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ProfessorCirno posted:Warcraft is frequently at its weakest when it tries to go for Big Cosmic Lore type stuff. Somehow even weaker then when they crowbar in yet another reason to have more faction conflict. Well now we're heading towards No Faction War but Big Cosmic Lore with the World Soul Saga over the next 3 expansions. So. Buckle up buttercup.
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Dec 3, 2023 08:28
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Gridlocked posted:Well now we're heading towards No Faction War but Big Cosmic Lore with the World Soul Saga over the next 3 expansions. Until whatever Big Giant Threat the Jailer was preparing for is defeated, at which point Blizz will probably start up the faction war again because War in Warcraft.
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Dec 3, 2023 08:32
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Kith posted:I'm surprised. I didn't think it was possible for Garrosh's pauldrons to get any stupider. Most people with armor tend to drown very quickly if they fall into water, so Garrosh circumvented that problem by giving himself floaties.
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Dec 3, 2023 12:22
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Frankly I am just kinda glad we are going underground for the next expac, Though it could use more zones, it is at least using known actors and already existing races that have lore so its not quite so much a huge lurch of things. And a lot of people have wanted more nerubian content. Also got to the final raid boss, pretty decent to have a boss that is a world ending threat yes, but who doesn't have vast cosmic goals, he wants to punch people, threatening to set everything on fire is frankly just him trying to get people to fight him properly. He literally just keeps waiting for the players to come to him so he can have an epic brawl at the end of things.
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Dec 3, 2023 14:20
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Alliance 1: I Feel... Edgy Update title is one of Kael's random lines when you click on him, by the way.   It could not be helped, Lord Garithos. We ran into a group of night elves from across the sea, and - I am not interested in your fanciful excuses.Meet Lord Garithos. He is an irredeemable rear end in a top hat who exists to drive conflict by being an rear end in a top hat and to be hated by the player. He has no sympathetic backstory, no Freudian excuse, and no redeeming virtues. I don't like him, but not for the reasons Blizzard intends me to. He's just too simplistic and heavy-handed for me to enjoy hating, and I think he's poorly written to boot. Mal'Ganis was fun to hate, in part because he felt (to me, at any rate) like a credible threat. Mal'Ganis engineered Stratholme, in large part because he was always two steps ahead of Arthas - and that is what made it satisfying, irrespective of everything else, when Arthas finally got one fatally over on him. Garry is just here to ham-handedly be a petty dick who's wrong about everything and drive Kael into Blizzard's desired path. It's like Maiev's betrayal of Tyrande in the previous campaign, it's not that I object to the idea in and of itself (although I would prefer it to not happen), but that it's executed so clumsily. My reaction to Garry is not 'man I can't wait for him to get his.' My reaction to Garry is 'can he please get his so we can get on with the plot already?' If Blizzard wanted me to start thinking 'Maybe the Alliance aren't necessarily good guys,' then I question their judgment in storytelling. What was the whole dog and pony show about the orc internment camps if not to add that moral ambiguity to the factions?  Yes, Lord Garithos.Part of the problem with why this campaign starts off on drastically the wrong foot with me is, why is Kael even taking orders from this shitbag? There's plenty of reasons you could imagine for why the crown prince of Quel'thalas would work with the remnants of Lordaeron's army, but Kael is framed here like he's some kind of formal subordinate under intense obligation to put up with him.  My men are ready to fight, milord! When shall we leave for the front? *We* will be leaving immediately, but your people will be staying here. Our scouts report that a second strike force may be heading this way from the east. I need you to repair the outlying observatories so that we can monitor that region. But milord, we are warriors, not - You have your orders, Prince Kael'thas. I trust your elven ears heard them clearly enough. Move out!As an example of how petty and blatantly wrong Garry is supposed to be about everything, see him dismissing Kael talking about the night elves as a fanciful tale. We're at Dalaran. There was just a major battle between the night elves and the naga nearby, followed by the night elves wiping out a host of undead, and as we'll see later Garry clearly knows about the naga and doesn't like them. I find it hard to put my feelings into words, but I think saying that hating Garry feels too obvious and easy is somewhere in the ballpark of what I want to say. I have a tendency to get suspicious whenever I run into a character this blatantly written to be a sink of audience hatred (or love, on the other foot), and this whole first mission feels so off to me that I don't hate Garry per se. He isn't worth the emotional effort.   You've been awfully quiet. I'm here. He's not. What do you suppose that means about what happened to him after he died? So here's mister 'I feel... edgy' again. Besides his flamestrike spell that we saw earlier, he also has this. I'm sure advanced, high-micro players can find a use for this. I also have spellbreakers, a new Alliance unit that can hijack summoned units, steal enemy buffs, and generally gently caress around with casters. They wield Darth Maul swords that they throw and spin around because Warcraft is, and has been for a long time, anime as hell.  I did what I believed was right at the time. That is all anyone can do. I approve. You're doing well.  Well that's quite a thing. This was all killing time while a worker repaired the first observatory.  The observatory gives vision on a huge part of the map, notably this mana fountain. In addition to Kael and the spellbreakers, your starting force has two priests and a few human footmen.  Remember this idea from the convoy mission?   Going rogue as soon as Dalaran was destroyed, tsk tsk. As I recall, you went rogue while Dalaran was still intact. A demon possessed me with the aim of making me get pregnant and possessing my baby in the womb. I missed that day in mage school. Something something he who fights monsters. I prefer a take I heard in Bastion. 'As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.' Approaching the lake triggers a cutscene.   We are on our own now, good prince. I am called Lady Vashj. My brethren and I come in peace, to offer you our aid. You have nothing I need, witch. Is that so? I thought you might require boats to reach the observatories that you seek. WHERE ARE YOUR DESTROYERS NOW, ELF?! Our two races share common ancestry, Kael. Now, against the undead, we share a common peril. These boats are merely a gesture of goodwill. Then I accept your offer. Thank you. ...Why are you all looking at me like that? The forces of the Old Gods were helping against the Scourge after all! We really could have used black dragon help against the Legion, just saying. The game helpfully points out a gimmick: Kael's flamestrike can burn down trees. In this case, the second supply cache. I spent a long while burning random patches of forest looking for secrets, and only found one.  Namely, a golem that drops some loot. Also, note the idle peasant indicator. The worker who repaired the observatory has come along, but while this blood elf subfaction includes elven workers and reskinned priests, that indicator icon still shows a normal human peasant.  I cut out most of my exploring, but the rewards notably included a trio of pocket buildings that let Kael rapidly pop out the core of a base now that I have a gold mine.  Honestly, Issy. The fact that you still expect rational behavior out of people is adorable. 'Issy?' Come on, Onyxia. You aren't that good at pretending to be human. You never called me anything cute like that. Honestly, she strikes me as one hell of a cheap date. I had low standards. The undead will attack periodically from the west. There's a nearby mana fountain if you need to replenish your priests.   Dwarves, Kael? You surprise me. Windrunner went and got the Farstriders massacred during the war, so I made do with necessary allies. Such venom in your voice. I hear you once courted the now-fallen Ranger General. I believe that there is a difference between what I will do during this play and what she ended up doing, Aspect. Also, I courted a lot of women to no avail. And a few men. The north end of this island has some creeps to clear out while you repair the observatory. Observatories are invulnerable once repaired, so there's no need to protect them once done.  Let's see... Sylvanas, turned evil and almost destroyed all of reality. Jaina, went crazy and almost destroyed multiple civilizations. I made a pass at our fallen Guardian companion back before she became the Guardian of Tirisfal, later became possessed by Sargeras - And I told you that I had bigger game in mind than any throne. Asira Sunbright, joined the Twilight's Hammer. Freywinn, went completely insane with his plants in the Botanica. Solarion, we had a nice thing for a bit until she got way too into the Void. I could go on. Destroying the undead base isn't too hard, they mainly use banshees and necromancers, which the blood elves are uniquely well equipped to destroy. Flamestrike also does a remarkably good job against buildings, two shots takes down an undead turret.  And mortar teams finish the job. I have almost the full Alliance tech tree on this mission, the aviary is the only major absence.  An island to the southwest has a bunch of ogres.  There's loot, prisoners to rescue if you destroy the cage doodads, and the third supply cache.  I never married Deathwing's daughter, though, so I still defer to the King of Stormwind for disastrous relationship advice. The final resource cache is on a hill overlooking the final observatory.  Which is for some reason guarded by a named gnoll and his henchmen. I think this is the first level 11 creep I've seen. There's not any dialogue or anything about it.  I'm cutting out a lot of exploring and burning down forests looking for secrets because I was expecting something more to be hidden on the map. I found nothing more than that one golem I showed earlier.  I received ill news from the front line. Is it true that you've consorted with the vile naga? Well, yes, milord. They helped us cross the lake. I assure you that they pose no threat to us or to - They are inhuman and must be crushed like any other enemy! Be careful where you place your loyalties, blood elf. I will not tolerate any treason in my ranks. Now I must return to the front. You will remain here and wait for further orders.If I had any skill at photoshop I'd do up Garithos to look like a Warhammer 40k character.  Well this campaign is off to a fine start. A character I'm clearly supposed to hate but I don't because I think he's too stupidly written to be any fun to hate, in a plot with enough holes to be called a Florida highway. Oh what fun.
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Dec 3, 2023 14:28
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He Never Scoured Today's subject, Lord Garithos.  Garithos, Othmar Garithos to use his real name, was the son of a minor noble in Lordaeron whose home lay on the border with Quel'thalas. During the Second War, Garithos joined the armies of Lordaeron as a knight, but was passed over for candidacy as a paladin. Saidan Dathrohan briefly met with the young Garithos and deemed him not fitting material for a paladin. Garithos served an entirely unremarkable career as a line knight of Lordaeron, until the Horde destroyed Garithos' home town on the Quel'thalas border during their invasion of the elven kingdom, killing Garithos' entire family. Othmar Garithos hence became consumed by hatred for the... checks notes... elves for joining the Alliance and diverting their forces that he felt should have been protecting their own border, including his home, and for the Alliance leaders like Turalyon and Uther who preached unity and cooperation among the different kingdoms and races. So vociferous was Garithos that after the war he quickly found himself reassigned to the most remote poo poo details that anyone in Lordaeron's army could find. While Garithos had never crossed the line into actionable offenses and was still technically a noble of Lordaeron, he had so thoroughly pissed off everyone in the Alliance military command that he wound up in command of Lordaeron's premiere poo poo detail with all the other fuckups no one wanted to deal with. As it happened, this obscure posting meant that Garithos and his command survived the fall of Lordaeron and saw their chance to gain prominence and power in the post-apocalyptic state of the northern Eastern Kingdoms. As we'll see, he'll gently caress up everything and die. Garithos has only been mentioned in WoW for absolutely everyone, Horde and Alliance alike, to poo poo on as an idiot and an awful person in general. ... Hey, we're at 107 lore essays, 11 short stories, and a dozen or so other analysis posts. They can't all be winners. 
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Dec 3, 2023 14:29
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Cythereal posted:
That horse looks so very done with carrying this jobber oval office.
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Dec 3, 2023 14:53
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I mean having met people like Garithos I don't think k he seems that cartoonist compared to real life.
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Dec 3, 2023 15:01
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Cythereal posted:Hey, we're at 107 lore essays, 11 short stories, and a dozen or so other analysis posts. They can't all be winners. I mean there isn't much more you can say about the guy
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Dec 3, 2023 15:03
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I never really liked Kael myself. Who knows it might change after this but most likely not. Sure things are pretty poo poo but that's not really an excuse for willingly climbing into a burning dumpster positioned at the edge of a cliff and chaining yourself to it. Nowadays I can't help but wonder if garithos is based on a blizzard manager.
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Dec 3, 2023 15:09
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Garithos is very much a person many people reading this thread will have met in real life.
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Dec 3, 2023 15:10
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Cythereal posted:Hey, we're at 107 lore essays, 11 short stories, and a dozen or so other analysis posts. They can't all be winners. Dude exists solely to power Blizzard's best ( ) efforts at telling a "sophisticated," ambiguous, morally-gray tale (i.e., "Kael may have hosed up, but the Alliance did a heckin' racism") and his whole backstory is just the most obvious way to get there. What else is there to say?
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Dec 3, 2023 15:20
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Josef bugman posted:I mean having met people like Garithos I don't think k he seems that cartoonist compared to real life. There is a contingent of WoW players who think the problem with all the War Crimes is that only the Horde gets to do them. Garithos is their mascot.
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Dec 3, 2023 15:49
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Worth noting: Garithos has a special place of hatred in his heart for the Elves, because how dare those isolationist pricks need our help defending their forests when we could have spent those forces protecting Human lives instead. But, that doesn't mean he's okay with the other Alliance Members. Garithos is a Human Supremacist, plain and simple. He hated everybody. But he's at least largely willing to cooperate with everyone else. The Elves, he makes it seem like he's being held at gunpoint to include them in his forces. Frankly, I suspect Kael is worried that if he tries to take his ball and go home, or even call the guy out on his poo poo, Garithos will take it as an excuse to attack them as "traitors". Kael's Elves still make up a very small portion of the overall Alliance Surviving forces. Or something like that, I dunno, him being THIS submissive is one of the few things that always struck me as out of place, too. Maybe a certain issue that will get brought up next mission is contributing to that, but I dunno. Also, dang. Snarlmane is a lot weaker than I realized on Story Difficulty. I wonder if they took away his abilities in addition to cutting his health almost in half? (1500 to 900). Snarlmane himself is kind of a small meme among certain corners of Warcraft 3 fans, simply due to being an anomaly as a level 11 creep in a game that usually stops at 10.
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Dec 3, 2023 16:22
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Why did they nerfed his chin (ShitbagP.png? Well, it ain't wrong.) Cythereal posted:
Cythereal posted:
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Dec 3, 2023 16:26
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AtomikKrab posted:Garithos is very much a person many people reading this thread will have met in real life. absolutely. there's no shortage of him in the universe, particularly if you've ever read anything about the people running the British Empire. the problem is he is also boring. in a hack writer's hands, racism is magic, very literally. it follows the rules the writer says it does and it doesnt have to make sense, allowing the writer to force the hero into doing whatever they want. meet Garithos: he's Frozen Throne's Medivh.
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Dec 3, 2023 16:27
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Gun Jam posted:Too real. She's quoting a real life historical figure, as it happens. I encountered that quote playing Civilization 5, where it accompanies the discovery of dynamite as a tech, and it stuck with me.
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Dec 3, 2023 16:28
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Honestly, Garithos is probably the most one-dimensional character in all of WarCraft III - which is kind of impressive, in a way.
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Dec 3, 2023 16:31
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I mean, sometimes you need a blunt object to move the story to where you want. I'm not *impressed* by it, but it doesn't really seem unreasonable that the Alliance has a racist jerk in a position of moderate power. It is funny that the reason he survived is that people saw he was a jerk and tried to get him as far away from anything that mattered, though.Nostalgamus posted:Honestly, Garithos is probably the most one-dimensional character in all of WarCraft III - which is kind of impressive, in a way. Hey, he's got *two* dimensions: Xenophobia AND Paranoia.
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Dec 3, 2023 17:14
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I had a game-breaking bug that I never bothered to fix in mission 3 or 4 of the TFT Blood Elves campaign so I'm actually looking forward to seeing how this goes!
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Dec 3, 2023 17:26
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Garithos sucks massively and in an extremely realistic way. Ironically, his inclusion would be stronger if there were more characters like him to make it a running theme instead of a one-off. Also, it's no coincidence that Garithos's faction colors were changed from Light Blue to White in Reforged.
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Dec 3, 2023 19:04
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Cythereal posted:He Never Scoured Honestly this just feels like him going full “YOU SHOULD HAVE HELP SOON” rear end in a top hat mode. Anyway to put slightly more thought into him than Blizzards did. One could say that Garithos is karma for the elves second thinking about honoring their debt during the second war and only helping against the horde until it was literally at their doorstep and instantly leaving the alliance and going back to their isolationism after they were defeated which understandable made them look ungrateful for the lives that were lost. Instead we get mister “I hate elves” being an rear end in a top hat to Prince “i haven’t done anything wrong yet” for seemingly no reason because Garithos backstory isn’t explained in the game and was only revealed when Blizzard did a forums Q&A post CATA expansion release. Chainrider37 fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Dec 3, 2023 |
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Dec 3, 2023 20:04
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I don't think it's shocking or stains credulity all that Some Racist can just push Kael'thas around like this. Right now in the narrative, High Elven civilisation is broken. Their city is razed, their people and armies are slaughtered, and Kael'thas's forces survived only because they weren't there when Arthas came for the sunwell. He's a prince of a kingdon that doesn't exist anymore. His subjects are in literal anarchy or part of the alliance military structure. What power base do the elves have at this point?
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Dec 3, 2023 20:13
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Octatonic posted:What power base do the elves have at this point? Quite a lot, actually. I'll talk about this when I give the blood elves their proper lore post, but Arthas basically burned a straight path to the Sunwell and hosed off after resurrecting Kelly, leaving a small portion of forces behind. Quel'thalas' leadership is in disarray and its military strength was gutted, but Quel'thalas honestly came out of it pretty well compared to Lordaeron, Dalaran, Alterac, and Stromgarde.
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Dec 3, 2023 20:18
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Yeah for all the damage they took, the Elves didn't get the full RAZE IT TO THE GROUND FOR THE LICH KING run that most of the other kingdoms got.
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Dec 3, 2023 20:26
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Maybe it's just that Kael and the rest of his group are a bunch of soldiers who were "volunteered" to aid the alliance far away while the rest of their more valuable and smarter forces were reorganizing and starting their attempts to rebuild?
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Dec 3, 2023 20:38
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Although it is worth noting that as of the time these missions were being written that wasn't determined yet - we don't go to Quel'thalas in TFT and it wasn't included in WoW until the first expansion, so it might well have just been The Northern Plaguelands at that point until Blizzard needed new blood elf characters to have a levelling zone.
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Dec 3, 2023 20:39
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Poil posted:Maybe it's just that Kael and the rest of his group are a bunch of soldiers who were "volunteered" to aid the alliance far away while the rest of their more valuable and smarter forces were reorganizing and starting their attempts to rebuild? I believe that the canon explanation? Most of the elves are staying in Quel’Thalas trying to survive and rebuild while Kael group is just a expedition to try and get goodwill point among what’s left of the alliance so they can eventually return the favor and help his people back. It probably would have work to if literally any other human was in charge.
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Dec 3, 2023 20:59
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Chainrider37 posted:I believe that the canon explanation? Most of the elves are staying in Quel’Thalas trying to survive and rebuild while Kael group is just a expedition to try and get goodwill point among what’s left of the alliance so they can eventually return the favor and help his people back. Too bad everyone else is either dead, undead, or across the ocean.
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Dec 3, 2023 22:11
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I think Garithos feels pretty decent as someone to hate because you can empathize with Kael and the feeling of being pushed around by someone who's in charge of you, but refuses to listen to any arguments or logic. Whether it's parents, boss, etc. it's familiar to everyone.
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Dec 3, 2023 22:21
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As others have said, Garithos is entirely believable and realistic, and the only problem with Garithos is that he's just one person. Some of the more hardcore Alliance stans hate him because he besmirches the otherwise perfect Alliance, and that's frankly why the only problem with Garithos is that he's just one person - the Alliance being always moral, always good, always perfect, is both the most boring poo poo imaginable, and reflects pretty drat horrifically on the other faction that is intensely native peoples coded. I've mentioned it before but the Alliance very often looks like something straight out of some lovely "Deus Vult" internet-bound neo-nazi propaganda poster, and in Frozen Throne - the expansion where Blizzard is trying to play things a bit more morally grey - it makes complete sense they'd push into the far more grim side of that. Throughout WC3 and the better written parts of WoW, maybe ironically despite their names, the Horde's big strength has been its tolerance of others (joining with the trolls, then the tauren), and its big weakness has been its aggressiveness once they DO feel called to war. The Alliance's big strength has been its unity (they beat the Horde because the Horde falls to factionalism and infighting), and its big weakness has been its defensiveness leeching into intolerance for anyone outside of that unity. Frankly, the attitude you see from the previously mentioned people fits perfectly - the Alliance is moral and good so of course anyone who has a problem with it must be a bad person! Garithos here is just a good show that, when that unity is broken, things get ugly, fast. Kael is here because he's trying to work with the Alliance in the wake of the Scourge. Remember, until very, VERY recently, Kael was one of the people at Dalaran; he's not isolationist at all, and wants diplomacy and fellowship with non-elves to work out. After so much cataclysmic awfulness it frankly makes perfect sense he'd try to reignite those old treaties and try to help people reunite together. It's a pretty classic case of wanting to do the right thing, and getting tagged in by the worst people. Or, if you want, too little too late - Kael would've had substantially more success if the elves hadn't shut themselves off in the first place, but they did, and now it's too late to make those amends. Also, yeah, as was mentioned, the general gist of the game story at this point in time was that Quel'thalas was utterly ruined. Blizzard has never been shy about retconning freely (as each game is typically treated as it's own storyline), and I think going "No uhhhh the Blood Elves were mostly fine actually" is one such retcon.
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Dec 3, 2023 22:33
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I suppose it says something about me that... honestly, no. I don't relate to having to work under someone like Garithos. The bad bosses I've had to deal with were more just lazy, fond of lying to you, and did everything in their power to get out of having to do any work or bear any responsibility. I don't empathize with Kael's plight - sympathize with him, but not empathize.
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Dec 3, 2023 22:38
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Cythereal posted:Quite a lot, actually. I'll talk about this when I give the blood elves their proper lore post, but Arthas basically burned a straight path to the Sunwell and hosed off after resurrecting Kelly, leaving a small portion of forces behind. Quel'thalas' leadership is in disarray and its military strength was gutted, but Quel'thalas honestly came out of it pretty well compared to Lordaeron, Dalaran, Alterac, and Stromgarde. Gotta say, it doesn't track emotionally with "and then all high elves become blood elves". Or do all elves on Azeroth always desperately looking for their next magic fix?
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Dec 3, 2023 22:42
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Gun Jam posted:Gotta say, it doesn't track emotionally with "and then all high elves become blood elves". Or do all elves on Azeroth always desperately looking for their next magic fix? Patience. I'll get to this subject.
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Dec 3, 2023 22:44
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Cythereal posted:I suppose it says something about me that... honestly, no. I don't relate to having to work under someone like Garithos. The bad bosses I've had to deal with were more just lazy, fond of lying to you, and did everything in their power to get out of having to do any work or bear any responsibility. I don't empathize with Kael's plight - sympathize with him, but not empathize. Then you have been extremely lucky. I guarantee that, even if you have not, someone you know has either worked under, for, or alongside, someone like this. Kael is doing what the vast, VAST majority people in this circumstance do - he buckles down, he tries not to make waves, and he focuses on getting through the day, through the week, through the month, through whatever time it takes to no longer be dealing with this specific instance.
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Dec 3, 2023 23:03
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ProfessorCirno posted:Then you have been extremely lucky. I guarantee that, even if you have not, someone you know has either worked under, for, or alongside, someone like this. Absolutely, but it doesn't shake my feeling that Garithos is pointlessly, comically lovely for the sole purpose of being hated. Blizzard wants Kael to leave the Alliance so Garithos is their hatchetman and he has no other purpose. ProfessorCirno posted:Blizzard has never been shy about retconning freely (as each game is typically treated as it's own storyline), and I think going "No uhhhh the Blood Elves were mostly fine actually" is one such retcon. That's Blizzard's problem, not mine.
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Dec 3, 2023 23:06
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Cythereal posted:Absolutely, but it doesn't shake my feeling that Garithos is pointlessly, comically lovely for the sole purpose of being hated. Blizzard wants Kael to leave the Alliance so Garithos is their hatchetman and he has no other purpose. I don't think Blizzard was even thinking about the blood elves and their place in WoW at this point in time. I think it's far more simple - we've had a whole lot of narratives about the Alliance as good guys (even in the Alliance campaign, it's made clear that Arthas is betraying the Alliance), and wanted another look at what it'd be like if they weren't so good. Just as WC3 considered "ok but what if orcs weren't just evil" and made them more native peoples coded (which orcs always were in fantasy before WC3), here they're looking at the "human nations" being very starkly white cursader types, and they're considering how that might reflect on non-humans. Besides, it's not as if "humans end up a bit too racist to ally with elves, elves are too proud and/or haughty to ally with humans" is a new or groundbreaking story. Blizzard is doing what Blizzard has long done - take an idea that already exists, spin it in their own direction, and polish it up. We had the elves being isolationist side of things, now we're getting the humans being racist side of things. As others in the thread have said, the only shocking thing about Garithos is that he's been the only one like this in the general storyline thus far, not that he exists in the first place.
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Dec 3, 2023 23:39
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ProfessorCirno posted:I don't think Blizzard was even thinking about the blood elves and their place in WoW at this point in time. I think it's far more simple - we've had a whole lot of narratives about the Alliance as good guys (even in the Alliance campaign, it's made clear that Arthas is betraying the Alliance), and wanted another look at what it'd be like if they weren't so good. Just as WC3 considered "ok but what if orcs weren't just evil" and made them more native peoples coded (which orcs always were in fantasy before WC3), here they're looking at the "human nations" being very starkly white cursader types, and they're considering how that might reflect on non-humans. I feel like this whole narrative purpose was served by the internment camps and Thrall's story, but you do you.
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Dec 3, 2023 23:49
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Cythereal posted:Absolutely, but it doesn't shake my feeling that Garithos is pointlessly, comically lovely for the sole purpose of being hated. There are a lot of people who are pointlessly, comically lovely in real life because the slightest bit of power over others will immediately go to their head and turn them into a caricature. You're absolutely correct that Garithos's purpose in the story is to heavy-handedly push Kael to [REDACTED], but it's being done in a completely realistic way. The only real problem with Garithos is that there aren't more Alliance characters like him. The most that we get along those lines is stuff like this: Cythereal posted:
Cythereal posted:
Which is like... yeah, no poo poo, the Humans don't like the Orcs, but there are no other clear racial tensions outside of that. If there was a bit about Sylvanas trying to send for help and getting politely told (maybe by Arthas!) that the Human nations were too busy being a smoldering ruin because Quel'thalas didn't aid them with the Scourge, then Garithos being a shithead would make way more sense in the moment! However, as it stands, he's just... there. And while his post-hoc justification for being a shithead works, that came out years after the fact.
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Dec 3, 2023 23:59
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drat. These orcs will never surrender.
Then let's get in there and destroy the beasts! 
Agh! We shouldn't even be here! Or siding with the orcs!
We're here to hunt the remaining demons, human. You're lucky our goals are the same.
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Yeah humans being racist against orcs isn't great but at least perfectly understandable directly after a war. Someone being super racist makes a lot less sense, but it's not like real life racism does, so it's the biggest issue imo is that it comes so completely out of nowhere. I think any explanation like "I think the elves could have helped more, and their inaction affected me personally" actually makes it worse? After all, people irl are perfectly able to be racist without any personal reason. They get told "all [x] people have low IQ/are criminals/stink" by parents or books or other sources of prejudice and just believe that forever. We don't really get a sense of that, really? One can always assume, though, and maybe it's not the best thing to show in a video game in the first place.
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Dec 4, 2023 00:15
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