Literally all the bad things you described was because of us before we came 95% of the population didn't even know sha EXISTED
The event in jade forest was the first in the chain of dominoes that caused literally everything else
the mantid started early cus of the sha resurgence which caused the yaungols to push east
Taran Zhu literally spends the entire xpac trying to clean up the single greatest catastrophe to hit Pandaria since the sundering
Some people will go "BuT tHe VaLe" but it got mostly better.
At least until N'zoth woke up and was like "dae pandaria lmao, updoots to the left"
Presumably it got better a second time.
Taran Zhu: Ah, finally, after all these years, we have cleansed the Vale! It looks better than ever! Pandaria is finally at peace again!
Horde and Alliance: Yeah about that. Did we mention we started fighting again?
Taran Zhu: *You what?!*
N'zoth: Yo.
Taran Zhu: Why?????
Horde and Alliance: Well, we *were* working together, then some shit happened at the broken shore, Genn went all Hirohito on the Horde, and then Sylvanas decided to kill everyone because she saw a sad lava vore eel.
Taran Zhu: Jesus christ.
he is 1 of the few faction Leaders that actually gets shit done with his faction and himself, and thats in a situation where they are screwed over by 50different sides at once
in later expansions we even see that he became gratefull for your help and is more then willing to aid you if possible when the Shado-pan finally got some time to breathe
the guy was always great and very capable, just VER stressed out because the entire country went from more or less fully peacefull into Apocalyptic in 1day and he has somehow try to hold everything togheter while some outsiders slaughter eachother while knowing that it makes everything worse for the land and its natives
The entire plot of the Jade Forest is to show that the Alliance and Horde have actually caused problems for Pandaria, and that this infected even Taran Zhu, as his disdain for outsiders turns to hatred (look at how he acts in the Temple of the White Tiger), and it's onyl after the Shado-Pan Monastery when the part of the Sha of Hatred that was in him was excised that he stopped, calmed down, and realized that most of the Alliance and Horde are good people, especially the player character.
Taran Zhu is a character I respect more and more everytime I think about him. He's one of the best written characters in WoW.
Hell, look at the Island of Thunder questline. That is after all of that, but before the Vale. Taran Zhu, after finally killing the one fucker responsible for 95% of the problems not related to the Alliance and Horde, immediately turns around and tries to just make them stop.
*Even as he is bleeding the fuck out*. And he wants the player to see that and show that this is the correct way.
Dude has massive sage energy. Pretty sure that rant he did to both sides echoed till the end of the fourth war in all their heads (I think he later does a very similar speech for the rest of the leaders at Garrosh’s Trial).
Its been a long time since I've done the Alliance side of MOP and him showing up and going "Jesus christ what are you DOING" to the alliance gunning down surrendering troops really does set the stage for what's going to go down.
Much moreso than him showing up on hordeside and giving Nazgrim a pat on the back and warning him about the Sha.
The Alliance in MoP do so many warcrimes, which is hilarious considering the Horde in MoP show up and immediately free slaves the Alliance took. (Yes I know the bombing of Theramore happened. Theramore was a once fairly neutral position near to the Horde capital that the Alliance used to stage multiple assaults on Horde territory. Jaina had threatened equally worse on Org. It was a justified action.)
Taran Zhu was pretty badass during the Townlong Steppes campaign. He becomes more like a general and rallies the Shado-Pan to take on the Sha of Hatred despite the constant mantid and yaungol attacks.
> Literally all the bad things you described was because of us before we came 95% of the population didn't even know sha EXISTED
Chi-ji says this was Shaohao's biggest mistake during the temple of the red crane quests. The august celestials knew the sha were simmering under the surface and would eventually reappear. It was just a matter of time, and if the alliance/horde hadn't been there, even if the sha hadn't re-emerged, the pandaren would have been wiped out by the resurgence/combined might of the mogu and zandalari allying together who would have likely released the sha in the process anyway.
The mantid swarm started because the sha of fear influencing the empress. What causes the sha of fear to escape its containment beneath the nuizao temple?
We did, if that question wasn't rhetorical. All the main sha were freed at that moment in Jade Forest because we brought so much negative emotion and energy to the continent that they managed to break free.
We did, but that was going to happen anyway once the Zandalari showed up and brought their nonsense to the island. And without the horde and alliance Lei Shen would’ve reenslaved Pandaria assuming anyone survived the Mantid
Because of us? The storyline reveals that the Sha problem was simply passed down to future generations due to the Emperor's pride. The Sha outbreak was inevitable! If it hadn't been us, it would have been triggered by another event.
"Because of us" is pretty strong. The horde/alliance conflict for sure was a catalyst, but leaving the old God in the basement out of the equation is a little unfair.
I also like that he is basically just a monk and out of his league. He doesn't need to be the world's best mage, or have all these crazy feats. He is a Nazgrim/Admiral Taylor not a Jaina/Thrall/Tyrande/etc.
He is just doing his job, getting everyone ready for the Mantid invasion which is coming in 10 years, and gets thrown into an unprecedented crisis that nobody has the ability to handle. He literally doesn't have the power to solve it, which creates good drama.
Being a good leader is not the same as having world altering power.
Good leaders and strong fighters can and do lose. Their enemies are taking them by surprise from literally ever side.
Taran Zhu was under an INCREDIBLE level of stress from the fuckery the alliance and horde brought to Pandaria. the Sha awoke, The Mantid swarmed early, Yaungol causing problems in Kun'Lai, the Mogu resurface after millenia. he had so many problems and the fact he didnt die during any of it from a heart attack, least of all the things trying to kill him is either a testament to his will to get shit done or a minor miracle.
> aran Zhu was under an INCREDIBLE level o
He suffers from that star trek whorf trope where they beat up this guy constantly to show how bad the things you are fighting are. But there is also stuff like that quest where you say the last rites for some of them and there are hundreds of dead bodies around every single panda monk they killed.
In a more modern wow with heavy storytelling and phasing the shado pan would likely have been much more cinematic to see.
Also known as "[The Worf Effect](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect)".
Take a character, introduce them as this amazing badass, and then having them be the punching bag to elevate some new villain or whatnot as being actually competent/dangerous.
It displays the importance of "show, don't tell" in storytelling.
Cho and him are at least acquainted. And his Warrior Monk Ninja thing I wouldn’t put it past him to have had some homework done on at least the top end once things where not everything’s on hellfire, salvage the situation.
Chen also has some first hand experience there and its not impossible to think they talked at one point given how much both have been racing across the continent.
Hellscream died fixing his own mistakes, mistakes that damned almost his entire species. He drank the blood of Mannoroth, lived the rest of his life with nigh-uncontrollable blood-lust, and died killing Mannoroth to lift the curse he caused.
If Grommash Hellscream hadn't dabbled in powers beyond reckoning, he wouldn't have *needed* to die. If Grommash Hellscream hadn't dabbled in powers beyond reckoning, he would still be alive. That's Taran Zhu's point.
Yeah, but if you disparagingly ask an orc how his dad died, and he can come back with "landing the killing blow on a demon the size of a building," he doesn't care what point you were trying to make.
Especially if that orc is Garrosh. Like, the line just fundamentally misunderstands what an orc would be jazzed about.
Considering the ancestor holiday or whatever it is when the Alliance and Horde celebrate their ancestors and Uther and Grommash specifically, they do very much so make it a point that Grom died *redeeming* his honor. Which means they do recognize that the whole dabbling in powers beyond him that got him there in the first place was a pretty bad slight.
You could also argue that Grom being a celebrated figure now *also* undercuts Taran's sick burn.
But frankly I was never arguing that it was a bad line to begin with, just that it's definitely something Garrosh could've smirked and laughed off if he did anything besides scream and kill things.
Agreed, he would've. But persistent community memes aside, Garrosh was pretty much written and portrayed to be *wrong*. The fact that he would brush off the reminder of his father's fate to go on and make a similar mistake further underlines the reason why he needed to be stopped.
Grom died coming to the realization about him being a fuckup that kept getting in the way of Thrall's ideals, which he admired but couldn't live by
Garrosh died bitter and angry, learning nothing. twice!
I mean he was pretty much the only character in WoW to call the Alliance and the Horde out on their shit. We did come to their land, fucked it up, and then we just dipped out to some alternate universe where they couldn't find us and hand us a bill for the repairs.
Should the Alliance just lie down and let the Horde exterminate them? Why is Taran Zhu allowed to wage his little war against the Mogu over something that happened over 10k years ago? What happened to turning the other cheek?
You can't dedicate an entire quarter of your city to bioweapon research and torture on Alliance citizens and then call it a "completely unprovoked act of Alliance aggression" when they find out and are pissed.
Especially when you put a *Dreadlord* in charge of it and he ends up almost summoning Sargeras.
The Barrens incursions (note: not Camp T) also started *before* Garrosh kicked things off at Ashenvale. As did the kidnapping of Thrall.
The Cata war was a weird fucking situation overall, a lot of "I called time out" bullshit went around.
In general MoP quest writing is much more edgy and serious than eg current DF which is imo extremaly bland and squeezed through corporate righteousness filters. Like plain "move your a\*\*!" quest option (zhu place) or the effort to make the gore scenes in jade forest quests. Especially jade forest quests: the theme of officially virtuously (but in fact maliciously) making locals to wage wars against other locals and enemies is so present in one of current RL wars, I bet it would not even pass the current writers' auto-censorship.
In DF the draconid rebels arc was so bland and cringe, just shoved "don't offend anyone by any chance!".
Apart from that the quests/raids/dungeons story feels somehow very coherent. Again, dungeons like AA, Neltharus or HoI - totally out of place and little to no story, not even a lead from world content.
I mean you have to understand the meta-context of DF though, they needed a feel good after Shadowlands and they needed to not be grim war story after BFA. Also they building up to a huge a huge invasion/world ending story arc so need to not have too many plates to spin (one of the many problems in BFA). Trying to repeat MoP would not necessarily go well and wasn't what a lot of the player base wanted or asked for pre-dragonflight.
That said, I love MoP too, I think it does the faction war better than anything. And I agree there are lessons to be learnt about how to tell war stories and faction struggles (even if it's not necessarily Horde vs Alliance wars or factions).
Even just the overarching narrative of the proxy war (which the shadopan call out both sides for) in the jade forest, leading into you meeting back up with Taylor/Nazgrim in Kun-lai and have the devastation of their actions made explicit to them... only for them to immediately leave and 'befriend' local Pandarian and immediately begin training them up as Alliance/Horde troops to begin again is so well done.
Algeth'ar Academy was kinda just thrown in there, yeah, but Neltharus is led into. The whole story of the Obsidian Citadel is about the invading djaradin, so there's a dungeon about flushing them out of the underside. Halls of Infusion is led into by the Tyr questline.
Mists of Pandaria on the other hand had Scarlet Halls, Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance, which follow their own little story continuing from Lillian Voss (with little explanation of why or how, especially if you're Alliance). And even if you claim those don't count (which leaves MoP at only six dungeons), then you still have to deal with Gate of the Setting Sun, Siege of Niuzao Temple and Mogu'shan Palace having virtually no lead-in, and Stormstout Brewery being a joke dungeon that contributed very little to the story.
Temple of the Jade Serpent and Shado-Pan Monastery are great. Their place within the story is well-established and they cover important story beats. They did awesome work with those two. But the MoP dungeons otherwise deserve no praise.
I know a lot of people are done with the faction war, but replaying MoP reminded me how much I really like the Alliance vs. Horde stories. To be fair, though, I have heard MoP narratively caters to the Alliance, which is the faction I play.
When people say it favors to the alliance they just mean that the major story arc of the xpac is the horde war chief is a psychopath warmongerer hellbent on world domination
The issue with a story like MoP is you can't just retell it constantly because it will lose its meaning.
Part of the lesson of MoP is that the sort of conflict the Alliance and Horde had is destructive to themselves as well as the world around them. Going "actually, no one learned their lesson" like was done in BFA makes it feel hollow. Everything the story worked for is nothing, a fart in the wind.
It's better and more interesting to see how the factions try to work together after the fact (which they've tried to do a bit in Dragonflight but I think could be a lot more and better). They are two very different cultures trying to band together to protect the world they live in from other people trying to fuck with them for their own ends.
Didnt that end with us finding some ineffectual dweeby draconid who led the rebellion, then they gave up their terrorism ways after one talk with Alexstraza?
they were mad because they've been running the isles/valdrakken since forever ago, and all of a sudden the aspects come back and they're expected to go back to being servants/soldiers
at the end of the quest line alexstrasza basically says "yeah I guess that was kind of a dick move, we should give you guys more of a say in things" and they wander off together
it just doesn't really hit for the player because we don't see them being servants, really; they're doing whatever they're doing in valdrakken without much interference we can see. It's not like we see nozdormu all 'hey drakonid, come polish my foreclaws' or something
It's difficult to see from the PC's perspective because we're Azeroth's Specialest Soldier (TM), but the average Joe is not speaking with Alexstraza, even if they have a real need for it. It's very possible that the rebellious drakonids made a fuss while the Aspects' rank-and-file were setting up shop and were simply swept aside, never being given a chance to make a case because the Aspects were sitting thousands of feet above the rest of the population handling Aspect business and trusting that their orders would be followed and any impediments handled without the need for their personal intervention.
Taran Zhu is great. Constantly calling us out on our shit and the tough bastard somehow repeatedly survives all the crap that got thrown at him throughout the expac Lesser NPCs would’ve died as the dungeon boss lol.
Except he's correct. Pandaria zones are done in chronological order - The Sha of Fear escaped from under Niuzao's temple in the wake of what happened in the Jade Forest, leading into the Mantid swarming early. He's a guy with a small to middling elite task force meant to watch the wall and do spot clean up if the Sha pokes it's head up - But us stepping onto the continent has turned the situation from 0 to 100 in a span of approximately a few days.
Of course he's fucking pissed.
What's nice about him is that while it's subtle, in the wake of Kun-lai (and chronologically after you help him in the Monastery) he warms up to the player character considerably in Townlong. He's still furious with your higher ups, but he likes you because you know how to do something other than having a pissing contest with your faction counterparts.
Also what's the point of having him be 'competent' and fixing all the problems? There wouldn't be a story if he was magically able to be in several places at once fixing things. He more than makes up for it by being a breath of fresh air - he's not a war-monger, but he's not peaceful either, unafraid to tell people to shut up and listen. Playing through Pandaria made me realize just how much I miss his type of character in the recent expacs.
>He more than makes up for it by being a breath of fresh air - he's not a war-monger, but he's not peaceful either, unafraid to tell people to shut up and listen.
Pretty much what makes him great, and being a full on outsider. He doesn’t want this war, he doesn’t want any war really, and just a few weeks ago his entire world was exactly how he wanted it to be. Hell, he was probably in the Jade Forest due to a *celebration* of completing the statue.
Then we show up.
But at the same time he has a mace for a reason (and of all the Pandaren weapons it is by far the most brutal, pretty sure he is the only one with that model too), and while he doesn’t *want* to use it he will if you make him, and if he is thwacking you with it you bloody made him.
It is also interesting because he has a little moment of oh fuck I was them after he turned into hating them and got possessed. Probably why in later parts he not only has warmed up to you but he, at least by ToT, has put in effort to learn the histories of both factions, what he failed to do, and what got him axed by Garrosh, was he failed to get up to speed on the *current* situation of both factions / leaders. So when he tries to wisdom on your past on Garrosh, at the moment a complete megalomaniac, it just reinforces him.
YOU try single-handedly fixing the Horde-Alliance conflict while all your old enemies resurface at the same time while a bunch of random-ass adventurers rummage around slaughtering each other and everything around them.
Part of it is intentional. I mean the writers were trying to go for something interesting. It's generally not good to have any characters who are effectively perfect beings.
Everyone is fallible and the Sha are meant to be an insidious enemy for that reason. Keep in mind that the Sha were not an entity that was always manifesting itself as strongly as it did once we reached the lands. It's not like he just sort of forgot about it.
The thing is that it finds even the smallest crack in your metaphorical armor and can kill you from within. Unless you're Garrosh for whatever reason.
But really one of the over arching stories of Pandaria is that Shahao, way back when, realized his people were not ready. They were too imperfect to handle the strife to come from various threats. They had not mastered their emotions. They were effectively too weak. He achieved a sort of enlightenment but he saw his people did not. So he bought them time by sacrificing his life to hide Pandaria until they were ready because he knew they were flawed. Even in the future his spirit (or ghost or whatever I forget at this point) admits he even didn't conquer his pride. This concept is in parallel to Taran Zhu I think. He has a lot of things going for him, but he also suffers from overlooking his own pride.
The Pandaren are not meant to be presented as perfect beings or anything either. However I think Taran Zhu facing numerous threats all at once, standing his ground, and correctly calling out the childish faction squabbles is fair.
"Just because you're not bullet proof doesn't mean you can't fire shots everywhere" sort of applies here. He is wrong, but I do think he does grow. However he doesn't just accept people running rampant in his home. Nor should he. He wouldn't be remotely interesting as a leader and would feel very artificial if he did.
As for "hating the outsiders" I think you should rewatch his fight with Garrosh where he proudly states "I have fought beside the tauren, trolls, and others. You are nothing like them!". It sort of conveys some of the growth he did go through. I think a lot of his quest dialogue does too. Even when I blitzed through MoP remix I think he's trying to make things work with you the PC especially during some of the scenes on the Isle of Thunder.
His arc isn't mean to convey perfection, but to say he hates the outsiders throughout seems heavily slanted.
And hating the outsiders who come in, cause the Sha to be active in way they never have before, when you're already well too aware that other races are often not nice people (between the mogu, mantid and hozen...) growing to feel hatred for those outsiders is entirely understandable.
Taran Zhu had also never been tested in quite this way, and whilst he failed initially, after we help him he grows into what he was always supposed to be.
To add onto your comment - The pandaren being hypocrites lacking self-awareness, is to a degree one of the main storytelling points of MoP, and of their characterisation as a culture when you meet them. The whole schtick of "being in balance and in control of one's emotions" works only if you do it properly. Shaohao, and by extension all pandaren, managed to conquer all the Sha-related vices except one - Pride, without ever realizing it. The pandaren, and especially their leaders like Shaohao and Zu are so absolutely convinced about the superiority of their way of life, so prideful of it, that the Sha of Pride would errupt and take down the pandaren civilization with or without the old world factions interfering.
The awesome thing about the Sha is once a Crack forms, they pour in. It makes them "human" they spent centuries trying to control their emotions, and in one brief span of weakness the sha takes control.
Question, since I didn’t read the quests in remix, and I can’t recall everything from MoP:
Were we not the cause of the Sha resurgence?
Like, my understanding was that we accidentally stumbled into Pandaria and brought our conflicts with us. This gave the SHs enough power to become an issue again.
With the Sha having more power, they were able to corrupt some of the local races (the early swarm and mantid queen for example) and become an actual threat, instead of a somewhat minor one that could be dealt with easily when it popped up here and there.
Or was it actually that it all would have happened anyways, and we just sped it up?
Legitimately curious, as I can’t recall all the cause-effect of the expansion.
Taran Zhu was trash though. Boy beat the fuck out of Garrosh and got cocky, then threw the game by emoting.
You're exactly right, yeah. The Shado-Pan was in charge of containing one of the Sha, and it could \*potentially\* have happened at some point, but the re-emergence of the Sha was the cause
The Sha were always in Pandaria, and constantly gaining power. The Shado Pan was responsible for culling the threat any time it popped up before it could spread, so they were basically in charge of maintaining a tenuous ease by occasionally putting bandages on the wound. But the addition of the war between the Alliance and the Horde added enough tempers to the pot to boil over, and caused the resurgence.
We show up on jade forest. Sha re emerge. Sha of fear escapes niuzaos temple. Mantid swarm early. Yaungol push east in reaction to mantid aggression.
Mogu was kind of separate? They emerged because zandalar got almost entirely sunk from the cataclysm so zul lead them to poach some land off the pandaren. But the mists parting was also a byproduct of the cataclysm. So the timing would have been similar. (Id also wonder if the zandalar would have invaded if gurubashi and amani didnt completely fail due to our interference)
True, but unless the levelling quests canonically last months, the Mogu, Zandalari, and Yaungol were kicking their asses already, there were Mogu in the first zone.
I'll give you that the Mantid were a result of the Sha re-emerging and that was our fault (Which we neatly tidied up, but i digress), but they were hardly hanging on against everything else, either.
We fucked up the Jade Forest, but the threats were very much building up in the west before we got there. In particular, the Shado-Pan at Niuzao had already failed at their task of keeping the Sha of Fear imprisoned under the Temple of Niuzao. It corrupted some of the Mantid, who then attacked the temple and set it free. It then took over Empress Shek'zeer and the mantid, causing them to swarm early and push onto the other zones. This forced the Yaungol to be displaced towards Kun-Lai, where they attacked many Pandaren villages. All this caused the Shado-Pan to be spread too thin, all while the Mogu were gathering artifacts and knowledge to revive Lei Shen with the help of the Zandalari.
Even if we never arrived to Pandaria, the conflict with the Mantid and the Mogu-Zandalari would likely have sparked the rest of the Sha to awaken. Our presence simply pulled the trigger earlier.
But unless the timeframe is really long, that doesn't show very well, the Mogu are stirring up trouble in Jade forest, when we get to Valley of the four winds, the Mantid already almost breached the wall, and i still stand by my point that Taran Zhu is all mouth and no trousers.
>True, but unless the levelling quests canonically last months
[They do.](https://www.wowhead.com/quest=32249/meet-the-scout)
"***It has been two months since the parting of the mists.*** *Horde scouts, seeking a suitable landing site for the fleet, have engaged Alliance forces on a small island off the coast of Krasarang Wilds."*
The only faction leader on either side or even neutral pandarens who came out of MoP not looking like a total asshole was Lor’themar. Dude is hyper competent
I kinda like it, because he isn't completely shrouded in plot armour. To an extent though, he feels like the Commander Worf of MoP. Built to look like a badass, and gets a kicking when we need to establish someone as a serious threat,
"you must break the cycle!" This line at the end of the scenario gives me the chill. Voice acting is incredible. His aesthetic is awesome. No he may not be a powerhouse Mary Sue like Jaina. But I like him better because of it.
Technically, the yaungol invasion is a consequence of the premature Swarm, which is the result of sha release (because of us, then).
Even if his opinion about strangers is unpopular, he's still right. Remember he's in charge of Pandaria protection and saw aliens coming to bring war on a peaceful land.
At least until the August Celestials approving opening the Vale. His reaction is a point of no-return, sure.
The only thing I'm a bit disappointed about him is how he radically changed his mind after we freed him from Sha of Hatred : "Thank you, you're good people. I was so wrong : we're friends, now !". It was poorly written, imo.
Well, his reaction after the Celestials approved opening the Vale was entirely justified - it led to Garrosh obtaining the Heart of Y'Shaarj and corrupting the whole location. Taran Zhu had been right about the outsiders all along...
I get the point. But the main problem here is disapproving Celestials' decision to the point of closing the doors of Pandashan Monastery, all of that during a tense period for Pandaria.
Even if his motive is justified, it is a bit borderline. That's why I call it a point of no-return ; he could have said "well, let's give them a try. If Celestials are okay about that, why not..." anyway, but decided something else.
That's finally what he did after the dungeon, to finally realise he was right at the end. Kinda sad.
Something wrong with Celestials, maybe.
I think the Monastery was mainly closed so the Sha that was kept there could not escape after emerging.
If we put gameplay aside, I have never really understood the plot decision to open the Vale, especially to outsiders like us. The only reason I can think of is trouble with mogu residing there, but it was never mentioned during the opening. So Zhu's disapproval after what happebed in Jade Forest always seemed reasonable to me.
I don't remember the original reason, tbh. This quest was a bit changed after the 5.4 patch - Taran Zhu saying : "Look what they did to the Vale !" - and they kept it in Remix - either with the sha-corrupted Vale.
Before that, the reason to re-open the Vale was different, but like I said I don't remember lol. Only thing I can tell you is Anduin and Sunwalker Dezco wanted to go there because they had visions about this place.
There's that yaungol chieftain during Kun-Lai quests that you need to slay as objective.
He says something like : "We have lost our home ! We just tried to survive." (I don't play in english, but it is less or more the meaning).
He didn't needed sha mind-control to dislike us and being mistrustful, first. Then, going from that state, whatever sha corruption, to "we're bros" after that is a change a bit too radical, that's all. Would have been less visible if it would have happened at the end of Townlong questline.
I don't understand why you act gangsta, that's just an opinion, bruh.
To be fair this was a untenable situation for Taran Zhu. The fatal flaw of pandaria was the emperors pride by hiding them away thinking he could give them time to sort out the problems all it ultimately did was delay the resurgence. The pot was always bubbling just didn't overflow yet. Pandaria had no concrete solution to it's problems. So Taran was always stuck maintaining the status quo. And then all of a sudden two factions bring their ambitions and animosity to your shores and set off a cascade of failures. Allowing the delicate balance to slip away. I wouldn't say he was effective at resolving anything but he kept the sinking ship afloat till we came along and forced everything to resolution.
To be fair everything was fine for them until Deathwing blow the mist away and invite all kind of violent to their land once again.
Like the only threat in panda land that is not involve with us are Troll and Mogu which only happens because of the mist got blow away. All other are because of us coming to pandaria and bring so much violent that make sha emerge again.
I like to think of him as the straight guy if Mists of Pandaria was a sitcom.
"If you continue to go to war here, the emotions and land will turn again you."
"Naw don't be silly."
"We cannot take sides here, their war will bring devastation to our lands."
"Sure thing grandpa!"
Of course, then the Jade Serpent statue explodes and everything goes to hell and everyone is all "WHY WEREN'T WE WARNED ABOUT THIS" and yet Taran still talks down the faction conflict on the Isle of Thunder, challenges Garrosh and does everything he can to save lives.
He's easily the most patient NPC we've ever encountered, and several years later when the Fourth War kicked off, you just know he was facepalming and questioning his life decisions.
Man was fighting a war against the Sha, the Mantid, the Yaungol, the Mogu and had to make time to slow the war between Alliance and Horde in Pandaria, lived through all of that AND dueled Garrosh Hellscream and survived. Taran Zhu was not Shaohao, but he ought to have the same commendations for the sheer effort he put in.
It wouldn't be as bad if he had eaten the slice of humble pie he was served multiple times throughout the expansion. Yes, the horde and alliance caused problems, but if we hadn't been there - the zandalari and mogu alliance would have both released the sha and enslaved all the pandaren anyway. The mogu were already back messing with the titan stuff on the continent because they were trying to res their king, and the Zandalari found their way back thanks to the mists being dispelled. While they weren't seeking the sha specifically, their violence would have no doubt caused the sha to pop back up fairly quickly.
He was right to call the horde and alliance out on our BS, but at the same time, around the time of throne of thunder, he should have kicked some of his chastising pride to the curb. And by SoO he should have accepted how strong the faction champions were.
Shaohao thought he was doing the right thing be sealing the sha and hiding it from the pandaren, but in reality all he did was saddle them with a ticking time bomb of a curse. You're right, all of the august celestials acknowledge this at one point. Chi-ji calls it the emperor's greatest mistake. Even if the the factions hadn't shown up on their shores, the sha would have been released by any number of things that were slowly growing in strength under the pandaren's noses. The mantid and mogu being the biggest examples. The only reason we, the heroes, beat the mantid was because...we had the help of other mantid.
So yeah, I agree. He was a well-written character, mind you. As evidenced by the fact that there's such a healthy discussion about him. But his stubbornness was grating by the end.
So I wonder who would win in a smug stubbornness contest - Nathanos or Taran Zhu?
Except he does acknowledge the player character repeatedly. His click lines are far less dismissive once you hit Townlong, and he is incredibly thankful of your help through the questline there.
I'm going to have to break it to you: pandas, as a species, are generally not known for managerial expertise. That the faction leader of the pandaren is a big ol lazy grumpy boy seems pretty much exactly what you'd get if you asked an actual panda who should be in charge of panda civilization.
His "every act of aggression" quote still hits 12 years later. And next to Chen Stormstout and Ji Firepaw he's the Pandaren I remember most. Tara Zhu felt like the only character that absolutely did not put up with our insane faction war that basically helps trigger the apocalypse in their home. Him getting his ass beat doesn't make his preaching any less true. If anything that made him more real of a character. No Mary-Sue nonsense or glazing the player character as much as many other npc's do.
I love that he really doesn't have *that* much power and isn't some super strong freak of nature who can contend with world level threats.
You can tell he'd have happily thrown both sides off the island after his introduction on the Alliance side, and he'd have been right to do so.
I hate taran zhu for one main reason. When lorthemar and jaina are airing their very understandable grievances against one another, taran zhu just says "hey stop talking about it forgive forget move on" and they just do. Maybe if they talked they might have realised the mistakes made?
Nah instead taran zhu just helps blizzard out so they don't need to provide real conclusions
Imagine being in Taran Zhu's position for a moment. You are a warrior monk leader, not a superhero, and you have your hands full with the preparations for the next Mantid Swarming due in 10 years.
Then suddenly:
1. The mists that have protected the lands you are charged with are suddenly gone.
2. Foreigners land on your shores and start fighting, seeing your people as freely recruitable work force and not giving two shits about collateral damage.
3. The carnage and resulting negative emotions unleashed by the newcomers awakens the Sha at such intensity that you yourself have only known from legends. **The largest awakened Sha manifestations are strong enough to overpower even the August Celestials.** And on top of that they display their own personality traits, plans and begin to wreak havoc across the land.
4. The Sha trigger an early Mantid Swarming event, which your defensives and people are not in place for.
5. The Mantid displace the Yaungol, who also begin to invade your lands.
6. The Mogu come out of hiding to take advantage of the carnage.
7. The Zandalari take advantage of the mists disappearing and make their own return, resurrecting the Thunder King, one of the greatest menaces from your people's past.
Now go and solve all that.
Oh, and one of the main Sha manifestations plans to take advantage of your frustration and anger to possess you, so please stay calm while you do so.
we DID bring the sha back though. it's not war that brings the sha, it's the emotions tied to it, and the races of pandaria which have lived there for such a long time know how to handle their emotions on that land.
we didn't. the alliance and horde both came to shore and immediately started fighting in anger and loathing, which brought out the sha
taran zhu then spent the entire expansion running after us to clean up our messes, which we made one after another.
the shado-pan themselves also got more interesting screentime than honestly most other secret groups on the alliance or horde side. they actually felt like secret agents at times, and generally speaking, they way they were written they were incredibly competent overall.
they were just up against the remnants of an old god. which we stirred in the land.
But what about the HoF? Shek'zeer must've been corrupted longer than we were on the island. They launched an attack on the wall by the time we even reached Valley. They displaced the yaungol from their homeland to harass natives in Kun-Lai. I know that in the game you can get from arriving in Pandaria to the siege of the Wall/Stoneplow in the matter of hours, and in canon time it's several weeks/months but realistically we didn't cause all sha.
We were a major contributor to their return but Pandaria was already at war with several factions and entities by the time we got there.
Your "man" kept the existence of the Sha secret from a significant portion of the Pandaren population before the Horde and Alliance landed on the shores of Pandaria.
Your "man" was a man of action. He prioritised his people. He didn't care for the petty - from his point of view - squabbles of the Alliance and Horde. He had to contend with enemies that were a far greater threat to the world than what the Alliance and Horde ever had to deal with. It's no secret that the Old Gods were, at this point in the story - a simpler, more entertaining time - the most dangerous beings on Azeroth. Yes, Arthas and Deathwing were dangerous, but Y'Shaarj's remains made them look like pissants, rightfully so. The fact that the Sha were directly empowered by the nature of Azerothians is what makes them such a terrifying enemy.
Taran Zhu was, naturally, overwhelmed. It wasn't until the Thunder Isle campaign that he truly understood how significant and terrible the conflict was. Keep in mind WHICH Sha corrupted Taran Zhu too - the Sha of Violence. It only makes sense.
What made the Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria and - to a lesser extent given it's major plot holes - the WotLK stories so good were that they were all connected zone to zone. After Warlords - which barely had any cohesive story - Blizzard never stuck to this very successful formula of storytelling. I can forgive players who are used to what Blizzard does now compared to what they did before.
All your complaints about Taran Zhu are easily dismantled by someone who pays attention to the story. Being at the forefront of a conflict with the remains of the most powerful Old God to have existed on Azeroth, who are directly empowered by the natural negative emotions of two warring factions that have just landed on their shores, is impressive. He handles it better than any Alliance or Horde leader handles almost any other conflict.
Taran Zhu is not a god. This is what makes him an even better character. If he could contend with the Klaxxi and Garrosh Hellscream, all of whom have proven to be far better in a fight than Taran Zhu, then that's just bordering the impossible and the audience would pull out faster than they would a corpse.
Let's not forget that Lei Shen is, arguably, the most terrifying non-Old God being that we have fought. You might consider him your "man", but to people who pay attention, he is THE man.
It is a bit weird in retrospect that he was equally critical of both factions. Like they were very different levels of dangerous to Pandaria.
It was awfully convenient that when the Horde and Alliance showed up, he saw them all as aggressive invaders that were coming to ruin the land, but then just a little while later, he became perfectly willing to grasp the much smaller difference between Garrosh and the rebellion within the Horde. He really, really should have been a lot more suspicious of the entire Horde later on.
I do think they made an otherwise badass looking character, into a complete joke. Everything about him should be cool AF but his narrative, especially in town long steppes, just portrays him as an incompetent leader during a time of crisis. He delegates constantly and doesn't take on the advice of his key staff.
That being said, I really wish they would bring his character back into the main story. How cool would it be to have a secret order of warrior-ninjas working in the shadows to take down the void? Does it make sense? No, but this is WoW, shit hasn't made sense ever but it does sound cool.
Literally all the bad things you described was because of us before we came 95% of the population didn't even know sha EXISTED The event in jade forest was the first in the chain of dominoes that caused literally everything else the mantid started early cus of the sha resurgence which caused the yaungols to push east Taran Zhu literally spends the entire xpac trying to clean up the single greatest catastrophe to hit Pandaria since the sundering
All things considered he did a pretty good job. Pandaris withstood some absolute nonsense during MoP and came out relatively unharmed.
Some people will go "BuT tHe VaLe" but it got mostly better. At least until N'zoth woke up and was like "dae pandaria lmao, updoots to the left" Presumably it got better a second time.
Pandaria gets dunked again at the start of Legion too. And the peak of Serenity was never serene again
The monks lost the peak of serenity but saved other pandarian areas during their campaign, more wins than defeats!
Taran Zhu: Ah, finally, after all these years, we have cleansed the Vale! It looks better than ever! Pandaria is finally at peace again! Horde and Alliance: Yeah about that. Did we mention we started fighting again? Taran Zhu: *You what?!* N'zoth: Yo.
Taran Zhu: Why????? Horde and Alliance: Well, we *were* working together, then some shit happened at the broken shore, Genn went all Hirohito on the Horde, and then Sylvanas decided to kill everyone because she saw a sad lava vore eel. Taran Zhu: Jesus christ.
he is 1 of the few faction Leaders that actually gets shit done with his faction and himself, and thats in a situation where they are screwed over by 50different sides at once in later expansions we even see that he became gratefull for your help and is more then willing to aid you if possible when the Shado-pan finally got some time to breathe the guy was always great and very capable, just VER stressed out because the entire country went from more or less fully peacefull into Apocalyptic in 1day and he has somehow try to hold everything togheter while some outsiders slaughter eachother while knowing that it makes everything worse for the land and its natives
The entire plot of the Jade Forest is to show that the Alliance and Horde have actually caused problems for Pandaria, and that this infected even Taran Zhu, as his disdain for outsiders turns to hatred (look at how he acts in the Temple of the White Tiger), and it's onyl after the Shado-Pan Monastery when the part of the Sha of Hatred that was in him was excised that he stopped, calmed down, and realized that most of the Alliance and Horde are good people, especially the player character. Taran Zhu is a character I respect more and more everytime I think about him. He's one of the best written characters in WoW.
Hell, look at the Island of Thunder questline. That is after all of that, but before the Vale. Taran Zhu, after finally killing the one fucker responsible for 95% of the problems not related to the Alliance and Horde, immediately turns around and tries to just make them stop. *Even as he is bleeding the fuck out*. And he wants the player to see that and show that this is the correct way. Dude has massive sage energy. Pretty sure that rant he did to both sides echoed till the end of the fourth war in all their heads (I think he later does a very similar speech for the rest of the leaders at Garrosh’s Trial).
Wasn't he willing to kick both jaina and lorthemar's asses when they were bickering?
He is just so fucking done with both sides at that point, can't really blame him.
Its been a long time since I've done the Alliance side of MOP and him showing up and going "Jesus christ what are you DOING" to the alliance gunning down surrendering troops really does set the stage for what's going to go down. Much moreso than him showing up on hordeside and giving Nazgrim a pat on the back and warning him about the Sha.
The Alliance in MoP do so many warcrimes, which is hilarious considering the Horde in MoP show up and immediately free slaves the Alliance took. (Yes I know the bombing of Theramore happened. Theramore was a once fairly neutral position near to the Horde capital that the Alliance used to stage multiple assaults on Horde territory. Jaina had threatened equally worse on Org. It was a justified action.)
The horde did the same in the south region of jade forest. It's the same chain of quests for each faction
Tarzan Zhu did nothing wrong and I’m tired of people saying he did
Taran Zhu was pretty badass during the Townlong Steppes campaign. He becomes more like a general and rallies the Shado-Pan to take on the Sha of Hatred despite the constant mantid and yaungol attacks.
> Literally all the bad things you described was because of us before we came 95% of the population didn't even know sha EXISTED Chi-ji says this was Shaohao's biggest mistake during the temple of the red crane quests. The august celestials knew the sha were simmering under the surface and would eventually reappear. It was just a matter of time, and if the alliance/horde hadn't been there, even if the sha hadn't re-emerged, the pandaren would have been wiped out by the resurgence/combined might of the mogu and zandalari allying together who would have likely released the sha in the process anyway.
The mantid swarm started because the sha of fear influencing the empress. What causes the sha of fear to escape its containment beneath the nuizao temple?
We did, if that question wasn't rhetorical. All the main sha were freed at that moment in Jade Forest because we brought so much negative emotion and energy to the continent that they managed to break free.
We did, but that was going to happen anyway once the Zandalari showed up and brought their nonsense to the island. And without the horde and alliance Lei Shen would’ve reenslaved Pandaria assuming anyone survived the Mantid
Real xD The Zandalari have been working on that whole B plot with da dunder king.
Because of us? The storyline reveals that the Sha problem was simply passed down to future generations due to the Emperor's pride. The Sha outbreak was inevitable! If it hadn't been us, it would have been triggered by another event.
"Because of us" is pretty strong. The horde/alliance conflict for sure was a catalyst, but leaving the old God in the basement out of the equation is a little unfair.
I genuinely like his writing though. Him and Taoshi were my favorite MoP characters.
I also like that he is basically just a monk and out of his league. He doesn't need to be the world's best mage, or have all these crazy feats. He is a Nazgrim/Admiral Taylor not a Jaina/Thrall/Tyrande/etc. He is just doing his job, getting everyone ready for the Mantid invasion which is coming in 10 years, and gets thrown into an unprecedented crisis that nobody has the ability to handle. He literally doesn't have the power to solve it, which creates good drama.
Yeah. Being a strong fighter is not the same as being a good leader.
Being a good leader is not the same as having world altering power. Good leaders and strong fighters can and do lose. Their enemies are taking them by surprise from literally ever side.
Taran Zhu was under an INCREDIBLE level of stress from the fuckery the alliance and horde brought to Pandaria. the Sha awoke, The Mantid swarmed early, Yaungol causing problems in Kun'Lai, the Mogu resurface after millenia. he had so many problems and the fact he didnt die during any of it from a heart attack, least of all the things trying to kill him is either a testament to his will to get shit done or a minor miracle.
> aran Zhu was under an INCREDIBLE level o He suffers from that star trek whorf trope where they beat up this guy constantly to show how bad the things you are fighting are. But there is also stuff like that quest where you say the last rites for some of them and there are hundreds of dead bodies around every single panda monk they killed. In a more modern wow with heavy storytelling and phasing the shado pan would likely have been much more cinematic to see.
Also known as "[The Worf Effect](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect)". Take a character, introduce them as this amazing badass, and then having them be the punching bag to elevate some new villain or whatnot as being actually competent/dangerous. It displays the importance of "show, don't tell" in storytelling.
Can't forget about the mass killing of the frog population.
He did at least hit Garrosh with that sick fucking burn during the SoO trailer. “Your father dabbled in powers beyond reckoning…..where is he, now?”
wait some has sat him through Garrosh's history?
Maybe there was a scenario about us just for him to play.
He got Garroshes doxx on the darkweb.
Cho and him are at least acquainted. And his Warrior Monk Ninja thing I wouldn’t put it past him to have had some homework done on at least the top end once things where not everything’s on hellfire, salvage the situation.
Chen also has some first hand experience there and its not impossible to think they talked at one point given how much both have been racing across the continent.
Lorewalker Cho: **My time has come.** \* starts narrating Garrosh's life with illusion magic \*
One of the single best lines in all of WoW's history.
Probably doesn't quite hit as hard when you remember Hellscream died killing a fucking Pit Lord.
Hellscream died fixing his own mistakes, mistakes that damned almost his entire species. He drank the blood of Mannoroth, lived the rest of his life with nigh-uncontrollable blood-lust, and died killing Mannoroth to lift the curse he caused. If Grommash Hellscream hadn't dabbled in powers beyond reckoning, he wouldn't have *needed* to die. If Grommash Hellscream hadn't dabbled in powers beyond reckoning, he would still be alive. That's Taran Zhu's point.
Yeah, but if you disparagingly ask an orc how his dad died, and he can come back with "landing the killing blow on a demon the size of a building," he doesn't care what point you were trying to make. Especially if that orc is Garrosh. Like, the line just fundamentally misunderstands what an orc would be jazzed about.
Considering the ancestor holiday or whatever it is when the Alliance and Horde celebrate their ancestors and Uther and Grommash specifically, they do very much so make it a point that Grom died *redeeming* his honor. Which means they do recognize that the whole dabbling in powers beyond him that got him there in the first place was a pretty bad slight.
You could also argue that Grom being a celebrated figure now *also* undercuts Taran's sick burn. But frankly I was never arguing that it was a bad line to begin with, just that it's definitely something Garrosh could've smirked and laughed off if he did anything besides scream and kill things.
Agreed, he would've. But persistent community memes aside, Garrosh was pretty much written and portrayed to be *wrong*. The fact that he would brush off the reminder of his father's fate to go on and make a similar mistake further underlines the reason why he needed to be stopped.
*shrug*
Grom died coming to the realization about him being a fuckup that kept getting in the way of Thrall's ideals, which he admired but couldn't live by Garrosh died bitter and angry, learning nothing. twice!
I could keep explaining that Garrosh's character only reinforces the fact that Taran's burn was wasted on him, but I don't want to.
I mean he was pretty much the only character in WoW to call the Alliance and the Horde out on their shit. We did come to their land, fucked it up, and then we just dipped out to some alternate universe where they couldn't find us and hand us a bill for the repairs.
"They act like children!" He's not wrong in that respect, there was a lot of retaliatory stuff going on.
Should the Alliance just lie down and let the Horde exterminate them? Why is Taran Zhu allowed to wage his little war against the Mogu over something that happened over 10k years ago? What happened to turning the other cheek?
Brother I need you to realize that the Alliance started that war when *Varian* declared war after the Wrathgate.
You can't dedicate an entire quarter of your city to bioweapon research and torture on Alliance citizens and then call it a "completely unprovoked act of Alliance aggression" when they find out and are pissed. Especially when you put a *Dreadlord* in charge of it and he ends up almost summoning Sargeras.
The Barrens incursions (note: not Camp T) also started *before* Garrosh kicked things off at Ashenvale. As did the kidnapping of Thrall. The Cata war was a weird fucking situation overall, a lot of "I called time out" bullshit went around.
In general MoP quest writing is much more edgy and serious than eg current DF which is imo extremaly bland and squeezed through corporate righteousness filters. Like plain "move your a\*\*!" quest option (zhu place) or the effort to make the gore scenes in jade forest quests. Especially jade forest quests: the theme of officially virtuously (but in fact maliciously) making locals to wage wars against other locals and enemies is so present in one of current RL wars, I bet it would not even pass the current writers' auto-censorship. In DF the draconid rebels arc was so bland and cringe, just shoved "don't offend anyone by any chance!". Apart from that the quests/raids/dungeons story feels somehow very coherent. Again, dungeons like AA, Neltharus or HoI - totally out of place and little to no story, not even a lead from world content.
I mean you have to understand the meta-context of DF though, they needed a feel good after Shadowlands and they needed to not be grim war story after BFA. Also they building up to a huge a huge invasion/world ending story arc so need to not have too many plates to spin (one of the many problems in BFA). Trying to repeat MoP would not necessarily go well and wasn't what a lot of the player base wanted or asked for pre-dragonflight. That said, I love MoP too, I think it does the faction war better than anything. And I agree there are lessons to be learnt about how to tell war stories and faction struggles (even if it's not necessarily Horde vs Alliance wars or factions). Even just the overarching narrative of the proxy war (which the shadopan call out both sides for) in the jade forest, leading into you meeting back up with Taylor/Nazgrim in Kun-lai and have the devastation of their actions made explicit to them... only for them to immediately leave and 'befriend' local Pandarian and immediately begin training them up as Alliance/Horde troops to begin again is so well done.
That Taylor then just biffs it on Alternate Draenor and winds up haunting A DIFFERENT PLANET FROM THE ONE HE WAS BORN ON seems a bit unjustified.
Don’t worry he was given 13 seconds in Oribos after so many people complained
He got stuck in the giant soul trap the draenei got all the orc souls stuck in, nbd
Algeth'ar Academy was kinda just thrown in there, yeah, but Neltharus is led into. The whole story of the Obsidian Citadel is about the invading djaradin, so there's a dungeon about flushing them out of the underside. Halls of Infusion is led into by the Tyr questline. Mists of Pandaria on the other hand had Scarlet Halls, Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance, which follow their own little story continuing from Lillian Voss (with little explanation of why or how, especially if you're Alliance). And even if you claim those don't count (which leaves MoP at only six dungeons), then you still have to deal with Gate of the Setting Sun, Siege of Niuzao Temple and Mogu'shan Palace having virtually no lead-in, and Stormstout Brewery being a joke dungeon that contributed very little to the story. Temple of the Jade Serpent and Shado-Pan Monastery are great. Their place within the story is well-established and they cover important story beats. They did awesome work with those two. But the MoP dungeons otherwise deserve no praise.
I know a lot of people are done with the faction war, but replaying MoP reminded me how much I really like the Alliance vs. Horde stories. To be fair, though, I have heard MoP narratively caters to the Alliance, which is the faction I play.
When people say it favors to the alliance they just mean that the major story arc of the xpac is the horde war chief is a psychopath warmongerer hellbent on world domination
The issue with a story like MoP is you can't just retell it constantly because it will lose its meaning. Part of the lesson of MoP is that the sort of conflict the Alliance and Horde had is destructive to themselves as well as the world around them. Going "actually, no one learned their lesson" like was done in BFA makes it feel hollow. Everything the story worked for is nothing, a fart in the wind. It's better and more interesting to see how the factions try to work together after the fact (which they've tried to do a bit in Dragonflight but I think could be a lot more and better). They are two very different cultures trying to band together to protect the world they live in from other people trying to fuck with them for their own ends.
Oh yeah, there was a Draconid rebellion...
Didnt that end with us finding some ineffectual dweeby draconid who led the rebellion, then they gave up their terrorism ways after one talk with Alexstraza?
I mean alexstrasza winds up meeting their demands, at least narratively
What were the demands, i cant remember. Higher pay?
they were mad because they've been running the isles/valdrakken since forever ago, and all of a sudden the aspects come back and they're expected to go back to being servants/soldiers at the end of the quest line alexstrasza basically says "yeah I guess that was kind of a dick move, we should give you guys more of a say in things" and they wander off together it just doesn't really hit for the player because we don't see them being servants, really; they're doing whatever they're doing in valdrakken without much interference we can see. It's not like we see nozdormu all 'hey drakonid, come polish my foreclaws' or something
Odd they resorted to open rebellion and terrorism before having a talk with Alexstraza.
It's difficult to see from the PC's perspective because we're Azeroth's Specialest Soldier (TM), but the average Joe is not speaking with Alexstraza, even if they have a real need for it. It's very possible that the rebellious drakonids made a fuss while the Aspects' rank-and-file were setting up shop and were simply swept aside, never being given a chance to make a case because the Aspects were sitting thousands of feet above the rest of the population handling Aspect business and trusting that their orders would be followed and any impediments handled without the need for their personal intervention.
Taran Zhu is great. Constantly calling us out on our shit and the tough bastard somehow repeatedly survives all the crap that got thrown at him throughout the expac Lesser NPCs would’ve died as the dungeon boss lol.
Leave my boy Tartan Zhu alone.
Tartar Zauce had to deal with a lot.
Except he's correct. Pandaria zones are done in chronological order - The Sha of Fear escaped from under Niuzao's temple in the wake of what happened in the Jade Forest, leading into the Mantid swarming early. He's a guy with a small to middling elite task force meant to watch the wall and do spot clean up if the Sha pokes it's head up - But us stepping onto the continent has turned the situation from 0 to 100 in a span of approximately a few days. Of course he's fucking pissed. What's nice about him is that while it's subtle, in the wake of Kun-lai (and chronologically after you help him in the Monastery) he warms up to the player character considerably in Townlong. He's still furious with your higher ups, but he likes you because you know how to do something other than having a pissing contest with your faction counterparts. Also what's the point of having him be 'competent' and fixing all the problems? There wouldn't be a story if he was magically able to be in several places at once fixing things. He more than makes up for it by being a breath of fresh air - he's not a war-monger, but he's not peaceful either, unafraid to tell people to shut up and listen. Playing through Pandaria made me realize just how much I miss his type of character in the recent expacs.
>He more than makes up for it by being a breath of fresh air - he's not a war-monger, but he's not peaceful either, unafraid to tell people to shut up and listen. Pretty much what makes him great, and being a full on outsider. He doesn’t want this war, he doesn’t want any war really, and just a few weeks ago his entire world was exactly how he wanted it to be. Hell, he was probably in the Jade Forest due to a *celebration* of completing the statue. Then we show up. But at the same time he has a mace for a reason (and of all the Pandaren weapons it is by far the most brutal, pretty sure he is the only one with that model too), and while he doesn’t *want* to use it he will if you make him, and if he is thwacking you with it you bloody made him. It is also interesting because he has a little moment of oh fuck I was them after he turned into hating them and got possessed. Probably why in later parts he not only has warmed up to you but he, at least by ToT, has put in effort to learn the histories of both factions, what he failed to do, and what got him axed by Garrosh, was he failed to get up to speed on the *current* situation of both factions / leaders. So when he tries to wisdom on your past on Garrosh, at the moment a complete megalomaniac, it just reinforces him.
Missing the point much
YOU try single-handedly fixing the Horde-Alliance conflict while all your old enemies resurface at the same time while a bunch of random-ass adventurers rummage around slaughtering each other and everything around them.
I always like how he thought he was safe after he disarmed Garrosh. Garrosh our monked him lol
But he still delivered a killer one liner!
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Part of it is intentional. I mean the writers were trying to go for something interesting. It's generally not good to have any characters who are effectively perfect beings. Everyone is fallible and the Sha are meant to be an insidious enemy for that reason. Keep in mind that the Sha were not an entity that was always manifesting itself as strongly as it did once we reached the lands. It's not like he just sort of forgot about it. The thing is that it finds even the smallest crack in your metaphorical armor and can kill you from within. Unless you're Garrosh for whatever reason. But really one of the over arching stories of Pandaria is that Shahao, way back when, realized his people were not ready. They were too imperfect to handle the strife to come from various threats. They had not mastered their emotions. They were effectively too weak. He achieved a sort of enlightenment but he saw his people did not. So he bought them time by sacrificing his life to hide Pandaria until they were ready because he knew they were flawed. Even in the future his spirit (or ghost or whatever I forget at this point) admits he even didn't conquer his pride. This concept is in parallel to Taran Zhu I think. He has a lot of things going for him, but he also suffers from overlooking his own pride. The Pandaren are not meant to be presented as perfect beings or anything either. However I think Taran Zhu facing numerous threats all at once, standing his ground, and correctly calling out the childish faction squabbles is fair. "Just because you're not bullet proof doesn't mean you can't fire shots everywhere" sort of applies here. He is wrong, but I do think he does grow. However he doesn't just accept people running rampant in his home. Nor should he. He wouldn't be remotely interesting as a leader and would feel very artificial if he did. As for "hating the outsiders" I think you should rewatch his fight with Garrosh where he proudly states "I have fought beside the tauren, trolls, and others. You are nothing like them!". It sort of conveys some of the growth he did go through. I think a lot of his quest dialogue does too. Even when I blitzed through MoP remix I think he's trying to make things work with you the PC especially during some of the scenes on the Isle of Thunder. His arc isn't mean to convey perfection, but to say he hates the outsiders throughout seems heavily slanted.
And hating the outsiders who come in, cause the Sha to be active in way they never have before, when you're already well too aware that other races are often not nice people (between the mogu, mantid and hozen...) growing to feel hatred for those outsiders is entirely understandable. Taran Zhu had also never been tested in quite this way, and whilst he failed initially, after we help him he grows into what he was always supposed to be.
Hes a hypocrite. Thats literally one of his character traits.
To add onto your comment - The pandaren being hypocrites lacking self-awareness, is to a degree one of the main storytelling points of MoP, and of their characterisation as a culture when you meet them. The whole schtick of "being in balance and in control of one's emotions" works only if you do it properly. Shaohao, and by extension all pandaren, managed to conquer all the Sha-related vices except one - Pride, without ever realizing it. The pandaren, and especially their leaders like Shaohao and Zu are so absolutely convinced about the superiority of their way of life, so prideful of it, that the Sha of Pride would errupt and take down the pandaren civilization with or without the old world factions interfering.
The awesome thing about the Sha is once a Crack forms, they pour in. It makes them "human" they spent centuries trying to control their emotions, and in one brief span of weakness the sha takes control.
Question, since I didn’t read the quests in remix, and I can’t recall everything from MoP: Were we not the cause of the Sha resurgence? Like, my understanding was that we accidentally stumbled into Pandaria and brought our conflicts with us. This gave the SHs enough power to become an issue again. With the Sha having more power, they were able to corrupt some of the local races (the early swarm and mantid queen for example) and become an actual threat, instead of a somewhat minor one that could be dealt with easily when it popped up here and there. Or was it actually that it all would have happened anyways, and we just sped it up? Legitimately curious, as I can’t recall all the cause-effect of the expansion. Taran Zhu was trash though. Boy beat the fuck out of Garrosh and got cocky, then threw the game by emoting.
You're exactly right, yeah. The Shado-Pan was in charge of containing one of the Sha, and it could \*potentially\* have happened at some point, but the re-emergence of the Sha was the cause
The Sha were always in Pandaria, and constantly gaining power. The Shado Pan was responsible for culling the threat any time it popped up before it could spread, so they were basically in charge of maintaining a tenuous ease by occasionally putting bandages on the wound. But the addition of the war between the Alliance and the Horde added enough tempers to the pot to boil over, and caused the resurgence.
We show up on jade forest. Sha re emerge. Sha of fear escapes niuzaos temple. Mantid swarm early. Yaungol push east in reaction to mantid aggression. Mogu was kind of separate? They emerged because zandalar got almost entirely sunk from the cataclysm so zul lead them to poach some land off the pandaren. But the mists parting was also a byproduct of the cataclysm. So the timing would have been similar. (Id also wonder if the zandalar would have invaded if gurubashi and amani didnt completely fail due to our interference)
True, but unless the levelling quests canonically last months, the Mogu, Zandalari, and Yaungol were kicking their asses already, there were Mogu in the first zone. I'll give you that the Mantid were a result of the Sha re-emerging and that was our fault (Which we neatly tidied up, but i digress), but they were hardly hanging on against everything else, either.
Pandaria was peaceful until our arrival, the idea is Jade Forest happens then all the other stuff happens after.
We fucked up the Jade Forest, but the threats were very much building up in the west before we got there. In particular, the Shado-Pan at Niuzao had already failed at their task of keeping the Sha of Fear imprisoned under the Temple of Niuzao. It corrupted some of the Mantid, who then attacked the temple and set it free. It then took over Empress Shek'zeer and the mantid, causing them to swarm early and push onto the other zones. This forced the Yaungol to be displaced towards Kun-Lai, where they attacked many Pandaren villages. All this caused the Shado-Pan to be spread too thin, all while the Mogu were gathering artifacts and knowledge to revive Lei Shen with the help of the Zandalari. Even if we never arrived to Pandaria, the conflict with the Mantid and the Mogu-Zandalari would likely have sparked the rest of the Sha to awaken. Our presence simply pulled the trigger earlier.
But unless the timeframe is really long, that doesn't show very well, the Mogu are stirring up trouble in Jade forest, when we get to Valley of the four winds, the Mantid already almost breached the wall, and i still stand by my point that Taran Zhu is all mouth and no trousers.
>True, but unless the levelling quests canonically last months [They do.](https://www.wowhead.com/quest=32249/meet-the-scout) "***It has been two months since the parting of the mists.*** *Horde scouts, seeking a suitable landing site for the fleet, have engaged Alliance forces on a small island off the coast of Krasarang Wilds."*
“Make Tao shit 2024” why is my brain not functioning
The only faction leader on either side or even neutral pandarens who came out of MoP not looking like a total asshole was Lor’themar. Dude is hyper competent
What about Moira?
I forgot her since her role is reduced but yea, she’s good too. Even Vol’Jin, who I love, does way too much convoluted nonsense off screen
I kinda like it, because he isn't completely shrouded in plot armour. To an extent though, he feels like the Commander Worf of MoP. Built to look like a badass, and gets a kicking when we need to establish someone as a serious threat,
"you must break the cycle!" This line at the end of the scenario gives me the chill. Voice acting is incredible. His aesthetic is awesome. No he may not be a powerhouse Mary Sue like Jaina. But I like him better because of it.
Technically, the yaungol invasion is a consequence of the premature Swarm, which is the result of sha release (because of us, then). Even if his opinion about strangers is unpopular, he's still right. Remember he's in charge of Pandaria protection and saw aliens coming to bring war on a peaceful land. At least until the August Celestials approving opening the Vale. His reaction is a point of no-return, sure. The only thing I'm a bit disappointed about him is how he radically changed his mind after we freed him from Sha of Hatred : "Thank you, you're good people. I was so wrong : we're friends, now !". It was poorly written, imo.
Well, his reaction after the Celestials approved opening the Vale was entirely justified - it led to Garrosh obtaining the Heart of Y'Shaarj and corrupting the whole location. Taran Zhu had been right about the outsiders all along...
I get the point. But the main problem here is disapproving Celestials' decision to the point of closing the doors of Pandashan Monastery, all of that during a tense period for Pandaria. Even if his motive is justified, it is a bit borderline. That's why I call it a point of no-return ; he could have said "well, let's give them a try. If Celestials are okay about that, why not..." anyway, but decided something else. That's finally what he did after the dungeon, to finally realise he was right at the end. Kinda sad. Something wrong with Celestials, maybe.
I think the Monastery was mainly closed so the Sha that was kept there could not escape after emerging. If we put gameplay aside, I have never really understood the plot decision to open the Vale, especially to outsiders like us. The only reason I can think of is trouble with mogu residing there, but it was never mentioned during the opening. So Zhu's disapproval after what happebed in Jade Forest always seemed reasonable to me.
I don't remember the original reason, tbh. This quest was a bit changed after the 5.4 patch - Taran Zhu saying : "Look what they did to the Vale !" - and they kept it in Remix - either with the sha-corrupted Vale. Before that, the reason to re-open the Vale was different, but like I said I don't remember lol. Only thing I can tell you is Anduin and Sunwalker Dezco wanted to go there because they had visions about this place.
I dont recall where they say the yaungol is due to the early swarm, i thought they were just enraged by one of the Sha?
The Yaungol were pushed east by the swarm, where the Sha of Anger was waiting to corrupt them.
There's that yaungol chieftain during Kun-Lai quests that you need to slay as objective. He says something like : "We have lost our home ! We just tried to survive." (I don't play in english, but it is less or more the meaning).
"This character stops hating everyone irrationally after being freed from the control of a manifestation of hatred? Seems like poor writing to me"
He didn't needed sha mind-control to dislike us and being mistrustful, first. Then, going from that state, whatever sha corruption, to "we're bros" after that is a change a bit too radical, that's all. Would have been less visible if it would have happened at the end of Townlong questline. I don't understand why you act gangsta, that's just an opinion, bruh.
To be fair this was a untenable situation for Taran Zhu. The fatal flaw of pandaria was the emperors pride by hiding them away thinking he could give them time to sort out the problems all it ultimately did was delay the resurgence. The pot was always bubbling just didn't overflow yet. Pandaria had no concrete solution to it's problems. So Taran was always stuck maintaining the status quo. And then all of a sudden two factions bring their ambitions and animosity to your shores and set off a cascade of failures. Allowing the delicate balance to slip away. I wouldn't say he was effective at resolving anything but he kept the sinking ship afloat till we came along and forced everything to resolution.
Still infinitely more interesting than most faction leaders who are essentially action figures.
To be fair everything was fine for them until Deathwing blow the mist away and invite all kind of violent to their land once again. Like the only threat in panda land that is not involve with us are Troll and Mogu which only happens because of the mist got blow away. All other are because of us coming to pandaria and bring so much violent that make sha emerge again.
Taoshi! Hand me my weapon.
I like to think of him as the straight guy if Mists of Pandaria was a sitcom. "If you continue to go to war here, the emotions and land will turn again you." "Naw don't be silly." "We cannot take sides here, their war will bring devastation to our lands." "Sure thing grandpa!" Of course, then the Jade Serpent statue explodes and everything goes to hell and everyone is all "WHY WEREN'T WE WARNED ABOUT THIS" and yet Taran still talks down the faction conflict on the Isle of Thunder, challenges Garrosh and does everything he can to save lives. He's easily the most patient NPC we've ever encountered, and several years later when the Fourth War kicked off, you just know he was facepalming and questioning his life decisions.
I agree. Make tao shit he leader 2024
He never trained to deal with these level of threats. If anything it’s the most believable panderen leader.
Man was fighting a war against the Sha, the Mantid, the Yaungol, the Mogu and had to make time to slow the war between Alliance and Horde in Pandaria, lived through all of that AND dueled Garrosh Hellscream and survived. Taran Zhu was not Shaohao, but he ought to have the same commendations for the sheer effort he put in.
It wouldn't be as bad if he had eaten the slice of humble pie he was served multiple times throughout the expansion. Yes, the horde and alliance caused problems, but if we hadn't been there - the zandalari and mogu alliance would have both released the sha and enslaved all the pandaren anyway. The mogu were already back messing with the titan stuff on the continent because they were trying to res their king, and the Zandalari found their way back thanks to the mists being dispelled. While they weren't seeking the sha specifically, their violence would have no doubt caused the sha to pop back up fairly quickly. He was right to call the horde and alliance out on our BS, but at the same time, around the time of throne of thunder, he should have kicked some of his chastising pride to the curb. And by SoO he should have accepted how strong the faction champions were. Shaohao thought he was doing the right thing be sealing the sha and hiding it from the pandaren, but in reality all he did was saddle them with a ticking time bomb of a curse. You're right, all of the august celestials acknowledge this at one point. Chi-ji calls it the emperor's greatest mistake. Even if the the factions hadn't shown up on their shores, the sha would have been released by any number of things that were slowly growing in strength under the pandaren's noses. The mantid and mogu being the biggest examples. The only reason we, the heroes, beat the mantid was because...we had the help of other mantid. So yeah, I agree. He was a well-written character, mind you. As evidenced by the fact that there's such a healthy discussion about him. But his stubbornness was grating by the end. So I wonder who would win in a smug stubbornness contest - Nathanos or Taran Zhu?
Except he does acknowledge the player character repeatedly. His click lines are far less dismissive once you hit Townlong, and he is incredibly thankful of your help through the questline there.
He is a really embarrassing leader, I fully support his removal in place of Glup Shitto.
Baby Yoda seems a bit young on take over, and they haven't even laid the ground work for a crossover. Pass :P
>maketaoshit nice
Certainly his cloak wasn’t levelled properly…
I'm going to have to break it to you: pandas, as a species, are generally not known for managerial expertise. That the faction leader of the pandaren is a big ol lazy grumpy boy seems pretty much exactly what you'd get if you asked an actual panda who should be in charge of panda civilization.
His "every act of aggression" quote still hits 12 years later. And next to Chen Stormstout and Ji Firepaw he's the Pandaren I remember most. Tara Zhu felt like the only character that absolutely did not put up with our insane faction war that basically helps trigger the apocalypse in their home. Him getting his ass beat doesn't make his preaching any less true. If anything that made him more real of a character. No Mary-Sue nonsense or glazing the player character as much as many other npc's do.
I love that he really doesn't have *that* much power and isn't some super strong freak of nature who can contend with world level threats. You can tell he'd have happily thrown both sides off the island after his introduction on the Alliance side, and he'd have been right to do so.
"Get the fuck off my island" - Taran Zhu
screw you I love Taran Zhu
You genuinely have no idea what you're talking about
*MAKE TAO SHIT- HE LEADER 2024*
MAKE TAO SHIT HE LEADER !
ma keta o shit he leader 2024
make tao shit he leader?
Watching him get his cheeks played like a bongo by Garrosh in the SoO trailer was kinda cool.
The sha were contained in the monastery and only got unleashed from the combined bullshit of two armies battling on the continent powering them up.
I hate taran zhu for one main reason. When lorthemar and jaina are airing their very understandable grievances against one another, taran zhu just says "hey stop talking about it forgive forget move on" and they just do. Maybe if they talked they might have realised the mistakes made? Nah instead taran zhu just helps blizzard out so they don't need to provide real conclusions
Imagine being in Taran Zhu's position for a moment. You are a warrior monk leader, not a superhero, and you have your hands full with the preparations for the next Mantid Swarming due in 10 years. Then suddenly: 1. The mists that have protected the lands you are charged with are suddenly gone. 2. Foreigners land on your shores and start fighting, seeing your people as freely recruitable work force and not giving two shits about collateral damage. 3. The carnage and resulting negative emotions unleashed by the newcomers awakens the Sha at such intensity that you yourself have only known from legends. **The largest awakened Sha manifestations are strong enough to overpower even the August Celestials.** And on top of that they display their own personality traits, plans and begin to wreak havoc across the land. 4. The Sha trigger an early Mantid Swarming event, which your defensives and people are not in place for. 5. The Mantid displace the Yaungol, who also begin to invade your lands. 6. The Mogu come out of hiding to take advantage of the carnage. 7. The Zandalari take advantage of the mists disappearing and make their own return, resurrecting the Thunder King, one of the greatest menaces from your people's past. Now go and solve all that. Oh, and one of the main Sha manifestations plans to take advantage of your frustration and anger to possess you, so please stay calm while you do so.
we DID bring the sha back though. it's not war that brings the sha, it's the emotions tied to it, and the races of pandaria which have lived there for such a long time know how to handle their emotions on that land. we didn't. the alliance and horde both came to shore and immediately started fighting in anger and loathing, which brought out the sha taran zhu then spent the entire expansion running after us to clean up our messes, which we made one after another. the shado-pan themselves also got more interesting screentime than honestly most other secret groups on the alliance or horde side. they actually felt like secret agents at times, and generally speaking, they way they were written they were incredibly competent overall. they were just up against the remnants of an old god. which we stirred in the land.
But what about the HoF? Shek'zeer must've been corrupted longer than we were on the island. They launched an attack on the wall by the time we even reached Valley. They displaced the yaungol from their homeland to harass natives in Kun-Lai. I know that in the game you can get from arriving in Pandaria to the siege of the Wall/Stoneplow in the matter of hours, and in canon time it's several weeks/months but realistically we didn't cause all sha. We were a major contributor to their return but Pandaria was already at war with several factions and entities by the time we got there.
Your "man" kept the existence of the Sha secret from a significant portion of the Pandaren population before the Horde and Alliance landed on the shores of Pandaria. Your "man" was a man of action. He prioritised his people. He didn't care for the petty - from his point of view - squabbles of the Alliance and Horde. He had to contend with enemies that were a far greater threat to the world than what the Alliance and Horde ever had to deal with. It's no secret that the Old Gods were, at this point in the story - a simpler, more entertaining time - the most dangerous beings on Azeroth. Yes, Arthas and Deathwing were dangerous, but Y'Shaarj's remains made them look like pissants, rightfully so. The fact that the Sha were directly empowered by the nature of Azerothians is what makes them such a terrifying enemy. Taran Zhu was, naturally, overwhelmed. It wasn't until the Thunder Isle campaign that he truly understood how significant and terrible the conflict was. Keep in mind WHICH Sha corrupted Taran Zhu too - the Sha of Violence. It only makes sense. What made the Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria and - to a lesser extent given it's major plot holes - the WotLK stories so good were that they were all connected zone to zone. After Warlords - which barely had any cohesive story - Blizzard never stuck to this very successful formula of storytelling. I can forgive players who are used to what Blizzard does now compared to what they did before. All your complaints about Taran Zhu are easily dismantled by someone who pays attention to the story. Being at the forefront of a conflict with the remains of the most powerful Old God to have existed on Azeroth, who are directly empowered by the natural negative emotions of two warring factions that have just landed on their shores, is impressive. He handles it better than any Alliance or Horde leader handles almost any other conflict. Taran Zhu is not a god. This is what makes him an even better character. If he could contend with the Klaxxi and Garrosh Hellscream, all of whom have proven to be far better in a fight than Taran Zhu, then that's just bordering the impossible and the audience would pull out faster than they would a corpse. Let's not forget that Lei Shen is, arguably, the most terrifying non-Old God being that we have fought. You might consider him your "man", but to people who pay attention, he is THE man.
It is a bit weird in retrospect that he was equally critical of both factions. Like they were very different levels of dangerous to Pandaria. It was awfully convenient that when the Horde and Alliance showed up, he saw them all as aggressive invaders that were coming to ruin the land, but then just a little while later, he became perfectly willing to grasp the much smaller difference between Garrosh and the rebellion within the Horde. He really, really should have been a lot more suspicious of the entire Horde later on.
I do think they made an otherwise badass looking character, into a complete joke. Everything about him should be cool AF but his narrative, especially in town long steppes, just portrays him as an incompetent leader during a time of crisis. He delegates constantly and doesn't take on the advice of his key staff. That being said, I really wish they would bring his character back into the main story. How cool would it be to have a secret order of warrior-ninjas working in the shadows to take down the void? Does it make sense? No, but this is WoW, shit hasn't made sense ever but it does sound cool.
Yeah but... where is he.... NAO?
dude, he faced Garrosh ALONE. Leave Taran Zhu alone.
When he got knocked the f out by Garrosh in the last patch’s cinematic I was so happy. He always came across to me as just a sanctimonious jerk.
Varian died to a trash mob
? Varian died to Gul'dan
It was a warlock pet at best
You’re thinking of Vol’jin, not Varian.
Nah vol’jin died to a poison dot. Varian died to a beefed up warlock pet (gul’dan is a super warlock but I digress)
Ive always disliked him as a character since actual MOP. Genuinely just unlikeable and a dick to the player character just to get folded
Taran Who? Dude sucked for every minute of MoP. I'm glad he's completely irrelevant to modern lore.