#putress

Uh so either this is potentially one of the biggest retcons in Warcraft history OR Afrasiabi is talking out of his ass. Even though the Battle for Undercity questline/scenario isn’t available anymore, it’s pretty fucking clear that Varimathras and Putress were Legion collaborators trying to deflect blame onto the Forsaken/Horde. Varimathras literally starts talking about ‘The Master’ during the climactic battle where he’s holding open portals to the Twisting Nether for demons to come through. There’s no grey area in this.

If Sylvanas was actively involved, it was only in setting things up (moving Blight production to Northrend), then allowing Putress and Varimathras to do what she expected them to. That’s still far from ‘ordering’ the attack itself. Afrasiabi is full of shit. We were there, we played the questline, we saw what was going on. Blizzard, please stop trying to support your awful writing retroactively.

EDIT:

I read the article that THIS article was quoting, and something really struck me, a quote from Afrasiabi.

"Any time we get a player base that's divided in their support for a character, I feel like we're doing our jobs. Any time it's one-sided to the point of 'this is clearly the right direction', it's not as interesting.”

I’ve bolded the important part, because it potentially says a lot about Blizzard’s story choices and philosophy, the philosophy of keeping things ‘interesting.’

I literally took a class on this, and it can be summed up in one phrase:

A leg wound is interesting.

In that class, we learned to differentiate between interest and entertainment - they’re both close to each other, but there’s some distinct differences, differences to be aware of when writing and designing games/stories/etc. There’s only one requirement for something to be interesting, and that’s this: it has to hold your attention. For entertainment, there’s more complex requirements: it has to provoke a response that the viewer wants to revisit, see more of, and/or continue experiencing. Obviously, all entertaining things are interesting, but not all interesting things are entertaining.

When I’m talking about ‘wanting’ to experience something, that’s not just referring to positive experiences. Schindler’s List isn’t a movie that most people ‘want’ to see in the basic ‘looking for a good time’ definition, and yet people intentionally choose to sit down and watch it. They want to have that experience, even if that experience entails grief and horror. The bottom line is that the brain is craving a certain experience, whether naturally or because it was surprised by novelty and desired more input. That’s what I mean when I’m talking about want and entertainment.

Interest, on the other hand, is completely devoid of any emotional charge. It can produce an emotional charge, but it is itself a neutral word. Someone in a hockey mask hunting you through your house is interesting. So is a pair of socks you’ve never seen before. An interesting thing holds your attention by virtue of its difference from everyday existence, not because of any content.

This leads me back to Afrasiabi talking about things being not as interesting when everyone’s agreeing. This sort of thought process is pretty dangerous, in my opinion, because it only attaches value to interest, not entertainment. This design philosophy doesn’t care how the game makes you feel, only that it makes you play; every event, no matter how triumphant or horrendous, has the same transactional value - it keeps you in the seat, so they’ll keep doing it. There’s no care for the emotional arc, character fidelity, or narrative weight - just ‘push button, receive attention.’

In my opinion, this is a terrible - and furthermore lazy - way to write a story. If you view your players as just reserves of attention to endlessly mine, then all narrative accountability goes out the window. You’re writing a narrative with the mindset that setting the house on fire is as valid a choice as cooking a surprise dinner - and, more insulting, you’re expecting that players should want to be interested instead of entertained; you’re expecting that they’ll put up with any nonsense you vomit out because they want their attention to be held, not because they actually give a shit about anything or anyone in the game world. And if you’re designing/writing a game with that mindset knowing that your players are wanting to be entertained, it’s even more irresponsible, because you’re taking characters and places and worlds that people have serious attachments to and you’re disregarding any narrative context as you bang these elements together to produce loud noises.

“Keh heh heh heh heh, did you think we had FORGOTTEN?”

“Did you think we had FORGIVEN?”

....

(( These are my personal headcanons and aren’t to be taken as fact! These, however, are the basis for Bella’s experience within the Royal Apothecary Society. If you do not follow these headcanons, do tell me before roleplaying and having anything to do with Bella’s past in this area. ))

Let me tell you a thing. The Dark Lady wasn’t really betrayed by Putress. You heard right. It’s a plan, a scheme, and would you really expect anything less from her?

The Dark Lady wanted to create a plague, one worse than the one the scourge used. She used Putress to reverse-engineer it, and he successfully did, earning him a promotion from Master to Grand Apothecary. He created the anti-plague -- something that could literally cure the plague and stop it from spreading.

And what did they do with it? What would you expect from the Banshee Queen? No, she didn’t use it to save the living. Why would she? She used it to create the New Plague, something that had the potential to kill living and undead alike.

At the time of development, the current fight was in Northrend against her most hated enemy, the Lich King. She asked Putress to do something. It sounded simple- test the New Plague. But where? The only place that was best- The Wrathgate.

As Sylvanas went ‘round the back, the Alliance and Horde forces faced off against the Lich King himself and his forces. Why was this place perfect? For one, it had lots of scourge and living to see its effects. Another reason was to punish the Alliance, which had turned her and her people away in undeath. But the best reason was to end the Lich King then and there.

The plan, for the most part, worked. Living and undead fell easily to the plague bombs, and the Alliance (and Horde) suffered heavy losses. The Lich King nearly fell. But there was another plan in place. The Banshee Queen knew all that went on in her Undercity, especially what went on just around her. She was no fool- Varimathras was planning a revolt.

So went on the Battle for Undercity, and Putress was a willing pawn that needed to be cut down. She played the victim, saying she had no idea any of this went on. Faranel puts up a nice façade, especially when the Kor’kron had covered the area.