I've taken some time to think about your comments, still quoted below. You make excellent points. & I agree that I always wanted more from the Forsaken. Whether the cause boils down to author's priorities or some stylistic flaw is open. Maybe I'm getting a little passive as a reader, because with WoT, I assumed that the low-key operation of the Chosen was a difference between the AoL and Current Age wars against the Shadow.

Back in the day, the Dark had all this machinery that they could take advantage of - a connected, industrialized world at the peak of development. It created opportunities to cause massive carnage. This time around, the Dark is starting with no country in direct control, and they need two books to gain power on a national level. And worse: the channeling population is lower, more poorly-trained; horse and ships are the fast modes of xport; industry barely exists, and information travels slowly (and inaccurately). I figured with all that, the Forsaken had fewer opportunities to enact actions as before (save Semi, Moggy). There's just less Chosen around, so they have the BA & Isam to do their large-scale nastiness (Logain, Taim, Two Rivers, etc).

The duration and world-wide scale of the AoL fight also gives us 4+ years and many locations that were involved. I assumed this meant us readers end up getting some of the choicest stories on the Forsaken, and that we wouldn't get to see those kinds of actions until the fighting broke out on a major scale. All of our Forsaken were governors and/or generals - and we've gotten bare glimpses of Graendal surreptitiously ruling her nation or Rahvin and Sammael's actions in Caemlyn and Ilian. To that end, I would wish that they'd begun large-scale Light/Dark fighting in TGS-1.

Maybe we'll get something in ToM. Like Mesaana feed all of Lugard's women-haters to the Trollocs.