My Forsaken ideal
Yes, that title is a pun.
So, my subscription is over, and I don’t plan to renew it anytime soon, if ever. Nothing really special here, but I feel it’s important to say that it’s not because of the gameplay or anything. Sure, I know it sucks for a lot of people, but I always was more of a lore nerd, enjoying roleplay and always imagining my own stories. Suffice to say, BfA disappointed me a lot ! Especially since, as the title suggest, I loved the Forsaken. In the end, this post isn’t really a complaint, or a salty goodbye to a game I spent way too much time playing. If anything, I just want to share my point of view on my dear elbow-less weirdos. That way, maybe, you too could see the wasted potential I still mourn to this day.
I read a lot of discussions, and opinions on the Forsaken. The one I disagree the most with, is that their development should have ended after WotLK, and everything went south as soon as Cata hit. I, however, thought Cataclysm was amazing in the way it progressed the Forsaken as a whole. I’m not talking about the whole genocidal war (more on that later), but the true beginning of their own culture. Their revenge achieved, they could at last shed away the past, and start looking toward the future. Some people will say that, as unnatural abomination, they don’t deserve a future. Some think they should have stayed eternal victims of their damnation, weeping silently as they let themselves waste away. But I found something beautiful in their new culture, a culture about taking broken things, and making it their own. The most obvious example being their brand new architecture, replacing old decrepit ruins by gothic buildings (maybe ? I don’t know anything about architecture, sorry). Another detail I loved ? They didn’t built any boat ! They just “raised” some from the bottom of the sea, as they themselves where raised from their graves. Yeah, you heard that right ! If I were a Forsaken “shipwright”, I’d go find myself a Goblin lawyer to sue Jaina for copyright infringement ! Anyway, in those kind of things, I saw the start of a whole new culture, a whole new civilization forming itself out of broken lives. And I loved it.
Now, I guess the elephant in the room needs to be addressed. Whether you believe that it’s due to imperfect soul-attachment, some necromantic shenanigan, or the plain old traumatic experience of dying, it’s pretty obvious that Forsaken have a… “different view of morality”. Don’t worry, I won’t argue that burning Teldrassil was justified, or that using the living as guinea pig is acceptable. But while I’m on the subject, I’ll just go and say that I don’t find blight such a horrible weapon in a world where fighters set each other on fire, send poisoned arrows or curse of agony on their enemy’s very soul. At least, a gas mask can help you against blight. But back on the subject, I like to think that death, either caused or witnessed, have a lesser impact on you if you, yourself, went through it. And came back. Yes, a death rarely has a single victim. It causes suffering to the dead’s relatives, too. But Forsaken don’t care about that. The dead can come back. And the people that miss them ? They’ll get better. They are alive. And one day they’ll be dead too. It’s not an excuse, but it’s a (headcanon) reason. It’s a point of view to entertain.
More than anything, I loved the Forsaken sense of community. They knew that, individually, most of them wouldn’t have made it this far. Too many broken lives, given purpose through each other. And in the end, they didn’t care about the details. A jawless peon, a cockroach vendor, even a leper gnome, anyone could find their place among the Forsaken. Not by being evil, not even by serving the war machine. Just by sharing the sentiment of being undesirable and alone, and the willingness to go on despite this weight.
Sorry for my ramblings, I just needed to put it out there before leaving this part of my imagination behind. I know that half of my vision is headcanon, is the other half is probably retconned at this point, but… it was how I experienced playing a Forsaken !
PS : I always thought that Rise Against’s song Zero Visibility expressed my idea pretty well.