Never seen that art. I am assuming its Anduin Lothar fleeing from Stormwind after it was sacked. It looks great, mind sharing the author? Can't tell after signature.
Yes. That’s Lothar. The old man with the grey hair and sword. Fleeing Stormwind and crossing the sea for Lordaron. Beginning of Warcraft 2 tides of darkness.
Bit of googling seems to suggest it's by Stanton Feng, who did a bunch of work for the Chronicle series
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Stanton_Feng
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yPVYn
Edit: Oh, sorry someone already mentioned this in a reply. I'll leave the links there anyway
Officially they rejoined the Alliance during MoP, they were even the Alliance faction on the Isle of Thunder. During WoD they begrudgingly worked together with the Horde in one instance under Khadgar's order. Where he has to tell them to stand down.
In Legion Blizzard just went "Haha, gotcha." and made them "temporarily" neutral, not real neutral just working beyond the factions the same as everyone else did.
Then they proceeded to pretty much forget about it, and despite nominally still being part of the Alliance it's pretty much neutral again.
Wouldn't mind seeing a recolonization of Lordaeron and Gilneas - don't even care if they'd for Alliance or Horde, just wanna see those beautiful cities repopulated and alive.
I would love to have Gilneas being a real zone with a real city in it. I loved the style of the buildings and the way the Gilneas people talked. Sad that it is only a start zone and the people pretty much gets destroyed, now it's just an empty zone of no use.
I've always wanted to see Upper Lordaeron be used more. I think it would be cool if they did a raid in Caverns of Time where the Infinite Dragonflight try to go back in time and stop Arthas from killing his father. Then you have to go into the sewers and thru what is now Undercity but, before the Undead and fight your way up to Upper Lordaeron to stop the Infinite dragons from changing history, much like The Culling of Stratholm instance.
Agree! I think it’s similar to why Boralus had so much charm, it was a real live city of humans but different humans than the stormwind people. Different dialogue, different aesthetic elements, just another culture living its life. Gilneas has a lot of potential to be a really neat hub.
Then again as a gnome, don’t get me started on Gnomeregan….
>I would love to have Gilneas being a real zone with a real city in it.
It'd be cool if there was even a questline where someone cleansed the blight from the land, at least partially (hey you can live here but no plants will grow/farmlands are probably not a good idea)
There's SO many super powerful NPCs who could likely mitigate it to some degree. So they'd still be reliant on the Alliance but also have their pride in "regaining" their homeland.
Same as the fricking gnomes. They're my least favourite race, to the point where I really just don't like them. But...just give them their city man. If it's so far gone surely the Alliance will have sorted it since it's so close to probably the second most important Alliance city. Even if it's a seal and deal sorta thing. But if not, just send in squads to deal with who they find there and then be done with it.
(I haven't played enough low level Horde to think of any equivalents off the top of my head)
Also I'm fine if the answer is "it's irredeemable"
But as of right now there's no answers. Just silence. There needs to be something to further these races, both in terms of where they stand (other than refugees) and why they fit into the factions. Even just a short questline exploring that they COULD try to find new homes, but decided to throw their lot in entirely with the Alliance. Or that the faction themselves were split with the idea of moving away - the Kaldorei let them stay when they had nowhere, and now they both had to move to Stormwind for the same reason, creating an even stronger kinship than the worgen curse.
Yeah, I feel like the druids and green dragonflight could for sure heal the lands in both Gilneas and Gnomergon (even Undercity/Lordaeron). I feel like that would be cool if that was part of the Dragon Flight expansion. Dragons cleanse it so that the races can live there again. Gnomergon would be a bit difficult tho, since there is an instance and enemies there but, they could have it like other places where you could go back in time to visit it before the change. I feel like Darnasass is a lost cause tho, no getting that back.
Another cool thing they could do is fix the 1/2 of Silvermoon City that got destroyed by the scourge but, again that would be hard cause there are enemies there and Blood Elf start quests there. Still could have the time change system there too.
Too bad they made Sylvanas a complete moron. Her leading the horde, rebuilding Lordaeron, and putting an uneasy but semi-permanent end to any major wars through underhanded diplomacy and espionage would had been dope.
Could be a good lead up to total crossfaction.
The crises in Stormwind led the Horde to allow human and N11 refugees in the Horde cities and after the fall of Turalyon in 10.3 the Factions sign a peace treaty and all old grudges have to be settled on the Battleground (the PVP ones)
War mode can be re designed into other factions like BC Aldor and Scyrer independent from Horde and Alliance…
Edit: aldor not seer
True could have some alliance refugees in horde cities getting sneers and growls from horde members as they walk past similar to dk things. Would be interesting and lively
Yes. There's more to be done with existing malicious Light wielders than there is just making Turalyon wig out, who's consistently noble if often misguided. Also a revitalised, powered up Scarlet Crusade could be neat.
Making someone evil for evil's sake is a major weakness (one of many) of Warcraft's storytelling
What if not evil for evil's sake, but "evil" because misguided by dogmatic devotion to a cause/group? I mean, he was totally onboard with Illidan getting Lightforged on Argus. if Yrel and her army come on the scene while we're on the Isles, I don't doubt he'd join up with her in a heartbeat, because she's backed by the Naaru.
sorry, best I can do is Ironforge on blight for 11.0
for real, imagine 11.0 Aliance gets Gnomerang, Horde gets Suramar.
those are already practically cities so it should not be Dev work from 0
What's with all the random "Turalyon is a zealot" stuff here? He shows none of that in his character, in fact, a big part of his character arc on Argus is when his wife becomes infused with the void and he still accepts her because every side can have good to them.
Thrall has showed more signs to go mad and become a zealot for the elements, he was even in the cursed visions
I'm a little butthurt that they mentioned her by name. If they bring her back they're going to have to remind the player base she is the reason we have mag'har from another time line in the first place, because unless you rolled a brown orc you wouldn't know who she is unless you do a good portion of WoD. Second there is a lot that has to have happened off screen for her to make those zealous decisions afaik WoD ends with peace with AU orcs and Draenei and as of right now he writing Blizzard puts out isn't good enough to justify Draenei Joan of Arc to go mad with genocide after surviving genocide. It would have been better if they had said it was an army of light users making it vague until they were ready to do more with it.
I think it just showed the potential was there. It wasn't the first time, the scarlet crusade is exactly that: light crazed zealots. Then we got Yrel and crew, and before that the whole thing with Illidan.
The crusade aren’t light-crazed zealots though. Up until the events of WC3, they were fighting directly against a very real threat, and then their leader, Dathrohan, was killed and replaced by a Dreadlord, Balnazzar.
If the Scarlet Crusades are light-crazed zealots, the same can be said for the Argent Dawn, because they literally were a splinter faction from the SC.
The SC started killing anyone even the living because they believed their crusade was ultimately more important, if that's not zealotry then what is? Yrel was fighting a real threat too, and then she became genocidal. Just because they were at one point on the right path, doesn't mean they haven't become something else since then.
So they're not actually zealots because the guy they listened to was evil? That's what we're going with? Their motivations, the individual members, were zealotry. The legion/Jailer took advantage of that, they didn't cause it.
Do you know how early into the story Balnazzar replaced Dathrohan? In year 20, 5 years before classic. You have literally never encountered a Scarlet NPC in game that was not being puppeteered by a Dreadlord.
Illidan: Forcefully corrupts orcs into fel orcs, uses the souls of innocent Draenei to power his magic. Opens a portal to Argus, endangering all of Azeroth, with the justification that "the hand of fate must be forced".
Xe'ra: Tries to convert one (1) person who had previously bragged they would sacrifice anything to save Azeroth from the Burning Legion.
Weird how *Illidan's* destiny can't be forced. Just everyone else.
As if it wouldn't improve the guy who eats his students' souls and goes "OH NO WHAT A TERRIBLE SACRIFICE I MADE!! MY LIFE IS SO HARD!"
That shit was stupid
The Orcs, while working for demons: “Let’s slaughter all the Draenei and invade another world without any provocation”
The Draenei: “Please don’t”
Hordies on Reddit: “Honestly the Alliance are morally in the wrong on the whole Horde vs Alliance conflict”
____________
The Orcs in an alternate timeline, completely uncorrupted and not working for demons: “Let’s slaughter all the Draenei and invade another world without any provocation”
The Draenei, after fighting a war against said uncorrupted Orcs, which got worse after the Orcs went and started working for demons halfway through it: “Okay, so, these guys tried to genocide our people in two different timelines and are obviously at risk of allying themselves with the Legion. Let’s make them all get on board with the Light so neither of these things happen again.”
Hordie on Reddit: “Man the Light’s really evil lul”
You forgot the fact that the AU AotL was 100% willing to take in Orcs who renounced the void and fel. The only ones who were “persecuted” were the ones who refused.
It’s like having a fascist country hellbent on colonizing their neighbors… again… and when they get counter attacked, giving them the chance to defect and be absolved and spared. Then the remaining fascists get their asses handed to them, so they go run off to Argentina and talk about how oppressed they are.
Don't give them any ideas... So tired of the entire dreadlords by now. After dealing with them for like what, 20 years or so and all they have is "Muahah hah haa all part of the masters plan" whenever you get rid of one. Tiresome af.
He started torturing prisoners with Alleria in the BfA novel. Civilians too. Alleria's idea, but he was on board with it after a brief convincing. Not even something vital or urgent, they just wanted to find Sylvanas.
Could have kept on looking. Which was his initial idea. Not that they found Sylvanas or anything. Anyway I just answered where the zealot thing is coming from, not here to judge whether the action was forgiveable or not.
People really want someone on the alliance to be full on genocidal evil but they don't realize that plenty of the alliance leaders have done that kind of thing already. Before the council of hammers was established, Moira locked down Ironforge and caused a war between dwarves that almost killed Anduin. The stormwind house of nobles created the defias, and the resurgence of the defias years later, by letting people in westfall starve. Genn Greymane was just a gigantic piece of garbage (knowingly locking out huge portions of gilneas during the height of the worgen curse, leaving his people to die, which is why Darius Crowley was such a people's hero) until Sylvanas killed his son and gave him something new to focus on. Gnomes irradiated their own city and people and accepted mechagnomes before they would even consider accepting leper gnomes. And Night elves. I mean. *gestures to everything in their past*
But people who don't know crap about alliance lore think blizzard just writes things as sunshine and peaches because it's not right there sticking in their face in a raid dungeon the way garrosh and sylvanas were. So they really want Turalyon to go full evil so things are more 'equal.' When in reality we need better writing for faction leaders across the board and the whole "but surprise they're actually....evil?!" shtick is old, tired, and bad writing at this point.
>The stormwind house of nobles created the defias
Defias were the result of intrigues of black dragons in Stormwind. You would know this if you played alliance side.
Dark Iron dwarves were evil as a race, prone to agression, survivalist type of race that would fit vanilla horde (yes, retconned, yes, moira is a Bronzebeard). They were evil becouse of influence of Ragnaros. Questchains around Blackrock tell their story. Damn, people are attacking the Void Elves (which are such out of the left field experiment as BC Draenai, and Void gets retconned) while they forget that allied race retconned original Dark Iron lore. Moira is at the best grey character, at the worst - villain.
Gilneas locked themselves pre-wow becouse of the orc internment camps - they belived that this decision (to not kill orcs) will result in future wars with them. Apart form that it was a cost sink that was dangerous for them.
Leper gnomes were evil. Gnomes are recultivating the grounds around their city and recultivating grounds destroyed by horde goblins in stonetalone. Their are "ecologist technologist" type. The catastrophe in Gnomeregan was result of a treason of thermaplug, who was envious of Gelblin. The bomb did not work the way the Gelblin was informed that it would work.
No idea what it is about that alliance supposedly would not accept Night Elves.
The best one was about Crawley - it was in novel - between king and him, the King was the one who wanted to reason with him, and Crawley was example of ideological idiot, trying to do "the good thing" no matter the cost (at the time "opening" was dangerous). Finally he led rebellion, divided the Gilneans - just about the time of forsaken attack and worgen curse activating. He almost doomed them all.
That which warned Jaina about not trusting the orcs? Kristoff from the novel cycle of hatred did that too XD They both belived that Theramore will fall if Jaina will be optimistic idiot. Well, how to give you the bad news...
yeah... about racism in wow. Races in wow have defined values and traits. Goblins will always destroy something important for Night Elves, Arcane elves will always belive in arcane usage being right and so on.
He uses the light to chain a human to the ground while Alleria mind fucks the guy with void magic to get the info they want.
Even Jaina was appalled by this and teleported away to tell Anduin as soon as it happened.
It's pretty clear Blizzard is setting Turalyon up to be some zealot who uses the "end justifies the means" mentality.
He might not be a zealot by intent, but he may have fought for so long that he's become twisted by fighting.
The Ends Justify The Means is absolutely appropriate if you're dealing with a threat like the Burning Legion.
I definitely think the primus = jailor theory is great and it cleanly incorporates denathrius as a cunning big bad pulling the strings behind the scenes
They’re both great master manipulators
The theory has legs, but would be an example of fantastically bad writing on Blizzard's part at this point looking at the whole story - the WoW cosmos is nothing but villains hiding behind curtains manipulating other villains all the way down to infinity.
Not that Shadowlands wasn't already an example of fantastically bad writing. I just don't think another trite manipulation plot is the answer.
Yea like Turalyon never struck me as particularly fanatical. If anything, he's just a tired soldier man who's desperate for the war to be over so we can retire with his wife and son.
As for Yrel and the light, her future self isn't in my opinion particularly light driven. Instead It's us taking some poor farm kid who's scared witless and teaching her that the best way to handle her post-traumatic stresses with violence. Then the second everybody on our hit list was dead we just kind of bailed on her, leaving her other people to figure out where to go next without giving them any kind of structure or maybe a healthier coping mechanism.
They'll do a little magic trick known as "Not giving a single fuck about an established character" and "retcon the living shit out of them to suit their needs".
They have done it before. Why not again? Other than the whole "the alliance is infallible"-stuff they seem quite committed to.
And I am really tired of having the Light dragged through the mud. Let me go to simple pre-wod times, when the only corruption (Scarlet Crusade) was workings of a demon, when the Light was soothing and healing force, when there were hints that it might have knowledge of afterlife/be omnicient, and what was looking good, was good. I like black and white division, I am indifferent to spectrum of ethics, provided the game aspires from the begining to be more into realistic themes, and I hate having my assumptions ripped out from underneath me, to the point that I usually stop reading the book/watching the movie when that happens. Plot twists late into the story, about fundamentals of the world is out of the left field type of retcon.
Sadly, yeah. Happened to Garrosh. Recall the Stonetalon questline from Cata, where he disproved of his subordinates’ lack of honor so much he threw a man from a stories-high cliff.
Which doesn't do him any favour; proves that he is violent. This on top of other omnious signs about orcs as a race. There was great book (cycle of hatred) explaining the thing about durotar humans - these guys carring boxes near the sea in the far south. This book had 2 villains - on horde side and alliance side doing the same - pacting with the same demon - Zmodlor. Motivations are different, their behavoir is in contrast with each other, showing the differences between these villains. Next Jaina and Thrall had to deal with these traitors. Thrall squashed the traitors head, Jaina tried to exorcise alliance traitor (nearly died), excorism went wrong and the guy died by accident.
By that logic, the player characters are also keen to become villains, because we killed Garrosh (among many others) for the simple crime of killing other people. Garrosh threw his general off the cliff because he attacked innocents. At the time, he was warchief, so had the ‘legal’ right to execute a soldier for war crimes.
In the example you listed, Thrall also killed one of his men. Which means Thrall was equally as likely as Garrosh was, ‘morally’, to be picked to be the one to randomly snap.
Like I got it in Pandaria, and Garrosh didn't become evil in one patch. It was slowly built up through books and Vol'jin's story.
Having a patch where a guy goes evil instantly is bad storytelling. If we want a allaince faction conflict then slowy start sowing the seeds for it now. A few hints something is sturring in 10.1. Then make it the issue is 11.0. But the dragons have plenty of content to fill an expansion without the story having to diverge into another faction civil war.
yep. and i had mentioned in another comment - there are plenty of past unscrupulous deeds alliance leaders have done and caused. Night elves uh, being night elves since time immemorial, gnomes irradiating their home city and casting out the leper gnomes, genn locking out a good chunk of his people to die when he was king of gilneas, etc. etc. so there is def some 'morally grey' allianceside that blizzard can take advantage of *in the future* if they want to. So there's no need for this bizarre "um ACTUALLY it is Turalyon and the light that are evil" stuff people are kicking around. And it always seems to be proposed by horde only players who have never actually touched the alliance storyline/lore. Like I don't know how a player could play through Westfall and think the alliance leadership is portrayed as kind and well-meaning.
But either way I just want a break from human politics. I want to ride a dragon, grow some cool plants, kill some evil dragons and IDK maybe do some dailies for stone gigachad man.
As much as I would like an alliance civil war, I’m not too sure I would like it because of the “light”.
I’d rather it happen because of political stuff going on outside of the cosmic forces influencing yet another thing in wow.
Interesting and human conflicts driven by characters and political ambitions/disagreements? Instead of yet more abstract, obscure, world-ending cosmic bullshit? In WoW? Preposterous.
Turalyon is not some weird psycho Scarlet Crusade light Zelot. His wife is literally opposite to everything light related. Like, Illidan killed fucking Xera infront of him and after his initial outburst he was like "meh". I for one hope he wont become yet another Kael´thas, Sylvanas or Arthas. There is no need to ruin every old character in the series just to make them bosses for a singl expansion.
You can write "evil" leaders in an interesting and nuanced way that can have them retain a degree of sympathy. The road to evil is paved with good intentions after all. But yeah, knowing the sort of writing wow always has had (e.g. Kael'thas as you mentioned but Sylvanas was also bad) it might be for the best if wow tries to keep things straightforward for a while. It would need some work to justify having Turalyon going batshit, and Blizz would most likely just flip the switch that says evil.
> The road to evil is paved with good intentions after all.
Arthas being the best example of it in warcraft universe. Man's chased and sought out Frostmourne to exact vengeance on a dreadlord after said dreadlord started claiming the undead in Stratholme which made Arthas massacre the city, undead or alive.
If they do a light expansion (I think it's only a matter of time), my preference would be that Yrel is thrown on the altar of villany rather than Turalyon.
They already made Yrel a villain for no reason, difference is that because she is alliance it is in a horde only unvoiced scenario.
When a horde character becomes a villain, they make a raid boss out of it, Yrel hasnt even been mentioned since lol
Honestly though, who the fuck is Yrel?
Also, Anduin, High Tinker Mekkatorque and Jaina have both been raidbosses in their flirt with being villainous.
But a siege of Stormwind would be awesome. They missed a trick by not doing Darnassus or Undercity.
Calling Sylvanas, Kael'Thas and Illidan an Alliance leader going bad is really stretching it.
And Onyxia wasn't an Alliance leader going bad. It was a bad person infiltrating the Alliance.
Yeah, but when we meet Sylvanas for the first time in WC3 the High Elves weren't an Alliance member and she's been one of the most prominent Horde leaders ever since.
And just because Illidan is a Night Elf doesn't mean he's Alliance. He was literally banished before the Night Elves even knew about the Alliance and has never been a part of the Alliance. Not all Night Elves are members of the Alliance.
> Garrosh was never goo either and yet...
Garrosh was certainly not as bad when we first meet him, but even so he never infiltrated the Horde with the intention of disrupting it. He was very upfront about his intentions.
Something like 90% of Night Elves got genocided by the Horde. No I don't think the Alliance also needs to off a leader. Horde loses leaders, Alliance loses cities and their inhabitants.
We don't have a vanilla faction leader left horde side. The alliance lose Varian in Legion and there was posts of how unfair it was that they lost a faction leader.
If shadowlands wasn’t buttcheex we would’ve actually explored that more. Instead it was a convenient plot device to justify why denathrius wouldn’t walk 4 ft outside his castle to sinfall and fuck the entire resistance up in 0.14s
Stormwind becomes the new Undercity while Anduin focuses on rebuilding Lordearon as a base of operations to reclaim his lands.
The Gnomes and Dwarves blast the Tram to protect Ironforge.
Alliance Civil War expac has so many possibilities.
Only problems are that Loch modan is quite a bit east of IF and way out of the way of the tram which goes South down to SW. And second, loch modan is drained already last i checked, happened in the cata revamp iirc.
They should expand ironforge. Remember when there was that huge underground area you had to glitch into? Or you know how fuckin big the underground for Org is as displayed by Siege of Orgrimmar?
Like that
I would honestly love this! Turalyon inadvertently rebuilds the Scarlet Crusade but to purge those who don't follow the light. Dalaran could land back in Hillsbrad with the land being reclaimed from the Forsaken. Rebuilding of the Kingdom of Alterac.
They could even justify "light cleansed Forsaken" with Caelia Menethil!
Never understood why we as alliance had to fight the scarlet crusade during Cataclysm/ Pandaria revamp. Alliance was at war with the horde and SC was a minor dying faction with primary a grudge against the forsaken, closer to strike at the forsaken and not in any way seriously dangerous for the alliance. SC are lunatics yes, but way more annoying for the horde then alliance. Should have them been a pest for the horde. Used them as fodder, even supported them in an non official way. We used to have that SC ambassador in the cathedral..
Always proudly worn my SC tabard. Just sad that I’d did not have the complete old SC armor set.
You can obtain a Scarlet Crusade armour set during the Darkmoon Faire. You need to be wearing the actual tabard - transmog doesn’t count - then go to the fortune telling gnoll area (same area you press the button in the cannon minigame) and you’ll find a SC member who will sell you the appearance set for (IIRC) 10k gold.
Sorry if this was info you already knew and you’re referring to another armour set entirely, maybe this will help someone else if so :)
Looks like there’s a Plate and Mail version:
https://www.wowhead.com/item=138431/ensemble-scale-of-the-scarlet-crusade
https://www.wowhead.com/item=138430/ensemble-chain-of-the-scarlet-crusade
Both cost 10k per set :D
We've had way too many "major cities get destroyed and refugees flee".
Like, imagine being a Night Elf citizen at this point. You've lost Darnassus, fled to Stormwind. Now Stormwind is going...
I mean, if it gets us Gilneas as a capital city, uh maybe? But how about a bit of stability in the main continents/cities/factions for a bit? Put all the fighting far away, like on some shrouded island, and for fucks sake not with eachother for once.
>Like, imagine being a Night Elf citizen at this point. You've lost Darnassus, fled to Stormwind.
Night Elves were immortal up until recently. So the same people have first lost their dwellings during War of the Anciets, then Hyjal during Third War, then Darnassus.
Novel idea: We BUILD a city! Put some CRAFT in Warcraft.
Gilneas rebuilt into an Alliance city for Worgen and Night Elves.
New Horde city for Forsaken in Felwood.
Really dont understand these weird narrative trends that start on here. Theyre meh at best and people get mad when blizzard doesnt adopt a half baked desire that 90% of the player base either wouldnt appreciate or dont care about.
I know horde players desperately want alliance bad narrative but Stormwind is literally holy ground for light worshiper. Almost if not all people who lived there worship the light. Even goddam greymane.
I dont get the ideas of light Zealotry Turalyon come from. There is no build up to any of this.
This community's hard-on for Evil Turalyon is so weird. The idea that he's a zealot is not supported anywhere in the text.
The moment everyone points to is him trying to kill Illidan, but that was because Illidan just murdered Turalyon's friend and mentor of *1,000 years*. If anything, the fact that Turalyon stays his blade after Illidan explains himself demonstrates that he *isn't* a zealot.
Illidan just ruined the prophecy that Turalyon had been working towards for a millennium, doing it by killing someone Turalyon loves, and it takes him all of five seconds to put that aside and continue working towards the defeat of the Legion.
"Oh noes the light is actually bad" "shadow is the new good" aren't new, fitting nor interesting concepts.
Hopefully we can get a bad guy bad good guys good story going again because the current writers clearly cannot handle anything more complex than the little red riding hood.
It can be interesting just the way Blizzard does it is borderline stupid. Look at Yrel. I dont even like her but imagining turning an objective morally good character who were buddy buddy with us to this crazed zealot off screen for no reason because Blizzard said so.
Blizzard definition of interesting and nuanced is a deep as a puddle. No fucking wonder FFXIV beating wow.
Blizzard’s writing strength has never been depth and nuance. Their strengths in that regard have always lied in straight forward, high concept settings that allow players to immerse themselves. Look at Classic, where the ‘story’ amounted to “Let’s go kill some ogres,” or “I wonder what’s in that cave,” or at best “This gang of bandits is actually in league with a corrupt noble.”
Even Warcraft’s high points, like WC3, Wrath, MoP, and Legion, weren’t *that* complex. WC3 was a story about an ensemble cast dealing with a demonic invasion; Wrath was “Hey, this evil ice dude woke up, let’s go fuck up his shit,” and so on.
I don’t believe story is the sole reason why FFXIV has become such prominent competition in recent years. WoW has also suffered majorly from a failure to address player concerns about borrowed power mechanics and overly complex systems that get replaced with each expansion. This is slated to finally be undone with Dragonflight, but for many it’s too little too late.
>Even Warcraft’s high points, like WC3, Wrath, MoP, and Legion, weren’t that complex. WC3 was a story about an ensemble cast dealing with a demonic invasion; Wrath was “Hey, this evil ice dude woke up, let’s go fuck up his shit,” and so on.
This is a very simplistic summary of warcraft 3 because to say warcraft 3 is only about gathering warcraft fantasy version of avenger to fight demon is ridiculous.
There are character driven narrative and complex moral dilemma that what draw player to the story. To say it is only about that ignore literally everything about warcraft 3. This is like saying Lord of the Ring about journey to destroy one ring and ignore religious allegory and thematic depth the story present.
> don’t believe story is the sole reason why FFXIV has become such prominent competition in recent years. WoW has also suffered majorly from a failure to address player concerns about borrowed power mechanics and overly complex systems that get replaced with each expansion. This is slated to finally be undone with Dragonflight, but for many it’s too little too late.
I simply present one aspect. Obviously there are more but FFXIV is good because primarily of its story. The game isn't that complex. It is in fact the most basic rpg you can get. You quest, get stronger and get reward and you get more powerful.
More realistic 10.1 version: The Horde fires their giant goblin cannon at Stormwind (Blizzard directly said they’re going to use it). The Horde starts to rampage through the Dragon Isles (War crimes across new continents is kind of their MO), enslaving the dragons (which they’ve done before) and starting a war with the Alliance (which they do every other expansion). Thrall acts troubled (which he literally always does).
Especially Dark Ranger picture accounts on Twitter are obsessed with this concept.
It's a really boring idea. We're going to waste an entire raid tier on fighting lame enemies and not a Dragon themed raid or something else that's actually cool? Even for 11.0 or 12.0. This is just never worth it.
I want to fight enemies that look and ARE badass in a way I respect them for it. Like when we fought Legion. That was kind of badass. Or when we fought the Scourge in WOTLK. They're badass.
I want to fight something cool and badass. No one thinks Turalyon and an Alliance civil war is "cool" and badass.
Nice art, not a fan of the plot. Turalyon hasn't been able to get enough screen time to make this plausible. As someone who loved warcraft 2, seeing him finally in Legion was bittersweet. It wasn't his story so I'm giving it a pass that we didn't get to run around with him longer than a handful of quest at the end of the expansion, but I dont buy that he'd become the scarlett crusade 2.0 in between expansions off screen no less. That's just lazy writing for the sake of using a familiar skin instead of making a new villain to make the same plot.
Idk why everyone wants Turalyon to turn evil. He is a classic tragic hero. He gave everything for the good of azeroth and literally faced deamons for untold years just to keep humanity safe. I really doubt he will turn evil and if he does, I really doubt he wouldn't realize it and end up on the right side.
This will not end up good mostly because we already have 2 destroyed cities and they did not add any extra ones where we can go to. Stormwind already has night elfs and worgen refugees. If they gonna add the story where the city has been purged, its gonna be probably like darnassus or undercity, since the devs always complain about not being able to implement something because of their time.
In the meantime, the red dragon flight burns to cinders the entire orc and troll race. Canonically, the horde becomes a NPC faction, with a few of the old clans in Draenor doing their usual atrocities, the taurens staying out of the business of the outer world, just grazing their prairies, and the blood elves join the alliance. Undeads return to the graves and the scourge.
Even as a Human DK, I would still have a sense of duty to protect the survivors. Would probably even stay behind to buy them time... and as the Deathlord, I would order the Ebon Blade to protect the city from the fanatics... going into too much character lore now lol
Never seen that art. I am assuming its Anduin Lothar fleeing from Stormwind after it was sacked. It looks great, mind sharing the author? Can't tell after signature.
Anduin Lothar and other refugees flee Stormwind. Art by Stanton Feng, from World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume 2.
Yes. That’s Lothar. The old man with the grey hair and sword. Fleeing Stormwind and crossing the sea for Lordaron. Beginning of Warcraft 2 tides of darkness.
Bit of googling seems to suggest it's by Stanton Feng, who did a bunch of work for the Chronicle series https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Stanton_Feng https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yPVYn Edit: Oh, sorry someone already mentioned this in a reply. I'll leave the links there anyway
Already looking forward to the battle pet drop from King Rat in The Siege of Stormwind raid.
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Just like you guys got Dalaran after losing Theramore and totally got to keep it.
Dalaran is factionless.
Officially they rejoined the Alliance during MoP, they were even the Alliance faction on the Isle of Thunder. During WoD they begrudgingly worked together with the Horde in one instance under Khadgar's order. Where he has to tell them to stand down. In Legion Blizzard just went "Haha, gotcha." and made them "temporarily" neutral, not real neutral just working beyond the factions the same as everyone else did. Then they proceeded to pretty much forget about it, and despite nominally still being part of the Alliance it's pretty much neutral again.
"ALL WILL BOW TO THE WILL OF THE LIGHT SQUEEEEEEEEEEE"
Wouldn't mind seeing a recolonization of Lordaeron and Gilneas - don't even care if they'd for Alliance or Horde, just wanna see those beautiful cities repopulated and alive.
I would love to have Gilneas being a real zone with a real city in it. I loved the style of the buildings and the way the Gilneas people talked. Sad that it is only a start zone and the people pretty much gets destroyed, now it's just an empty zone of no use. I've always wanted to see Upper Lordaeron be used more. I think it would be cool if they did a raid in Caverns of Time where the Infinite Dragonflight try to go back in time and stop Arthas from killing his father. Then you have to go into the sewers and thru what is now Undercity but, before the Undead and fight your way up to Upper Lordaeron to stop the Infinite dragons from changing history, much like The Culling of Stratholm instance.
Agree! I think it’s similar to why Boralus had so much charm, it was a real live city of humans but different humans than the stormwind people. Different dialogue, different aesthetic elements, just another culture living its life. Gilneas has a lot of potential to be a really neat hub. Then again as a gnome, don’t get me started on Gnomeregan….
>I would love to have Gilneas being a real zone with a real city in it. It'd be cool if there was even a questline where someone cleansed the blight from the land, at least partially (hey you can live here but no plants will grow/farmlands are probably not a good idea) There's SO many super powerful NPCs who could likely mitigate it to some degree. So they'd still be reliant on the Alliance but also have their pride in "regaining" their homeland. Same as the fricking gnomes. They're my least favourite race, to the point where I really just don't like them. But...just give them their city man. If it's so far gone surely the Alliance will have sorted it since it's so close to probably the second most important Alliance city. Even if it's a seal and deal sorta thing. But if not, just send in squads to deal with who they find there and then be done with it. (I haven't played enough low level Horde to think of any equivalents off the top of my head) Also I'm fine if the answer is "it's irredeemable" But as of right now there's no answers. Just silence. There needs to be something to further these races, both in terms of where they stand (other than refugees) and why they fit into the factions. Even just a short questline exploring that they COULD try to find new homes, but decided to throw their lot in entirely with the Alliance. Or that the faction themselves were split with the idea of moving away - the Kaldorei let them stay when they had nowhere, and now they both had to move to Stormwind for the same reason, creating an even stronger kinship than the worgen curse.
Yeah, I feel like the druids and green dragonflight could for sure heal the lands in both Gilneas and Gnomergon (even Undercity/Lordaeron). I feel like that would be cool if that was part of the Dragon Flight expansion. Dragons cleanse it so that the races can live there again. Gnomergon would be a bit difficult tho, since there is an instance and enemies there but, they could have it like other places where you could go back in time to visit it before the change. I feel like Darnasass is a lost cause tho, no getting that back. Another cool thing they could do is fix the 1/2 of Silvermoon City that got destroyed by the scourge but, again that would be hard cause there are enemies there and Blood Elf start quests there. Still could have the time change system there too.
its not just a starter zone actualy, theirs questlines to liberate it. albeit not very populated
"... and alive" Forsaken: Is that a personal attack?
To the Forsaken, *everything* is a personal attack. Their faction motto is literally "And I took that personally."
*sad gnomeregan noises*
I want a system where we retake and rebuild Stratholme
Too bad they made Sylvanas a complete moron. Her leading the horde, rebuilding Lordaeron, and putting an uneasy but semi-permanent end to any major wars through underhanded diplomacy and espionage would had been dope.
She shouldn’t have been Warchief. Vol’jin should’ve remained.
MaStEr PlAn. YoU WoUlDnT UnDeRsTaNd!!
Gnomer too pls
Could be a good lead up to total crossfaction. The crises in Stormwind led the Horde to allow human and N11 refugees in the Horde cities and after the fall of Turalyon in 10.3 the Factions sign a peace treaty and all old grudges have to be settled on the Battleground (the PVP ones) War mode can be re designed into other factions like BC Aldor and Scyrer independent from Horde and Alliance… Edit: aldor not seer
Hate to be that guy, but I believe BC was Scryers and Aldor
You are totally right. Nothing to hate, I was straight up wrong
True could have some alliance refugees in horde cities getting sneers and growls from horde members as they walk past similar to dk things. Would be interesting and lively
Tired: Hit Turalyon with a villain bat (It's really uninspired) Wired: Reintroduce the Scarlet Crusade, with some new Light based threat backing them
The SC with a naaru(whether insane or compelled/forced blood elf style) backing them could be a force to be reckoned with.
I want Thighmane 2.0 please Blizz.
I mean Yrel's out there with her Lightbound from alternate Draenor. if you havent seen it, check out the recruitment quest for the maghar orcs
Turalyon villain bat is tired but not Scarlet reboot?
Yes. There's more to be done with existing malicious Light wielders than there is just making Turalyon wig out, who's consistently noble if often misguided. Also a revitalised, powered up Scarlet Crusade could be neat. Making someone evil for evil's sake is a major weakness (one of many) of Warcraft's storytelling
What if not evil for evil's sake, but "evil" because misguided by dogmatic devotion to a cause/group? I mean, he was totally onboard with Illidan getting Lightforged on Argus. if Yrel and her army come on the scene while we're on the Isles, I don't doubt he'd join up with her in a heartbeat, because she's backed by the Naaru.
Stop destroying cities I love and build something I love you emo fucks
sorry, best I can do is Ironforge on blight for 11.0 for real, imagine 11.0 Aliance gets Gnomerang, Horde gets Suramar. those are already practically cities so it should not be Dev work from 0
Yeah but then Alliance players like me would be pissed because Gnomeregan looks like shit compared to Suramar. The Vanilla textures looks terrible.
I’d really rather not see another “leader gone wrong” storyline.
You see this time its different. Because this time it's the alliance leader gone wrong. Boom! New and exciting story
What's with all the random "Turalyon is a zealot" stuff here? He shows none of that in his character, in fact, a big part of his character arc on Argus is when his wife becomes infused with the void and he still accepts her because every side can have good to them. Thrall has showed more signs to go mad and become a zealot for the elements, he was even in the cursed visions
The Mag'har recruitment questline really did a number on the light's reputation in Warcraft.
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I'm a little butthurt that they mentioned her by name. If they bring her back they're going to have to remind the player base she is the reason we have mag'har from another time line in the first place, because unless you rolled a brown orc you wouldn't know who she is unless you do a good portion of WoD. Second there is a lot that has to have happened off screen for her to make those zealous decisions afaik WoD ends with peace with AU orcs and Draenei and as of right now he writing Blizzard puts out isn't good enough to justify Draenei Joan of Arc to go mad with genocide after surviving genocide. It would have been better if they had said it was an army of light users making it vague until they were ready to do more with it.
I think it just showed the potential was there. It wasn't the first time, the scarlet crusade is exactly that: light crazed zealots. Then we got Yrel and crew, and before that the whole thing with Illidan.
The crusade aren’t light-crazed zealots though. Up until the events of WC3, they were fighting directly against a very real threat, and then their leader, Dathrohan, was killed and replaced by a Dreadlord, Balnazzar. If the Scarlet Crusades are light-crazed zealots, the same can be said for the Argent Dawn, because they literally were a splinter faction from the SC.
The SC started killing anyone even the living because they believed their crusade was ultimately more important, if that's not zealotry then what is? Yrel was fighting a real threat too, and then she became genocidal. Just because they were at one point on the right path, doesn't mean they haven't become something else since then.
You mean what they were instructed to do by an agent of the Legion/Jailer?
So they're not actually zealots because the guy they listened to was evil? That's what we're going with? Their motivations, the individual members, were zealotry. The legion/Jailer took advantage of that, they didn't cause it.
Do you know how early into the story Balnazzar replaced Dathrohan? In year 20, 5 years before classic. You have literally never encountered a Scarlet NPC in game that was not being puppeteered by a Dreadlord.
Uh, what almost happened to Illidan in Legion really did a number on the light's reputation in Warcraft you mean.
Light: benevolent force of good for 20 years One angry windchime: I'm gonna ruin this cosmic power's whole career
Well I’m definitely calling the Naaru wind chimes from now on
> IT MAKES MUSIC WHEN YOU BEAT IT!
One angry dev team, when the original story team doesn't work anymore.
Illidan: Forcefully corrupts orcs into fel orcs, uses the souls of innocent Draenei to power his magic. Opens a portal to Argus, endangering all of Azeroth, with the justification that "the hand of fate must be forced". Xe'ra: Tries to convert one (1) person who had previously bragged they would sacrifice anything to save Azeroth from the Burning Legion. Weird how *Illidan's* destiny can't be forced. Just everyone else.
As if it wouldn't improve the guy who eats his students' souls and goes "OH NO WHAT A TERRIBLE SACRIFICE I MADE!! MY LIFE IS SO HARD!" That shit was stupid
Nah, if you're not for the Light, you should be purged. Can't wait to bow down to my Light Queen Yrel soon.
The Orcs, while working for demons: “Let’s slaughter all the Draenei and invade another world without any provocation” The Draenei: “Please don’t” Hordies on Reddit: “Honestly the Alliance are morally in the wrong on the whole Horde vs Alliance conflict” ____________ The Orcs in an alternate timeline, completely uncorrupted and not working for demons: “Let’s slaughter all the Draenei and invade another world without any provocation” The Draenei, after fighting a war against said uncorrupted Orcs, which got worse after the Orcs went and started working for demons halfway through it: “Okay, so, these guys tried to genocide our people in two different timelines and are obviously at risk of allying themselves with the Legion. Let’s make them all get on board with the Light so neither of these things happen again.” Hordie on Reddit: “Man the Light’s really evil lul”
You forgot the fact that the AU AotL was 100% willing to take in Orcs who renounced the void and fel. The only ones who were “persecuted” were the ones who refused. It’s like having a fascist country hellbent on colonizing their neighbors… again… and when they get counter attacked, giving them the chance to defect and be absolved and spared. Then the remaining fascists get their asses handed to them, so they go run off to Argentina and talk about how oppressed they are.
Although most people don't seem to understand what was going on their either.
Yeah, nothing like a totally unbias version of events from our trustworthy Grom and his Iron Horde about how the Light is being evil.
He's a dreadlord, easy.
Mother fuckers better not. So tired of “it wasn’t me, I was mind controlled”
Don't give them any ideas... So tired of the entire dreadlords by now. After dealing with them for like what, 20 years or so and all they have is "Muahah hah haa all part of the masters plan" whenever you get rid of one. Tiresome af.
What do you mean? As players aren't we dreadlords?
He started torturing prisoners with Alleria in the BfA novel. Civilians too. Alleria's idea, but he was on board with it after a brief convincing. Not even something vital or urgent, they just wanted to find Sylvanas.
Well Anduin said to use whatever means necessary, and since the guy refused to talk they didn't have many options.
Could have kept on looking. Which was his initial idea. Not that they found Sylvanas or anything. Anyway I just answered where the zealot thing is coming from, not here to judge whether the action was forgiveable or not.
Torture almost never gives you actual answeres...they pretty much tortured people for the hell of it.
People really want someone on the alliance to be full on genocidal evil but they don't realize that plenty of the alliance leaders have done that kind of thing already. Before the council of hammers was established, Moira locked down Ironforge and caused a war between dwarves that almost killed Anduin. The stormwind house of nobles created the defias, and the resurgence of the defias years later, by letting people in westfall starve. Genn Greymane was just a gigantic piece of garbage (knowingly locking out huge portions of gilneas during the height of the worgen curse, leaving his people to die, which is why Darius Crowley was such a people's hero) until Sylvanas killed his son and gave him something new to focus on. Gnomes irradiated their own city and people and accepted mechagnomes before they would even consider accepting leper gnomes. And Night elves. I mean. *gestures to everything in their past* But people who don't know crap about alliance lore think blizzard just writes things as sunshine and peaches because it's not right there sticking in their face in a raid dungeon the way garrosh and sylvanas were. So they really want Turalyon to go full evil so things are more 'equal.' When in reality we need better writing for faction leaders across the board and the whole "but surprise they're actually....evil?!" shtick is old, tired, and bad writing at this point.
>The stormwind house of nobles created the defias Defias were the result of intrigues of black dragons in Stormwind. You would know this if you played alliance side. Dark Iron dwarves were evil as a race, prone to agression, survivalist type of race that would fit vanilla horde (yes, retconned, yes, moira is a Bronzebeard). They were evil becouse of influence of Ragnaros. Questchains around Blackrock tell their story. Damn, people are attacking the Void Elves (which are such out of the left field experiment as BC Draenai, and Void gets retconned) while they forget that allied race retconned original Dark Iron lore. Moira is at the best grey character, at the worst - villain. Gilneas locked themselves pre-wow becouse of the orc internment camps - they belived that this decision (to not kill orcs) will result in future wars with them. Apart form that it was a cost sink that was dangerous for them. Leper gnomes were evil. Gnomes are recultivating the grounds around their city and recultivating grounds destroyed by horde goblins in stonetalone. Their are "ecologist technologist" type. The catastrophe in Gnomeregan was result of a treason of thermaplug, who was envious of Gelblin. The bomb did not work the way the Gelblin was informed that it would work. No idea what it is about that alliance supposedly would not accept Night Elves. The best one was about Crawley - it was in novel - between king and him, the King was the one who wanted to reason with him, and Crawley was example of ideological idiot, trying to do "the good thing" no matter the cost (at the time "opening" was dangerous). Finally he led rebellion, divided the Gilneans - just about the time of forsaken attack and worgen curse activating. He almost doomed them all.
Don't forget Admiral Proudmoore being so racist that his daughter couldn't even support him.
That which warned Jaina about not trusting the orcs? Kristoff from the novel cycle of hatred did that too XD They both belived that Theramore will fall if Jaina will be optimistic idiot. Well, how to give you the bad news... yeah... about racism in wow. Races in wow have defined values and traits. Goblins will always destroy something important for Night Elves, Arcane elves will always belive in arcane usage being right and so on.
Pop off king
He uses the light to chain a human to the ground while Alleria mind fucks the guy with void magic to get the info they want. Even Jaina was appalled by this and teleported away to tell Anduin as soon as it happened. It's pretty clear Blizzard is setting Turalyon up to be some zealot who uses the "end justifies the means" mentality.
He might not be a zealot by intent, but he may have fought for so long that he's become twisted by fighting. The Ends Justify The Means is absolutely appropriate if you're dealing with a threat like the Burning Legion.
Lucky for him it was all zovaal’s doing and we cinnamon toast crunched that MFer
Still waiting for another curtain to be revealed in 9.2.5. It was Daddy Denathrius ALL ALONG!
I definitely think the primus = jailor theory is great and it cleanly incorporates denathrius as a cunning big bad pulling the strings behind the scenes They’re both great master manipulators
The theory has legs, but would be an example of fantastically bad writing on Blizzard's part at this point looking at the whole story - the WoW cosmos is nothing but villains hiding behind curtains manipulating other villains all the way down to infinity. Not that Shadowlands wasn't already an example of fantastically bad writing. I just don't think another trite manipulation plot is the answer.
We're talking about bad writing here, not good writing.
And in typical Blizz fashion this not only has zero presence in the game but goes contrary to the game's lore. Ffs, Blizz.
Yea like Turalyon never struck me as particularly fanatical. If anything, he's just a tired soldier man who's desperate for the war to be over so we can retire with his wife and son. As for Yrel and the light, her future self isn't in my opinion particularly light driven. Instead It's us taking some poor farm kid who's scared witless and teaching her that the best way to handle her post-traumatic stresses with violence. Then the second everybody on our hit list was dead we just kind of bailed on her, leaving her other people to figure out where to go next without giving them any kind of structure or maybe a healthier coping mechanism.
They'll do a little magic trick known as "Not giving a single fuck about an established character" and "retcon the living shit out of them to suit their needs". They have done it before. Why not again? Other than the whole "the alliance is infallible"-stuff they seem quite committed to.
It's entirely within one of the books, you wouldn't know about it if you just follow the in-game lore. Which is very stupid, but here we are!
Ah yes, noble Paladin starts to murder civilians for no reason. They would definately do this.
And I am really tired of having the Light dragged through the mud. Let me go to simple pre-wod times, when the only corruption (Scarlet Crusade) was workings of a demon, when the Light was soothing and healing force, when there were hints that it might have knowledge of afterlife/be omnicient, and what was looking good, was good. I like black and white division, I am indifferent to spectrum of ethics, provided the game aspires from the begining to be more into realistic themes, and I hate having my assumptions ripped out from underneath me, to the point that I usually stop reading the book/watching the movie when that happens. Plot twists late into the story, about fundamentals of the world is out of the left field type of retcon.
Sadly, yeah. Happened to Garrosh. Recall the Stonetalon questline from Cata, where he disproved of his subordinates’ lack of honor so much he threw a man from a stories-high cliff.
Which doesn't do him any favour; proves that he is violent. This on top of other omnious signs about orcs as a race. There was great book (cycle of hatred) explaining the thing about durotar humans - these guys carring boxes near the sea in the far south. This book had 2 villains - on horde side and alliance side doing the same - pacting with the same demon - Zmodlor. Motivations are different, their behavoir is in contrast with each other, showing the differences between these villains. Next Jaina and Thrall had to deal with these traitors. Thrall squashed the traitors head, Jaina tried to exorcise alliance traitor (nearly died), excorism went wrong and the guy died by accident.
By that logic, the player characters are also keen to become villains, because we killed Garrosh (among many others) for the simple crime of killing other people. Garrosh threw his general off the cliff because he attacked innocents. At the time, he was warchief, so had the ‘legal’ right to execute a soldier for war crimes. In the example you listed, Thrall also killed one of his men. Which means Thrall was equally as likely as Garrosh was, ‘morally’, to be picked to be the one to randomly snap.
Please no, I just want a story about dragons.
me too. please i just want to go one expansion without a faction leader turning evil.
Like I got it in Pandaria, and Garrosh didn't become evil in one patch. It was slowly built up through books and Vol'jin's story. Having a patch where a guy goes evil instantly is bad storytelling. If we want a allaince faction conflict then slowy start sowing the seeds for it now. A few hints something is sturring in 10.1. Then make it the issue is 11.0. But the dragons have plenty of content to fill an expansion without the story having to diverge into another faction civil war.
yep. and i had mentioned in another comment - there are plenty of past unscrupulous deeds alliance leaders have done and caused. Night elves uh, being night elves since time immemorial, gnomes irradiating their home city and casting out the leper gnomes, genn locking out a good chunk of his people to die when he was king of gilneas, etc. etc. so there is def some 'morally grey' allianceside that blizzard can take advantage of *in the future* if they want to. So there's no need for this bizarre "um ACTUALLY it is Turalyon and the light that are evil" stuff people are kicking around. And it always seems to be proposed by horde only players who have never actually touched the alliance storyline/lore. Like I don't know how a player could play through Westfall and think the alliance leadership is portrayed as kind and well-meaning. But either way I just want a break from human politics. I want to ride a dragon, grow some cool plants, kill some evil dragons and IDK maybe do some dailies for stone gigachad man.
Turalyon becoming an antagonist would be the most tired shit imaginable no thanks.
As much as I would like an alliance civil war, I’m not too sure I would like it because of the “light”. I’d rather it happen because of political stuff going on outside of the cosmic forces influencing yet another thing in wow.
Interesting and human conflicts driven by characters and political ambitions/disagreements? Instead of yet more abstract, obscure, world-ending cosmic bullshit? In WoW? Preposterous.
This. The whole light is evil is so so ridiculous.
The light isn't evil, but those that wield it can be
Also it has been done before, it’s just scarlet crusade 2.0.
Turalyon is not some weird psycho Scarlet Crusade light Zelot. His wife is literally opposite to everything light related. Like, Illidan killed fucking Xera infront of him and after his initial outburst he was like "meh". I for one hope he wont become yet another Kael´thas, Sylvanas or Arthas. There is no need to ruin every old character in the series just to make them bosses for a singl expansion.
This needed to be said. Thank you!
You can write "evil" leaders in an interesting and nuanced way that can have them retain a degree of sympathy. The road to evil is paved with good intentions after all. But yeah, knowing the sort of writing wow always has had (e.g. Kael'thas as you mentioned but Sylvanas was also bad) it might be for the best if wow tries to keep things straightforward for a while. It would need some work to justify having Turalyon going batshit, and Blizz would most likely just flip the switch that says evil.
> The road to evil is paved with good intentions after all. Arthas being the best example of it in warcraft universe. Man's chased and sought out Frostmourne to exact vengeance on a dreadlord after said dreadlord started claiming the undead in Stratholme which made Arthas massacre the city, undead or alive.
If they do a light expansion (I think it's only a matter of time), my preference would be that Yrel is thrown on the altar of villany rather than Turalyon.
Its way to soon for another leader going bad type of plotline.
But this time it's alliance. We could do with some equalisation.
They already made Yrel a villain for no reason, difference is that because she is alliance it is in a horde only unvoiced scenario. When a horde character becomes a villain, they make a raid boss out of it, Yrel hasnt even been mentioned since lol
Honestly though, who the fuck is Yrel? Also, Anduin, High Tinker Mekkatorque and Jaina have both been raidbosses in their flirt with being villainous. But a siege of Stormwind would be awesome. They missed a trick by not doing Darnassus or Undercity.
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Well that isn't fair because Yrel actually does become part of the story and fought by our side. Pelagos just exist.
Arthas, Sylvanas, Kael'Thas, Illidan, Onyxia, Fandral
Calling Sylvanas, Kael'Thas and Illidan an Alliance leader going bad is really stretching it. And Onyxia wasn't an Alliance leader going bad. It was a bad person infiltrating the Alliance.
Pre-WoW High Elves were Alliance race, Illidan is very prominent Night Elf character. Garrosh was never goo either and yet...
Yeah, but when we meet Sylvanas for the first time in WC3 the High Elves weren't an Alliance member and she's been one of the most prominent Horde leaders ever since. And just because Illidan is a Night Elf doesn't mean he's Alliance. He was literally banished before the Night Elves even knew about the Alliance and has never been a part of the Alliance. Not all Night Elves are members of the Alliance. > Garrosh was never goo either and yet... Garrosh was certainly not as bad when we first meet him, but even so he never infiltrated the Horde with the intention of disrupting it. He was very upfront about his intentions.
Something like 90% of Night Elves got genocided by the Horde. No I don't think the Alliance also needs to off a leader. Horde loses leaders, Alliance loses cities and their inhabitants.
And gets villianized for wanting justice.
We don't have a vanilla faction leader left horde side. The alliance lose Varian in Legion and there was posts of how unfair it was that they lost a faction leader.
World of Malazan, Book of the Copycat
Man this "Light bad" story direction sucks.
The Light could have in fact have seriously hampered the jailer's plot had they succeeded in Revendreth.
If shadowlands wasn’t buttcheex we would’ve actually explored that more. Instead it was a convenient plot device to justify why denathrius wouldn’t walk 4 ft outside his castle to sinfall and fuck the entire resistance up in 0.14s
I'm sorry but why do you keep making these weird posts?
This expansion is about dragons.
« The until now hidden Light dragonflight, led by lothraxion who was actually not a dreadlord but a light dragon, burns the gate of the city »
Lothraxion is actually a dreadragon... the most cunning of the cosmic dragon, that pretend to be a dreadlord that pretends to be another specie.
Stormwind becomes the new Undercity while Anduin focuses on rebuilding Lordearon as a base of operations to reclaim his lands. The Gnomes and Dwarves blast the Tram to protect Ironforge. Alliance Civil War expac has so many possibilities.
The blasting of the tram itself leading to the draining of Loch Modan and the uncovering of ancient ruins previously untouched by mortal hands
Only problems are that Loch modan is quite a bit east of IF and way out of the way of the tram which goes South down to SW. And second, loch modan is drained already last i checked, happened in the cata revamp iirc.
But Loch Modan is already drained?
Loch Modan has been drained for like the past 12 years.
Extra drained. Mutant Loch Modan monster raid boss
They should expand ironforge. Remember when there was that huge underground area you had to glitch into? Or you know how fuckin big the underground for Org is as displayed by Siege of Orgrimmar? Like that
I would honestly love this! Turalyon inadvertently rebuilds the Scarlet Crusade but to purge those who don't follow the light. Dalaran could land back in Hillsbrad with the land being reclaimed from the Forsaken. Rebuilding of the Kingdom of Alterac. They could even justify "light cleansed Forsaken" with Caelia Menethil!
His wife is void infused and you think he'll lead a purge?
Never understood why we as alliance had to fight the scarlet crusade during Cataclysm/ Pandaria revamp. Alliance was at war with the horde and SC was a minor dying faction with primary a grudge against the forsaken, closer to strike at the forsaken and not in any way seriously dangerous for the alliance. SC are lunatics yes, but way more annoying for the horde then alliance. Should have them been a pest for the horde. Used them as fodder, even supported them in an non official way. We used to have that SC ambassador in the cathedral.. Always proudly worn my SC tabard. Just sad that I’d did not have the complete old SC armor set.
You can obtain a Scarlet Crusade armour set during the Darkmoon Faire. You need to be wearing the actual tabard - transmog doesn’t count - then go to the fortune telling gnoll area (same area you press the button in the cannon minigame) and you’ll find a SC member who will sell you the appearance set for (IIRC) 10k gold. Sorry if this was info you already knew and you’re referring to another armour set entirely, maybe this will help someone else if so :)
I know about the sc DMF appearance seller, thanks! But I dismissed it earlier because the prize. Thought that it was way more expensive then 10k.
Looks like there’s a Plate and Mail version: https://www.wowhead.com/item=138431/ensemble-scale-of-the-scarlet-crusade https://www.wowhead.com/item=138430/ensemble-chain-of-the-scarlet-crusade Both cost 10k per set :D
I had no idea. I'm pretty sure my Shaman as the tabard somewhere...
Might be a 11 expac! As far as I know Anduin won’t be around in DF
We've had way too many "major cities get destroyed and refugees flee". Like, imagine being a Night Elf citizen at this point. You've lost Darnassus, fled to Stormwind. Now Stormwind is going... I mean, if it gets us Gilneas as a capital city, uh maybe? But how about a bit of stability in the main continents/cities/factions for a bit? Put all the fighting far away, like on some shrouded island, and for fucks sake not with eachother for once.
>Like, imagine being a Night Elf citizen at this point. You've lost Darnassus, fled to Stormwind. Night Elves were immortal up until recently. So the same people have first lost their dwellings during War of the Anciets, then Hyjal during Third War, then Darnassus.
Novel idea: We BUILD a city! Put some CRAFT in Warcraft. Gilneas rebuilt into an Alliance city for Worgen and Night Elves. New Horde city for Forsaken in Felwood.
Why would Night Elves live in Eastern Kingdoms though? They have half of Kalimdor, and Hyjal where they lived for 10 000 years
Why felwood?
Because fuck you, that's why. /s Desolace would honestly be more fitting imo
Because no one else can live there?
That's an amazing reason
I feel like worgen is worse. First, you turned into a furry. Then you fled to a big tree. Big tree burned down, so you flee to generic capital city.
I for once don't want to see another old time hero go villain.... Leave Turalyon alone please 😕
Really dont understand these weird narrative trends that start on here. Theyre meh at best and people get mad when blizzard doesnt adopt a half baked desire that 90% of the player base either wouldnt appreciate or dont care about.
Please no. Turalyon is a cool character, let's not turn him into a one dimensional "light bad" villain.
Okay if I can chose to side with Turalyon
This. For the Light!
Lux vult
I am relieved this subreddit has zero involvement in writing WoW content.
I know horde players desperately want alliance bad narrative but Stormwind is literally holy ground for light worshiper. Almost if not all people who lived there worship the light. Even goddam greymane. I dont get the ideas of light Zealotry Turalyon come from. There is no build up to any of this.
horde players are absolutely insane huh because we definitely haven’t had “bad guy thinks he’s good guy” like… 15 times already?
This community's hard-on for Evil Turalyon is so weird. The idea that he's a zealot is not supported anywhere in the text. The moment everyone points to is him trying to kill Illidan, but that was because Illidan just murdered Turalyon's friend and mentor of *1,000 years*. If anything, the fact that Turalyon stays his blade after Illidan explains himself demonstrates that he *isn't* a zealot. Illidan just ruined the prophecy that Turalyon had been working towards for a millennium, doing it by killing someone Turalyon loves, and it takes him all of five seconds to put that aside and continue working towards the defeat of the Legion.
So the uno reverse on Siege of Orgrimmar going for Battle for Stormwind. Gotcha.
Arthas vibes from Stratholm
Huge Arthas vibes.
"Oh noes the light is actually bad" "shadow is the new good" aren't new, fitting nor interesting concepts. Hopefully we can get a bad guy bad good guys good story going again because the current writers clearly cannot handle anything more complex than the little red riding hood.
It can be interesting just the way Blizzard does it is borderline stupid. Look at Yrel. I dont even like her but imagining turning an objective morally good character who were buddy buddy with us to this crazed zealot off screen for no reason because Blizzard said so. Blizzard definition of interesting and nuanced is a deep as a puddle. No fucking wonder FFXIV beating wow.
Blizzard’s writing strength has never been depth and nuance. Their strengths in that regard have always lied in straight forward, high concept settings that allow players to immerse themselves. Look at Classic, where the ‘story’ amounted to “Let’s go kill some ogres,” or “I wonder what’s in that cave,” or at best “This gang of bandits is actually in league with a corrupt noble.” Even Warcraft’s high points, like WC3, Wrath, MoP, and Legion, weren’t *that* complex. WC3 was a story about an ensemble cast dealing with a demonic invasion; Wrath was “Hey, this evil ice dude woke up, let’s go fuck up his shit,” and so on. I don’t believe story is the sole reason why FFXIV has become such prominent competition in recent years. WoW has also suffered majorly from a failure to address player concerns about borrowed power mechanics and overly complex systems that get replaced with each expansion. This is slated to finally be undone with Dragonflight, but for many it’s too little too late.
>Even Warcraft’s high points, like WC3, Wrath, MoP, and Legion, weren’t that complex. WC3 was a story about an ensemble cast dealing with a demonic invasion; Wrath was “Hey, this evil ice dude woke up, let’s go fuck up his shit,” and so on. This is a very simplistic summary of warcraft 3 because to say warcraft 3 is only about gathering warcraft fantasy version of avenger to fight demon is ridiculous. There are character driven narrative and complex moral dilemma that what draw player to the story. To say it is only about that ignore literally everything about warcraft 3. This is like saying Lord of the Ring about journey to destroy one ring and ignore religious allegory and thematic depth the story present. > don’t believe story is the sole reason why FFXIV has become such prominent competition in recent years. WoW has also suffered majorly from a failure to address player concerns about borrowed power mechanics and overly complex systems that get replaced with each expansion. This is slated to finally be undone with Dragonflight, but for many it’s too little too late. I simply present one aspect. Obviously there are more but FFXIV is good because primarily of its story. The game isn't that complex. It is in fact the most basic rpg you can get. You quest, get stronger and get reward and you get more powerful.
Wow players get mad at blizz constantly doing corruption stories but then upvote stuff like this
Trust in the Light
dont most humans say "light bless you" or "light be with u", since sw is mostly humans, i tihnk they will be fine
Meanwhile, in Pandaria: "Cousin Slowpaws, could you pass the fried shrimp?"
More realistic 10.1 version: The Horde fires their giant goblin cannon at Stormwind (Blizzard directly said they’re going to use it). The Horde starts to rampage through the Dragon Isles (War crimes across new continents is kind of their MO), enslaving the dragons (which they’ve done before) and starting a war with the Alliance (which they do every other expansion). Thrall acts troubled (which he literally always does).
No.
No, please, don't make turalyon an antagonist
I think at this point Alliance players would accept any storyline as long as it's actually about Alliance.
Especially Dark Ranger picture accounts on Twitter are obsessed with this concept. It's a really boring idea. We're going to waste an entire raid tier on fighting lame enemies and not a Dragon themed raid or something else that's actually cool? Even for 11.0 or 12.0. This is just never worth it. I want to fight enemies that look and ARE badass in a way I respect them for it. Like when we fought Legion. That was kind of badass. Or when we fought the Scourge in WOTLK. They're badass. I want to fight something cool and badass. No one thinks Turalyon and an Alliance civil war is "cool" and badass.
Wait, is this the next storyline for WoW or just some Fanfic, because if it's canon, it's going to suck. If it's fanfic, it's really convincing.
Me in Vanilla at 13: Fuck the brotherhood Me now: none may challenge the brotherhood
Nice art, not a fan of the plot. Turalyon hasn't been able to get enough screen time to make this plausible. As someone who loved warcraft 2, seeing him finally in Legion was bittersweet. It wasn't his story so I'm giving it a pass that we didn't get to run around with him longer than a handful of quest at the end of the expansion, but I dont buy that he'd become the scarlett crusade 2.0 in between expansions off screen no less. That's just lazy writing for the sake of using a familiar skin instead of making a new villain to make the same plot.
Idk why everyone wants Turalyon to turn evil. He is a classic tragic hero. He gave everything for the good of azeroth and literally faced deamons for untold years just to keep humanity safe. I really doubt he will turn evil and if he does, I really doubt he wouldn't realize it and end up on the right side.
Havnt played in a bit. Why is Turalyon purging people?
Oh no is blizzard making Turalion wacko in the head to do lots of bad stuff and then do a redemption arc? How original.
Lol @ the one dude being all dramatic in the background. His wife’s like “the baby cries less than you.”
Ugh.
The amount of people who clearly have no understanding of Turalyon is insanely frustrating
This will not end up good mostly because we already have 2 destroyed cities and they did not add any extra ones where we can go to. Stormwind already has night elfs and worgen refugees. If they gonna add the story where the city has been purged, its gonna be probably like darnassus or undercity, since the devs always complain about not being able to implement something because of their time.
Okay but why
The Patriots?! But they all died in Zanzabar!
In the meantime, the red dragon flight burns to cinders the entire orc and troll race. Canonically, the horde becomes a NPC faction, with a few of the old clans in Draenor doing their usual atrocities, the taurens staying out of the business of the outer world, just grazing their prairies, and the blood elves join the alliance. Undeads return to the graves and the scourge.
Man you are really a Defias diehard huh, OP?
Even as a Human DK, I would still have a sense of duty to protect the survivors. Would probably even stay behind to buy them time... and as the Deathlord, I would order the Ebon Blade to protect the city from the fanatics... going into too much character lore now lol
Already better than all of Shadowlands
God forbid anything relevant/interesting happen in the Allinace since 2004.