How to fix Baine?

[Super Dickmann]

I'm taking time off of my busy schedule of shitting on Baine at every opportunity and cribbing an idea from the official forums. Now all of us who don't play Alliance know that Baine is a complete doormat and traitor who is unsuited to be janitor, let alone faction leader or future Warchief. Since I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to rag on about this when more of his dialogue and the Derek cinematic comes out, I pose this question to you. If you were in charge, how would you fix Baine to make him an actually palatable character?

Hard mode: You can't take him behind the barn like Old Yeller.

[Aucald]

Baine creates a temporary alliance with Jaina to spare Mulgore as a resurgent Alliance rampages across upper Kalimdor. Jaina, disobeying Anduin's orders to hold to the terms of the armistice, decides that despite their prior relationship Baine can't be trusted and so commands her forces to start killing the Tauren of Mulgore while Baine himself is away in Zuldazar (having been called on the carpet for this arrangement with the Alliance). Baine returns to Mulgore after having been chastised to find that a large portion of his people have been slaughtered by Jaina's Kul Tiran forces, with the survivors having just been able to push Jaina's garrisons out of the great gate and into the Barrens.

Enraged by Jaina and the Alliance's betrayal of him and his people, he emerges with a heart of brass, willing to finally lay down his previous idealistic pacifism and takes the fight directly to the Alliance forces in the Barrens - using the Tauren solders' knowledge of the terrain (and their now burning hatred) to devastate the Alliance ranks and re-take the Kalimdor warfront.

[ls-]

Baine creates a temporary alliance with Jaina to spare Mulgore as a resurgent Alliance rampages across upper Kalimdor. Jaina, disobeying Anduin's orders to hold to the terms of the armistice, decides that despite their prior relationship Baine can't be trusted and so commands her forces to start killing the Tauren of Mulgore while Baine himself is away in Zuldazar (having been called on the carpet for this arrangement with the Alliance). Baine returns to Mulgore after having been chastised to find that a large portion of his people have been slaughtered by Jaina's Kul Tiran forces, with the survivors having just been able to push Jaina's garrisons out of the great gate and into the Barrens.

Enraged by Jaina and the Alliance's betrayal of him and his people, he emerges with a heart of brass, willing to finally lay down his previous idealistic pacifism and takes the fight directly to the Alliance forces in the Barrens - using the Tauren solders' knowledge of the terrain (and their now burning hatred) to devastate the Alliance ranks and re-take the Kalimdor warfront.

TBQH, he'd probably once again justify Alliance's actions by saying something like "well, we had warriors and gatherers there, so... And I'm Horde, so they indeed had no reason to fully trust me", and then he'd proceed to exile everyone who'd want to retaliate :P

It's Baine we're talking about >_> I mean, it wouldn't be the first time he tried to justify Allies' attacks on the Horde or even his people...

And Anduin would prob tell him that he'd handle Jaina's disobedience himself, and Baine would be satisfied w/ it :P

[Deleted]

if he comes out and openly say that he regrets what happened to garrosh and how he should ally with him instead of betraying him, and then cut sylvanas and nathanos in half with his bare hands (he can do that, sylvanas admits this in a book) while screaming THIS IS FOR GARROSH OUR TRUE WARCHIEF, then i will forgive him, for real.

[nerv234]

Baine creates a temporary alliance with Jaina to spare Mulgore as a resurgent Alliance rampages across upper Kalimdor. Jaina, disobeying Anduin's orders to hold to the terms of the armistice, decides that despite their prior relationship Baine can't be trusted and so commands her forces to start killing the Tauren of Mulgore while Baine himself is away in Zuldazar (having been called on the carpet for this arrangement with the Alliance). Baine returns to Mulgore after having been chastised to find that a large portion of his people have been slaughtered by Jaina's Kul Tiran forces, with the survivors having just been able to push Jaina's garrisons out of the great gate and into the Barrens.

Enraged by Jaina and the Alliance's betrayal of him and his people, he emerges with a heart of brass, willing to finally lay down his previous idealistic pacifism and takes the fight directly to the Alliance forces in the Barrens - using the Tauren solders' knowledge of the terrain (and their now burning hatred) to devastate the Alliance ranks and re-take the Kalimdor warfront.

Good thinking. But why make him lose too much people, in times where there are mages with teleports he would know after slaughter of first vilage. Btw. Ebonhord burning down alliance soldiers stuck in the chokepoint would be satisfying enough and would be similar to the war between Amani and Arathor(you know, anihilation of amani army by human/elven mages).

[Niwes]

best thing blizz can do, since they introduced this douche bag by watching his father being killed and doing nothing, is to kill him.

give him that pseudo hero death (for the ppl who liked him, if there is even one out there) and send him to the dust. then come up with a half assed story about some lost brother of him, or such shit, to introduce a new character on this position. and then make something better, more serious, less douchbaggy out of that character.

ppl will forget such a cheap transition but have more fun with a better designed character.

and it is not that blizz (as incompetent as they became) can not achieve it. New Illidan for example was not the best i ever seen, but it was good enough that ppl accepted it and did not gone too much „omg this is not Illidan“ cause of the redeem stuff.

i strongly believe that blizz at least is able to replace Baine with something better.

so, make Horde great again (instead a bunch of lame douchebags, a green jesus, a murder bitch, a greedy fatty and a useless panda).

[Aucald]

Good thinking. But why make him lose too much people, in times where there are mages with teleports he would know after slaughter of first vilage. Btw. Ebonhord burning down alliance soldiers stuck in the chokepoint would be satisfying enough and would be similar to the war between Amani and Arathor(you know, anihilation of amani army by human/elven mages).

I would imagine that with Alliance forces already inside Mulgore (keeping the peace, as it were) it would be difficult for the Tauren to evacuate once these peacekeeping forces turned on them and started liquidating the citizenry. Couple that with the majority of the Tauren's elite forces being dispatched elsewhere you'd have a case where there weren't enough specialists to aid in the conflict.

[Gigantique]

I second the notion of giving Baine some deep-felt betrayal that really hurts his people and his naive ideologies, turning him and his people into the really scary backbone of the Horde army they should be. A pseudo-Aszuna-prince-whatever-his-name could work too, with his people initially blaming him for the devastation, and eventually rallying behind him on a murderous rampage to get revenge when he does something crazy like leading the counter-attack and taking back the gates of mulgore in spectacular and brutal fashion (throw some low-tier named Alliance NPC off the top of the gates maybe?).

Baine needs some traumatic event turning him against his own beliefs, much like Jaina has compared to her naive self from WC3. The Alliance could also do good story-wise if they did something truly heinous (ravaging innocent villages), even if the order from Anduin etc was to minimize the casualties, but Knight-Captain Dickbag and his Lietenuant Assmunch had such a hateboner for the Horde that the thing just fell apart into genocidal murder. As much as pacifist-Baine annoys me to no end, if he through these quests ended up with a cinematic where he stands on the top of the Great Gates, slamming Alliance soldiers off it left and right using a huge totem, then seeing Knight-Captain Dickbag on the floor, whimpering or spewing some racial slurs, then see from his view Baine slamming the butt of the totem in his/your face, and you even get a flashback to the original Vanilla cinematic. Queue some view from the outside of more important NPCs like Jaina (since her and Baine have a thing) watching with surprise/slight horror as Baine tosses Dickbag’s corpse off the wall and yelling something along the lines of «We will never forget this, *Lord Admiral*» and stepping down while Horde banners are being raised again on each side of him.

That would make Baine cool to me.

[Techno-Druid]

turning him and his people into the really scary backbone of the Horde army they should be

That's not what the tauren are though, they're great fighters but they're not brutish monsters.

[Martymark]

Baine should get stabbed to death in a book and never mentioned again in game.

[Kynario]

Baine should get stabbed to death in a book and never mentioned again in game.

That's very mean

[Arrashi]

As someone said already - make him "tip" alliance about zuldazar, allowing them easy entry.

Then have horde "deal" with him, while his last words are "My king im sorry, i failed you".

[thesmall001]

Double-crossing Baine is too easy a path to take when many characters -especially Jaina, who's currently very central and has just completed that arc- have already used that story line too many times. There's not a lot of variation left to it.

A cool hook for Baine could be that his patient stoicism comes back to bite him in the rump and he ends up suffering a massive loss due to his decision to wait for the right time to strike. Then the regret over this drives him to do something terribly reactionary that he then regrets. Maybe he betrays Anduin or Jaina's trust in some sort of unforgivable way. Maybe he divides the Horde's forces leading to a substantial dishonour. Maybe he screws over Saurfang without meaning to do so. Or divides the Tauren in the reverse of his father's legacy.

I'm reading War Crimes again right now and there's a lot to be said for Baine as a really moral and ethical center-point for the Horde. It's not the coolest role but it is a good role and one I'm glad Blizzard can play with still. I've maintained from the start that this is the expansion is patiently back-loading the moral greyness: The Horde will get their ship in order only for the Alliance (under so-very-fair Anduin, making it so much sweeter) to decide that the Horde can't be trusted to guide themselves any longer. So they'll peacefully collar the Horde. Baine giving up and accepting that fate could be a really good way to drive that guilt-culture home for the Horde.

Then moving forward we can start to watch the Horde chaff under the Alliance's supervision, let the Alliance gradually become more forceful and domineering in that role, only for the Horde to eventually get back to a point where they feel justified in breaking the chains that bind them. After all that, maybe, I can see Baine in a leadership role.

[valax]

I'm taking time off of my busy schedule of shitting on Baine at every opportunity and cribbing an idea from the official forums. Now all of us who don't play Alliance know that Baine is a complete doormat and traitor who is unsuited to be janitor, let alone faction leader or future Warchief. Since I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to rag on about this when more of his dialogue and the Derek cinematic comes out, I pose this question to you. If you were in charge, how would you fix Baine to make him an actually palatable character?

Hard mode: You can't take him behind the barn like Old Yeller.

Make him bathe in alliance blood , for a change .

[melzas]

I'd give him some spotlight on the battlefield. Make him kill/defeat some important alliance character, so that we see that behind his pacific approach lies a great warrior who can inspire his people and that he is a leader that needs to be respected. Right now all he does is talk about peace. He is a pushover and the way story is presented, Sylvanas doesn't care about him at all.

I'm fine with Baine being a pacifist, but I really don't like that the way the story is told, he comes out as a weakling. We don't need every racial leader to be pro-war, but I'd like them to be champions of their race that need to be respected, and there is nothing to respect Baine for right now.

[Wildberry]

Honestly, I really don't think there's a way to salvage Baine at this point.

Assume, for a moment, that we go with the idea where he kills an important Alliance character. So what? That changes absolutely nothing about him. He will still be the exact same Baine that we've all come to loathe. Putting him in a "kill or be killed" situation really doesn't do much to rehabilitate him.

Since that's out, we're left with various scenarios that involve the Alliance somehow screwing Baine over. Those really don't work too well either. Taurajo writ large? Jaina liquidating Mulgore's citizenry? It really doesn't matter what we go with, because the outcome will be received one of two ways:
A.) It will either clash with his stance on Taurajo, undermining his character further
B.) It requires the Alliance acting cartoonishly evil, which just won't happen under Blanduin Wrynn of all people. Not even Jaina or Genn could reasonably be expected to do something "Bad" enough to really push someone like Baine over the edge.

Let's not forget that Jaina's 180 only recently became remotely palatable and that, prior to her Kul Tiras arc, she was one of the most intolerable, schizophrenic characters in the Warcraft universe that bored us all with a meandering arc.

Baine really has no equivalent to a potential Kul Tiras arc that could result in the actualization of a different Baine.

I think it's worth asking though, let's assume we somehow manage to shift Baine's character in a believable and well written way. Is it worth it? Not only does that hypothetical come with risks of terrible writing, considering you'd have to justify a very large 180. Beyond that, despite people here saying "angry Baine would make a good Warchief candidate," I disagree entirely; this will still be the same Baine that betrayed the Horde outright, that pushed for negotiating after taking 1 loss, and so on. No matter how much his personality shifts, that reputation is going to follow him (Similar to how people still complain about Garrosh in Nagrand).

But ultimately, any action that's sufficient enough to give Baine a different characterization is going to require poor writing for other characters. As alluded to above, some of the scenarios presented require the Alliance to be written as a ridiculous caricature of "bad guys." We've seen how precious Alliance posters are, they really don't want anything to tarnish their squeaky clean reputation. While I'd personally like to fight against a morally grey Alliance, I don't really think there's any way to reconcile the faction as-is, with the faction as it needs to be to push Baine into different territory.

And let's not leave aside the fact that it'd have to be someone major within the Alliance that screws over Baine. A rogue, no-name general, invented specifically for this purpose won't be satisfying from a story perspective. Canonically, such an underling will, or at least should, lack to pull and political capital to force someone like Baine to reconsider his previous stances. At best, we'd get wariness of the Alliance rank and file from something like that, but Baine would still likely lean to peace, just a top-down approach to it.

At the end of the day, we'd have to tarnish other characters, in hopes that a completely intolerable character might become remotely palatable. I really don't think the math works out in favor that. It's just not worth it.

The best case scenario is that Golden et al. take the hint that Baine Bloodhoof is one of the most loathed characters in this franchise at the moment, and they decide to axe him. Take the development that would've been spent trying to salvage Baine, and use it to build up a better, non-Bloodhoof character to take the reins. At this point, Baine would have to become a completely different character to be not-completely-hated, why not just start with a blank slate?

Hard mode: You can't take him behind the barn like Old Yeller.

Impossible.

[Darknessvamp]

Baine trips on one of the many logs scattered around Thunderbluff and falls off the edge of a cliff as he is on his way to confirm with his own eyes his sentries report of a small fleet of Alliance Airships bombing the Mulgore gate beyond which an Alliance Army feverishly awaited. He tries to call out for help from the two tauren warriors accompanying him but he's gone in a flash. The warriors report that the Alliance did it to stop the shame of their chieftain's actual demise being known and reaffirm their loyalty to the horde. They then select a Tauren veteran of the wars with the Centaurs and who has a backbone as their new chieftain and prepare to actually deal with the Alliance trying to encroach on their lands.

[BlakeArt]

Baine is perfectly fine. You can't have two side arguing about what's best between peace and war if every protagonist want war. He's a pacifist and don't want blood to be spill for nothing. You don't seems to understand that. They never game him a moment to shine as a central character, but that's okey, not every character are that chance and most of those who got that chance ended up universally hated whatever does Blizzard.

[Wildberry]

Baine is perfectly fine.

He literally betrayed the Horde. No amount of "but we need TWO SIDES!!"-arguments are going to change that fact.

[ls-]

He literally betrayed the Horde. No amount of "but we need TWO SIDES!!"-arguments are going to change that fact.

Well, from Ally point of view Baine is fine, moreover, Baine would be an awesome Warchief.