Bad Writing Workshop: The Bombing of Theramore

I’ve mentioned on this blog before that I deal with depression, and it means I’m not always in my best place. One of the ways I deal with it is to write and be creative, but then performance anxiety causes the pressure to rise on what I’m writing and it means I have to take frequent breaks from writing. Validation from friends and family tends to help (and I don’t mean for my writing, just validation of existence), but I live alone and this week has been hard and stressful, so it’s been difficult for me, tired and alone (by choice, I needed to decompress and play Zelda) on a Friday night, to get any writing done. So, I’ve decided to try something a little bit different today.

Normally, I really prefer to be positive when I write for the blog. I’ve been at this blog for over ten years, and it’s had a lot of bad ideas put on it, but one thing I would write about in my early 20s were pretty bog standard nerd complaints. It was what I was used to doing the message board thing in my teens, and it was one of the reasons I stopped writing on this place for a couple of years. When I came back, I told myself to stick to positive ideas, which is where things like Game Anatomy came from. However, writing in games is something that really sticks in my craw, and it can be very frustrating, so I’m going to pilot a new idea I had about trying to improve bad writing in video games. So, hopefully, enjoy the first of maybe several Bad Writing Workshops.

The Battle of Theramore is the worst bit of writing in Warcraft. I mean that sincerely and not in as a form of exaggeration to make a point about something. We can talk about Sylvanas burning down Teldrassil, or how Chronicle III retconned her into having ordered the backstabbing at the Wrathgate or the awful Wildstorm comic (which is a shame, because they were written by Walt Simonson), but none of them have had the sheer destructive impact on the game, on the series, than the Battle of Theramore. There are events in fiction, especially serialized fiction, that are so bad that it ruins everything not only what comes after it, but also several things that came before, and the Battle of Theramore is one of those events. The repercussions it had on the characters and the setting ripple forward and backward in time, ruining the characterization of several characters and mess up the very ethos of the setting.

A basic rundown of the events are as follows: the Horde invades Thearmore for pretty justified reasons, and the city’s ruler Jaina Proudmoore defends the city. It’s a pretty standard city siege fantasy story, complete with evacuation of the civilians and bloody battles, but there’s a twist. The twist is that when the Horde pulls back, it’s not because they’re losing. The whole siege was a feint, because the real tactic was to drop a mana bomb on the city, a sort of magical nuclear bomb, destroying it utterly. The even used a focusing iris to destroy it across the entire multiverse, just to make sure the game’s time traveling dragons couldn’t rescue the city by pulling it out of an alternate dimension or something. It’s an exceptionally cruel move, and meant to highlight how awful Garrosh Hellscream really is. Also, the civilian ships were later attacked and the human civilians were taken back to Orgrimmar as slaves, where they were literally chained to kor’kron guards and forced to fight to the death against each other, on the fear their children would be murdered. One of the writers said this didn’t happen, but it’s literally in the game. I didn’t take that shit from the books, it’s one of the mobs in Siege of Orgrimmar.

The destruction of Theramore drives Jaina Proudmoore, once the leading speaker for peace among the different races and groups of Azeroth, into a murderous rage and she tries to destroy Orgrimmar, but is talked down by former Horde Warchief Thrall and her dragon boyfriend. Now, technically, this isn’t the incident that changes her character, that’s the Divine Bell fiasco, but this is where it all started. The Divine Bell situation, the Scouring of Dalaran, the exile of Aethas Sunreaver and probably even Siege of Orgrimmar never would have happened if it wasn’t for the use of the Mana Bomb on Thearmore. It cements Garrosh Hellscream as a savage nutcase who cares only about violence, despite his declarations about honor of combat earlier in the expansion this takes place in, and it ruins the Horde as a political unit, because no one disavows Garrosh after this happens. It then causes the ruin of Jaina Proudmoore’s character, completely upending any character development she might have had and turning her into a completely different person, while simultaneously robbing her of any actual interesting conflict her character had. Most importantly, though, it ruins the themes of the story over all, that anyone can be a hero, regardless of where they start, but making one side so exceptionally cruel and vicious that it completely undermines what the story is about. There’s a reason Blizzard keeps going back to the well of “evil Horde” no matter how many times it has been played out.

The biggest sin, though, is that it ruins the story going backwards and forwards. Jaina is the most obvious casualty of this calamity, but she’s not the only one. Since Cataclysm, several Warcraft III era characters have been ruined, killed, screwed over or turned into something that they’re not. Even Thrall, who has largely escaped having his character given a 180 or being murdered has largely been sidelined and his original idea of the savior of the orcs has been completely ruined. The bombing of Theramore is where it all goes bad. The biggest problem is that there is nothing leading up to this. It’s just a cruel, vindictive move done by one of the characters to show that he’s an iron fisted tyrant and to set him up as the biggest bad in the next expansion. That’s it. It’s a big moment that changes so many characters, but there is literally nothing that led up to it. It’s not the culmination of several years of storytelling, or even the conclusion of Cataclysm’s story, it’s just an event, and several characters have to deal with it. Jaina is hit probably the worst. Even now, with Battle for Azeroth, her character hasn’t recovered from what’s happened to her. This is mostly because they didn’t know what to do with her after all of this, because the destruction of Theramore took away her main conflict. Oh, sure, she hates the Horde now, but whatever, so do a lot of people, for largely the same reasons. No, what made Jaina interesting is that she was more interested in peace and forging a better future.

This little bit of the story is what made World of Warcraft so cool. Neither side was run by what you would call “good people.” On the Alliance side, you had stability and order, and common folk were generally free. “Peasantry” was more of a name than a condition inflicted upon the masses, but the nobles were greedy and corrupt, the kings were generally absent or had issues of their own and there was a lot of corruption. The Alliance, especially on the Eastern Kingdoms was a very American place. The Horde, on the other hand, had a good leader in Thrall, with Vol’jin and Cairne backing him up, but he also had to deal with Sylvanas and her cadre, as well as several old guard orcs and trolls who felt, probably rightly, they had been wronged by the Alliance of Lorderon. The point is, there was a lot of tension, a lot of anger, and a lot of people didn’t want there to be peace. Fighting, though, was stupid. They were on a planet that every demon in the universe wanted to destroy, there are Lovecraftian monsters out to fuck shit up, and of course, Arthas broods on his Frozen Throne with an army of the undead slowly growing. Even after eliminating Arthas, the characters who wanted peace, to move on past the scars of the old wars had this conflict because everyone was opposed to them. These characters, along with the story expectation of the PCs, wanted to look past race and anger and forge a better, more complete future for all of the peoples of Azeroth.

People liked Jaina because she was one of the leaders of that group. Her, Thrall, Cairne and a few others. They always made the rational decisions, always willing to stand up to people who were more interested in revenge or warfare or conquest, even within their own faction. By blowing up her city, it led her on a path where she was just angry all of the time. Now she hates the Horde because they hurt her, just like Genn, just like Sky Admiral Rogers, just like…

I could go on and on, but that’s the point. Garrosh, too, was a victim of this as well. The Mana Bomb is so ridiculously cruel and stupid it’s a wonder anyone actually let him do it. In the book where it happens, several Horde leaders call him out and he’s like “whatever, bitch, I do what I want.” He basically becomes Orc Hitler, complete with orc supremacy, turning the Kor’kron into the SS (with uniforms to fuckin’ match) and enslavement of the enemy. It’s gross and tasteless, but it’s also not who Garrosh was at this point. Garrosh never should have become warchief. This is true in universe, and from a story perspective. Taking Thrall away didn’t help anyone, except to let Thrall kill steal the player twice, and kinda made his character worse too. That said, the Garrosh we got was a crazy, violent person, but he did have honor. That was what could have made him an interesting character, him slowly becoming more and more dangerous until both sides have to team up to shut him down. He loved fighting, but had rules, and refused to murder. He threw that guy off of a bridge for killing civilians, he had that awesome conversation about what it truly meant to be an orc in Borean Tundra, wouldn’t let Sylvanas use the plague and told her off for becoming more and more like the Lich King and even in Mists of Pandaria, he mostly tried to avoid killing civilians. Like, he could have made a good villain, so focused on building his empire that he lost his way, but no, he’s just going to nuke a city and start rounding up civilians while putting humans in work camps (or, forcing them to fight to the death so the Kor’kron don’t kill their also enslaved children).

So, how do we fix this? Well, the obvious is, don’t blow up Theramore, but that became the catalyst for the Siege of Orgrimmar which is one of the best raids Blizzard ever did, so we need to get to the point where Garrosh Hellscream has gone so evil that even Sylvanas is like “we gotta kill this guy.” Blowing up Theramore is bad, so we can just ignore that. We can still have the battle, sure, maybe even the capturing of civilians and definitely Jaina’s apprentice’s death, but let’s take away the destruction, Jaina’s 180 (which has literally done nothing for the overall plot, and would make her coming back to Kul Tiras in Battle for Azeroth a lot more interesting if she STILL believed in peace) and chaining the civilians to Kor’kron and forcing them to fight to the death. Like, what the fuck was that shit?

The obvious route to go with is to allow Y’shaarj to corrupt Garrosh during Mists of Pandaria, but that’s stupid too. Instead, I think a more gradual element would work a lot better. During landfall in the Jade Forest, we can have Garrosh slowly get more and more violent. Have him lose a couple of battles, win a couple and get a taste for victory. Have him hear about the Divine Bell, and his intents on stealing it, thinking it will allow him to conquer all of the Eastern Kingdoms easily. Once the Kirin Tor get it, have him threaten Aethas to cause the civil war in Dalaran. We can remove the scourging of Dalaran, because nothing came of that, either. However, instead of Jaina getting mad, Aethas can accidentally kill Rhonin while they’re stealing the Bell. Or, better, Aethas brings Garrosh into Dalaran with a portal, and Garrosh murders Rhonin. This gives Vareesa a lot of anger on the Isle of Thunder, and Jaina a personal stake in what’s going on without making her angry. She can even have a lot of her anger that she had during Isle of Thunder (made worse by the Sha), but at the end, she, Lor’thremar and Taran Zhu can come to the same conclusion.

Throughout Mists of Pandaria, have Garrosh get more and more power. Have him win a few battles in the scenarios, and have him it go to his head. Add a couple of scenarios where he’s conquering parts of Ashenvale, and even pushing up to Darkshore, and his actions get more and more violent, as he slowly sees himself as better and more right than anyone else. Have Vol’jin question the murder of Rhonin and his continued violence and have him try to assassinate Vol’jin. Meanwhile, at home, things begin to deteriorate, as he’s spending all of the money he had, plus all of the incoming wealth, on the war. He’s fighting on so many fronts that it’s draining the coffers of Orgrimmar, and causing everyone to go hungry, so he institutes more and more draconian laws as pork riots break out in the streets of Orgrimmar. As he gets more and more unhinged, the player, led either by Jaina or Lor’thremare depending on the player’s faction, would rally both sides to start up a revolution.

Maybe it’s not the best, but I think it works a lot better that what we got.