Why I look forward to Calia's rule (if blizzard does anything with this)

[Skytotem]

The Horde should be able to be good without needing to be taken over by the Alliance, or have its religion replaced by light, or anything like that.


The Forsaken should be able to keep their shadow/alchemy themes and NOT go all golden-perfect-pretty marble and ALSO not be genocidal Scourge-Lite.

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We need Forsaken characters developed. Bethor Iceshard, Oran Snakewrithe, Helcular, Gunther Arcanus, Lady Cozwyn, High Executor Anselm, etc...

Not Nelfs like Delaryn or Sira, not Calia who was never forsaken by anyone and is just a new cult of personality, not more ALLIANCE characters

[Skirdus]

To be fair this sort of change would most likely develop under any new leader put in place to take over in Sylvanas's absence. It's nothing unique to Calia in particular.

This is why I was hoping Lilian Voss would step up to the plate, because her "Being undead is a curse and I don't want it to happen to anyone else so I'm actively going to hunt down people and organizations raising the dead" mentality is directly at odds with Sylvanas's

[Rozz]

I want to see the Forsaken's impact on Calia.

At the moment she is a naive women with little experience for anything. There were times in BTS where I forgot she wasn't Anduin's age or 22. Similar to Danaerys (who was idealistic and met constant cruelty/conflict), I want to see Calia mature in response to her people's needs. Change should go both ways.

[Arrashi]

I want to see the Forsaken's impact on Calia.

At the moment she is a naive women with little experience for anything. There were times in BTS where I forgot she wasn't Anduin's age or 22. Similar to Danaerys (who was idealistic and met constant cruelty/conflict), I want to see Calia mature in response to her people's needs. Change should go both ways.

I don't think forsaken have anything that can pierce her armor of friendship and kindness. I mean look what happened last time, after they killed her she got up 3 seconds later and was stronger than ever.

[matrix123mko]

Forsaken are not one note. They aren't fully evil. That's how Alliance sees it. In fact, they just want to defend their homeland from living invaders by any means.

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I don't think forsaken have anything that can pierce her armor of friendship and kindness. I mean look what happened last time, after they killed her she got up 3 seconds later and was stronger than ever.

They can make her evil in order to reveal that Anduin deserves her throne and make him the King of Lordaeron.

[Rozz]

I don't think forsaken have anything that can pierce her armor of friendship and kindness. I mean look what happened last time, after they killed her she got up 3 seconds later and was stronger than ever.

But she at least realized that her actions were irresponsible and that she ultimately favored them over the Alliance itself.

Baby steps are better than eternal stagnation. Although they should be careful not to repeat what they did to Jaina. Having a heroine meet conflict doesn't require extreme odds and a bad dye job.

[Timester]

Except the problem is Calia isn't an interesting character. I don't see her being used any further than pushing "a lightforging is great" and "repent" narrative before inevitably joining the "evil" forces of Light in a future expansion. Primarily because she isn't acting to understand the Forsaken but to instead "make them cope". I mean that's what I'm getting from her spiriting away the risen Night Elves for "private counseling". Don't be surprised when we get Light Ranger NPCs in the future is all I'm saying.

The problem with Calia is that is basically blank slate. She literally can go nowhere, plot wise.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I hope to see some Forsaken fraction happening in game, with different Forsaken showing us opposite views. Just like they did with Tyrande and Shandris.

For once, the Forsaken are no longer the monolithic bone shield of a character, they have space to develop.

[ChairmanKaga]

of course you think that, because you haven't been given any other way of seeing the race. This is what stagnation does.

Some Undead maybe shouldn't be borderline evil but Forsaken should be. Forsaken isn't simply that they are undead it's all the circumstances-history-background surrounding that name and identity.

If they want to introduce further undead as a player race and make Calia their leader, fine. Forcing her into The Forsaken and abandoning their archetype in the game is unfortunate.

[Traveler Voltin]

Yeh.. great developments with Golden writing the forsaken like arms falling off from shaking hands and Sylvanas outlawing books or something (lol wut?). Lilian Voss now speaks for the forsaken and said "nah I chose not to lead" lol wht? She was never part of the forsaken in the first place. She is just the only undead character the writers actually developed besides sylvanas and nathanos. Also, it sucks that nathanos was in practically every cut scene and stole time from other characters cause now he is just some villain we will be putting downs lackey. It's just so pointless. This is just a culmination of blizzards incompetence. Many players liked the evil and mad scientist vibe of the forsaken and dont want sad humans with skin disease.

yeah the golden rectons piss me off.
"i dont understand the forsaken." Rectons forsaken lore. "I understand forsaken now."

[Super Dickmann]

Seeing as how the OP is Trassk and he admits that's her whole appeal to him, I'll skip the usual fare about how Calia is to 15 years of Forsaken lore what Nurse Ratched was to McMurphy or whatever. No one here disagrees with this, they just view it as desirable, and instead address the bit about the Forsaken being a monolith and Sylvanas being unopposed, both within their own context and relative to other races.

Within their own context, every single expansion where the Forsaken have had a major storyline, from Vanilla, to Wrath to Cataclysm Sylvanas has been the subject to both doctrinal disputes and outright opposition going from her own political faction, not people who just so happened to also be undead humans. This is both in directions more radical and more moderate than her. In Vanilla, for radicals you had the people who were already plotting Forsaken world conquest like the various Varimathras-connected quest, rogue intros and so forth. For moderates you had Darkmar who defected not because Sylvanas was oppressing him, but because he couldn't stand for her using evil old god artifacts. In Wrath, for more radical you both had Putress, who actually took the death to the living thing seriously and rebelled against Sylvanas for her failure and the more mundane fare, like how Wroth has you kill people just for being captured while Sylvanas herself later has you rescue fleeing troops after their failure in Cataclysm. In Cataclysm and onwards, every single named Forsaken character raised by Sylvanas turns on her. Every single one without fail - Galen, Godfrey, the lords with him, Delaryn, Derek, Zelling, Stone, etc. On the more radical note you had Stillwater and his use of mindless undead which got even Lydon disgusted, on the more moderate note you had guys like the Captain Jekyll, who despite being given orders to capture Dun Garok defies them because he is impressed with the bravery of the dwarves for fighting for their land even unto death, something which he finds in line with the Forsaken themselves. BFA goes without saying. Along with that is that the Forsaken are the ones who change the most from their more derelict - we just want revenge, we are monsters and only the 'former' citizens of Lordaeron vibe of Vanilla, inhabiting ruins and so forth, to their Cata-era reclamation of their Lordaeronian identity, the concept of undeath as a transhumanist state and that to people as twisted as that, undeath isn't so bad. The Forsaken change - do they change in the same direction the way the Alliance did? No, but in terms of both internal opposition and group-wide development, they have a pronounced shift.

Let's check that against some others, shall we? The Darkspear have never at any point have any internal conflict whatsoever. It took until Wrath for orcs to materially disagree with Thrall and for this to be brought to attention and no conflict was had against Thrall himself until Mists, where the ones who did it were exclusively baddies, where Sylvanas's Forsaken opposition has covered the entire moral spectrum. The Grimtotem are tauren opposition, but they're external to Baine and the only tauren who didn't agree with Baine were evicted from the race and any screen time at the end of Cata, with the usual suspects here going on about how that makes sense of course, since the tauren as a collective are peaceful, a collective identity they seem to take a lot more umbrage with when it comes to the Forsaken. Humans had conflict up to Cata with the Defias, House of Nobles and so forth, but have since then not had a single person who disagreed with Anduin or opposition to his agenda or personality traits, except Rogers who conveniently vanished. The only ones to have consistently had more internal differentiation with the leader are the dwarves and the night elves due to their many highly different subfactions.

As a final note, let's disregard all that and assume every Forsaken eats babies for breakfast and does everything Sylvanas tells him - there's some truth to that too, even if it's a simplification, and it's not off from the fantasy sold with the intros and their description. Instead, let's judge Calia as someone who breaks that monolith and produces different types of Forsaken. Name me a single extant Forsaken character who disagrees with or has a bad word to say about Calia. Name a Forsaken character except Voss who existed before BFA and has appeared since their change in BTS. Hell, name me one in BTS. You can't. They've all disappeared or left the race. The new situation is also a monolith, it's just a monolith that's closer to the ones possessed by humans or worgen at this stage in terms of general themes compared to their original baseline as 'harbingers of doom' who use their 'cruelty and viciousness', as anyone who ever rolled Forsaken during Vanilla would know of them. Calia introduces something new to the Forsaken at the expense of everything old, but the experience she offers, while 'fresh' to the Forsaken is virtually the same experience as offered by every other race already.

[Cyram]

The one thing I can hope for the future of the Forsaken under Calia "Let's talk about my dad but not about my brother" Menethil is that we get new prominent Forsaken characters - you know, either someone that opposes her, or someone that is in favor of her - just anyone, at this point. The Forsaken (and most Horde races, honestly) are in dire need of characters to develop, now that Sylvanas is gone and Thrall's retired.
Also... am I the only one who thinks that Derek Proudmoore is actually an agent of Sylvanas who decided to follow Calia just to keep an eye on her? Maybe a sleeper agent that'll get triggered and fuck things up? I mean, the whole "oh you're leaving? Me too!" thing was just too weird, imo.

[Catblob]

I wonder what becomes of the Royal Apothecary Society with Calia in charge; she probably won't be particularly thrilled with their research efforts thus far.

[Trassk]

I wonder what becomes of the Royal Apothecary Society with Calia in charge; she probably won't be particularly thrilled with their research efforts thus far.

Pretty certain most of the apothecary society research and misdeeds happened in undercity. That got nuked by sylvanas.

This is something people seem to be forgetting, the forsaken don't have a city anymore.

[Rendark]

Calia leading the forsaken is the worst thing you could do to them.

[Tharivor]

The cure for one personality cult is not to install another. Forsaken lore has suffered since Cataclysm to the extent that it became focused on Sylvanas alone, while the actual institutions of Forsaken society like the Deathstalkers, Apothecaries, and the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow have fallen by the wayside. Getting rid of the remains of these and creating an entirely opposing new identity tied solely into the personality of a single universally worshipped leader is literally the worst thing that could happen and will only finish what Sylvanas storyline started. At least the cult of Sylvanas coexisted somewhat with wider Forsaken lore.

The only way Calia could be a positive development if it leads to multiple sub-factions within the Forsaken, but anyone who believes that hasn't been paying attention to all the mood music Blizzard has been sending out about Calia.

But then the impression I get from the OP, like most of the pro-Calia posts around here, is that its less about wanting to move on from Sylvanas and more about wanting to remove all Forsaken lore wholesale so Alliance rpers can play as Lordaeron humans with pale skin.

[GreenJesus]

The cure for one personality cult is not to install another. Forsaken lore has suffered since Cataclysm to the extent that it became focused on Sylvanas alone, while the actual institutions of Forsaken society like the Deathstalkers, Apothecaries, and the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow have fallen by the wayside. Getting rid of the remains of these and creating an entirely opposing new identity tied solely into the personality of a single universally worshipped leader is literally the worst thing that could happen and will only finish what Sylvanas storyline started. At least the cult of Sylvanas coexisted somewhat with wider Forsaken lore.

The only way Calia could be a positive development if it leads to multiple sub-factions within the Forsaken, but anyone who believes that hasn't been paying attention to all the mood music Blizzard has been sending out about Calia.

But then the impression I get from the OP, like most of the pro-Calia posts around here, is that its less about wanting to move on from Sylvanas and more about wanting to remove all Forsaken lore wholesale so Alliance rpers can play as Lordaeron humans with pale skin.

Anyone that is excited about Calia are 95% alliance players.

[matrix123mko]

Calia leading the forsaken is the worst thing you could do to them.

It is like giving Magatha to tauren. That would be funny.

[Rendark]

At this point deleting the forsaken from the game would be better then having Calia as a leader.

[Triceron]

What about in WotLK when Grand Apothecary Putress and other Royal Apothecary Society members sided with Varimathras? They took control of Undercity and tried to kill Sylvanas. They caused the Wrathgate incident (killing both the undead and the living). There are also undead who did not side with Sylvanas during the events of 8.2.5.

Wasn't this explained in BFA to be Sylvanas all along? She apparently took credit for this for some reason.

#itwassylvanasallalong #blamevarimathras #nolivesmatter

[Tharivor]

Wasn't this explained in BFA to be Sylvanas all along? She apparently took credit for this for some reason.

#itwassylvanasallalong #blamevarimathras #nolivesmatter

I think this was very much the intention. By retrospectively tying Sylvanas to every prominent Forsaken moment, even those that paradoxically were aimed at her death, Blizz is deliberately sending the message that "All past Forsaken activity/identity was just Sylvanas" which effectively gives Calia a completely blank slate to reform the Forsaken in her image with no internal opposition now that Sylvanas is gone.

It doesn't fit with the pre-BTS lore at all, but as we all know Blizz isn't ashamed to retcon everything in pursuit of their latest storyline.