i've finally pieced together my thoughts on something important to me.
this is more world of warcraft stuff so if you don't care lol whatever i spose. spoilers i guess but this is for a 15 year old game lol.
so, the human starting areas in vanilla wow are some of my favorite questing zones. elwynn forest, westfall, redridge and duskwood. The denizens of each zone is faced with their own problems. the defias brotherhood takes over mines, farms, and terrorizes the commonfolk in elwynn forest and westfall. redridge faces an impending orc invasion, and duskwood is just fucked by undead, curses and werewolves that have no tails because blizzard are cowards. Meanwhile, the nobility and armies of stormwind refuse to aid them. seemingly at their own expense even.
it's revealed that the defias is actually a workers rebellion of masons who rebuilt the city of stormwind and then were not paid by the nobles for their efforts. quests at higher levels reveal that the defias was under the influence of an evil dragon named onyxia and guess what the nobility was also being manipulated by the same dragon who is posing as a noble and mind controlling the human leaders. also the king's been kidnapped!
i love this story a lot. it's a messy one. especially because van cleef and the defias brotherhood are not your standard evil villains. players even back then thought that it would be cooler to join the defias and help them overthrow the corrupt nobles. despite ultimately keeping the nobles in power it still paints them in a harsh light. despite being fairly easy to empathize with, the defias' actions are terrible as they murder and ruin the lives of other workers. i've seen many players left with the feeling of "are we the baddies." there's no glorious heroism until the true villain is revealed and defeated and as cheesy as that part is i am a sucker for it. it's all very political and the politics are fucked up and not pretty and that's the point.
i often think about what it would look like if you could join the defias or what should van cleef have done to lead a successful rebellion. the truth of it would be instead of turning upon other working class folks with violence he should have helped them. if the defias had been there to assist the people that stormwind abandoned so many more would have joined his cause with much less bloodshed. imagine if gyran stoutmantle could be convinced that joining the defias was what was best for the future of westfall, or the night watch, etc. but that would not have made as good of a story as the defias being a pawn to a big evil dragon mommy.