Evolution of Jaina Proudmore in WOD

[fenixazul]

I feel that , after Garrosh's end, she is going to be the next WOW big classic nemessis.

You know, the classic story of a Hero, with good intentions, something happens, get corrupted in some way, and become a villan without wanting that.

Arthas, Illidan, and Garrosh, all follow the same way

[Xilurm]

They have ruined Jaina. Maybe our hope is Yrel.

[Katie45]

Cause your when your homeland gets blown to hell you should be happy and hug the people who bombed you right?

[Xilurm]

Cause your when your homeland gets blown to hell you should be happy and hug the people who bombed you right?

She let the Horde kill her father and she practically didn't care.

Let that sink in for a while...

[Daralii]

She let the Horde kill her father and she practically didn't care.

Let that sink in for a while...

Because she thought letting him die would mean the Horde wouldn't need to go to war again. She was proven very wrong, and she sat at her father's grave crying and apologizing.

Can't say I'm happy about her character arc, it's okay for her to change but it was too big a swerve really. I hope they don't continue to give her the idiot ball Varian used to hold.

She's the only vaguely intelligent member of the Alliance's leadership at this point. The Horde apparently starts the fighting on Ashran. She called that shit back in SoO.

[tristannarutofan]

This is how Jaina's personality can now be interpreted.



Jaina went from being a well rounded character, to becoming what I refer to as a plothole filler. She is now a character whos personality can be altered to fit the situation the developers need her for. I mean given the direction of the games lore its no surprise, since all blizzard does now is adapting the story around the players avatar instead of building up well thought out characters, so Jaina having no stable personality is just par for the course.

You realize the same person can
Act differently day to day?


I think people who don't understand jaina don't understand the human condition.

Or think "dismantle the horde" means "kill the people in the horde"

- - - Updated - - -

She let the Horde kill her father and she practically didn't care.

Let that sink in for a while...

Exactly. She sacrificed her irrational father to save innocents and stop a war. And because of that everyone else that ever trusted her died.

Why do u think she was so pissed?!

[Magicalcrab]

You realize the same person can
Act differently day to day?


I think people who don't understand jaina don't understand the human condition.

Or think "dismantle the horde" means "kill the people in the horde"

- - - Updated - - -


Exactly. She sacrificed her irrational father to save innocents and stop a war. And because of that everyone else that ever trusted her died.

Why do u think she was so pissed?!

I think it's a fair criticism to say that this particular case of character development is at the very least jarring. And you can use all kinds of real-world examples to explain how it makes sense from Jaina's point of view, and it would STILL be bad writing from a storytelling perspective.
With the kind of story that Blizzard is writing, and considering their extremely limited range, the best approach to character arcs would probably be a more linear fashion with set ups and payoffs. We saw none of that in Jaina's slip to the dark side of the force.

As a character, we had seen Jaina standing outside of the usual warmongering status quo. She was very aware of the "greater good" and usually held the somewhat naive but moral high ground in any conflict she was involved in. She was a more objective observer, an advocate of peace and an intelligent scientist. When you turn her into a vengeful racist at the tip of a hat, you run the risk of writing a horribly jarring story and alienating those that were previously familiar with that character.
Her descent into apparently momentary madness had never been set up ahead of time - we never saw her lose patience with anyone or get snippy prior to these events - and her arc was triggered by that same old boring "the bad guys ate my family" trope Blizzard keeps falling back to.

It was all very sudden and out of the blue.

The idea of turning a character like Jaina (who was fairly unique in this strange cast of characters) interesting by making her part of the same old warmongering teenager status quo as every other character is totally baffling to me. It entirely missed the point of the original Jaina and the role she played, and in my opinion it made her boring-er as a result. That's not to say that characters have to remain rigid or that they cannot change ever, but this kind of role-reversal requires tact, and a more gradual change would've made more sense given the material.

They're not writing freaking Bladerunner here. That there are numerous threads every two months on this forum where people try to justify the change after the fact should be evidence enough that there is at the very least a lot of confusion regarding the sudden case of murderous hysteria. Hopefully Blizzard realised that a lot of people felt it was poorly written and not thought out (probably because it was poorly written and not thought out), and are scaling her monstrous side back a bit for WoD.

If so, I'll be a happy crustacean.

[Saravat]

She has always struck me as one of the most shallow of the lore characters - to the point where I find her annoying no matter which aspect of her limited 'self' she's expressing. I'd be absolutely delighted to kill her off to make room for a different female character with more complexity and depth.

[Nanaboostme]

This is how Jaina's personality can now be interpreted.



Jaina went from being a well rounded character, to becoming what I refer to as a plothole filler. She is now a character whos personality can be altered to fit the situation the developers need her for. I mean given the direction of the games lore its no surprise, since all blizzard does now is adapting the story around the players avatar instead of building up well thought out characters, so Jaina having no stable personality is just par for the course.

This, she isnt even a believable character anymore, her motivations are questionable. The developers need to hire better writers

[snuzzle]

Horde characters go on a rampage, killing, invading and what not, but it's cool. Jaina does it once = mad, warmonger? Seriously, Horde would be just getting what they had done before.

Yes, because it completely flies in the face of her established character. It would be like Blizzard saying "Yeah, you know what, we don't want Sylvanas to be a ruthless self-serving type character anymore. She's gonna be good and work with Vol'jin as an awesome ally now!"

I mean, it's their game and their story; they can certainly do whatever they wish. But when a character does a complete 180 and changes their entire personality, people are gonna use language like that to describe just how out of character it is.

- - - Updated - - -

I think it's a fair criticism to say that this particular case of character development is at the very least jarring. And you can use all kinds of real-world examples to explain how it makes sense from Jaina's point of view, and it would STILL be bad writing from a storytelling perspective.
With the kind of story that Blizzard is writing, and considering their extremely limited range, the best approach to character arcs would probably be a more linear fashion with set ups and payoffs. We saw none of that in Jaina's slip to the dark side of the force.

As a character, we had seen Jaina standing outside of the usual warmongering status quo. She was very aware of the "greater good" and usually held the somewhat naive but moral high ground in any conflict she was involved in. She was a more objective observer, an advocate of peace and an intelligent scientist. When you turn her into a vengeful racist at the tip of a hat, you run the risk of writing a horribly jarring story and alienating those that were previously familiar with that character.
Her descent into apparently momentary madness had never been set up ahead of time - we never saw her lose patience with anyone or get snippy prior to these events - and her arc was triggered by that same old boring "the bad guys ate my family" trope Blizzard keeps falling back to.

It was all very sudden and out of the blue.

The idea of turning a character like Jaina (who was fairly unique in this strange cast of characters) interesting by making her part of the same old warmongering teenager status quo as every other character is totally baffling to me. It entirely missed the point of the original Jaina and the role she played, and in my opinion it made her boring-er as a result. That's not to say that characters have to remain rigid or that they cannot change ever, but this kind of role-reversal requires tact, and a more gradual change would've made more sense given the material.

They're not writing freaking Bladerunner here. That there are numerous threads every two months on this forum where people try to justify the change after the fact should be evidence enough that there is at the very least a lot of confusion regarding the sudden case of murderous hysteria. Hopefully Blizzard realised that a lot of people felt it was poorly written and not thought out (probably because it was poorly written and not thought out), and are scaling her monstrous side back a bit for WoD.

If so, I'll be a happy crustacean.

Everything this guy said summed up my thoughts better than I ever could.

[tuesday the paladin]

I kind of hope blizzard will kill off jaina soon. But I'd imagine the amount of crying would be massive.

[Gothicshark]

...
maybe we will see anduin with some female chaarcter

Or male... I mean it's possible.

[tristannarutofan]

I think it's a fair criticism to say that this particular case of character development is at the very least jarring. And you can use all kinds of real-world examples to explain how it makes sense from Jaina's point of view, and it would STILL be bad writing from a storytelling perspective.
With the kind of story that Blizzard is writing, and considering their extremely limited range, the best approach to character arcs would probably be a more linear fashion with set ups and payoffs. We saw none of that in Jaina's slip to the dark side of the force.

As a character, we had seen Jaina standing outside of the usual warmongering status quo. She was very aware of the "greater good" and usually held the somewhat naive but moral high ground in any conflict she was involved in. She was a more objective observer, an advocate of peace and an intelligent scientist. When you turn her into a vengeful racist at the tip of a hat, you run the risk of writing a horribly jarring story and alienating those that were previously familiar with that character.
Her descent into apparently momentary madness had never been set up ahead of time - we never saw her lose patience with anyone or get snippy prior to these events - and her arc was triggered by that same old boring "the bad guys ate my family" trope Blizzard keeps falling back to.

It was all very sudden and out of the blue.

The idea of turning a character like Jaina (who was fairly unique in this strange cast of characters) interesting by making her part of the same old warmongering teenager status quo as every other character is totally baffling to me. It entirely missed the point of the original Jaina and the role she played, and in my opinion it made her boring-er as a result. That's not to say that characters have to remain rigid or that they cannot change ever, but this kind of role-reversal requires tact, and a more gradual change would've made more sense given the material.

They're not writing freaking Bladerunner here. That there are numerous threads every two months on this forum where people try to justify the change after the fact should be evidence enough that there is at the very least a lot of confusion regarding the sudden case of murderous hysteria. Hopefully Blizzard realised that a lot of people felt it was poorly written and not thought out (probably because it was poorly written and not thought out), and are scaling her monstrous side back a bit for WoD.

If so, I'll be a happy crustacean.

All this post does is give me more reason to believe

I think people who don't understand jaina don't understand the human condition.Or think "dismantle the horde" means "kill the people in the horde"

To say she's just turned into a murderous warmonger, or vengeful racists ignores the actual story. It would be like calling the Priest in Romeo and Julient a irresponsible child killer. Or Malcome Reynolds a selfish petty pirate. Or saying that the business partner "did it" because people saw him yell at the victim and make a vague death threat..

I mean half of your post is talking about the sudden onset of her murderous hysteria.

I think you missed the point. It explains in that exact book that not ONLY was she basically in the worse state that any human can be. A mental condition that literally drives thousands of people to do just the type of thing she wanted to do, every day. But that the magic from the mana bomb was messing with her head.

WHICHEVER of those two factors effected her the most, AFTER the people who cared about her stopped ignoring what she was going through (something that people who fail at helping depressed and struggling people tend to do alot, failing to help their loved ones) and listened to her and spoke to her reason, compassion and humanity she stopped herself . Emphasis on HERSELF. She could have obliterated Thrall and Kaelec with one swipe of her magical powers at the time. The key part of talking someone down from murder or suicide is not the person doing the talking but the humanity and reason the talkers reinstate into the troubled person. She CHOSE to back down because she DIDNT want to be that person.

Which resulted in her becoming herself again. Just not the Naive (as you said) woman she once was. One of the problems, i guess you could say, is that in fantasy worlds entire species can consist of a few hundred thousand people. While in the real world that would just be a small country. So, say, its impossble to justify being biased against Human culture because we literally have thousands of cultures because there are billions of us. But after the Horde was formed all Orc Culture became the same thing and individual cultures forsaken. From what i've seen she hates the Orc Culture, and those who sustain it. And it doesnt matter that there are those within that culture that disagree or feel differently....because just like Vol'jin, her FRIEND Baine Bloodhoof, her friend's sister, and the leader of her former allies....they would sit back and let a mass murderer commit genocide. And she knows people can stand up to stop it. Kalec did. Thrall Did. Anduin did, Varian did. Hell Vol'jin and bain FINALLY did. When pushed into a corner. The horde leaders had a crappy choice, but they still had a choice. And they chose to sit by while orc Culture destroyed people that had already survived Genocide, were under her personal care, helped save their own murderes lives (remember it was the people of Theramore that fought at Hyjal years ago. Along side the various heroes there when Theramore was destroyed).

She isnt racist against orcs. She hates orc culture. Because right now Orc culture is Horde Culture. And that allowing murderers and strength mongers to do what they want and those who disagree shut their yaps and hope they dont end up on the wrong side of their pikes is exactly what destroyed everything she tried to protect. Hell we even see it in WoD. People accuse blizzard of trying to shove orcs down our throats, but if anything they've shown us how most orc clans are barbaric. That orcs aren't racially horrible (frostwolves and Shadowmoon) but that their culture glorifies murder, death, and brutality.

You are right, Jaina WAS Naive. Now she isnt.

So that just leaves if what she has done since then and if its in line with her new characterization.

So since theramore we had the Intro to pandaria in which she wasnt a part of. However, we do know the horde were not above enslaving the local population.

Then Operation shield wall. In which The Blood elves aid Garrosh in finding a weapon of mass destruction. The Alliance intervene and take the weapon and hide it. Then The Horde infiltrates the city under her protection that is allied to both the Alliance and Quel'thalas. They break out the person secondly most responsible for the destruction of her city who betrayed Dalaran by using it to smuggle not just a weapon of mass destruction, but one intended to destroy Dalaran's allies. In response to this objective betrayal of the city the Sunreavers tried to hard to regain entry to, in order to commit an act of GENOCIDE, she arrests most of them, with those resisting arrest with lethal force, met with lethal force. Despite this crackdown on an organization that has both commited and act of war (genocide), tried to create another one, and guilty of treason....the weapon still makes it into the hands of a political leader who has openly declared his intent to commit MASS genocide. While looking for that weapon her "nephew" finds Garrosh and stops it, which leads Garrosh to try to kill the 16 year old boy, her "nephew".

So i think we can all agree that though a lot of that was spurred on by her personal feelings that any major leader has an obligation to stop genocide and terrorism especially when it comes from members of your own governance .

Then Throne of Thunder comes out. The Silver covenant and Sunreavers race each other to put an end to the Thunder King, investigate its power to use against Garrosh (both of them) while on the side using some Gaza-esc guerrilla tactics on each other's forces. They ALMOST come to an armed conflict over the last incident. Which basically comes down to Lor'themar wanting innocent people who are suspects freed from prison (reasonable), while she wants Her prisoner that was freed via an act of war(reasonable). BOTH members refuse to budge and neither are ready to back down.

We do know from Aethis' body language that both are in the right, and that Aethis betrayed BOTH of them. So Meta-wise we should be on Jaina's side at least in regards to Aethis. If he'd just come clean and say it was all his fault and that the Sunreavers had nothing to do with it then Jaina could let them go.

Finally in Siege of Ogrimmar she helps take down a tyrant and suggests for Varian to occupy Horde Territories since the faction as a whole is to unpredictable and dangerous. Which seeing as thats what every human civilization has done (though they've done it badly) i think we can agree that it is a fair recommendation.


So other than that moment of weakness THAT SHE HERSELF REGRETS AND GLAD SHE DID NOT COMMIT, the only thing negative that can legitimately be used to criticize her is that now she is an aggressive politician unafraid to flex her military muscles, particularly when it comes to a faction that has proved willing to commit mass genocide.


I mean during the legendary questline (in WoD) yea she's a bit bitchy to Kadgar...but thats all she does....is tell him her disapproval and remind him that i think he was part of the Council of Six that agreed to keep their hands off Horde Business.

-----------------

So other than be prejudice against a Culture and Faction proven to commit genocide, who is NOW ruled by the leaders who LET it happen; Stopping terrorists who commited treason, AVOIDED an unnecessary conflict with people she has political grievances against. and pointing out that after invading germany and taking out hitler we probably shouldnt give power back to the Axis of Power in case another Nazi regime might come about What did she even do wrong?

Was it cus she was mean and sarcastic?

[Enosh]

- After betrayal of the sunreaver: Mad, illogical warmonger

lol
you mean becoming the only non moronic leader of the alliance
hint: she was right in SoO, the horde and alliance are at war in ashran over some piece of shit ogre bullshit, if both factions are willing to go to war over that another large scale war where the horde leadership once again tries to exterminate the alliance is just around the corner

[stomination]

Imprisoning members of an organization that's compromised by radicals supporting a man hellbent on the genocide of every single one of her allies = illogical warmongering. Top kek.

Sounds like Gbay is ok now.

[Ausr]

Human/Dragon half breed would be kinda cool to see if the whole Jaina/Kalec thing goes on.

[Trassk]

Yes, because it completely flies in the face of her established character. It would be like Blizzard saying "Yeah, you know what, we don't want Sylvanas to be a ruthless self-serving type character anymore. She's gonna be good and work with Vol'jin as an awesome ally now!"

I mean, it's their game and their story; they can certainly do whatever they wish. But when a character does a complete 180 and changes their entire personality, people are gonna use language like that to describe just how out of character it is.

oh sweet christmas can you imagine the reaction from players and anti-forsaken rabble rousers if they did that XD. oooh man that would be amazing to read.

But yeah, so me, Jaina Proudmoore died in theramore, not anything like 'another being replaced her at the point of explosion', its just that whatever great characteristics she had, the warm, insightful, peace driving ruler who wanted to end the ignorence of conflict, was killed off and replaced with this pathetic ragdoll puppet character, only there because of the whining war loving morons on forums who can't relate to a character unless they are broken or corrupt somehow.

[Aeula]

Because she thought letting him die would mean the Horde wouldn't need to go to war again. She was proven very wrong, and she sat at her father's grave crying and apologizing.

She's the only vaguely intelligent member of the Alliance's leadership at this point. The Horde apparently starts the fighting on Ashran. She called that shit back in SoO.

Not what I heard, alliance started it by trying to find an artifact to use against the horde, then we found out about it and got to it first, now they're pissed and are warring with us.

[Ratyrel]

Imo her character makes sense. We'll see how she behaves in WoD now that she's calmed down due to what happened during Garrosh's trial. Being forced to relive those experiences and facing the insane version of herself was terrible, but allowed her to face her trauma, and gain some comfort as well as regaining some emotional peace and clarity.

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

I like her actually.
I'd like to see people acting all calm and happy when their entire nation is killed by the enemy and she is betrayed every single time.

I can see her being reserved and maybe redeeming herself