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For Arthas it his first taste of major combat instead of Orc round three fighting a enemy that is more insidious.
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Jul 19, 2023 01:49
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 I read it as Pale trees
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Jul 19, 2023 02:18
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Cythereal posted:Blame folks on discord who egged me into posting this. I meant Isidora's line in this update about having fallen in love at some point as a vague, noncommittal implication that after all the awful things I did to her, she did find peace and happiness in the end. All the dead heroes got it down bad for Sally. I have to know cause I do love DK lore so much: who in your head did you make Deathlord for the threadfic?
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Jul 19, 2023 08:43
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For whom it concerns regarding how I interpret and write death knights, here's how I put it in a half-finished short story fragment about Isidora's incarnation of the Four Horsemen than I may or may not ever finish. CW: mention of suicide.quote:Flickering across the four were sensations that there was no formal name for. The Knights of the Ebon Blade had taken to calling them 'phantom feelings.' Decades of experience as a living, breathing person taught one an instinctive mental understanding of one's emotions and when they arose. Death knights, as a general rule, felt few to no emotions. Each death knight was of course subtly different, and some had a broader range of emotions than others, but this icy deadening of the soul was the norm. Even so, minds and long instinct recognized that they should be feeling anxiety, even fear right now, and strange impressions flickered across the Horsemen as they felt that strange recognition that they should feel fear and simply didn't. There was only the cold, stilling the blood and smothering hearts that no longer beat.
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Jul 19, 2023 23:32
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I have recorded the next mission, and for now all I'll say is this: Blizzard, you absolute cowards. I would have cracked up if five randomly generated elite mercenaries showed up to join your forces and then the Infinites attacked near the end.
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Jul 20, 2023 01:48
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Cythereal posted:I have recorded the next mission, and for now all I'll say is this: Blizzard, you absolute cowards. I think that would take more of a sense of humour about themselves than Blizzard have. 
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Jul 20, 2023 01:51
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Cythereal posted:I have recorded the next mission, and for now all I'll say is this: Blizzard, you absolute cowards. That would in fact be absolutely hilarious and a campaign mod at some point needs to do this XD
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Jul 20, 2023 02:04
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Cythereal posted:I have recorded the next mission, and for now all I'll say is this: Blizzard, you absolute cowards. That would require efforts instead of this half rear end poo poo show that is Reforge.
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Jul 20, 2023 02:58
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Sounds like something that could be added in Azeroth Reborn mod.
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Jul 20, 2023 09:20
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Szarrukin posted:Sounds like something that could be added in Azeroth Reborn mod. They'd have to do some model work for the Infinite Dragonflight, and I suppose you could use recolours of alliance forces for random mercs. Random incidental dialogue about looting and bosses and such. Maybe something about only having a certain amount of time. Honestly it feels like something they'd do in WoW.
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Jul 20, 2023 19:03
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Torchlighter posted:They'd have to do some model work for the Infinite Dragonflight, and I suppose you could use recolours of alliance forces for random mercs. Random incidental dialogue about looting and bosses and such. Maybe something about only having a certain amount of time. Honestly it feels like something they'd do in WoW. They did, I think  : https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Culling_of_Stratholme_(instance)
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Jul 20, 2023 19:07
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Pieces of Peace posted:They did, I think I'm aware of the reference being made to the caverns of time dungeon, I'm more musing about the technical details of how the modders would probably want to reference the aforementioned bit.
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Jul 20, 2023 19:32
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Torchlighter posted:I'm aware of the reference being made to the caverns of time dungeon, I'm more musing about the technical details of how the modders would probably want to reference the aforementioned bit. The "It feels like something they did in WoW' bit is confusing. Not sure what you mean by that if you're already aware of the WoW dungeon.
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Jul 20, 2023 19:42
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Torchlighter posted:They'd have to do some model work for the Infinite Dragonflight SC2 hybrids could work as Infinite Dragonflight with slight modifications.
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Jul 20, 2023 19:43
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that instance was one of the few that I actually enjoyed in the brief time I played WoW, probably because it was actually something I was aware of (since Cataclysm was coming and I was only playing a few times a week I didn't really realise that there were actual stories being told as I did my levelling and exploring). That, and, I feel it was written very well, all the things Arthas mentions as you go through the streets really got to me at the time
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Jul 20, 2023 20:30
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Maybe let’s hold off on talking about the subject of the update until the update
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Jul 20, 2023 23:36
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Update will probably be Saturday, for reference. This mission, and the lore post that will accompany it, deal with some pretty heavy topics that I don't like thinking and writing about, so I'm being slower and more careful about how I write this than normal.
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Jul 20, 2023 23:55
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Alliance 6: The Left Hand of Destiny Before the main event, we first need to deal with the magic unhoused person and his cardboard REPENT THE END IS NIGH sign.  So for the record, the official line on how Medivh knew what was coming is that after Medivh was killed at Karazhan, his soul was still briefly entangled with that of Sargeras, and Medivh's mind touched his. From that glimpse into Sargeras' mind, Medivh saw that Sargeras had been preparing a contingency plan in the event the Horde failed: he had ordered the Dreadlords to begin studying Azeroth and prepare a campaign of subversion to turn the humans against one another in the event the orcs didn't get the job done. This is, later WoW lore established, one of the standard ways for the Legion to take worlds. Typically, they first study and planet and determine if a simple invasion could overcome the planet easily or not. If the Legion expects serious resistance (or in the case of Draenor, the Legion was expecting their primary target the draenei to pack up and run the moment they saw an infernal), they instead turn to subverting local leaders and populations as proxies to divide and weaken the planet until the planet is suitably weakened for the Legion to deliver the deathblow. Cursed swords that tempt great warriors and then eat their soul are an old favorite trick of the Legion, and in fact one such weapon was already sent to Azeroth - this is one of the threats that the Guardians of Tirisfal were created to combat.   I have no time for this!    Your son is impressively bad with people. He gets it from his mother. Don't say it! I sensed tremendous power about him, Arthas. Maybe he does know what will happen. Nothing he can say will make me abandon my homeland, Jaina. I don't care if that madman has seen the future. Let's go. All that power, and he did nothing with it. For good or ill, I believe the kiddo was terrified of what could happen if he intervened directly and made a mistake. Being possessed by Sargeras will do that do you, and I would know. That had been my father's estimation of why Medivh never acted in any subsequent conflict. If the last Guardian of Tirisfal were not a coward with a broken self-confidence, he would have been a near-unacceptable risk for our plans. You just don't get it, do you, Onyxia? Get what? One wrong choice paralyzing you from ever making another choice good or bad? I don't think my son fears anyone except the man he sees in the mirror.  Arthas. I truly think we failed you. All of us. Perhaps we, too, struggled with pride. Would you have been different had Gavinrad taught you? Or Saidan? Or even me? Or did we presume that Uther's greatness of character would extend his skill to teaching a young man as well? I was already a paladin sworn when Uther took me under his wing, all those years ago. You were just a child. How could anyone defy the law, you asked me at that trial. Because the wisdom of yesterday may not be the wisdom today needs, I answered. Perhaps you were never meant to be a paladin at all and deserved the chance to find your own path. Oh, Arthas. Uther would have died for you. Any of us would have. Wherever your soul is now, Arthas, I hope you might one day forgive four foolish old men for our pride. Y'all, welcome to what might be the most famous level in RTS history. Honestly, a bit of a shame I'm not one to do the actual RTS part justice.  Arthas' voice is sarcastic and more than a little bitter.  Probably not the best time to be pulling rank, buddy. Was the plague a thing in your timeline as well? Yes. Was it this bad? Yes. I am very glad I was already dead by this time.  And with six words, the plot and tone of the human campaign has turned on its head.  Uther is stunned.  Remember that Uther wasn't at Hearthglen. He didn't see what the plagued grain was doing and how the plague works.  Arthas' decision is immediate and decisive. The game never says this, but I very much get the feeling that Arthas was running over Hearthglen in his mind in the time since, thinking about what he'd do if the situation repeated here. I don't think this is an impulsive decision at all.  Of course Uther is horrified. Who wouldn't be? Forced to make a snap decision, he's chosen his sense of right and wrong over any sense of loyalty or duty.  The world is going mad, just as Medivh foresaw.  The most powerful human nation on Azeroth is coming apart at the seams.  I'll leave all discussion of the morality of what Arthas is doing for the lore post below.  But if this scene is making you incredibly uncomfortable, good.  In the official story, this scene is where Arthas began to lose his powers as a paladin and his connection to the Light began to wane.  According to the Bronze Dragonflight, this scene is the moment that decides Arthas' fate in every timeline that's followed the canon course of history until now. Arthas' actions here at Stratholme will define him for the rest of his life.  Whatever you think of the characterization of Arthas and Uther and their relationship up to this point, it's all been leading to this.  All the major players in the human campaign have made their choices.  On to the actual mission, I can upgrade to tier 3 now.  While the base gets building I go creeping and find a small band of orcs dubbed the Lost Patrol. This battle also shows my new unit for this map: knights. Like in every previous game, knights are heavy hitters and move fast, the primary late-game Alliance unit. They'll never be my whole force, and this mission will soon be on a ticking clock that I take more seriously than I really need to on Story difficulty, but they effectively replace footmen as the Alliance's front line.  After a couple of minutes to let you get situated and building, a cutscene introduces the master Kel'thuzad mentioned: Mal'Ganis.  Mal'Ganis is in theory the second in command of the Dreadlords, answering to Tichondrius the Darkener, but in truth he's the one with the direct line to their real boss, Sire Denathrius in the Shadowlands.  I didn't believe it at first when my brother sent word of all this. What was so hard to believe? The plague? That a human would be willing to do this. My thread in Isidora's strand had come to appreciate how completely insane humans can be, but never in my life in the main strand had I seen anything like this. I was never anything like Arthas, Katrana. You were closer than you realize by the end, dear. When you marched into the Burning Steppes, when you saw what the orcs did to your home, when you gave the order to leave nothing standing, you weren't as collected and controlled as you said you were afterwards. I was there. I saw your eyes.  Blackhand, Warchief of the orcish hordes, hear me. My conjurers have carried my voice to you wherever in your fortress you're cowering. I am Isidora Turan. Duchess of the Northlands. General of the Army of Stormwind. Commander of the Seventh Legion. War Leader of Stormwind. Your cause is lost. You are cut off from resupply and reinforcement. You cannot win and you cannot escape. Wherever you run, wherever you hide, you will be found and you will be brought before me in chains or in pieces. I offer you mercy once, and only once. Surrender, and I will treat you and your men as the old rules of war among men dictate. Refuse, and we will not stop until all that remains of your army is echoes on the wind. The lives of you and your men are in your hands, Warchief. Choose wisely. And so, the premise of the level: Stratholme is filled with houses containing infected citizens. You need to destroy the houses and mercy kill the citizens while Mal'Ganis goes around destroying houses and zombifying the citizens. I actually kind of regret not turning up the difficulty for this mission, and I know how weird that is for me to say. But as you'll see, on Story there's basically no tension or rush.  Because you can intercept Mal'Ganis and his forces. Mal'Ganis is no pushover - he's a level 6 Dreadlord, the second full undead hero of the game - but he doesn't use his ultimate and he doesn't bring many troops with him. He can put a unit to sleep, disabling them temporarily or until a unit attacks the sleeping unit; he has a wide column area effect damage spell; and he has an aura that lets himself and nearby allied units steal health when they attack in melee. Dreadlords are my favorite undead hero to open with in skirmish, but Mal'Ganis just doesn't bring enough support and mercifully doesn't seem able to use the Dreadlord's final ability.  After you kill Mal'Ganis, you have a few minutes to cleanse Stratholme in relative peace.  Don't neglect defenses entirely, as Mal'Ganis will send troops to your base. I imagine you could hit back and wipe out Mal'Ganis' base if you want, but I don't bother.  Well this is new for Reforged! After putting 30 people out of their misery, the next house you destroy pops out a miniboss that WoW players might recognize! You see, in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, one dungeon is The Culling of Stratholme. The Bronze Dragonflight sends a group of players back in time to this battle because the Infinite Dragonflight means to assassinate Arthas during this battle, and players have to ensure that history plays out as it should. WoW's depiction of this battle, though, is pretty different. Rather than the mostly empty streets and people sick but not yet turned like in this game, WoW depicted Stratholme as already overrun with the undead and the majority of the dungeon is spent fighting wave after wave of undead rampaging through the city. Salramm the Fleshcrafter here is the first boss of the WoW dungeon, in that game he emerges after players kill a certain number of trash waves. Here, he's a reskin of Kel'thuzad as a beefed up necromancer and goes down in moments before I realized he was an actual enemy unit on the field.  Arthas gets some loot for it.  When you destroy a house, the people will turn into zombies after a few seconds. However, they're far weaker as humans, giving you a limited window to kill them before they turn.  Mal'Ganis returns but doesn't bring nearly enough support this time, either. I finish leveling holy light on Arthas from the resulting level. (yeah I don't like divine shield in campaign)  On Story, this mission is honestly dull to play, unfortunately. Maybe I'll bump it up to Normal for the next update. Maybe. Also, I'm pretty sure Reforged changed the layout of the city to match the map in WoW's dungeon.  After 70 kills, the second boss from the WoW dungeon pops out: Meathook, an abomination quasi-hero. He has a ton of health to chew through. Katr - no, Onyxia... I don't like to think about the Burning Steppes. Blackhand's last words haunted me for the last of my days. I'm a dead man, but the fire still burns in my veins. Why won't it end? Why won't it let me go...? A question I've only started to understand now that I'm dead. What do you mean? You never drank demon blood. My father's pacts. What he did to my mother. What he demanded of me. Did Blackhand truly have a choice when fate decreed he would play a villain on the stage? Did Arthas? Could they have turned out differently? Did Arthas have to do this? ... Did I have a choice? Did any of us ever have a chance to be something else? Why did Arthas do this? Why did Blackhand? Why did I?... Why?
Cythereal fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 23:11
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At the Shores of Rubicon The Culling of Stratholme. In a bid to keep this thread from turning into a straight copy of the endless number of times this subject has been argued over by nerds, I'm going to present an analysis of how this event has been portrayed and talked about in-universe. This subject is going to deal with some heavy matters that may trigger some people and offend others. To this end, I expect and demand that everyone put on their big boy/girl/enby/other pants and discuss things maturely, without resorting to personal attacks against other posters. Failing that, I hope mods are on the ball.  The first and most important thing to establish when discussing the Culling is this: the plague of undeath is completely incurable and one hundred percent fatal. We know this because of a couple of quest lines in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Set about ten years after the events of Reign of Chaos, this is the expansion that saw the united forces of Azeroth invade Northrend and ultimately destroy the Lich King. Unsurprisingly, the plague came up a couple of times, both involving the same ending. Note that there was a famous zombie plague event in the game for Wrath that did feature that plague being cured. I am going to disregard this as a special event put on for fun by Blizzard, probably partly in memory of the Corrupted Blood incident that I may discuss at some point if people wish. This event has never been referenced again, so I'm going to treat this event as non-canon. First and most importantly, we have the tale of Crusader Bridenbrad. This was a questline made in honor of a senior Blizzard developer's family member who died of cancer during Wrath's development. Bridenbrad was a paladin who players found dying alone in the Northrend wilderness. He had contracted the plague during battle, and had made his peace with his coming death. Player characters reached out to every source of healing magic that existed in a bid to cure the plague. Archdruids couldn't cure the plague. Alexstrasza couldn't cure the plague. The Naaru couldn't cure the plague. Bridenbrad's life simply could not be saved, in the end the Naaru ascended his soul directly into the Light to grant him eternal peace. Stripping out all the fanciful details and Biblical comparisons, what the Naaru did for Bridenbrad was euthanasia, giving him a clean and painless death. Alliance players may have found this familiar, because another storyline in Northrend is called the Broken Front and involves an Alliance offensive against the Scourge. Just as the Alliance mounted their attack, however, the Horde attacked the Alliance forces, charging into their rear. In the ensuing battle, the Scourge wiped out both sides and began raising the fallen as new undead. Alliance players were went to rescue any survivors, only to discover that many severely injured soldiers had been infected with the plague and left by the Scourge to turn. These wounded soldiers asked for, and the player characters delivered, a merciful death followed by destruction of their corpse to keep the Scourge from using their bodies. At the time of the Culling, of course, no one knew for a fact that the plague couldn't be cured. But we do know that ten years later, Alliance forces at least (we do not know of any Horde perspectives like this) believed that the kindest thing to do to anyone infected with the plague was to make them comfortable and administer euthanasia. This is, minus the dying moments in comfort, exactly what Arthas did for the infected at Stratholme.  In the wake of the Culling, Uther and Jaina returned to Lordaeron's capital and convened a conference to discuss events, what Arthas had done, and what was to be done about the undead. The three battles at Andorhal, Hearthglen, and Stratholme had in fact eradicated the Scourge's presence in Lordaeron and driven the Cult of the Damned into hiding. Arthas, despite the collateral damage at Stratholme, had accomplished his goal of driving the Scourge out of Lordaeron, and the question became, what now? King Terenas Menethil, though deeply distraught, could not bring himself to openly condemn Arthas' actions, and permitted Arthas to recruit volunteers for his planned strike into Northrend. Terenas would neither support nor deny Arthas. Word also reached Lordaeron when Arthas departed that Arthas had not in fact killed everyone: he had chosen to spare Stratholme's orphanage, where many of the city's children and a number of pregnant women had taken shelter. Initially Arthas imposed a quarantine on the orphanage, but the matron running the facility proved that no one there had eaten tainted grain, which priests and sorcerers in Arthas' detachment confirmed. They were sent back to Lordaeron City under military escort with orders to kill them if even one soul showed signs of infection. This was the only glimmer of light to the battle: the battle between Arthas and Mal'Ganis had left Stratholme in ruins, virtually uninhabitable. Many Stratholme residents had committed suicide in the city's death throes, and some of Arthas' own soldiers joined them in the wake of the battle, unable to live with what they had just done. The death toll was almost total for the entire citizenry of Stratholme, barring those who had sheltered in that orphanage. There were two sides to the debate about what to do next in Lordaeron. Uther and Archbishop Alonsus Faol believed that a cure to the plague might yet be found, and insisted that anyone showing signs of the plague should be brought in for treatment. Others, including paladins Saidan Dathrohan and Alexandros Mograine, believed that Arthas might very well have had a point, and insisted that a series of lockdown measures be prepared for to isolate and burn out any further signs of infection. What Dathrohan and Mograine feared was that, while the threat had seemingly passed for now, there was no telling when it might resurface and only immediate, decisive action was likely to quell such a threat. For Archmage Antonidas and Jaina Proudmoore, the response of the Kirin Tor to the threat was to prepare Dalaran for war. Without the Order of Tirisfal, and knowing the threat to be magical in nature, Antonidas believed that the Kirin Tor would have to take a strong involvement in the conflict, and further believed that if Azeroth truly was facing some kind of large-scale undead threat, the magical power of Dalaran would make the city an inevitable target. Ambassadors from Kul Tiras, in turn, imposed a protective blockade on Lordaeron shipping. Any ship sailing out of Lordaeron, no matter the flag, would be stopped and searched for any signs of infection or contamination among cargo and crew. Ultimately, no consensus was reached in Lordaeron before the shape of the conflict turned yet again in events we'll see.  Courtesy of the Bronze Dragonflight, a number of books have established over the years that there were several alternative ways the battle for Stratholme could have gone. Every alternate outcome of Stratholme that we know of, however, agrees on one thing: the city could not be saved. There are versions where small handfuls more people could be saved, like that fortunate orphanage, but the overall course of the battle is, according to Blizzard's authorial voices, set in stone. The plague is simply too deadly, too incurable, and the Scourge's plans far too advanced and entrenched. Any alternate timeline where Stratholme could be saved is a timeline that was already significantly different. The idea that keeps cropping up in my research, in all these suggestions of how things could have gone and why they did or didn't, is that Lordaeron was simply not prepared for an enemy like this. The Order of Tirisfal was humanity's traditional defense against this kind of threat, and the Burning Legion dealt with that one before the First War. There doesn't seem to have ever been an analog of the Black Death, Spanish Flu, or other horrifically deadly epidemic in Azeroth as far as we know (though there are millennia-long blank spots in our knowledge of human history on Azeroth). The Horde's necromancers, for all their power, never approached anything in the same zip code as the threat of the Scourge and the plague. Lordaeron was taken unawares by a threat they did not know existed and had no awareness of. Where all of these alternate timelines diverge, then, is not the fate of Stratholme or the act of the Culling itself, but on how Arthas interacted with Uther and Jaina. We know that there's at least one timeline where Arthas refused to cull the city at first, and imposed a quarantine around the city, isolating and screening those who tried to flee. But Arthas, after days of watching Stratholme die and strengthen Mal'Ganis, declared that he could not simply stand by and watch - and Uther and Jaina, who had had time to understand the plague and digest its implications, did not abandon him. In this timeline, Uther and Jaina both ultimately perished at Arthas' side in Northrend. Two more timelines that we know of saw Arthas order the Culling not out of anger, but grief and regret, taking the time to explain things more fully. Though Uther still departed in these timelines, he did so more peacefully, and Jaina reluctantly chose to remain at Arthas' side. In one of these timelines, Jaina would ultimately perish in Northrend during coming battles. In the other, it was Arthas who ultimately fell in Northrend and Jaina took up the mantle that awaits.  Never, at any point, has Blizzard ever glorified the Culling of Stratholme or asserted that Arthas was to be praised for his actions. The Culling was, in the logic and story that Blizzard has presented, probably the least bad outcome to the crisis in Stratholme. Arthas did end the Scourge threat in Lordaeron, kept the entire city's population from being turned into undead, and drove the Cult of the Damned into hiding. What the Culling was not, was a good thing. Blizzard has always asserted that, contrary to the game map depicting everyone as infected, Arthas and his troops did kill many innocent people who were not infected. Many citizens, infected or not, saw themselves trapped between the undead and Arthas and chose to take their own lives. In the long term, Arthas' decisions and in particular the way he went about them also cost him the closest he had ever had to friends. While the story of the Third War for Lordaeron is, in every timeline that we know of, an immense tragedy, Arthas played a significant role in making things worse for himself. Arthas also began losing his powers as a paladin at this time, and the books have asserted that he wasn't nearly as confident as he acted. Arthas wasn't any more sure he was doing the right thing than anyone under his command, and he willingly let anyone who wished leave his command, before and after the Culling. Blizzard has consistently presented and described the Culling as a terrible tragedy in a crisis with no clear right answer, as divisive in-setting as it is with the player base. The rest, I leave to your own interpretations. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 23:12
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Another scene which is given more depth in the Arthas novel. There, Arthas informs Jaina of the effects of the plagued grain on the way to Stratholme, so she's had time to digest the implications. As such, Jaina backs Arthas up when he informs Uther that Stratholme is about to turn into a city full of undead. However, her first instinct is to talk to Antonidas, figure out to see if there's a cure and study the effects of the grain. She is shocked, like Uther is, when Arthas proposes the culling. Of course, Jaina would be ultimately wrong since, as stated, there was no cure for the plague. I actually didn't know about the Stratholme orphanage, my impression was that Arthas had culled the entire city and left no survivors without giving the city any warning. This makes the culling sound more... organized? If that's the right word. Like they had systemically planned out the invasion and wiping out of the city and taken their time to examine the citizens for degrees of infection rather than the race against time that this mission (and the instance in WoW) depicted.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:27
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ApplesandOranges posted:I actually didn't know about the Stratholme orphanage, my impression was that Arthas had culled the entire city and left no survivors without giving the city any warning. This makes the culling sound more... organized? If that's the right word. Like they had systemically planned out the invasion and wiping out of the city and taken their time to examine the citizens for degrees of infection rather than the race against time that this mission (and the instance in WoW) depicted. The only description of the event itself we're given is that a woman with a baby in her arms rushed out of the orphanage and pleaded with Arthas that the orphanage couldn't afford grain, no one there was infected, and Arthas relented in that one singular instance (it's from one of the Children's Week events per the wiki). We also know, however, that after Mal'Ganis' defeat, Arthas and his forces systematically swept through the city, hunting down and exterminating survivors.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:34
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it is an odd choice, but an interesting one, that Arthas in this mission and Uther at the end of the last one have the same problem "well yeah you're right, but you're being a dick about it, and so you're hosed"
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Jul 21, 2023 23:36
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How long did the events of the Culling take? I had it in my head it was like a crime of passion; a rampaging legion of Alliance soliders fighting against dreadlords to wipe out the city within a day or two. But this is also me being unaware just how big Stratholme is (there's WoW size scale of course but that's not always the best barometer). It could very well have taken over a week or something, and if Stratholme has multiple entrances there could have been escapees (doomed ones, but nevertheless). Though Arthas would have posted guards at any common entrances, if the Culling took place over a long enough period of time I imagine some trapped people might have gotten creative or desperate (hiding for as long as possible, trying to exit via waterways, etc.). The missions also made it seem like Stratholme had little military might and so resistance to Arthas or Mal'Ganis, but in practice I feel like there would at least have been a token guard, and Arthas mostly succeeded through both surprise (the guards would not be expecting their prince to attack them) and ruthlessness.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:40
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ApplesandOranges posted:How long did the events of the Culling take? The only timeframe we're given is that it was less than three days. We have very few details about how the Culling actually went down. Almost everything that talks about the Culling discusses the lead-in and the aftermath, not the actual battle.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:44
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One thing I will note about the culling of Stratholme is that they didn’t do a very thorough job of disposing all of the body In the aftermath. I believe in based wow one of the background for an undead PC was to be a victim of Stratholme who was recently revived by a necromancer.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:49
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I'm glad that for all of Blizzard's penchant for retcon-ing, they ultimately kept the stance that Stratholme was a lovely situation with no single right answer.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:52
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This line is just masterfully done. You can hear the hurt in Arthas' voice.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:10
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The fact that there is a brief window in which you can kill them pre-turning is a great piece of mechanical storytelling. If they turn and attack you, they're zombies. Obviously killing them is moral, but they have have several times more health than the villagers so it takes longer and they do a bit of chip damage. In those few seconds before they turn, they are neutral. You can't just right click, you have to click the attack button (or press A) and click them to force the attack, to make the decision to execute them while they are confused and don't know why their own soldiers are turning their blades on them. IIRC there are even children who all this applies to.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:17
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The voice acting in this campaign in general is surprisingly good, at least on the part of Arthas, Jaina, and Uther. And a lot of the next campaign's. There are a lot of lines that stick in my mind, and those three deliver nearly all of them. The third and fourth campaigns' acting are much less memorable to me, but that's getting way ahead of ourselves. Stratholme did hit hard. It's not my favorite mission to play, but the intro and outro... dang. As Cythereal said, six words to turn the campaign on its head. Also, the map is definitely different in Reforged. In the original, your base is in the northeast of the map and you have to cross one of several bridges into a pretty sizable, relatively orderly little city. I may be misremembering, but from the minimap, this version looks like a much smaller place. Which may be for the better on gameplay, because once you picked off the nearby buildings and their inhabitants, it started to get just long and slow enough to be annoying for reinforcements to reach your main group, or to catch up with Mal'Ganis when he respawned.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:24
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Does Uther know about the plague grain? Uther most likely thought the the plague was curable with the light or other means.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:35
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Is the zoo with the 99% evasion rat still there in reforged?
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Jul 22, 2023 00:37
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Allllright, here we go. First and foremost, as noted, Reforged completely rebuilt this map's terrain from the ground up. This is the original layout:  And here is the new:  Note, I don't know why the first image is so small here, if you open it in a separate tab it's much larger. But regardless, one thing to note is that in the original, you started in the top-right corner, while here you are located to the south of the city - which is geographically more appropriate, given the city's location. As noted, the rebuilt map is designed based around the city's layout in World of Warcraft - it's still not a 1-to-1 translation, but it's certainly closer to WoW's incarnation of the city. Of note, there's one feature of the rebuilt map that neither the original Warcraft 3 or WoW itself showed: a harbor. Think back to Warcraft 2, and this may become a nice touch that people might appreciate, as Stratholme was stated at in Warcraft 2 to be the primary provider of Oil in Lordaeron and surrounding nations, and was a coastal, naval city. So yeah, nice touch. Both images were just taken from a very quick google image search, the Reforged map obviously comes from some "guide" site, so don't mind that. Small detail, that Orc "lost patrol" is actually replacing a small bandit camp that was in the original map. As noted, Salramm and Meathook are new additions to Reforged, based on the first two bosses of the WoW dungeon - both minibosses received substantial buffs in the 1.33 patch, but neither are terribly dangerous overall. There's actually a certain amount of randomization in when, and potentially if, they appear, but I don't have a strong enough understanding of the Warcraft 3 editor's triggering language to understand the specifics of it. I just know that at least one person has gone through this map without ever encountering Meathook, in particular. Salramm's line of dialogue could actually be found in the original map, attributed to a standard Necromancer (and is spoken in their voice), but was unused. One last detail I want to point out, is actually a small change to the dialogue in the actual pre-mission cutscene. In the following exchange, one line was moved around. Arthas: "They may look fine now, but it's just a matter of time before they turn into the undead!" Arthas: "This entire city must be purged." Uther: "What?" Uther: "How can you even consider that?" In the original map, Uther's "WHAT?" came before the line about Purging the City, implying Arthas had not yet told him that detail about the events in Hearthglen - which makes sense, considering Arthas stormed off immediately, and Uther has just arrived, with an implication that they haven't spoken in that period. Now, the "WHAT" serves to emphasize Uther's shock at Arthas' decision. I'm honestly not sure which version I like more. EDIT: Oh, one more detail about Mal'ganis: In the original map, and normally in the editor, Mal'ganis has four spells; they typical Dreadlord Carrion Swarm and Sleep spells, and two spells unique to him that simply mimic the effects occuring with the villagers here on this map; turning one into a zombie, then despawning one, if the two spells are used in succession. I think he uses the latter in-map, but the former effect is handled by triggers instead. In Reforged, his hero unit was edited to give him access to Vampiric Aura. If the player is playing on Hard, Mal'ganis is increased to level 8, and he is given access to Inferno, which he will use immediately, and whenever possible. This makes taking him out to have a few clean minutes to cull villagers a lot more complicated. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 00:39
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ChaosDragon posted:Does Uther know about the plague grain? Uther most likely thought the the plague was curable with the light or other means. Uther did not know. You can see Arthas start to explain before he's cut off. Whether the plague could be cured or not was a subject of intense argument in-setting after the battle, with Uther being on the side that surely a cure could be found. sirtommygunn posted:Is the zoo with the 99% evasion rat still there in reforged? I sure didn't see a zoo.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:40
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Cythereal posted:I sure didn't see a zoo. A quick check online says that Filson the Rat is still around, but apparently hangs out near a Fountain in the northeast end of town, rather than in any zoo.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:46
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Unbelievable, that zoo was the soul of the mission, and not at all wildly out of place.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:47
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Story-wise, the Culling is excellent. It's a horrible situation, one that we as players following the story have seen the same thing Arthas has. His decision is horrifying. Unforgivable. It had to be done. Uther doesn't know, how could he? In the heat of the moment, there is no explanation, only emotion. Time is working against them, tempers are running hot, Arthas seems to be falling apart at the seams. And, yeah, drat if the tone change on the human campaign wasn't complete and immediate.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:49
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So does Jaina know about the grain?
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Jul 22, 2023 00:56
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ChaosDragon posted:So does Jaina know about the grain? It's been retconned that she does, Arthas tells her on the way to Stratholme. It is also retconned that they do tell Uther about it just before Arthas decides on the culling.
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Jul 22, 2023 01:00
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Cythereal posted:Also, I'm pretty sure Reforged changed the layout of the city to match the map in WoW's dungeon. Oh thank God you said that, I thought I was going insane and remembering the mission wrong.
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Jul 22, 2023 01:11
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ChaosDragon posted:So does Jaina know about the grain? She knew grain was carrying the plague, and investigating it was her job, but the fact the plague is turning people into undead is a realisation Arthas had after she'd left to get Uther. She might have figured it out on her own, she had all the right information. This might honestly be the best mission in the game? The writing is really strong, the voice performance too, and the unusual time pressure of the mission gimmick adds a lot of tension without adding a lot of frustration, at least as long as you're playing at a suitable difficulty. Certainly top five, at least. Arthas and Uther are ultimately both right. Arthas was right that it's a choice between killing them now while they're innocent citizens or killing them once they're an organised army of the undead, coming from a perspective of someone who had to do the latter once already. Uther is right that that is an utterly unconscionable thing to do, on par with the worst of the Horde's war crimes, and coming from not having had time to process what the nature of the threat really is. Maybe it says something that perhaps Blizzard's best-preserved piece of good writing is a horrific act of suffering done for the greater good, but I'm glad it did stay that way. Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 01:14
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