Laying the groundwork for finally getting rid of the retarded faction war. I'm all for this.
Agreed.
In 2004 I was really intrigued by the potential for a series to make an undead faction actually interesting. What does it mean to have crossed over death's door and return with all its horrors fresh in your mind? How can being thrown into the jaws of hatred and persecution from ones you was called brothers and sisters OVERNIGHT affect your ability to interact with the world? In comparison to most fantasy series take of undead being "BOOM! Look how I just pwned the *formerly village doctor*... I mean disgusting corpse. I'm such a badass!", the Forsaken had the potential for so much.
Then we got...
"hehehe hey (Forsaken Adventurer)... hehe, lets collect some diseased bear guts and make humans sick with it lol. Apparently a small faction of humans think we suck so we should probably prove them wrong by killing literally everything"
"Hi! I'm the Banshee Queen. I'm going to do jack-all for 6 years and then kill myself."
"Nevermind I'm back. We're plaguing Gilneas because they're weak, defenseless, and ravaged by disease."
Cool. Yeah the Forsaken are cool.
I'm sorry, did I ask about the Blight? No, I asked specifically about the Druids. So how about you answer that instead of moving the goalposts?
Putress had a group of Apothecaries loyal to him. They kinda performed a coup together with Varimathras (previously also affiliated with the Forsaken) and kicked Sylvanas out of Undercity. So I really cannot fathom how you can still maintain that your claim that until now there has never been a splinter faction of group of dissent within the Forsaken is even remotely correct. The thieves of the bloodstones were also a group. Stillwater also had some people loyal to him from what I recall. Desolate Council opposed Sylvanas on the grounds of immortality for the Forsaken and then multiple members tried to defect to the Alliance because they believed Sylvanas wouldn't let another Gathering happen.
And how is it going to do so? Blizzard doesn't even remember that there are non-Voss Forsaken for the most part, so who's going to take opposition to Calia? And why would Blizzard bother writing that when they are obviously devoted to hamfisting the unification across all Horde races no matter how forced it is? The Forsaken will all fawn over Calia because Horde members even thinking a negative thought about their new Alliance overlords is verbotten.
But then the problems come when you remove the leader. Blizzard have planned this for awhile now and yet have not set up opportunities for the Forsaken race or even make enough Forsaken characters ready to have a dilemma about the future.
Like, they have made it so, that the idea of a totally new character, with close to ZERO interaction with the race, is being set up to be its leader, and yet she is somehow the currently best answer/bet for a leader. Says a lot about how little there work there actually was put in developing the race.
We don't even have any undead aside from Voss to give us a reaction to Sylvanas leaving, noone to express the sudden loss of purpose.
May the lore be great and the stories interesting. A game without a story, is a game without a soul. Value the lore and it will reward you with fun!
Don't let yourself be satisfied with what you expect and what you seem as obvious. Ask for something good, surprising and better. Your own standards ends up being other peoples standard.
You certainly implied it, but it's good that you're attempting to backtrack, at least.
I'm talking about leadership in the general sense - being a leader within a given hierarchy, which is something that takes on many forms. This isn't "conflation," it's acceptance of the notion that ideas, in general, aren't necessarily confined to singular instances. I understand this can be confusing - it's far too easy to complain about meaningless semantics than actually arrive at workable solutions. We could bandy about semantics all day, but actually coming to a conclusion? Well, that would mean the fighting would end, and we can't have that.
You mean the idea that a nationality or group identity is more than blind loyalty toward a single given leader figure? Sure, you could call that "loose." I call it "functional," but again, this exchange is utterly pointless.
Ah yes, because a single quest completely and absolutely encapsulates what it is to be Forsaken - that's it. Never mind the entire group of people inducted into being Forsaken at their formation back in WC3, they obviously got grandfathered in through that quest. Never mind the countless Forsaken raised by the Val'kyr afterward, who to my knowledge never went through the Deathknell zone to pick up the quest, they're out too, I guess. Never mind that Sylvanas considered Voss a Forsaken when she raised her in Cata, and was content to wait for Voss to arrive at that knowledge herself, in due time. Now perhaps we can return to the actual subject at hand as opposed to this pointless and irrelevant trip down the memory lane of past debates.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
To be fair, the Forsaken 'identity' was always built strongly around Sylvanas's cult of personality. Hopefully, even with Calia at the helm, most Forsaken remain more morally-grey like Lillian Voss. Perhaps not necessarily, "experimenting on captive POWs to maximize the results of a highly-virulent plague" levels of obviously-evil, but a racial predilection toward R&D of questionable ethics and spywork/assassination coming naturally to them.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
May the lore be great and the stories interesting. A game without a story, is a game without a soul. Value the lore and it will reward you with fun!
Don't let yourself be satisfied with what you expect and what you seem as obvious. Ask for something good, surprising and better. Your own standards ends up being other peoples standard.
I'm not moving the goalposts, I'm telling you it's pretty much irrelevant to the conversation. I was never arguing that the Forsaken didn't sometimes act on their own to inflict harm and kill based on their own personal whims and desires.
Yes and I loved both of those incidents, they are probably my favorite Forsaken moments in lore.Putress had a group of Apothecaries loyal to him. They kinda performed a coup together with Varimathras (previously also affiliated with the Forsaken) and kicked Sylvanas out of Undercity. So I really cannot fathom how you can still maintain that your claim that until now there has never been a splinter faction of group of dissent within the Forsaken is even remotely correct. The thieves of the bloodstones were also a group. Stillwater also had some people loyal to him from what I recall. Desolate Council opposed Sylvanas on the grounds of immortality for the Forsaken and then multiple members tried to defect to the Alliance because they believed Sylvanas wouldn't let another Gathering happen.
But both groups were wiped out or suppressed at the end of those stories. That's exactly what I'm saying, and why I don't think Calia being the leader is necessarily an immediate bad thing. There's a huge difference between the way she acts, looks and behaves and the rest of the Forsaken, and I feel like that's going to be a story point if they have even a lick of sense.
It's a possibility, sure. But I'm personally reserving judgment for when it actually happens.And how is it going to do so? Blizzard doesn't even remember that there are non-Voss Forsaken for the most part, so who's going to take opposition to Calia? And why would Blizzard bother writing that when they are obviously devoted to hamfisting the unification across all Horde races no matter how forced it is? The Forsaken will all fawn over Calia because Horde members even thinking a negative thought about their new Alliance overlords is verbotten.
People are knee-jerk reacting negatively to this under the assumption that the Forsaken will just fall in line, but I don't really think that's likely. Most of them were fanatically devoted to Sylvanas, and without her they're confused and purposeless. If there isn't some kind of cultural shift then holy shit are they going to miss a huge mark.
I really hope the more evil sided forsaken stage a coup and kill off Calia. The forsaken all falling in line with Calia would be complete bullshit. An Anduin self-insert has no place in the Forsaken. For the Dark Lady! Blizzard writing Sylvanas out of the forsaken is just Golden fanfiction and didn't happen.
"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. "
- General Jack D. Ripper.
You asked me to elaborate and I did using actual examples. That's the point.
- - - Updated - - -
Now you know what it's like to be a Night Elf for all these years. At least they're giving you a redemption arc after the victim card got played. Night elves got cool dark eyes man...Justice for all.
“I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.”
― Ronald Regan