Friday, December 10, 2010

THUNDER LORE RANT!

*Coughs*
That was your opportunity to look away now or run screaming.  If you stay now its your own damn fault.

We still have some folks?  Good.

So, with the Holidays comming my pen and paper RPG time has been sadly restricted due to lack of my own time and lack of players who can meet up.  On the upside this means I can play a bit more of WoW Cataclysm. 

As many of you know my main is Thunderstep, a Tauren Death Knight.  I play almost exclusively on the Horde side for a lot of reasons which I'll spare you for now.  Simply put I love the stories of the Warcraft universe.  The lore, while not always consistent, is a good damn story overall.

That dedication is apparent in this new expansion , and while I have not seen all of what it holds yet I do have a few things I'd like to vent before my spleen bursts.

Horde Side
I really enjoy the goblins in the game.  I have ever since Warcraft: Orcs Vs Humans.  They are insane, pyromanicial, money grubbing, mad scientists.  I LOVE THAT!

So when the horde gained them as a playable race I was excited.  That feeling went up and down until the expansion came out, and we could finally get into the goblin starting area.  IT IS AWESOME!

It's funny, darkly humorous, and at times even sad. 

More folks see the comedy of the goblins but there are some parts that are deeper that folks seem to be missing.  They were once slaves and became free, making their Trollish masters into their slaves.  They represent intelligence without a moral guide, hence the "Mad Scientist" slant.  They have destroyed their environment for the sake of money, and re-built it with technology  to their demands.  They are about as divorced from nature as is possible.  They don't fear what their discoveries will bring, or even what they will mean, but only drive forward to the next big thing.

Funny, sad, and a commentary on our lives.  Overall a great start.

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
So, what has Thunder's undies in a bunch here?  I'll give you a name...  It has now become a name I hate more than Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream COMBINED.  That name is... Trade Prince Galliwix.

He is the grand poobah of Asshats, Fucknuggets, and Twat Waffles.  Politicians come to him to see how much more they could screw their constituents.  Even Deathwing looks at him and says "I just want to destroy the world... THAT guy is a REAL asshole."

Why do I hate this little green pile of excrement so much?  Its because either the story writers at Blizzard are masters of subtle genius and are leaving open an opportunity at a later date for some political infighting and maneuvering for the goblins...  OR they have no God-Damned idea what they are doing and ended the starting area with something akin to "Well we need a Goblin leader... Fuckit leave Galliwix in charge and move on."

You see, all throughout the starting experience for the Goblins, your character is in competition with Galliwix.  First for potential leadership of the Bilgewater Cartel, then as rivals for leading the Goblins on the Lost Isles, and finally as hero vs slaver villian douche at the end. 
As for a list of Galliwix's crimes:
1) Sabotaging a party your character throws by hiring PIRATES to threaten and KILL people.
2) Tricking you to hand over your life savings to take you on THE ONLY AVAILABLE BOAT in order to survive the volcanic eruptions thanks to Deathwing.  (Side note... what happened to the rest of Kezan, the Goblin home island?  Did ALL of it get demolished?  What about Undermine, the Goblin hidden capital?)
3) Taking your money, and then promptly tossing you and all other goblins into a brig to be sold as SLAVES. 
4) Trying desperately to turn others against you after you SAVED HIS LIFE off the coast of the Lost Isles.
5) While another volcano explodes, taking all the other goblins as slaves AGAIN!  With pirate help!
6) Trying to kill THRALL, leader of the Orcs and the Horde in general! 

The end fight of the zone is your character in a shredder, Thrall as Uber-Shaman, and Galliwix in a spider-bot machine (Stolen from Gnomes as I DOUBT he could have made his own).  You get to totally kick his rear, but just before the coup de grace Galliwix surrenders, and tells Thrall:

Trade Prince Gallywix yells: Uncle! Uncle! I give! You guys are too much for me!
Trade Prince Gallywix yells: I'm beaten. You've shown me the error of my ways. From here on out, I promise to reform the way that the cartel is run!
Trade Prince Gallywix yells: I'm your goblin, Thrall. What would you have of me?
So here I am... at this point hoping desperately that Thrall will kick his ass, turn him over to the other Goblins, or hell, even strip him naked and sell him to the gnomes... and I get this:
Thrall grunts and thinks a moment on what to do with the Trade prince.
Thrall yells: For now, you will remain the Trade Prince of the Bilgewater Cartel.
Now I don't play on a role playing server... people usually complain when folks DO try and role play in video games anyway, but I have come to like my little goblin and want the best for her and her people (That's right... I'm playing a FEMALE goblin damnitt!).  Regardless, when I read the above I "yelled" in game

          Geargrind: WHAT?!?

Lets put this in perspective... Galliwix thus far has tried to kill you, make you a slave, make your friends slaves, and kill the leader of the whole GOD DAMNED HORDE.  I yelled "WHAT THE FUCK!" in real life as well.  Commenting on writing in a game like this means one of two things I think.  1) It was well written and got an emotional response or 2) It was honestly a "What the Fuck" moment that makes no damned sense, writing or not.
Thrall yells: I will send a representative from amongst your people to the new warchief, Garrosh Hellscream in Orgrimmar.
Thrall yells: You will have a new home in Azshara and the Bilgewater Cartel will be part of the Horde!
Trade Prince Gallywix yells: It will be as you say! Long live the Bilgewater Cartel! For the Horde!
The ONLY saving grace here is that Thrall couched his statement with a "For Now" about Galliwix leading.

Here is the problem though...  WHAT THE FUCK WAS HE THINKING?!?

No no, let me take that back and re-ask the question...

"WHAT THE FUCK WERE THE BLIZZARD WRITERS THINKING?!?" 

Did they forget Thrall's character totally here?  Did they forget that Thrall himself was a slave?  We have to rescue him from Alliance and Thrall notes he was a slave once so no... so why is Thrall fine with someone who Thrall even ackowledeges as being a slaver and who had just tried to kill him as being worthy of being leader of the Bilgewater goblins?!?

Even amoung Goblins, Galliwix is painted as an epic douchebag.  The other goblins don't want him, but know he's too dangerous to take out from the way the NPCs talk about him.  So I ask again... WHY?

So I come back to one of two things...
1) (optimistic) The story is just unfolding and we (players) will get to depose Galliwix later and put someone else up as leader of the Goblins.
2) (Pessimistic/realist) Blizzard gives a shit less, just chalks this up to a "Hiccup" in the lore and Thrall's behavior, and ignores that they have effectively made a sociopathic, megomainacal, greedy, little shitbag a faction leader.

*Sighs*  The thing is, if I did not like the story so much I probably would not care one way or the other... but God-Damnitt Blizzard!  STOP FUCKING SCREWING OVER THE HORDE AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY!