When did the Forsaken change?

[cparle87]

That's probably fairly accurate, could be down to the means of the raising as well, back in Classic the Forsaken were barely free of the Lich King's grasp, so the method was probably extreme and brutal, and ripped away remaining humanity, where as now it's probably more advanced and retains much more now

Yeah, that's how I see it too. As time passes and the forsaken deal with immediate threats, feel more secure in their existence, and become more comfortable with their place in the universe they'll be able to express more than kill/murder/take. Even in classic we saw good forsaken like Leonid and the group who stole the bloodstones from Undercity, and in Cata we even had forsaken leave the group for neutral groups like the Argent Crusade when they saw Sylvanas was falling off the right path. All the guys going "rainbows and unicorns" "retcons" and such simply weren't paying attention to what was going on. Dualism is sad.

[PenguinChan]

In the lore it blatantly changed in BTS but it makes sense that over time the Forsaken stopped having as much contempt for other races - when parts of their own race died off following not only Putress but Sylvanas over the many years of her poorly written arc. I can only imagine after so much grief and pain of following those who lead them to another death and no resolve can make the Forsaken realize maybe that isn't working out so well. To each their own about how it has ended up but I've always felt the game has portrayed not all Forsaken are alike; let alone near emotionless rage husks. Sylvanas was already a key point to that before she went haywire in the lore.

[Flurryfang]

@Flurryfang

"Sure, the Forsaken reaccepted their prior national identity, reconsidered their undeath and had to fix their relationship with the Horde going from hidden to out in the open, but that's not actually change because they didn't get rid of the gas the making of which has been fundamental to their goals and aesthetic since literally their first zone in the first game."

I wish that at least some of the people who make these asinine arguments were honest and said that they don't give a shit about changes or about internal conflict per se but only about ones that produce the results they were after. I've flat out stated that I've no issue with retcons provided they produce more faction conflict, both inside and out and can create more stories, hence why I'm entirely for say, the Thrall Durotar retcon or the initial orcish retcon since it's only qualitatively that we can actually argue about anything. The amount of people who actually want change for its own sake rather than change that caters to their preferences or interests in some way are next to none.

Well damm, you just went from 20 to 1000 in a second there xD Saying that they are asinine arguments makes you look like a complete jackass, cause they are not factual arguments, they are arguments of opinions. You say that they did all of this, i say otherwise. I don't see this "reacceptance" or "reconsideration" as actual something that happen to the race. Just because it was mentioned in books with "Then the Forsaken had to really prove themselves to the Horde again", does not mean it actually happen in the game. The best example of this, is the betrayel at the Wrath Gate. One would believe, that the Forsaken would have something to prove after that, yet the only one who talk about this, is Sylvanas. Nothing else in the race changed, the war against the Gilnean was a push from Garrosh to make the undead earn their place in his better Horde, not a form of reparation from the earlier betrayel. So again, nothing changed in the race itself, only the interaction of their main leader towards other leaders. The characters change, while the races get stagnant.

So i guess i am one of the "next to none" people, because i do give a shit about internal conflics and changes, cause i believe that WoWs races have a need for progress or else they get stagnant and boring, like most of them have become right now. None of them develop based upon the things that happen, only some of the character that represent them.
And saying that retcons are good aslong as they create faction conflict is asinine(), cause then you can just retcon most of the main characters, into complete chaos within the Horde xD

[Aucald]

She is indeed not the only example, but what I'm demonstrating by referencing her or the granny or the Agamand family and so and so forth is that we already had a civilian perspective shown to us and for the reasons I argue, it was a perspective with greater depth before BTS as compared to the BTS one. What we weren't shown, I'll give you, is this particular civilian perspective, but that's because it'd be impossible to do so under the framework the writers had previously set up. You might prefer the new version and I might prefer their whole lot thrown into a furnace, but what they provide is not some hitherto unseen depth because the depth was already there and plain in the text. If your argument has shifted from 'they have depth' now when before they didn't and in that same text you also confirm that actually there were tons of people who's conflict is shown with some depth already, which is what I'm getting at, then the initial premise fails as well and the position goes from 'they didn't have anything before' to 'they didn't have this before'. Which I'll easily give you - they did not and could not have this before, but as, were they to be able to tell this story and character many other stories and characters would not gel and would altogether be absent there's a reason virtually every Forsaken player figures that that's a sacrifice not worth making.

And as I said above, the narrative was at pains to show a particular aspect of the Forsaken previously - the aspect Sylvanas directly cultivated and inspired in her people. She *wanted* them angry, vengeful, and overall to embrace the darker aspects of their new natures. That's the kind of emotions a chessmaster wants in their (un)living weapons. It wouldn't do for the Forsaken to be moping about, pining for lives they couldn't recapture (at least according to her PR) - she needed them wrathful, vengeful, so that they could be aimed unerring at the Scourge when the time came. In Classic we witnessed the society that Sylvanas promulgated as queen of a cult of personality, using her position as the savior of the Forsaken people to see it done. She promoted violence, hostility, and severance as a means to an end because it made sense for her to do so. Nothing about that history retroactively changes as a result of Cata or BfA, it's still there, and the events it motivated all still occurred and play into WoW's present.

Their morality is influenced by their nature as undead, that's what I'm getting at - this is not the case with the new civilian Forsaken or people like Derek. To them this is a premise that's entirely unimportant, because their narrative centers around dehumanization and social pressure, all outwardly induced, not about dealing with a fundamental alteration to their lives. The current undead were not able to readopt their living ones, the Forsaken historically could do not do so, even when they wanted to. Had Sylvanas not shot Parqual, he could have been with his daughter and lived a fairly standard life. But even once Bartholomew moves from one social mileau to an entirely different one, he's still affected by his curse. I deliberately use an outlier here to get my point across because despite Bartholomew and say, any random selection of Executors being based in a story that has the same core premises, they reach different ends and follow the same rules. The BTS Forsaken follow different rules. This is also the difference between the Cataclysm change and the BTS change - Cataclysm does not change anything brought up before or alter the experience that was had then, but builds up on it, hence the Forsaken reassessment of themselves in the direction of self-improvement while being cast into a different circumstance, rebuilding their situation with the Horde, the focus on Lordaeron and so forth, things that were on the backburner in Vanilla. It does not change the start point but what comes after. It's also why I can't really agree or follow the argument made regarding this being either an appeal to tradition or to it. Not just because on account of being fiction, the characters are writing tools and ergo their consistency is desirable, not just because of the change in premises or that maintaining theme is important when you're selling a product based on that theme, as is the case here, but because the new framework changes them as much as it does everyone else. Judkins being allowed to leave to spread hope or Lilian being allowed to do whatever or the self-destructive level of trust placed in the autonomy of basically every named Forsaken who later turns on her, plus the constant appeals to the past either flat out have to be disregarded or make those involved look stupid. Those who were previously heroic, be it for what they did in the war or the stands they took or for how they dealt with their condition are rendered, as I pointed out before, into idiots or sadsacks when these actions retroactively happened under other circumstances.

Influenced, yes. Predicated entirely, no. We don't really know much about Derek's state of mind, either; you conclude his days of triage with Calia are all about extra torments he received at Sylvanas' hands, but you do so without any real evidence. He could well have spent the time coming to grips with his new nature as an undead being, and given the information we're later show in Shadows Rising this may well prove the case. The similarly afflicted Dark Rangers come to Calia for the same reason, and I said previously they don't have Derek's extra experiences of torture, they come to Calia for relief from their suffering because they've come to understand she can somehow soothe those pains. We also have no idea what kind of life Parqual might hypothetically had if he had escaped death at Sylvanas' hands. I mean think back to how curated the Gathering actually was, and even with the handpicked people you still had those who were spurned by their living or undead friends and relatives. Would the people of Stormwind, bearing the horrid legacy of the Third War, accept a Forsaken in their midst (because he certainly wasn't returning to the Undercity under Sylvanas' rule)? Would if be any kind of life for him or his daughter if he subject to constant suspicion, ridicule, or outright disgust in his new home? We'll never know the answer to those questions - but I highly doubt the prospect would be as rosy as you seem at pains to assert. Personally speaking, I think the narrative of the Forsaken is at a place now where the Forsaken need to define who they are and where they stand as a people - Sylvanas is gone, and their sense of overriding purpose is gone (external and false though it may have been), and while the Forsaken have achieved some degree of acceptance it is neither total nor unanimous in any sense. The living may still choose not to accept them, and their prior choices limit their options in terms of allies and friends. Not to borrow a cliche, but it's definitely a crossroads for the Forsaken, and that also opens up a multitude of narrative possibilities they've never had before.

I mean, acceptance is a given - canon is there. The sum of what the player can do is complain about it until they change certain elements, usually the most minor exprsesions. The players couldn't have any effect on the overall route, but they could at least cut out that insipid line about tireless defense of the living. But that does not make it good, nor gel it with what came before. The characters you reference are absent and the assorted retcons turn any Forsaken who partakes in what was the Forsaken baseline prior into a very different outlier to the new premise - i.e someone who's deliberately a dick for no reason when everything is offered on a silver platter and when he lacks either natural or nurture elements to act in that fashion. Mind, this is an irrelevant concern since no such Forsaken exist anymore. In my experience I've yet to see much of anyone previously invested in the race who prefers this new direction - its support consists almost exclusively of people who support it out of contrarian reasons, i.e because it pisses off people they don't like while having no intention of actually touching the race or among the Alliance. The current version has no more dimension than what was already had before - it's just a type of one-dimensionality that we already had and is catered to by multiple other races, humans and worgen most of all. No one has been able to actually explain what this depth is, only go on about how they prefer the Forsaken now that - by your own admission, their previous core has been expunged and how under this new version, they can tell different stories. What story you can reasonably tell except to confirm their ties to the living and then throw them into the sun I don't know, because any avenue for conflict either within the race or without with the faction itself has been stripped out. What's certain is that it'll have nothing but the incongruous name and the very bare bones in common with the race as it was and developed in its prior time.

I still don't know what you mean when you say such characters "don't exist anymore," it's not as if the changes to the Forsaken in BfA were some kind of magical eraser that excised these characters from existence. Calder Gray is still out there being crazypants as recent as WoD. Belmont is literally *in* BfA and laughs in the face of Tyrande herself, declaring all of Darkshore will belong to the Forsaken. Faranell is also in Darkshore during BfA, and survives the fighting. Lydon has been inactive since Cata but he's not dead, so unless the Forsaken cast him out for some unknown reason he's still active and "alive" (he was also featured in the 10th anniversary version of the "Tarren Mill vs. Southshore" PvP battleground back in 2014). Keever was also at Darkshore and to our knowledge remains alive. So no, I don't think your strange retroactive argument really bears out - all these established characters who represent the original tenor of the Forsaken still exist and still have their positions in the hierarchy. Perhaps if there are sweeping changes in their society I'll come around to your way of thinking, but for now there's no real evidence of what you're talking about as concerns characters disappearing or changing to suit some nebulous retcon. I agree the Forsaken have changed, and are changing more in all likelihood, but the specter of their past is still present and still shaping those changes for better or worse.

[Super Dickmann]

Well damm, you just went from 20 to 1000 in a second there xD Saying that they are asinine arguments makes you look like a complete jackass, cause they are not factual arguments, they are arguments of opinions. You say that they did all of this, i say otherwise. I don't see this "reacceptance" or "reconsideration" as actual something that happen to the race. Just because it was mentioned in books with "Then the Forsaken had to really prove themselves to the Horde again", does not mean it actually happen in the game. The best example of this, is the betrayel at the Wrath Gate. One would believe, that the Forsaken would have something to prove after that, yet the only one who talk about this, is Sylvanas. Nothing else in the race changed, the war against the Gilnean was a push from Garrosh to make the undead earn their place in his better Horde, not a form of reparation from the earlier betrayel. So again, nothing changed in the race itself, only the interaction of their main leader towards other leaders. The characters change, while the races get stagnant.

So i guess i am one of the "next to none" people, because i do give a shit about internal conflics and changes, cause i believe that WoWs races have a need for progress or else they get stagnant and boring, like most of them have become right now. None of them develop based upon the things that happen, only some of the character that represent them.
And saying that retcons are good aslong as they create faction conflict is asinine(), cause then you can just retcon most of the main characters, into complete chaos within the Horde xD

I attack your arguments as asinine because they are, transparently so - to say that the Forsaken going from being against making new undead and wanting to take out Arthas without having major interests in making a society to wanting to make a society based on their past history in Lordaeron and engaging in necromancy depicts no change is demonstrably wrong. To say that to go from having next to no interaction with the Horde to having a whole zone based on the aftermath of the Wrathgate, where they're thrown into a conflict by the Horde and have to play around the rules of the Warchief is not a new dynamic is similarly wrong. You encounter this change in your very first quest and your very first subzone as an undead player, centering around the Forsaken's new penchant for necromancy and the attitude of both those newly raised and those already in that society. You return to that well again both in Silverpine regarding the ethics and the pitfalls of the method with how Godfrey betrays you and Garrosh likens the Forsaken to the Lich King, and in Hillsbrad where their limits are shown with Stillwater and their rules on depriving their own of free will. This is not relegated to some obscure sidematerial, it's text, readily apparent, all based around the implication of a story beat that didn't exist in Vanilla but naturally followed on from what was set up there. Multiple people have spent pages upon pages arguing about it in just said topic and drawing a line between Vanilla to Wrath and Cata to Legion Forsaken society.

That change exists is self-evident, and to claim it didn't is not a difference of opinion, it's simply false - hence my point that it's not about the presence of change but whether it's desirable change and explaining my own take on retcons. I am fine with retcons provided they enable more stories and conflict than the prior version. The orcish retcon that made them tied to the Legion opened up more stories than could otherwise have been told, Durotar being a low-resource shithole and the orcs being dissatisfied with it and with Thrall accordingly thus leading to Garrosh enabled more stories both intra-orc, intra-Horde and in the conflict with the Alliance. The current Forsaken change meanwhile invalidates prior stories and has a very low bench for what further stories can be told. Tellingly, both of these are additive - the prior concepts can still exist and have a place there, even a major one, clashing with the new, whereas the Forsaken changes are subtractive, triviliazing previous plot beats and removing instead of adding characters. Hence, change and retcons are not necessarily good or bad, but are based on their effect, what they add and what they take away.

And as I said above, the narrative was at pains to show a particular aspect of the Forsaken previously - the aspect Sylvanas directly cultivated and inspired in her people. She *wanted* them angry, vengeful, and overall to embrace the darker aspects of their new natures. That's the kind of emotions a chessmaster wants in their (un)living weapons. It wouldn't do for the Forsaken to be moping about, pining for lives they couldn't recapture (at least according to her PR) - she needed them wrathful, vengeful, so that they could be aimed unerring at the Scourge when the time came. In Classic we witnessed the society that Sylvanas promulgated as queen of a cult of personality, using her position as the savior of the Forsaken people to see it done. She promoted violence, hostility, and severance as a means to an end because it made sense for her to do so. Nothing about that history retroactively changes as a result of Cata or BfA, it's still there, and the events it motivated all still occurred and play into WoW's present.

It did not portray an aspect, it portrayed a baseline. No element you cite was apparent as having been outwardly induced. Sylvanas did not care to impress social standards upon some random civilian in a cave or a dude at his mill to have them react in a certain way to their loved ones, they tell you why they feel that way and Sylvanas does all of nothing all the way up until Wrath. None of these people forgot their identities - the Barovs were still after deeds of their past lives, Clarice, the Agamands and so on tackled them in their own ways, based on their condition of undeath and a provable, actual rejection by the living, extending to Stormwind's policy that did at the time mean to wipe them out. But I don't need to be the one to tell you this, you've told as much yourself a page ago:

While the Lich King was still active in the world Sylvanas didn't need to constrain her Forsaken, nor did she particular care to - the Forsaken were weapons in her eyes, and their individual freedoms didn't matter insofar as their need and her need for vengeance were shared (which they almost always were). Both Sylvanas and the Forsaken bore considerable animus toward the Scourge and the Lich King, and that shared need for vengeance kept the Forsaken loyal to Sylvanas and on task toward that end. When the Lich King was finally undone Sylvanas was forced with the necessity of reorganized the Forsaken by force - she no longer had their shared focus on the Lich King to hold them, and their love for her as their queen while considerable was not as binding as their original shared desire for revenge.

Now, the Aucald of last page is wrong, whereas this page's Aucald is correct, since BTS's retcon makes the societal change induced solely by Sylvanas to have applied at all times back up to Vanilla, hence why Parqual complains about having to steal books because all others are burned and the thought police will catch you for talking about your past life, when in-game he's surrounded by them and makes no reference to it. Ditto Sylvanas is apparently extremely committed to exercising extensive and costly thought control despite having been previously shown to be apathetic and intending suicide after her fight with Arthas. But the fact that even you have to switch between these two takes shows the incoherence of the resulting story. Really, it doesn't matter which Aucald is right, because the whole sentiment is beside the point - the thing they were supposedly reacting to didn't exist as a concept until BTS and its introduction as a concept radically changes everything that came before to unrecognizability. Sylvanas having to force people to give up on their past lives in a situation where reapproachment would have your heart burnt at a pyre to return to the Light and those people seek out deeds to restore their claim on their priority is just as absurd as Sylvanas herself referring to those claims verbatim or the Forsaken characterizing their own prior Vanilla-era time as sadsacks and wishing to move past that.

Influenced, yes. Predicated entirely, no. We don't really know much about Derek's state of mind, either; you conclude his days of triage with Calia are all about extra torments he received at Sylvanas' hands, but you do so without any real evidence. He could well have spent the time coming to grips with his new nature as an undead being, and given the information we're later show in Shadows Rising this may well prove the case. The similarly afflicted Dark Rangers come to Calia for the same reason, and I said previously they don't have Derek's extra experiences of torture, they come to Calia for relief from their suffering because they've come to understand she can somehow soothe those pains. We also have no idea what kind of life Parqual might hypothetically had if he had escaped death at Sylvanas' hands. I mean think back to how curated the Gathering actually was, and even with the handpicked people you still had those who were spurned by their living or undead friends and relatives. Would the people of Stormwind, bearing the horrid legacy of the Third War, accept a Forsaken in their midst (because he certainly wasn't returning to the Undercity under Sylvanas' rule)? Would if be any kind of life for him or his daughter if he subject to constant suspicion, ridicule, or outright disgust in his new home? We'll never know the answer to those questions - but I highly doubt the prospect would be as rosy as you seem at pains to assert. Personally speaking, I think the narrative of the Forsaken is at a place now where the Forsaken need to define who they are and where they stand as a people - Sylvanas is gone, and their sense of overriding purpose is gone (external and false though it may have been), and while the Forsaken have achieved some degree of acceptance it is neither total nor unanimous in any sense. The living may still choose not to accept them, and their prior choices limit their options in terms of allies and friends. Not to borrow a cliche, but it's definitely a crossroads for the Forsaken, and that also opens up a multitude of narrative possibilities they've never had before.

I mean, the dark rangers looking to Calia to soothe them is itself so blatantly retarded and ridiculous that I've eviscerated it in entirely different topics and they're such blank slates that I can't actually assess them past the absurdity of them going to another continent to connect with some random human princess with a different type of undeath, following a different religion in a land they have no tie in while their own people are more than happy to accept them. I have a conspiracy theory that this wasn't supposed to be the case and there was either a Delaryn story somewhere along the way that got cut, or that the quest with Calia was meant to be her reaching out to actual Lordaeronian Forsaken who've lost direction, but that it was changed due to the backlash to 8.1. I've no proof of this but it'd explain a lot, including the new night elf dark ranger Visrynn with the same position and prominence but no prior experience or that most of the dark rangers we hear about in the book are night elves.

But Derek's case is fairly clear - his undeath isn't what troubles him, in so far as we've ever seen it, it's all centered around the treatment he received by Sylvanas, just like how Parqual is not changed by undeath but by what Sylvanas has inflicted on him and the Forsaken population in general in the post-BTS canon through her police state.

As already mentioned, to even conceive of this story under the prior framework would not make sense, not just because the Forsaken weren't a police state, this we've already gone over - but by the simple fact that their problem was not externally induced alone, but was a function of their condition and the rejection by their loved ones was not just some evil bitch tricking the gullible morons into ignoring their interests, but provably the case and not for one dimensional reasons of bigotry against undead who're actually just like them, but painful history, religion and a fundamental change that makes the undead not like them. They can be close, they can be good and kind and heroic, but they were different. In sidelining this element and by simplifying the living-undead divide as well as the appraisal of their human lives as something entirely desirable to aspire to as it was, with undead being defective humans rather than focus on the state, you can tell fewer stories than you would do otherwise and they are blander stories as well. The story of deception reduces individual initiative on either side, and a story that limits these barriers and cultural discrepancies leaves fewer avenues for expression. This state of events has done much to rob the Forsaken of their initiative and decisiveness, the titular Will of the Forsaken so essential to the race that it's an actual racial ability, to instead be spectators - both in their prior conflicts, which actually weren't a combination of cultural factors, their inherent nature and the attitudes of their enemies but really one bitch using them for her increasingly sequitous, nonsensical plan with none the wiser.

I still don't know what you mean when you say such characters "don't exist anymore," it's not as if the changes to the Forsaken in BfA were some kind of magical eraser that excised these characters from existence. Calder Gray is still out there being crazypants as recent as WoD. Belmont is literally *in* BfA and laughs in the face of Tyrande herself, declaring all of Darkshore will belong to the Forsaken. Faranell is also in Darkshore during BfA, and survives the fighting. Lydon has been inactive since Cata but he's not dead, so unless the Forsaken cast him out for some unknown reason he's still active and "alive" (he was also featured in the 10th anniversary version of the "Tarren Mill vs. Southshore" PvP battleground back in 2014). Keever was also at Darkshore and to our knowledge remains alive. So no, I don't think your strange retroactive argument really bears out - all these established characters who represent the original tenor of the Forsaken still exist and still have their positions in the hierarchy. Perhaps if there are sweeping changes in their society I'll come around to your way of thinking, but for now there's no real evidence of what you're talking about as concerns characters disappearing or changing to suit some nebulous retcon. I agree the Forsaken have changed, and are changing more in all likelihood, but the specter of their past is still present and still shaping those changes for better or worse.

This reminds me of Mace going on about Mordent Evenshade and how this shows a huge bold step for the Highborne in his unvoiced, lineless cameo in Darkshore, surrounded by the actually dominant and relevant night elf themes and characters. I love Calder Gray, and my complaints don't even go to WoD. I have no issue with the Forsaken not having screen time provided the screentime they do have is relevant to their story - Legion had a Forsaken story following up on Cataclysm and it was a nice one, even if it was ultimately a lot more about Genn and Sylvanas than about their actual component races. Stormheim was good. My complaints always have been relegated strictly to the post-BTS era, and how in the process of the major changes of the Forsaken, many previously core characters and roles - be it Sylvanas herself, the RAS, the Executors and Deathstalkers have been either explicitly removed or, as you say of Lydon, inactive. Belmont and Faranell showing up was good, but much like Darkshore itself - ultimately very shallow, because the Forsaken and the Night Elves have no historic ties or conflicts, and those characters appear for a pair of lines while much more emphasis is placed on Sira, who'd ultimately leave the faction, and her problem with Maiev. If anything, Darkshore is kind of an apotheosis of what the Forsaken would be if they were what certain forum posters talk about - plague-throwing dickheads with no characterization. A fine aesthetic and a fun romp on a base level, if a bit low on new assets, but thematically empty, with no depth, which can be said about even things that should be a huge deal to any incarnation of the Forsaken, like the loss of Capital City. It should've been humans/worgen vs Forsaken and orcs vs night elves, but that's veering off-topic, as has most of this spiel, so it might be wise to cut it down to a core point or two and leave it at that to avoid hour-long write-ups.

[Aucald]

It did not portray an aspect, it portrayed a baseline. No element you cite was apparent as having been outwardly induced. Sylvanas did not care to impress social standards upon some random civilian in a cave or a dude at his mill to have them react in a certain way to their loved ones, they tell you why they feel that way and Sylvanas does all of nothing all the way up until Wrath. None of these people forgot their identities - the Barovs were still after deeds of their past lives, Clarice, the Agamands and so on tackled them in their own ways, based on their condition of undeath and a provable, actual rejection by the living, extending to Stormwind's policy that did at the time mean to wipe them out.

I think it stretches credulity to imagine that Sylvanas has zero influence on her own people, especially as you've previously agreed she ruled as the head of a cult of personality centered around herself. Her speech in WC3: TFT actually outlines her view of how Forsaken society is to be, and the Forsaken (lacking anything else to truly hold to) latch on to her words as though they were gospel. This isn't to say they didn't have good reasons for feeling the things they felt, either; but there are very obvious and salient downward pressures in their society to embrace isolationism, anger, and a sense of xenophobic nationalism.

Now, the Aucald of last page is wrong, whereas this page's Aucald is correct, since BTS's retcon makes the societal change induced solely by Sylvanas to have applied at all times back up to Vanilla, hence why Parqual complains about having to steal books because all others are burned and the thought police will catch you for talking about your past life, when in-game he's surrounded by them and makes no reference to it. Ditto Sylvanas is apparently extremely committed to exercising extensive and costly thought control despite having been previously shown to be apathetic and intending suicide after her fight with Arthas. But the fact that even you have to switch between these two takes shows the incoherence of the resulting story. Really, it doesn't matter which Aucald is right, because the whole sentiment is beside the point - the thing they were supposedly reacting to didn't exist as a concept until BTS and its introduction as a concept radically changes everything that came before to unrecognizability. Sylvanas having to force people to give up on their past lives in a situation where reapproachment would have your heart burnt at a pyre to return to the Light and those people seek out deeds to restore their claim on their priority is just as absurd as Sylvanas herself referring to those claims verbatim or the Forsaken characterizing their own prior Vanilla-era time as sadsacks and wishing to move past that.

I'm only wrong if we take your supposition as a given (e.g. BTS's retcon makes the societal change induced solely by Sylvanas to have applied at all times back up to Vanilla), which I don't. Before the Storm isn't a retcon, and so it doesn't change anything retroactively back to Vanilla/Classic. I've already explained how the changes work - Sylvanas promoting rage and hatred to better "sharpen" the Forsaken as weapons to be aimed at the Lich King until the events of WotLK. Then Sylvanas loses her purpose in unlife and is given a new one by the Val'kyr - use the Forsaken as a shield, which requires she reorder society around herself, necessarily limiting the Forsaken's lateral freedom (what few they had prior) out of a necessity to keep them close and loyal to her. Before the Storm shows us the outcome of this change in her rule, having turned the Undercity into a veritable police state where reintegration of *any* kind is stifled and actively discouraged by the powers that be. Forsaken society, meanwhile, changed because the same thing happened to them that happened to Sylvanas in WotLK/Cata, with the Lich King dead they were faced with the ultimate existential question: "what now?" Their great purpose fulfilled, what do they do with their society? What does the world of the living offer the undead? Do they try to reconcile with their former lives, or do they cleave to their old hatred, and which if any offer a resolution that ultimately leads to continued existence? Hence, the Classic era Forsaken don't change, but they still are forced to deal with these questions - with some, like the Desolate Council, seeking a way to reunify with the world as it is, and others like Belmont seeking a way to change the world by force.

I mean, the dark rangers looking to Calia to soothe them is itself so blatantly retarded and ridiculous that I've eviscerated it in entirely different topics and they're such blank slates that I can't actually assess them past the absurdity of them going to another continent to connect with some random human princess with a different type of undeath, following a different religion in a land they have no tie in while their own people are more than happy to accept them. I have a conspiracy theory that this wasn't supposed to be the case and there was either a Delaryn story somewhere along the way that got cut, or that the quest with Calia was meant to be her reaching out to actual Lordaeronian Forsaken who've lost direction, but that it was changed due to the backlash to 8.1. I've no proof of this but it'd explain a lot, including the new night elf dark ranger Visrynn with the same position and prominence but no prior experience or that most of the dark rangers we hear about in the book are night elves.

You make a number of reaches here, none of which are in any way supported by the existing lore. Sure, they seek out Calia because she's a new kind of undead being seemingly untroubled by her state and seemingly able to help Forsaken accept or come to grips with their condition - but nothing in the narrative directly states or even implies that they follow her religion or any such nonsense. She's obviously a being some kind of gift, perhaps even a way out, and Delaryn and her retinue seem desperate for some kind of solution (one Calia may not even be able to offer them as she did with Derek). As for them travelling from Darkshore to Tirisfal Glades, well; Derek and Calia do the same thing in no time at all (going from Kul Tiras to Tirasfal Glades in the veritable blink of an eye). This is a gameplay mechanic, not an article of lore. It's more likely Delaryn and her retinue came to the Eastern Kingdom at Voss' invitation, just as Calia and Derek did. Since Voss was the one pulling strings here.

But Derek's case is fairly clear - his undeath isn't what troubles him, in so far as we've ever seen it, it's all centered around the treatment he received by Sylvanas, just like how Parqual is not changed by undeath but by what Sylvanas has inflicted on him and the Forsaken population in general in the post-BTS canon through her police state.

I've already stated my disagreement here - so you're going to have to provide some kind of lore justification to prove your assertion here, that Derek required Calia's care because of his torture at Sylvanas' hands. As for Parqual, he was described as being exceedingly fragile in undeath, so much so that his daughter couldn't embrace him at the Gathering - something that has nothing to do with Sylvanas' treatment and everything to do with the nature of undeath.

As already mentioned, to even conceive of this story under the prior framework would not make sense, not just because the Forsaken weren't a police state, this we've already gone over - but by the simple fact that their problem was not externally induced alone, but was a function of their condition and the rejection by their loved ones was not just some evil bitch tricking the gullible morons into ignoring their interests, but provably the case and not for one dimensional reasons of bigotry against undead who're actually just like them, but painful history, religion and a fundamental change that makes the undead not like them. They can be close, they can be good and kind and heroic, but they were different. In sidelining this element and by simplifying the living-undead divide as well as the appraisal of their human lives as something entirely desirable to aspire to as it was, with undead being defective humans rather than focus on the state, you can tell fewer stories than you would do otherwise and they are blander stories as well. The story of deception reduces individual initiative on either side, and a story that limits these barriers and cultural discrepancies leaves fewer avenues for expression. This state of events has done much to rob the Forsaken of their initiative and decisiveness, the titular Will of the Forsaken so essential to the race that it's an actual racial ability, to instead be spectators - both in their prior conflicts, which actually weren't a combination of cultural factors, their inherent nature and the attitudes of their enemies but really one bitch using them for her increasingly sequitous, nonsensical plan with none the wiser.

I mean you're basically trying to argue against canon here - Before the Storm tells us Sylvanas' Undercity was a veritable police state, and while you may greatly dislike the story you can't just throw it out and not consider it canon, that's not how canonicity works. It *was* a police state in every functional way we reckon it: freedoms denied, industry stifled, personal exploration limited, etc. etc. You don't get to choose piecemeal what canon you do and don't accept as genuine, you either accept the whole of it or you don't. We may not like how it ultimately pans out, but it is what it is.

This reminds me of Mace going on about Mordent Evenshade and how this shows a huge bold step for the Highborne in his unvoiced, lineless cameo in Darkshore, surrounded by the actually dominant and relevant night elf themes and characters. I love Calder Gray, and my complaints don't even go to WoD. I have no issue with the Forsaken not having screen time provided the screentime they do have is relevant to their story - Legion had a Forsaken story following up on Cataclysm and it was a nice one, even if it was ultimately a lot more about Genn and Sylvanas than about their actual component races. Stormheim was good. My complaints always have been relegated strictly to the post-BTS era, and how in the process of the major changes of the Forsaken, many previously core characters and roles - be it Sylvanas herself, the RAS, the Executors and Deathstalkers have been either explicitly removed or, as you say of Lydon, inactive. Belmont and Faranell showing up was good, but much like Darkshore itself - ultimately very shallow, because the Forsaken and the Night Elves have no historic ties or conflicts, and those characters appear for a pair of lines while much more emphasis is placed on Sira, who'd ultimately leave the faction, and her problem with Maiev. If anything, Darkshore is kind of an apotheosis of what the Forsaken would be if they were what certain forum posters talk about - plague-throwing dickheads with no characterization. A fine aesthetic and a fun romp on a base level, if a bit low on new assets, but thematically empty, with no depth, which can be said about even things that should be a huge deal to any incarnation of the Forsaken, like the loss of Capital City. It should've been humans/worgen vs Forsaken and orcs vs night elves, but that's veering off-topic, as has most of this spiel, so it might be wise to cut it down to a core point or two and leave it at that to avoid hour-long write-ups.

I assume this is some kind of allusion meant to cast aspersion on what I'm trying to relate, otherwise I fail to see how it's relevant to this discussion? Before the Storm wanted to tell a specific story about the Forsaken, one that didn't concern itself with the elements of the Forsaken military, the RAS, or Sylvanas' inner circle and instead about the workaday polity of the Forsaken - the lower decks, if you will, where the Forsaken merchant, artisan, and plebian castes toil without the freedoms accorded to Executors, Deathstalkers, or Apothecaries. This is a part of the Forsaken society as much as the previously mentioned groups are, and it's a part of the society we've seldom (almost never) seen. Especially not in the context of all that's happened to the Forsaken since we last saw that very little back in Classic (e.g. the death of the Lich King, Sylvanas' growing monomania with immortality, the fallout of the Gathering, and the destruction of their home and their lives as refugees). Hell, the story would be increasingly unrealistic if the Forsaken hadn't fundamentally changed as a result - that's a lot of major upheavals for the status quo to just go on its merry way. As for Darkshore and its story, I agree that's pretty lackluster - a *lot* of BfA is lackluster when it comes to lore because of ham-fisted execution (of which Teldrassil/Darkshore is kind of the nadir). I would also agree that would be singularly terrible if it was *all* the lore the Forsaken had, but fortunately this is not and won't be the case going forward.

[Ardenaso]

That was the doing of Warden Stillwater, who was so insane that the Forsaken renounced him utterly and killed him for his actions.

I thought the pretext was that he was doing necromancy, not because of the saplings themselves

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I dunno, i don't recall quests where you can bash skulls of defenseless people in non-forsaken zones. Quests seems to have strong racial favor.

also, wasn't there a quest where you slaughter Frostmanes who were just minding their own business?

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Yeah, which in turn makes their change of alignment even more nonsensical.
I started doing the Horde War campaign and was extremely annoyed by the amount of betrayal the Alliance suffered.

"Oh, but the Alliance shun their undead former kin"
Yeah ok? Then why do we have Death Knights?

Sorry for derailing. I just had to vent.

I'm thinking Tirion should have some blame for not also vouching for the Forsaken

[Aucald]

I thought the pretext was that he was doing necromancy, not because of the saplings themselves

It wasn't the saplings that drove Lydon and the other Forsaken to kill Stillwater, no. But the saplings were still part and parcel of Stillwater being dangerously and completely insane.

[Super Dickmann]

I think it stretches credulity to imagine that Sylvanas has zero influence on her own people, especially as you've previously agreed she ruled as the head of a cult of personality centered around herself. Her speech in WC3: TFT actually outlines her view of how Forsaken society is to be, and the Forsaken (lacking anything else to truly hold to) latch on to her words as though they were gospel. This isn't to say they didn't have good reasons for feeling the things they felt, either; but there are very obvious and salient downward pressures in their society to embrace isolationism, anger, and a sense of xenophobic nationalism.

It's not so much that Sylvanas lacks influence on her people, but that the story as presented to us for most of the game's runtime put far less focus on her and her influence over this being just the general undead experience. WC3 is an odd thing to bring up because the Forsaken there had 0 characterization. I think the only one of them with a speaking role besides Varimathras and Sylvanas is a random banshee. More so than that, rejection of prior life and humanity weren't in any way policy pillars for Sylvanas at the time, not just per Edge of Night, but from what we know in general - she tried to reach out to both Stormwind and Silvermoon on the basis of historical ties and was rejected accordingly, then teamed up with the Horde afterwards. The rejection by the living at that point was entirely real - the Stormwind Church burnt Forsaken hearts after all. Nevermind just lacking the willingness to run a police state or to direct the Forsaken, she didn't have the capacity to do so and given how broad the experiences be, it's more likely that she has the same reaction as them than that they emulate a distant, quasi-religious figure.

To note, I am strictly referring to the pre-BTS retcon version of events, much like in the comment you replied to regarding the police state. There is a police state and there has been since Vanilla according to BTS, but there wasn't in prior versions of the story - this is the whole point I'm making , that the premises differ and attempting to apply one to the other doesn't work.

I'm only wrong if we take your supposition as a given (e.g. BTS's retcon makes the societal change induced solely by Sylvanas to have applied at all times back up to Vanilla), which I don't. Before the Storm isn't a retcon, and so it doesn't change anything retroactively back to Vanilla/Classic. I've already explained how the changes work - Sylvanas promoting rage and hatred to better "sharpen" the Forsaken as weapons to be aimed at the Lich King until the events of WotLK. Then Sylvanas loses her purpose in unlife and is given a new one by the Val'kyr - use the Forsaken as a shield, which requires she reorder society around herself, necessarily limiting the Forsaken's lateral freedom (what few they had prior) out of a necessity to keep them close and loyal to her. Before the Storm shows us the outcome of this change in her rule, having turned the Undercity into a veritable police state where reintegration of *any* kind is stifled and actively discouraged by the powers that be. Forsaken society, meanwhile, changed because the same thing happened to them that happened to Sylvanas in WotLK/Cata, with the Lich King dead they were faced with the ultimate existential question: "what now?" Their great purpose fulfilled, what do they do with their society? What does the world of the living offer the undead? Do they try to reconcile with their former lives, or do they cleave to their old hatred, and which if any offer a resolution that ultimately leads to continued existence? Hence, the Classic era Forsaken don't change, but they still are forced to deal with these questions - with some, like the Desolate Council, seeking a way to reunify with the world as it is, and others like Belmont seeking a way to change the world by force.

We know Sylvanas didn't pattern Forsaken society around herself from her own thoughts at the time, let alone the universal narration and what it shows us which is that Forsaken are entirely free to either leave or attempt to make contact with their past lives and that they even have interests in deeds and documentst and lean on them from said past lives. Nevermind that there's a literal book on Lordaeron you can open up and read in Undercity itself among the tons of bookshelves. Under BTS, there was never a point where that was the case - Parqual and Elsie were always living in a police state where the thought of Capital City and the outside world was forbidden. This is very much not the case prior, indeed, Forsaken having a civil society at all would be pointless to Sylvanas as she doesn't envision a long term existence - Forsaken that want to continue existing predate Cataclysm in that vein. After Cataclysm, they indeed shift track, but as we've gone over in topic after topic, this is not centered on a police state, since people still can and do freely leave, but on a resurgent Lordaeronian nationalism and Sylvanas supporting the existence of a civilian society. The claim on Lordaeron and continuity between life and death is the point here, as is the reappraisal of undeath as superior to life or at the very least better than going gently into that good night. You could have told a story where Sylvanas instead institutes these police state changes after she becomes Warchief or after the setback at Stormheim makes her truly afraid for her mortality rather than confident in her position as she was prior and the Forsaken chafe against having their previous freedoms restricted and want to actually act out the self-actualization they've talked about and, not knowing what she saw after death, would be open to ending their lives. The book flirts with this very briefly at the start, but it's not the story told.

You make a number of reaches here, none of which are in any way supported by the existing lore. Sure, they seek out Calia because she's a new kind of undead being seemingly untroubled by her state and seemingly able to help Forsaken accept or come to grips with their condition - but nothing in the narrative directly states or even implies that they follow her religion or any such nonsense. She's obviously a being some kind of gift, perhaps even a way out, and Delaryn and her retinue seem desperate for some kind of solution (one Calia may not even be able to offer them as she did with Derek). As for them travelling from Darkshore to Tirisfal Glades, well; Derek and Calia do the same thing in no time at all (going from Kul Tiras to Tirasfal Glades in the veritable blink of an eye). This is a gameplay mechanic, not an article of lore. It's more likely Delaryn and her retinue came to the Eastern Kingdom at Voss' invitation, just as Calia and Derek did. Since Voss was the one pulling strings here.

You're missing my point - it's not that they go to Calia to convert to the Light or what have you, but that they have next to nothing in common with her. Derek and Calia are both human, both share a generally similar mileau as nobility, both follow the same faith and share friends and family. She has Lordaeronian heritage in common with the Forsaken and post-BTS represents what they're all secretly yearning for while crying themselves to sleep at night. None of this applies re: the undead night elves and the undead night elves already have their own people willing to accept them. The idea that they'd reach out to this unrelated human princess instead of their race and culture is preposterous, ditto them staying with the Horde with which they have nothing in common, which is why I suspect that this was not originally intended and their lack of presence in Shadowlands is because the negative response to them has had them be essentially written out. Especially since Calia is also already treated as having been introduced to the regular Forsaken, something we never see happen on-screen, but would make vastly more sense to be happening in Tirisfal in the aftermath of Sylvanas's departure.

I've already stated my disagreement here - so you're going to have to provide some kind of lore justification to prove your assertion here, that Derek required Calia's care because of his torture at Sylvanas' hands. As for Parqual, he was described as being exceedingly fragile in undeath, so much so that his daughter couldn't embrace him at the Gathering - something that has nothing to do with Sylvanas' treatment and everything to do with the nature of undeath.

Derek never references his undeath but he does reference what he suffered at Calia's hands - he joins up with her because of his bonds with her and sails off for this reason. Parqual indeed is physically affected by his undeath, but I didn't deny this. If you go back to my first response to the thread you'll see I made that point myself - that far from being fundamentally altering, undeath is essentially any mildly debilitating purely bodily dysfunction, lacking the mental effects.

I assume this is some kind of allusion meant to cast aspersion on what I'm trying to relate, otherwise I fail to see how it's relevant to this discussion? Before the Storm wanted to tell a specific story about the Forsaken, one that didn't concern itself with the elements of the Forsaken military, the RAS, or Sylvanas' inner circle and instead about the workaday polity of the Forsaken - the lower decks, if you will, where the Forsaken merchant, artisan, and plebian castes toil without the freedoms accorded to Executors, Deathstalkers, or Apothecaries. This is a part of the Forsaken society as much as the previously mentioned groups are, and it's a part of the society we've seldom (almost never) seen. Especially not in the context of all that's happened to the Forsaken since we last saw that very little back in Classic (e.g. the death of the Lich King, Sylvanas' growing monomania with immortality, the fallout of the Gathering, and the destruction of their home and their lives as refugees). Hell, the story would be increasingly unrealistic if the Forsaken hadn't fundamentally changed as a result - that's a lot of major upheavals for the status quo to just go on its merry way. As for Darkshore and its story, I agree that's pretty lackluster - a *lot* of BfA is lackluster when it comes to lore because of ham-fisted execution (of which Teldrassil/Darkshore is kind of the nadir). I would also agree that would be singularly terrible if it was *all* the lore the Forsaken had, but fortunately this is not and won't be the case going forward.

It's not really an allusion, I'm being pretty direct - Belmont and Faranell do nothing, Lydon and every Executor is absent and the Forsaken cast have taken a turn to being entirely different from BTS onwards. Their main outing in Darkshore for the old cast centers not on them, but on an undead night elf in an area that has no resonance to the Forsaken whatsoever. Voss is able to slide into de facto leadership despite the RAS and every Executor outranking her following her own character shift and none of them are even referenced. More so than that, like I brought up before we can see the Forsaken civilians prior - indeed, we've repeatedly gone over them across many topics, cumulatively more than any of the characters that appear in BTS and more informative of what it is their life was like at the time. We are shown this group, hell, we are that group for parts of Tirisfal, wherein we hardly meet any Forsaken of any kind of rank. What we're not shown is this particular type of thinking because for reasons I've already outlined, it'd be completely incongruent with what we otherwise know and so could not feature. Even setting that aside and pretending that those prior Forsaken civilians don't exist and this is the definitive portrayal, they are not an addition, but a substitute because as referenced, the previous leadership, all Executors, Deathstalkers and Apothecaries - foundational elements of the race and parts of its leadership structure are completely gone and a woman who wasn't even part of the Forsaken is the de facto leader with none the wiser, even before a Menethil slides into the role. Calia's assumption of prominence, the reaction to her return and what this means are entirely off-screen, much like Voss's takeover.

[Fewane]

I like how Sira's condition is portrayed in the book, but I'd question extrapolating her experience to being what the other undead night elves. Mostly because we have no idea of what their feelings or position actually are.

Also, when Sira died, she she spent her dying moments feeling totally betrayed by Tyrande (and Elune, to refer from the novel); might be that those strong dying moment feelings got imprinted more heavily when she was raised?

[Super Dickmann]

Also, when Sira died, she she spent her dying moments feeling totally betrayed by Tyrande (and Elune, to refer from the novel); might be that those strong dying moment feelings got imprinted more heavily when she was raised?

Yeah, this is actually canon per CDev - it's the explanation for why the newly raised Forsaken in Cataclysm that don't get characterization are universally assholes ready to kill their friends for a while after beig raised - since they were killed in the heat of battle, that sticks with them when they come back and it takes a bit for them to calm down and be legally competent.

At least where Delaryn was concerned, we got to see her last thoughts before she died and they were pretty bleak. Very good stuff honestly, it's a shame it didn't go anywhere since Blizzard nixed whatever may have been in store for her and Sylvanas. This is one of the few cases where I'd have liked to see what Golden would have done with it if given the chance.

[Aucald]

It's not so much that Sylvanas lacks influence on her people, but that the story as presented to us for most of the game's runtime put far less focus on her and her influence over this being just the general undead experience. WC3 is an odd thing to bring up because the Forsaken there had 0 characterization. I think the only one of them with a speaking role besides Varimathras and Sylvanas is a random banshee. More so than that, rejection of prior life and humanity weren't in any way policy pillars for Sylvanas at the time, not just per Edge of Night, but from what we know in general - she tried to reach out to both Stormwind and Silvermoon on the basis of historical ties and was rejected accordingly, then teamed up with the Horde afterwards. The rejection by the living at that point was entirely real - the Stormwind Church burnt Forsaken hearts after all. Nevermind just lacking the willingness to run a police state or to direct the Forsaken, she didn't have the capacity to do so and given how broad the experiences be, it's more likely that she has the same reaction as them than that they emulate a distant, quasi-religious figure.

An experience influenced by her as the center of Forsaken existence, queen of a cult of personality. I brought up WC3: TFT to show Sylvanas' views of what Forsaken society was to be - the Forsaken have no characterization in WC3: TFT because they don't really exist until the end of the Undead campaign in that game. To quote Sylvanas: "But we are no longer part of the Scourge. From here on out, we shall be known as the Forsaken. We will find our own path in this world..." Edge of Night only adds to this characterization and rationale.

To note, I am strictly referring to the pre-BTS retcon version of events, much like in the comment you replied to regarding the police state. There is a police state and there has been since Vanilla according to BTS, but there wasn't in prior versions of the story - this is the whole point I'm making , that the premises differ and attempting to apply one to the other doesn't work.

You'll need to cite a source from Before the Storm confirming the nature of this "retcon," then - you're claiming it outright says this veritable police state always existed since Classic, and I recall no such passage from the novel.

We know Sylvanas didn't pattern Forsaken society around herself from her own thoughts at the time, let alone the universal narration and what it shows us which is that Forsaken are entirely free to either leave or attempt to make contact with their past lives and that they even have interests in deeds and documentst and lean on them from said past lives. Nevermind that there's a literal book on Lordaeron you can open up and read in Undercity itself among the tons of bookshelves. Under BTS, there was never a point where that was the case - Parqual and Elsie were always living in a police state where the thought of Capital City and the outside world was forbidden. This is very much not the case prior, indeed, Forsaken having a civil society at all would be pointless to Sylvanas as she doesn't envision a long term existence - Forsaken that want to continue existing predate Cataclysm in that vein. After Cataclysm, they indeed shift track, but as we've gone over in topic after topic, this is not centered on a police state, since people still can and do freely leave, but on a resurgent Lordaeronian nationalism and Sylvanas supporting the existence of a civilian society. The claim on Lordaeron and continuity between life and death is the point here, as is the reappraisal of undeath as superior to life or at the very least better than going gently into that good night. You could have told a story where Sylvanas instead institutes these police state changes after she becomes Warchief or after the setback at Stormheim makes her truly afraid for her mortality rather than confident in her position as she was prior and the Forsaken chafe against having their previous freedoms restricted and want to actually act out the self-actualization they've talked about and, not knowing what she saw after death, would be open to ending their lives. The book flirts with this very briefly at the start, but it's not the story told.

It wasn't a binary toggle that flipped on overnight, though - it was a longer term reorganization of the society, and as Sylvanas suffered losses and setbacks it likely escalated as she grew more and more dependent (as well as desperate), and that desperation increased her stranglehold on the Forsaken as her shield. You get hints of this in Edge of Night itself, with Sylvanas taking the uncharacteristic step of preserving her people against Garrosh's tactic of squandering them as shock troops. I think you also missed the heavy implications otherwise in Before the Storm, but that is likely because you prejudged the text and plowed ahead with a notion you had already decided. I would imagine that the Forsaken police state escalated dramatically following Stormheim as well.

You're missing my point - it's not that they go to Calia to convert to the Light or what have you, but that they have next to nothing in common with her. Derek and Calia are both human, both share a generally similar mileau as nobility, both follow the same faith and share friends and family. She has Lordaeronian heritage in common with the Forsaken and post-BTS represents what they're all secretly yearning for while crying themselves to sleep at night. None of this applies re: the undead night elves and the undead night elves already have their own people willing to accept them. The idea that they'd reach out to this unrelated human princess instead of their race and culture is preposterous, ditto them staying with the Horde with which they have nothing in common, which is why I suspect that this was not originally intended and their lack of presence in Shadowlands is because the negative response to them has had them be essentially written out. Especially since Calia is also already treated as having been introduced to the regular Forsaken, something we never see happen on-screen, but would make vastly more sense to be happening in Tirisfal in the aftermath of Sylvanas's departure.

I can't be "missing your point" if I'm refuting what you quite literally said - you made your point badly if you include hyperbole that detracts from it. They do have something in common with her, as well; they're all undead. Commonality doesn't even matter here - Calia has something they believe they need from her, namely the means of somehow soothing or mitigating the pain they feel as newly undead beings. In this sense it wouldn't matter overly if Calia was actually a K'thir or a Demon of some kind - they're not drawn to her based on what she is, they're drawn to her based on what she can do. You're talking about heritage and social class in a situation where they manifestly don't matter at all. I can't help but point out to you that this argument is just flat-out wrong on multiple levels, and nonsensical on the rest.

Derek never references his undeath but he does reference what he suffered at Calia's hands - he joins up with her because of his bonds with her and sails off for this reason. Parqual indeed is physically affected by his undeath, but I didn't deny this. If you go back to my first response to the thread you'll see I made that point myself - that far from being fundamentally altering, undeath is essentially any mildly debilitating purely bodily dysfunction, lacking the mental effects.

As per the quest "Sense of Obligation" where the Horde character eavesdrops on Calia, Derek, and Jaina:

Lady Jaina Proudmoore says: As do I. Have you been able to find peace in your own heart, Derek?
Derek Proudmoore says: I still have some rough seas to sail, but I'm much better now, thanks to Calia. Without her guidance, I would have been truly lost.
Calia Menethil says: I'm so grateful you brought us together, Jaina. This time with Derek has helped me as much as it's helped him.
Lady Jaina Proudmoore says: In the wake of this war, others will need to find their footing. Their future. Perhaps you could guide them, too.
Calia Menethil says: I'm not sure how much help I could be. I don't have all the answers.
Derek Proudmoore says: Maybe they don't need answers. Maybe they just need hope. Like I did.

Note here that what Derek said he needed as "hope," not any kind of specific treatment for torture or what have you - "hope" that would somehow apply to the rest of the Forsaken. There's no direct mention of what Calia specifically did for Derek one way or the other, but the conversation itself and the nature of Calia's ministering seems to be far more general, and applicable to the Forsaken as a whole (who, again, do not share Derek's specific experiences with Sylvanas).

Also, we have no idea who Parqual was or what he was like in life - so you're making an argument about undeath "lacking mental effects" based on zero evidence here. Someone with extreme mental trauma can have moments of relative stability and lucidity at times, as well; especially if they're given preparation ahead of time as well as having an overriding need to have it. Parqual is also pretty mentally fragile during the Gathering, as well; a kind of brittleness that echoes his physical state that he likely didn't have in life either.

It's not really an allusion, I'm being pretty direct - Belmont and Faranell do nothing, Lydon and every Executor is absent and the Forsaken cast have taken a turn to being entirely different from BTS onwards. Their main outing in Darkshore for the old cast centers not on them, but on an undead night elf in an area that has no resonance to the Forsaken whatsoever. Voss is able to slide into de facto leadership despite the RAS and every Executor outranking her following her own character shift and none of them are even referenced. More so than that, like I brought up before we can see the Forsaken civilians prior - indeed, we've repeatedly gone over them across many topics, cumulatively more than any of the characters that appear in BTS and more informative of what it is their life was like at the time. We are shown this group, hell, we are that group for parts of Tirisfal, wherein we hardly meet any Forsaken of any kind of rank. What we're not shown is this particular type of thinking because for reasons I've already outlined, it'd be completely incongruent with what we otherwise know and so could not feature. Even setting that aside and pretending that those prior Forsaken civilians don't exist and this is the definitive portrayal, they are not an addition, but a substitute because as referenced, the previous leadership, all Executors, Deathstalkers and Apothecaries - foundational elements of the race and parts of its leadership structure are completely gone and a woman who wasn't even part of the Forsaken is the de facto leader with none the wiser, even before a Menethil slides into the role. Calia's assumption of prominence, the reaction to her return and what this means are entirely off-screen, much like Voss's takeover.

It's also not an argument I ever made. Belmont is pretty involved in the Darkshore Warfront intro quests, more than enough for him to show his personality. Faranell and Lydon not so much - but they are there, showing they still exist as characters (contrary to your previous claim). As for Voss becoming the leader, I would say that's down to her closeness to Sylvanas and Nathanos in BfA - she'd already ascended to the point where she was directly serving Sylvanas' and her majordomo Nathanos, putting her solidly in the inner circle of Forsaken leadership. You could argue her ascent is pretty unrealistically meteoric and I would agree, but that's a flaw in the nature of WoW's writing that's often repeated (and unfortunately sometimes necessary) because of the nature of modular storytelling in an action-oriented genre (e.g. no one wants to endure hours of boring sociopolitical wrangling). That being said, Voss' ascent to leader by no means means the Executors, Deathstalkers, or Apothecaries are gone (I still find this argument to be a bit mind-croggling), they're definitely still around and will still have roles to play in whatever Forsaken society is to follow. Voss will have the very unenviable task of managing all these factions and their conflicting worldviews, and she won't have Sylvanas' extreme power over the Forsaken as whole (both political and literal power). Unlike Sylvanas Voss will have to form coalitions and curry favor, and this offers up a lot more dramatic hooks and potential than the former model for the Forsaken ever could have. The same would likely be true for Calia when and if she ever becomes the leader of the Forsaken.

As this back and forth has grown in nature and is eating into the thread's conversational real estate, I think there is where I put a stop to my part of it. Feel free to rebut if you want to, of course, but I'm going to step back and let other people have their say without being hit by giant walls of text.

[RohanV]

One explanation for the change could be that the Lich King changed. Maybe the Lich King exerts an influence on all undead, even the ones who have broken from his direct control. When Arthas is replaced by Bolvar, that influence becomes a lot more benign.

[Daronokk]

All races must lose their flavour in favour of the supreme human race.

Forsaken lost their identity and are now just undead humans. Night Elves lost their identity and are now just purple humans. Orcs lost their identity and are now just green humans.

See where this goes?

Blizzard made an awesome universe with all these different races and different cultures and believes and new people at the company shit all over the established lore and make everything about humans and their human potential and everyone should bend over and let golden boy penetrate them. Golden did this with her left wing extremist views. California as a state is toxic to a company like Blizzard, they're shoehorning in all sorts of real world politics just to score woke points. F*ck this shit.

[omeomorfismo]

so finally blizz dropped the ball and murdered totally the forsakens?
gg, ill resub to gank ally raid in the prepatch and then ill delete my beloved character.

death to the living,
victory for the forsaken,
fuck you blizz

[Soon-TM]

players whined that the Horde is just the red Alliance

Lo and behold, the Horde is much more of a Red Alliance now than it was ever since it was (re)founded. Not that that has done it any good, nor it will in the future.

[Kathranis]

This is I think what Blizzard is going to do, but it's still a little up in the air.

Effectively, they'd be saying any undead raised after Arthas' death were not planned to be temporary, as if Ner'zhul/Arthas planned for the Scourge to be a temporary solution and Sylvanas did not plan for the Forsaken to be the same. This is an odd take, but I suppose given the motivations they gave in the Arthas book + the idea they kept bringing up pre-BfA with undead who aren't the same after death (and then subsequently flip floping on that, making undead who change or don't change willy nilly all throughout BfA) it does make minor amounts of sense.

It would just be stupid is the problem.

Well, the Scourge were just a tool for war. Mindless undead. The Forsaken were, originally, the undead that broke free from the Lich King's control and regained free will under Sylvanas's leadership.

I don't know if they've settled on the exact time that she met the Jailer and made the deal with him. I know they said it's "connected" to Edge of Night, which is obvious, but I'm not sure if they actually mean for that to be the moment she joined him, or just the first step.

Personally, I think what makes the most sense is that her shift from "ethical necromancy" early in Cataclysm to full on "genocidal necromancy" by the end of BFA is the result of her Val'kyr being whittled away and her getting closer and closer to true death. I'd reckon that up until Genn destroyed the Soul Cage, she was still trying to stave off death, hoping to subjugate more Val'kyr to replace those she lost. When that hope was lost, she realized that death was inevitable and finally accepted the Jailer's bargain. From there she sets about "breaking the machinery of death," which means filling the Maw with as many souls as possible.

[Thage]

It makes me wonder if I missed something in the story. A plot point where Forsaken resurrection was "fixed", and newly-made Forsaken started coming back with an unchanged personality.

Mostly, the big changes happened in Cataclysm's 1-60 experience and was dialed up to 11 in Before the Storm. I think the canon pins the difference on val'kyr resurrecting new Forsaken while the 'old guard' were all Scourge whose minds were freed, either because the Lich King was weakening during the Third War or, for the PC, apparent random happenstance. This lent a tragic angle to their society, as well, as none of them asked for this, and some are seemingly stuck in an unending cycle of breaking free from the Scourge, only for their minds to fade again after a few years as they fall back under the Scourge's sway. Those who can't break free again, new Forsaken are tasked with mercy-killing.

Then as of Cataclysm, most Forsaken NPCs we encounter are all-in on the personality cult aspect of their culture, and more people retain their old selves because being resurrected by the val'kyr is a choice made... which I guess has meaning when undeath is involved? And they doubled down on these aspects in BFA because subtle storytelling is a four-letter word at Blizzard HQ anymore. And now in Shadowlands, the Forsaken are reorienting once again, back closer to their Classic incarnations (SL in particular seems to be soft-resetting a lot of things back to the Classic status quo).

[Isenholt]

The forsaken were pretty much rewritten in the novel before the storm, changing their society on a fundamental level, reducing the changes people experience in undeath drastically.

I would argue that this "rewriting" is just bringing a lesser known, but indeed long present aspect of certain members of the Forsaken (and defectors) into plain view. The characters I've been fascinated by for years have been so minor that I wouldn't fault anyone for completely overlooking them. I don't think it is a bad thing if some of the Forsaken espouse tragic nobility, while others are openly scornful of the living.

I played a Forsaken from a few months after launch as my first and most beloved character, and my story for him matches more what you see in BTS. It's a shame really because, while I'm happy to see different sides of the Undead of Lordaeron that I've loved for all these years, I can understand why so many people dislike it.

I think on the whole we tend to discuss races of Warcraft in a very homogeneous way, but the most compelling aspect of the Forsaken to me is their willpower.

Even in the early priest quest for your first robe, Dark Cleric Beryl basically tells you: "Take this robe and wear it as a sign of your station—or don't! it's up to you to decide what you do and who you are." That told me as a player that the Forsaken were not about uniformity, they in fact seemed repelled by it. Being newly freed from the grasp of the Lich King, this makes sense! So, why should they all be motivated in the same way? In fact over the years I would say that the gradual (but understandable) deification of Sylvanas is the bigger offender to the identity of the Forsaken. True! They owe her for their freedom, and many of them see her as a Dark Madonna, but they were always supposed to have an identity apart from her too.

They wield both the Light and the Shadow. They refuse to violate the agency of one another, but once that agency has been lost (The Mindless State) they would not hesitate to kill their own loved ones in a somewhat tragic, yet symbolic, act of mercy.

OP mentioned some cases that support his view but there are others that defy it as well, such as the quest Marla's Last Wish, in which, Novice Elreth sends you to "put to rest" a Scourge-fallen man who was so beloved by his wife that even as she lay dying at his hands, she requested to be buried with him. If you choose to complete this quest you personally bury his remains next to his devoted wife and kneel before the grave.

All this to say, the Forsaken have always shown essential humanity, even if you had to dig to find it.

Lastly, I just wanted to say that while I am happy to see the things I always RP'd come a bit more into the limelight for the Forsaken, I wish that this didn't come at the expense of what other people loved about them! Some of us like the vindictive type of Forsaken, others the cold, unemotional, but not necessarily evil type, and some (like me) play a neutral good warrior who was a Paladin of Lordaeron in life, coming to grips with his new undead state and all the cool stories that can come out of that. There should be room for all of us!

[Gref]

There is one case where the newly-raised Forsaken behaves in the Classic-style: the Night Elf Wardens. They come back angry at the world and Elune. Ironically, I've seen more player complaints about the change in personality for the Wardens than for Zelling or Proudmoore..

holy... you are actually right that makes sense. how you explained wow classic forsaken and bfa forsaken.
I was so angry at night elf warden thing. it didn't make any sense to me but now that you explain it...I am really grateful. That clears lots of things.

it is actually zelling and derek that doesn't make sense not the wardens.

But I bet not even blizzard thought about that. that 1 step forward to evil. thank you really now I am at peace with this expansion lore wise.
except calia but well yeah ignoring that point.