FUCK IT, you still die anyway." And as you mentioned would completely fit the lack of communication.

While I can't claim to know what the intended themes of Shadowlands as an expansion are, I can venture a guess that direction would probably tie up some decent ones in a nice bow. "Death can't and should not consume all (Jailer defeated) but it's folly to make it something to fear or avoid forever (Sylvanas defeated)." Or as Bolvar puts it in the trailer, "the end is only the beginning."

Pretty much. In as much as Sylvanas would be doing it for others, it'd be an extension of her projecting her experiences onto them, the same way her post-retcon relationship with the Forsaken is cast in BTS. Things like her frustration at the other undead in BTS for wanting to die, her moment with Saurfang, where she's angry that his worldview doesn't align with hers, which itself mirrors the earlier moment with her sister in War Crimes. Her goal is to remain, but she's mostly doing it out of habit as her personal reasons have taken hits. She keeps getting distracted with her pettier vendettas and the way the world has, to her damaged world view, repeatedly shown her that no one is actually on her side and understands her position.

My only hope is that they decide early this time who'll be the end antagonist and use whoever the supporting antagonist there is, be it Sylvanas or the Jailor, to characterize the main one. And that they finally ditch the mystery box. Both can work as expansion antagonists, though I'd not exactly be adopting a novel position by saying that Sylvanas is far more suited for a prominent role than a new character, but they need to actually commit to putting them in the limelight and doing shit. While this segment has a lot of problems, it does communicate why these people are a threat - it's more Broken Shore than Tanaan, at the end, you accomplish nothing, and all those NPCs stay in hell.

Calia has the "Light has made a bargain with the enemy of all" but it's a tough read since pretty much every single cosmic aspect is due to be or has been an enemy of all at some point except maybe Life. Though the idea of a Life-aligned antagonist that's DEHTA meets the Azeroth equivalent of a pro-life clinic bomber would be hilarious. (Plus the Old Gods/Void Lords are, you know, liars. Hence why those whispers infuriate me.)

I'd kill for an expansion where the baddies are a DEHTA knock-off and Gazlowe is the big neutral NPC who wants to secure the future of Azeroth Oil and its employees. When it comes to Calia though, I do think they mean Death, since it's been referred to as the enemy of all, I just don't think it'll go anywhere - on a meta reason because Calia is obviously meant to be good incarnate and Golden writes her as such, on top of having stated herself that she's the reason that this is Calia and not a new character in the role, so she has a large amount of control over how the character is handled. For an in-story reason, the Void assumes base motives where there isn't one - it can't help but see Calia being raised as a special undead as transactional, because transactional exchanges and self-interest are what its quite literally composed out of and powered by.

That said I hope you and @Nymrohd are right and we get to off her in an expansion or two.

[tristannarutofan]

Calia being 'Horde' makes sense for the sake of the Forsaken who just got fucked over by their previous ruler. Though, for Valeera, not sure if it confirms her being Horde by standing next to Horde - else that would make Mayla and Baine Alliance for having stood next to Alliance leaders before.

She's there to save anduin most likely

[Lahis]

It is kind of annoying that the alliance gets some major players to show up ... and the biggest Horde person is ... Lor'themar ... don't get me wrong, I want to see more love thrown his way, but it just seems weird.

Baine and Thrall are already in the Maw at this point.

[Vakir]

For an in-story reason, the Void assumes base motives where there isn't one - it can't help but see Calia being raised as a special undead as transactional, because transactional exchanges and self-interest are what its quite literally composed out of and powered by.

That said I hope you and @Nymrohd are right and we get to off her in an expansion or two.

Makes sense - is that how the three lies were reconciled? I'm still not entirely sure what the hell they even were. Unless we're just gonna skip right over those.

As much as I'm tired of killing Horde leaders, pretty sure Calia's wildly unpopular no matter where on the factional ideology compass you are.

Baine and Thrall are already in the Maw at this point.

I do feel they spent an inordinately higher amount of time focusing on Anduin than anyone else, albeit we dunno how extensive the cutscene of the Jailer shoving Baine off the rise (LOL) is.

[tristannarutofan]

Horde is such a joke nowadays...

Look at their "representation":

1) A pretty blood elf, who used to fight for the Alliance in WC3 and before, and even now hangs mainly around Anduin.

2) A less pretty blood elf, who prefers company of Jaina and Thalyssra to that of original horde races.

3) A less feral night elf, called nightborne. Especially weird, considering its MORE feral cousins are part of the Alliance.

4) Undead human that is undead because she was killed by Horde Warchief a few months earlier - killed because she tried to make Forsaken defect to the Alliance.

5) A troll. A sad last element of that list, as I have truly no idea which troll is that supposed to be.

Soooo. you mean....Horde, horde horde and horde? thats who the horde are, except of course for baine and thrall who are in the maw, or did you forget that?

god i'm so glad that blizz has actual decent writers and dont listen to the edgelords here

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Its like Karma - you get to enjoy your little genocide fantasy and being undefeatable and unrepentant war criminals beating Alliance which is reduced to whimpering NPC faction... but then you have to serve Calia and the like. Begs for a question - was it worth it? Dont think so. But also kinda nice since we already lost everything and you are merely on your first step down this road of pain potentially.

^ keep the alliance roleplaying for goldshire

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Many Horde players do consider Baine to be "Alliance". Calia as the new forsaken leader is gonna piss off alot of forsaken players.

Where were all these "the horde is SUPPOSE TO BE EVIL" anti "leader who doesnt hate and despite her own people" forsaken players during the 2 years horde players were like "Ug the horde isnt suppose to be evil how dare the devs make us commit warcrimes"

I feel like i'm the only one who like recognizes that both types exist. that some people pick horde becaus they like monster races and others pic it to be edgy metallica loving edgelords who like killing ppl

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"Orcs? Taurens? Goblins? More trolls? Nah, let's add another elf races and humans." - Blizzard 2020.

i think maybe the problem is for some reason you think a few horde leaders is suppose to be some sort of representation of them as a whole.

why you think that i dont know.

do you go to silvermoon and go "see what hte horde has become? 100% elves. i see nothing but elves"

[Super Dickmann]

I do feel they spent an inordinately higher amount of time focusing on Anduin than anyone else, albeit we dunno how extensive the cutscene of the Jailer shoving Baine off the rise (LOL) is.

Wait, what? Tell me more.

On another note, what is this about the First Ones? I feel like I've slept through something massive while I was bitching about elves or whatever.

[tristannarutofan]

Also for the life of me I have no idea what the fuck Valeera is doing there. I don't mean on the Horde-side of that meeting, I mean at all.

@Gehco

Because it's the thematic equivalent of making Azshara the Night Elf leader and reconstructing society around arcane magic. So, actually nevermind it isn't, since there's at least three people who play night elf and are in favor of that, whereas Calia's support consists of the writing department and people who support it out of spite. The latter I can at least respect, since they are self-aware, I can't say the same about the writers.

Can people who dont know anything about the story stop commenting on it?

Valeera is Anduin's personal bodyguard and extra loyal to him after varian died. so maybe you think one of the people who cares most about keeping him alive is invested in rescueing him
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except it isnt even remotely like that.

Calia is the rightful leader of the Lordearon kingdom, and actually cares about the lordearon people unlike sylvannas who we knew hated the forsaken since 2009.

She's Never been alliance (unless for some dumb reason we are counting the alliance that existed before it was disbanded, in which case the horde is responsible for all the attrocities of Grom and Ner'zhul and blackhand) and has only ever cared about helping people.

Furthermore the current politics has the humans and forsaken as allies so it doesnt matter whos in charge.

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Well for starters she's not a member of the forsaken either politically or biologically (magically?). Further on a meta-level she represents another step towards the flanderised 'strive to protect the living' bonless nontoxic undead as opposed to the 'badass monster' archetype the vanilla devs designed.

and sylvannas is an elf who hates the forsaken and Calia is a human ruler of the kingdom the forsaken come from who actually wants to help them.

[Vakir]

Wait, what? Tell me more.

On another note, what is this about the First Ones? I feel like I've slept through something massive while I was bitching about elves or whatever.

https://youtu.be/u33Az6oP9R0?t=1926

Starts about here. The "First Ones" is what he refers to it near the end when you reach the portal.

Since this is WoW, though, I am assuming the most juicy details are from NYI cinematics.

[tristannarutofan]

Jesus, the more I look at that picture, the more wrong I see - as @Rafoel says, the closest there is to a Horde character there who even visually fits the Horde is Rokhan and he has one of those leper player character models. The Horde has no orcs in it at all. Possibly because there's none left to put there.

Except Green Jesus, but Sylvanas abducts him. Why she doesn't just kill all the abductees is beyond me. It's not like those left over wouldn't go into the Maw anyway to try and stop her, so even it being bait is a bit blase.

thats your problem right there

you think the horde is suppose to be what it was in 2004

times change. get over it, stories evolve, the horde isnt a bunch of monsters who sit in huts made of poop, anymore