World Of Warcraft

Oh, right. I do remember those, although they were offscreen in the game, so I feel like they don't quite count as much for the average player.

Flooding Orgrimmar... One, she didn't go through with it, unlike Garrosh and Sylvanas. Acts contemplated but not executed don't generally count against one's eternal ledger, although they do mark a turn towards potential nastiness. Two, if she had, does that make her a worse criminal than Garrosh, or just his equal?

The purge of Dalaran... Yes, that was indeed stupid. I don't see how it justifies calling her a villain necessarily, but she shouldn't get a pass on it karma-wise.

There's been a lot of speculation that she's going to turn evil, but I'm not going to jump on that bandwagon until I actually see it happen.

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As opposed to the nice, gentle things that Garrosh and Sylvanas have said? If anyone's owed the right to hate the Horde, it's Jaina Proudmoore, who tried for years to make peace, even restraining her own allies from retributive attacks, and got her home destroyed to show for it.

And guess what... she was right all along. Look at Sylvanas. Now, I don't think the entire Horde deserves her wrath, and if she tries to go farther than is just, it'll be a big problem.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 8th 2018 at 4:59:58 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

And they were/are treated as such but Jaina though? No.

I am not saying that makes her any worse than Sylvanas or Garrosh. I am saying that she is not much better than them and should not be treated as such.

The fact she was even considering it was scary enough as we know she could do it, it'd be easy for her.

The Purge of Dalaran was something she did and it was pretty horrible. Not only did she completely fuck up Varian's attempts to get the blood elves back on the Alliance but she was targetting civvies.

Jaina's no hero no more.

Edited by Wispy on Aug 8th 2018 at 1:57:35 AM

Well, let's see if her self-imposed exile has turned her into that villain for real or not. All we've seen her do so far in BfA is be unreasonably awesome. Once she starts in on the actual story content, we'll get a chance to know for sure.

I'm not putting her on a pedestal by any means, or judging her by standards I'm not granting the Horde. She has done evil, but she's had enormous amounts of evil done to her. She could put it aside and be a force for good, or she could go all in and become something we have to destroy. I'm fine with it either way.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 8th 2018 at 5:00:33 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

At this point she should probably get an entry on Karma Houdini.

Put your hate boner away before you trip on it. You can't list someone under that trope until their arc is concluded.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 8th 2018 at 5:04:39 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Eh? Sylvanas is up there already with a paragraph and a half rant on her.

Edited by Memers on Aug 8th 2018 at 2:11:35 AM

Then it should be deleted, since her arc isn't concluded either.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 8th 2018 at 5:12:22 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

You can't call someone Houdini if they haven't finished their escape yet.

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 8th 2018 at 3:06:54 AM

Probably need a major repair shop and cleanup thread on it cause there are a ton of examples of currently going character arcs and series on there. Potential spliting of 'Long Delayed Karma' and such.

Well anyway I hope it comes to light that half the reason for Sylvanas starting this war is Jaina's constant hate speech ontop of Greymane's hateboner. Let her BSOD on that.

Edited by Memers on Aug 8th 2018 at 2:10:28 AM

Yeah, Karma Houdini is and has always been one hell of a mess.

Anyway, Sylvanas has already stated her reasons for this war. While she may trust Anduin to maintain the peace, she doesn't trust his allies not to convince him otherwise (or work around him), and she feels that the Horde can only ever hope to negotiate for a long-term peace from a position of superior strength. Fine, that makes strategic sense. Anduin won't be king forever, and there's no guarantee that his successor will be as peaceable.

However, Sylvanas decides to strike first in such a way as to generate massive horror and dismay among the Alliance. She uses terror tactics, not military tactics. She intends her enemies to suffer and fear her. She wants their fear to divide them, making them easier to conquer.

More to the point, she doesn't give a damn about the Horde in the end; it's just a convenient tool. Her goal is her own immortality and she's willing to commit an unlimited number of atrocities to get it.

Sorry, but Jaina doesn't even rise to her ankles on the scale of comparative villainy, and using Jaina's rhetoric as an excuse for genocide is comparable to burning your school down because one of the teachers threatened to give you an F.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 8th 2018 at 5:12:46 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I am wary about Jaina Proudmoore simply for one reason: What she is willingly to do to get what she wants?

Many times has she advocated for the destruction of the Horde. Not simply dismantling the organization, but implicit genocide on the races that compose the Horde.

Almost going through with flooding Orgrimmar with her magic, purging Dalaran of the Blood Elves, advising Varian to attack the Horde leaders shortly after Garrosh was overthrown...

Once is one thing. But having multiple instances of nearly going over the edge is worrisome. Every Horde aggression made so far always brings out the worst out of Jaina. And one of these moves might cause her to snap and just go full genocidal.

And I believe that as long as she (and the rest of Kul Tiras) believes the lie they tell themselves in their sleep, that Daelin Proudmoore is right and did nothing wrong, she will end up becoming a villain.

Edited by Shadao on Aug 8th 2018 at 2:19:26 AM

Its worse if she does not become the villain especially now, thus the game is advocating genocide and racism.

She is not worse than Sylvanas at all, but she shouldn't 'the hero' the game is trying to make her out to be. And Jaina needs that told to her face as a realization about what she has been saying then seek atonement.

Edited by Memers on Aug 8th 2018 at 2:35:08 AM

I personally want Jaina to be an actual morally grey character for once. I actually understand why she hates the horde but she has done plenty of bad things herself ever since she was wronged.

I hope that her exile gave her time to self-reflect, if only so she becomes less of a racist person and Dealin 2.0 doesn't happen again

Uni cat

This may sound odd, but to me the worst thing Jaina did was leave the Kirin Tor at the start of Legion.

The Purge of Dalaran, bad as it was with civilian causalities and how it scuppered Varian's plans to bring the Blood Elves into the Alliance, at least had a logic to it. It's easy to see why it happened.

Leaving the Kirin Tor, and doing it when she did, always struck me as the act of a petulant child not getting her way. The fact that she ultimately went running to Daddy does not contradict this perception.

At a time when the world, the entire world, was in a life or death struggle with an otherworldly force, Jaina fucked off and did nothing to help because the Kirin Tor didn't do what she wanted vis-a-vis letting the Horde back into Dalaran.

She put her own hatred over the safety of all Azeroth and, as a direct result, forced us to endure Khadgar's dad jokes.

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 8th 2018 at 3:53:49 AM

I'm siding with Fighteer here, Jaina's always considered it, but she's never done it. Every time she thinks to act with a crippling blow or genocide towards the Horde, it's on the tail of something pretty terrible happening to her, and she eventually cools off and, while staying cold, abandons any kind of aggressive final solution style of thought.

Intention to act out of passion that you never carry out is an entirely different beast than premeditating a war, the casualties that come from it, and the extremely horrific war crimes that are pulled off.

Though there's a different bit of a thing there in the whole "Men are thoughtful, women are passionate" argument in the game's writing but that's REALLY not a discussion I want to get into.

Edited by NaraNumas on Aug 8th 2018 at 4:59:20 AM

Advocating atrocities to the High King of the Alliance doesn't count as an 'act'? Killing blood elf civilians doesn't count as an 'act'?

I really do not get this argument, what you say is just as important as what you physically do especially when you are in power.

Edited by Memers on Aug 8th 2018 at 3:11:52 AM

Not a fan of the Dadgar, I take it?

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Aug 8th 2018 at 12:04:11 PM

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Nobody's denying the second one, for what it's worth.

Still doesn't excuse the Purge of Dalaran.

She at the very least could of been written to of been targetting Blood Elves that were involved in the Theramore incident. That wasn't the case, she was killing and imprisoning innocent Blood Elf civvies and when Varian got rightfully angry with her because he was getting very close to getting the Blood Elves back into the alliance she didn't even bother trying to apologize nor make up for her actions.

Infact as sgamer mentioned she abandoned the Alliance to go to Kul'Tiras after she didn't get her way.

She's not as bad as Sylvanas but she lost her title as an hero an long time ago.

Edited by Wispy on Aug 8th 2018 at 3:14:40 AM

Well, I don't see the narrative painting her as a hero in any way at all, currently. Flying her ship into the Battle for Lordaeron and saving everyone's asses is an awesome act; it's a badass act; but it's not necessarily a heroic act. It depends entirely on what she does next.

I find it somewhat remarkable that she has no exchange with Sylvanas in the throne room. It's like she's deliberately standing in the background, observing her reunited allies to see if they fit her standards. Will Anduin have the balls to carry through with taking down Sylvanas? Will he dominate as a High King should or let Genn and Alleria get out of control?

Frankly, once she gets the details of the burning of Teldrassil, she's going to feel more justified than ever in taking the war to the Horde.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 8th 2018 at 6:33:46 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Especially if she doesn't know about Teldrassil, since it prompts the question of just what she was doing there in the first place.

I think there's a decent chance that the ultimate resolution of Jaina's storyline is not going to be that the things like the purge of Dalaran or her father's actions were correct. It might even be the opposite conclusion, that Sylvanas (and Garrosh before her) never could of convinced the Horde to march against the Alliance if those things among others hadn't happened.

From what I've seen from beta, Jaina's character arc is going to be heavily defined by her time in Thros, a sort of nightmarish spirit realm specific to Drustvar, as well as the Siege of Boralus dungeon. In neither instances does she engage the Horde, and she manages to win enough trust from the Kul Tirians to be appointed Lord Admiral by her mother.

Now of course, it's hard to make strong conclusions from datamined material and there's probably a cinematic or two in there, but I can say that it doesn't have the "smell" of a villian arc.

also note during the events of BFL she doesnt argue at all when Anduin shows mercy.

One thing I will say is that I would actually appreciate Jaina not being controlled by an evil dark force. Garrosh and Sylvanas did and have done some awful things, but Garrosh's madness was exacerbated by the Sha of Pride by the time of Mists (of course, things like the bombing of Theramore happened before that) and Sylvanas has been showing signs that she's not anywhere near as free of the Lich King's influence as she thinks since Cata at the very latest. It would be refreshing, for a change, to have an antagonist if that word's too loaded from an Alliance perspective, let's go with 'agitator in the direction of war' character who's not corrupted by some evil force, but who's just a racist asshole and who is able to move past that, especially since Jaina used to be such an outspoken voice for peace. I don't want her dead, I just want her head back on her shoulders.

I also want to say that acting as though people must be roleplaying to not consider Jaina above reproach doesn't feel conducive to discussion. Yes, she hasn't done anything as bad as Garrosh or Sylvanas yet, but that's a very, very low bar to clear, and shouldn't be held up as any reasonable standard of respectability. (It's also made foggier, as we can already see, by people who may not have read the books or other supplementary material, and can only go off of what's in-game.) We can say she's given the Horde cause to worry without implying equivalence.

Edited by RedSavant on Aug 8th 2018 at 8:31:42 AM

It's been fun.