Geya'rah

[Venziir]

Not for humans.

Anyone remember:

* Nazgrel was supposed to important.
* That the Horde had their own rogue organization, the Shattered Hand.
* The Horde used to have their own counterpart to the 7th Legion in the Kor'Kron, infact it could be said the 7th Legion was the Alliance counterpart of them.
* The Horde once had its own archaeology organization, yet we work for the Explorer's League anyhow.

You constantly recruit Shattered Hand rogues at the Horde mission table.
The counterpart to the 7th Legion are the Honorbound.
The Reliquary is still a thing, you actively fight them as Alliance in Vol'dun. Oh and you help a group of them in Zuldazar, they have expanded and are working with the Nightborne now.

[KrakHed]

Why they'd even go through this whole personality purification process with the Horde, if their plan really is to write interesting stories for the Horde. By interesting I'm thinking of stories that enable conflicts, both inter-faction and outward, which is something Horde always did better than Alliance and was part of its appeal in the first place.

I might be pessimistic, but looking at the cast we're left with and new characters introduced, I really doubt they'd be introducing anyone new and it all just looks to me like a giant setup for Avengers of Azeroth kind of story lines we're possibly be getting in the future.

Your missing my point. I'm not talking about good or interesting stories. I'm talking from a writing perspective.

When there's a depleted cast and identity, any hack writer could get things rolling for their dumb ideas. There's a massive vacuum right now, and I think anyone who bothered to try pushing a character would have a good chance to win them a place of prominence if they could give them even one memorable quality. There's not a lot of competition or anything.

[Super Dickmann]

I'm not calling it a good thing. I'm not even calling Lilian a good character. Her taking a prominent position was possible because there's no characters in prominent positions on the Forsaken. There are some good old ones who were popular, but that itself reflect my point. The Forsaken have few enough prominent characters that decently written quest NPCs can become quite memorable quite easily.

If every quest writer started throwing in their shitty OCs for quest chains, and brought them back for repeat appearances, they'd have the next big thing on their hands easily. Some random fan of Helcular, if on the quest writing team, could turn him huge.

This is a self-reinforcing point. The reason Lilian became a big deal is because all those other NPCs got ignored to put here there, as was the Forsaken identity they represented. This is not a natural consequence or something or that had to be done to clear the table, it was deliberate to get us from Point A to Point B and it's reflective of the fact that Blizzard do not care about expanding the Horde cast. Quests like the ones with Jaina where you go from fighting her to saving her brother because Jaina is a 'world character' and they sort of expect you to like her regardless of faction further shows that they don't even recognize the differentiation between Horde and Alliance characters.

@Dagoth Ur summarizes it well. This is not done to expand the Horde storytelling opportunities, but to remove the need of a differentiated Horde story in the first place. The present purpose of the Horde is so that it can easily fit into neutral storylines with the minimum of friction that having a cast of functional clones devoid of inward conflict and only reactive to outward conflict provides. Differentiation harms that aim. And in terms of organic character development, we already had this with Nazgrim - a character you followed through multiple zones and got attached to. He died when we first did this rubbish and left behind a gutted version of the Vanilla cast. All so that we could do it again since the Horde was deemed not bland enough and the orcish cast could further shrink with Saurfang's removal.

@Sondrelk

We go from "The majority of the Horde supports world conquest" for the entire expansion to "Sylvanas doesn't support world conquest so the Horde ditch her" while at no point addressing the implications of the former. This is the product of the Alliance being such a flawless hivemind of masochistic good guys, robbed of any kind of self-preservation. The problem with the Alliance, the Horde and the story itself wasn't the presence of Sylvanas, but Anduin as unquestioned faction leader, because with Anduin on one team, the only possible way the other side could ever go to war is with a BFA!Sylvanas tier baddie for being bad's sake.

[KrakHed]

I'm not saying that this was done for future story opportunities. I'm saying it's an opportunity for any writer smart enough to realize that the current Horde position is so poorly defined that they could get on the ground floor of building something new. It just depends on whether or not anyone is willing to take advantage of it.

[Reinhart11]

I'm not saying that this was done for future story opportunities. I'm saying it's an opportunity for any writer smart enough to realize that the current Horde position is so poorly defined that they could get on the ground floor of building something new. It just depends on whether or not anyone is willing to take advantage of it.

But the question is, will the lead writers of the game let another writer do this? I personally doubt that. They want to push their own agenda and that is homogenization. I'm not so sure what interesting characters on the Horde side would come from this. Because it looks like that Horde characters aren't allowed to have some proper edges. And we also know that character aren't just written by one single writer. There are a lot of writers with it looks like different vision for a single characters. Even with a writers comes up with a good characters, nothing keeps another writer from taking over and ruin the new character, especially if the latter writer is higher up in the food chain.

I think the best example for this is Garrosh. Metzen very likely couldn't stand Garrosh, because he became more prominent through Cataclysm compared to the unbearable Mary Sue Thrall, his alter ego, became. Meanwhile Afrasiabi went for different Garrosh story. But Metzen pushed through with his own plans and also clearly stated that he wanted Thrall back in the warchief seat. But there was big backlash against Thrall both at the end of MoP and after the WoD cinematic. I think we can be pretty sure that Metzen was more than surprised both times. But you clearly can see that a writer can do nothing if one higher up the food chain doesn't want that particular story.

I mean, your view on the subject is very positive, which is good i think. But is it realistic? I personally think it is not, sadly. As long as Anduin is portrayed as he is now, Golden will probably turn every new character into a Anduin/Baine acolyte. And if this isn't possible Horde characters will again end up as loot pinatas as long as this kind of writing style and philosophy in the writing doesn't change. And i don't see this change unless we get new authors in.

[KrakHed]

Eh. I don't think Garrosh became more prominent than Thrall. He was a widely disliked character. He was a character with some potential who never got to live up to it. Thrall was a character with a completed story who got a new arc to change him from his already completed form.

We need to keep in mind that Afrasiabi's Garrosh would have been very, very different than the Garrosh we got in the end. I don't think his idea for Garrosh would have wanted to wage a war on Anduin, and I very much doubt he'd be much different from Afrasiabi's Saurfang. Garrosh was introduced to us as a moping sad orc, so he probably wouldn't repeat that part of his story, but I'd expect he'd have basically the same ideals.

I personally don't see much issue with "Anduin/Baine acolyte" types, non belligerents, so long as the faction war story is kept far, far away. Those characters only act like spineless cucks when there's a faction war plot.

Thrall was just fine before, and performed well in leading a faction war in Warcraft 3. Reluctant but willing to see it through. Go'el was a bad idea, and WoD's efforts to redeem the character were undermined by one terrible writing choice, but I think he could settle back into being a decent character with a final arc to regain his Shaman powers. Strong wise leaderman wasn't so bad. The writers still love him, so that's an anchor for relevance.

Baine is a character who I see as undercooked, but reading through his lines tells me everything I need to. Baine is simply incompatible with a belligerent or villainous Horde as he's written. Because that's the only Horde he's ever been a part of in any significant capacity, and Blizzard is unwilling to end wars early, it's made him into the ultimate spineless cuck. He can't seriously fight the Alliance, as that'd make him a participant in the war, and he can't stop the Warchief, because the war must go on. I'm hoping he actually gets content outside the confines of war. Gentle giant who kicks ass when needed is a decent idea, and Baine is generally decent when that's what he's allowed to be.

Anduin... I agree that Anduin is shit. He's antithetical to an interesting story, so I don't see the point in wanting to fight him. It wouldn't be an interesting fight. Unlike Baine, Anduin's intended role is fundamentally shit. Anduin was designed for the role that Baine was merely forced into.

[Gann Stonespire]

You constantly recruit Shattered Hand rogues at the Horde mission table.

You mean in Legion? Yet they don't even do anything in the Horde war campaign unlike the SI:17.

he counterpart to the 7th Legion are the Honorbound.

LOL, No. The honorbound only; show up in a few areas of this expansion, don't recognize the player, never appeared before, and have no role in the lore. They suck, will never replace the Kor'kron and everybody knows it.

The Reliquary is still a thing, you actively fight them as Alliance in Vol'dun.

Yay they still appear as mobs yet the Horde PC still quests for the Explorer's league.

[Lord Pebbleton]

I wonder how is it possible that we get extremely cool names, like Tirion Fordring and Falstad Wildhammer, and at the same time lame names like Geya'rah and Go'el. Must be the apostrophe.

[Feanoro]

But don't you all remember, the story favors Horde because of "Horde bias" /s

Remind me again which faction

- got all the expensive cinematics
- got all the story focus, with the other faction effectively a plot device
- massacred one of the other faction's core races to near extinction
- had the strategic planner of that massacre held up as a noble hero dying as a martyr, to be honored by the other faction's leaders
- didn't have that massacre's fallen corpses violated to leap up and side with their killers
- magically had more forces remaining at the end despite Chief Bootlicker reporting "defeat is a matter of weeks"
- had all the atrocities committed swept under the rug because that one mean undead blood elf flew away

Would you like me to go on?

"Boo hoo, we went to a council!" Yeah, which means more of your characters making appearances to talk, argue, scheme and so on, as enjoyed by writers who liked GoT. Meanwhile, one by one ours are being written out or ignored in favor of Anduin Crybaby the Nontoxic.

I think the best example for this is Garrosh. Metzen very likely couldn't stand Garrosh, because he became more prominent through Cataclysm compared to the unbearable Mary Sue Thrall, his alter ego, became. Meanwhile Afrasiabi went for different Garrosh story. But Metzen pushed through with his own plans and also clearly stated that he wanted Thrall back in the warchief seat. But there was big backlash against Thrall both at the end of MoP and after the WoD cinematic. I think we can be pretty sure that Metzen was more than surprised both times. But you clearly can see that a writer can do nothing if one higher up the food chain doesn't want that particular story.

Not even likely, it's well known there was writing conflicts, "misunderstandings" if we're being charitable/corporate speak on Garrosh. You can see Metzen's mindset about Thrall when post-retirement Blizzcon he asked "When will the Horde get its TRUE warchief back?"

[mickybrighteyes]

The counterpart to the 7th Legion are the Honorbound.

Only cause the reputation bars have them as such.

In lore they are not comparable at all.

[KrakHed]

Remind me again which faction

- got all the expensive cinematics
- got all the story focus, with the other faction effectively a plot device
- massacred one of the other faction's core races to near extinction
- had the strategic planner of that massacre held up as a noble hero dying as a martyr, to be honored by the other faction's leaders
- didn't have that massacre's fallen corpses violated to leap up and side with their killers
- magically had more forces remaining at the end despite Chief Bootlicker reporting "defeat is a matter of weeks"
- had all the atrocities committed swept under the rug because that one mean undead blood elf flew away

Would you like me to go on?

"Boo hoo, we went to a council!" Yeah, which means more of your characters making appearances to talk, argue, scheme and so on, as enjoyed by writers who liked GoT. Meanwhile, one by one ours are being written out or ignored in favor of Anduin Crybaby the Nontoxic.

Not even likely, it's well known there was writing conflicts, "misunderstandings" if we're being charitable/corporate speak on Garrosh. You can see Metzen's mindset about Thrall when post-retirement Blizzcon he asked "When will the Horde get its TRUE warchief back?"

No, it's not because of a council. In faction wars, the Alliance takes more superficial meaningless damage while the Horde takes more tangible structural damage.

The Night Elves have had the majority of their civilian population killed, which is a terrible story. The thing is, civilians hardly matter. They were C characters at best. All your prominent named characters, the kinds who carry plots and get voiced lines, are alive. You still have Maiev, Tyrande, Malfurion, Shandris, and so on. They are all significant, notable characters. The rest of the Alliance cast is fully intact too.

Meanwhile, the Horde is losing Nathanos, Sylvanas, Saurfang, and Gallywix. Rastakhan too, even if he was new. For the past few expansions, new Horde characters have had a habit of dying. Zaela went evil for some reason and died too. The Horde can hardly hold onto a single new thing, while the Alliance gets more and more things to the point where the cast is bloated and there are a thousand more characters than it needs.

If we stretch this back to faction war set up, you can add Varian and Vol'jin to those lists. Which would seem even, right? Except no.

The Horde already lost Garrosh a little earlier. Cairne too. The Alliance lost Magni to stone, and then neutrality, but at least there was a chance he'd return some day.

In the same process, the longstanding Kor'kron Elite, with their badass name and all, got dragged through the mud as an SS parallel and it seems unlikely that they'll ever recover or be adequately replaced. Their cheap knock off, the 7th Legion, is now far more prominent than any Horde equivalent.

For all those fancy Cinematics that the Horde gets, none of it actually does jack shit for the health of the faction. The Horde is on life support. It's lacking all the basic necessities that the Alliance takes for granted.

Horde Elves are the only races that are actually still developed on the Horde.

[Venziir]

You mean in Legion? Yet they don't even do anything in the Horde war campaign unlike the SI:17.



LOL, No. The honorbound only; show up in a few areas of this expansion, don't recognize the player, never appeared before, and have no role in the lore. They suck, will never replace the Kor'kron and everybody knows it.



Yay they still appear as mobs yet the Horde PC still quests for the Explorer's league.

I meant in BfA obviously. And yes; the Honorbound are supposed to reflect the 7th Legion. That's why in the early bfa beta, they were called Kor'kron instead.

[Reinhart11]

Remind me again which faction

- got all the expensive cinematics
- got all the story focus, with the other faction effectively a plot device
- massacred one of the other faction's core races to near extinction
- had the strategic planner of that massacre held up as a noble hero dying as a martyr, to be honored by the other faction's leaders
- didn't have that massacre's fallen corpses violated to leap up and side with their killers
- magically had more forces remaining at the end despite Chief Bootlicker reporting "defeat is a matter of weeks"
- had all the atrocities committed swept under the rug because that one mean undead blood elf flew away

Would you like me to go on?

"Boo hoo, we went to a council!" Yeah, which means more of your characters making appearances to talk, argue, scheme and so on, as enjoyed by writers who liked GoT. Meanwhile, one by one ours are being written out or ignored in favor of Anduin Crybaby the Nontoxic.

Not even likely, it's well known there was writing conflicts, "misunderstandings" if we're being charitable/corporate speak on Garrosh. You can see Metzen's mindset about Thrall when post-retirement Blizzcon he asked "When will the Horde get its TRUE warchief back?"

In regards to Metzens opinion about Garrosh, he made that crystal clear. When he was asked if Blizzard would come up with a book about Garrosh, he said no, because it would only be about "KILL KILL KILL". This shows clearly how much he liked the character, especially because Garrosh was the counterpart to Mary Sue Thrall in Cata. On top of that, it was pretty clear that they never really planned for Vol'jin to be warchief. The book he got was rushed as well. Simply because they wanted to reinstate Thrall back than (which is Metzens wet dream even now), but didn't because of the backlash from the Siege of Orgrimmar Raid, where Thrall was all to willing to kill Garrosh off right there, without recognizing any fault of himself in the whole fiasco. And they repeated that story with the Duel in Nagrand, only that the backlash against Thrall was even bigger compared to the end of MoP. All the evidence that they never had plans for Vol'jin continued in WoD as well, because he did absolutely nothing of any worth and with Legion, they promptly and unceremoniously killed him off in the most pathetic manner. His Cinematic appointing Sylvanas also had to be retconed in BfA to paint Sylvanas as the big baddie, even though it didn't fit the vibe of the Cinematic where she was appointed Warchief at all. That showed that the plans Metzen had for Sylvanas were vastly different compared to what happened in BfA. Metzen also was responsible for the opening cinematic, which had a major faction war vibe. He was later shocked, in what direction the other writers took the story of Sylvanas.

In regards to all the cinematics and attention the Horde gets. All this attention from the writers constantly hurts and in BfA literally destroys the Horde, killing of their characters left and right, while the Horde players can't do jackshit against beloved Alliance characters and in the end even help the Alliance and a bunch of Alliance loving traitors, because appaerently the Horde has to love the Alliance and its leaders. Seriously, the Alliance can get all the attention they want, all the cinematics as well for all i care.

@ Krakhed

In Cataclysm i don't remember Garrosh being a widely disliked character. Especially compared to someone like Thrall. I remember the conversations in the german story forums and a lot of people were absolutely sick of the Thrall questlines, Alliance as well as Horde. The major hate for Garrosh started as far as i know with the destruction of Theramore. And even though this was a legitimate military target, it was pretty much the clear start of Garroshs journey through MoP and WoD to become the evil Orc villain.

I agree that Afrasiabi's Garrosh would be as insufferable as Sadfang was and would have turned into another Alliance loving Horde character. That already started in Goldens book War Crimes, where Anduin was able to influence Garrosh while the trial lasted. Golden clearly said, that if Kairoz wouldn't have rescued him, he would have tried to redeem himself because of Anduins actions. So its definitely good in my book, that this kind of story did not come to pass.

Without the faction war, the story of WoW is pretty boring. Other big bads aren't allowed to have any success and turn into bumbling imbeciles as soon as the pre event is over. The faction war stories are also as bad as they are BECAUSE most of the faction leaders in the Horde are Anduin Acolytes and betray their own faction and people and warchief as soon as a warchief goes to war with the Alliance. The biggest problem of the faction war is, that the stakes are too high and everytime the winner, or at least the Horde, would wipe out the enemy completely if they win. Which obviously can't happen. I just wish the writers would look at our own history, at all the wars different people, kingdoms and empires fought against each other and get inspired by these things. To complete defeat, occupy or even eradicate an enemy is mostly impossible. And it should be as well in WoW. For example it should not be easy for the Kalimdor Horde to project massive military power onto the Eastern Kingdoms. Meanwhile it should also not be possible the Alliance in the Eastern Kingdoms to project massive military power onto Kalimdor.

Thrall never really lead a proper war against the WoW Alliance. He fought against the Alliance of Lordaeron, but the Alliance of Lordaeron was not this assembly of holy samaritians, who forgive anything that is done against them, don't want revenge etc. Thrall in WoW never really went against the Alliance in an effective way. He even let the Alliance attack the Horde without retributions. And when Varian declared war on the Horde in Undercity, Thrall did nothing and after the defeat of the Lich King he became Green Jesus, made Garrosh Warchief against Garrosh's will and his friends like Cairne and Vol'jin didn't advise Garrosh at all, something Thrall was completely blind towards. He didn't recognize at all that Cairne and Vol'jin had already made their mind about Garrosh. They despised him, if not outright hated him in Vol'jins case. Thrall was completely oblivious to that.

On what basis could Thrall become a good character again? Especially because he never was a very good character from the start. He was an infallible, pretty plain Mary Sue in WC 3 already. He was good in his roll to free the Orcs from the internment camps and bringt them to Kalimdor, but thats about it. Now at the end of BfA, Thrall was all too willing to spill Horde blood again. Given, he wasn't eager, but he also was not desperately trying to avoid it. Hell, in front of Orgrimmar he counseled Sadfang to attack the city already. He didn't expect Sadfang to call for Mak'gora at all. From my point of view, Thrall still has learned nothing from his mistakes in the past. The only thing he does is giving some lip service.

Baine is simply not a Horde character in my opinion. He should not be in the Horde and god forbid should not be a leader. But he is not only disloyal to the Horde, worse, he is more loyal to the Alliance than to his own people. He exiled the Tauren who defended themselves against Alliance attacks and he cowered behind a wall who wouldn't have protect Mulgore against the attack of the humans if not for the Orcs and Goblins destroying the siege machinery and pushing the Alliance back in the southern barrens. And in BfA, he endangered all the Tauren for the sake of the dead human he didn't even know, just because he was Jainas brother. His allegiances are more than crystal clear.

I mean you're right, that the Horde outside of faction war could rebuilt. But how would this rebuilding look like under characters like Baine and Thrall? They will form the Horde into a fine, obedient vassal of the Alliance. That is what will happen under that kind of leadership. And its just not interesting. That why i think these kind of characters should not be part of the Horde. The Alliance doesn't have a bunch of leaders who put the well being of the Horde ahead of the Alliance. Although Anduin might change that as well or probably already did this, looking at the peace between the faction and the situation the Night Elves are left in.

I strongly doubt that current writers are interested in building up the Horde or would allow any other writers to do it.

[Feanoro]

In regards to Metzens opinion about Garrosh, he made that crystal clear. When he was asked if Blizzard would come up with a book about Garrosh, he said no, because it would only be about "KILL KILL KILL". This shows clearly how much he liked the character, especially because Garrosh was the counterpart to Mary Sue Thrall in Cata. On top of that, it was pretty clear that they never really planned for Vol'jin to be warchief. The book he got was rushed as well. Simply because they wanted to reinstate Thrall back than (which is Metzens wet dream even now), but didn't because of the backlash from the Siege of Orgrimmar Raid, where Thrall was all to willing to kill Garrosh off right there, without recognizing any fault of himself in the whole fiasco. And they repeated that story with the Duel in Nagrand, only that the backlash against Thrall was even bigger compared to the end of MoP. All the evidence that they never had plans for Vol'jin continued in WoD as well, because he did absolutely nothing of any worth and with Legion, they promptly and unceremoniously killed him off in the most pathetic manner. His Cinematic appointing Sylvanas also had to be retconed in BfA to paint Sylvanas as the big baddie, even though it didn't fit the vibe of the Cinematic where she was appointed Warchief at all. That showed that the plans Metzen had for Sylvanas were vastly different compared to what happened in BfA. Metzen also was responsible for the opening cinematic, which had a major faction war vibe. He was later shocked, in what direction the other writers took the story of Sylvanas.

Sorry for the "not even likely", I shouldn't post when tired. I was trying to express agreement with you, probably was trying for something like "No question it's likely" or some such.

In regards to all the cinematics and attention the Horde gets. All this attention from the writers constantly hurts and in BfA literally destroys the Horde, killing of their characters left and right, while the Horde players can't do jackshit against beloved Alliance characters and in the end even help the Alliance and a bunch of Alliance loving traitors, because appaerently the Horde has to love the Alliance and its leaders. Seriously, the Alliance can get all the attention they want, all the cinematics as well for all i care.

The reason the Horde gets all the deaths is Blizz writers liked GoT, and what they took away from it was councils being snippy with each other and "shocking" deaths. Meanwhile, we get High King Dipshit I and High King Dipshit II the Sissy so they only have to really bother with one Alliance character and can get back to their Horde drama. Other characters exist so Dipshit II isn't talking to himself.

[KrakHed]

In Cataclysm i don't remember Garrosh being a widely disliked character. Especially compared to someone like Thrall. I remember the conversations in the german story forums and a lot of people were absolutely sick of the Thrall questlines, Alliance as well as Horde. The major hate for Garrosh started as far as i know with the destruction of Theramore. And even though this was a legitimate military target, it was pretty much the clear start of Garroshs journey through MoP and WoD to become the evil Orc villain.

Everyone was indeed sick of the Thrall quests and there was a lot of hate for him leaving Garrosh in charge. I don't know anything about the German forums, but Garrosh was absolutely treated with contempt and hatred from the forums I knew. "A Basic Campfire" being a better Warchief than Garrosh was a meme from those days for a reason.

Garrosh was despised. He was seen as an outright incompetent idiot, because that's how he appeared in quests. He was a joke to many. The hatred for Garrosh only died down a little because Blizzard reps reassured people that he was going to get better.

Garrosh killed Thrall's popularity, that much is true. But that was mostly because people held Thrall responsible for making Garrosh Warchief when everyone, including Garrosh, protested. Him being the big superhero while shirking responsibility for a now rampaging Horde just wasn't a good look.

- - - Updated - - -

On what basis could Thrall become a good character again? Especially because he never was a very good character from the start. He was an infallible, pretty plain Mary Sue in WC 3 already. He was good in his roll to free the Orcs from the internment camps and bringt them to Kalimdor, but thats about it. Now at the end of BfA, Thrall was all too willing to spill Horde blood again. Given, he wasn't eager, but he also was not desperately trying to avoid it. Hell, in front of Orgrimmar he counseled Sadfang to attack the city already. He didn't expect Sadfang to call for Mak'gora at all. From my point of view, Thrall still has learned nothing from his mistakes in the past. The only thing he does is giving some lip service.

Baine is simply not a Horde character in my opinion. He should not be in the Horde and god forbid should not be a leader. But he is not only disloyal to the Horde, worse, he is more loyal to the Alliance than to his own people. He exiled the Tauren who defended themselves against Alliance attacks and he cowered behind a wall who wouldn't have protect Mulgore against the attack of the humans if not for the Orcs and Goblins destroying the siege machinery and pushing the Alliance back in the southern barrens. And in BfA, he endangered all the Tauren for the sake of the dead human he didn't even know, just because he was Jainas brother. His allegiances are more than crystal clear.

I mean you're right, that the Horde outside of faction war could rebuilt. But how would this rebuilding look like under characters like Baine and Thrall? They will form the Horde into a fine, obedient vassal of the Alliance. That is what will happen under that kind of leadership. And its just not interesting. That why i think these kind of characters should not be part of the Horde. The Alliance doesn't have a bunch of leaders who put the well being of the Horde ahead of the Alliance. Although Anduin might change that as well or probably already did this, looking at the peace between the faction and the situation the Night Elves are left in.

I strongly doubt that current writers are interested in building up the Horde or would allow any other writers to do it.

Who cares if Thrall was willing to fight and siege Orgrimmar? People whine and whine and whine about Horde not killing Horde, but then whine and whine and whine about Mary Sues.

You're playing the barbarian faction which isn't supposed to bother so much with political BS. Cracking heads for what you believe in is the fucking point. But no, if the barbarians fight and crack heads for what they believe in, rather than discussing things over tea or falling in line, they're 'traitors'.

As for Baine rescuing Derek, it had nothing to do with him being Jaina's brother specifically. Every Horde leader who saw it was disgusted with the plan. Baine was the only one with the balls to act in that case. So that's actually a positive. So what if there was a little infighting. Should he have knitted them sweaters?

The issue with Baine is that writers have been angling the story so that war against the Alliance is evil. For Baine to be a good guy who fights evil, that sticks him in a shitty situation where the evil to fight is the Horde. What's more, they used him as the last Horde character with diplomatic relations to the Alliance in Thrall's absence, as a placeholder. With the clumsy writing, this has left him as an awkwardly isolated character, as he's never fit in any Horde that he's been a part of.

Thrall never really lead a proper war against the WoW Alliance. He fought against the Alliance of Lordaeron, but the Alliance of Lordaeron was not this assembly of holy samaritians, who forgive anything that is done against them, don't want revenge etc.

Seriously? In this case, you're completely missing the issue despite bringing it up.

War against an assembly of holy samaritans isn't fun. In fact, it's extremely destructive to a faction, because it guarantees that you're the villain. And the villain loses. Thrall didn't do any massive faction warring back in the day, because the world design and plot wasn't focused on Horde/Alliance military action. That was an incidental thing.

In Cataclysm, in the Goblin starting zone, Thrall absolutely fucking wrecks the Alliance forces which captured him. He was more than willing to fight them when needed, but that was back when the Alliance hadn't become the stupidly purest of the pure.

But seriously, once the Alliance completed its evolution to Lawful Good overdrive, it killed any reason to fight them. I don't like the Alliance, I don't like their story, and killing the Alliance just gets more Alliance into the Horde story. Fighting the Alliance is boring shit. So fuck it. Fuck the faction war, fuck fighting an enemy a thousandfold less interesting than Murlocs and Troggs.

To me, Garrosh and Baine may as well be the same character. They both get more Alliance shit in Horde content, either as enemies or allies.

[Gann Stonespire]

Remind me again which faction

- got all the expensive cinematics

You got all the novels and those expensive cinematics were dedicated to vilifying the Horde for the Alliance narrative.

- got all the story focus, with the other faction effectively a plot device

Oh yeah, I remember, it was the Alliance.

- massacred one of the other faction's core races to near extinction

Newsflash, near extinction means nothing in WoW.

Darkspear Trolls were; the smallest of the Gurubashi troll tribes, exiled with many abandoned, persecuted to near extinction by the sea witch and Kul'tiras, forced to flee in boats, persecuted again by Daelin Proudmoore, had half of their population killed by Zalazane, and then the other half massacred in the Darkspear rebellion.

And guess what they can still field giant armies.

Essentially nameless or minor character deaths don't mean shit in this game. The faction that lost all of its named and important characters, guess who it was, the Horde.

- had the strategic planner of that massacre held up as a noble hero dying as a martyr, to be honored by the other faction's leaders

Had one of their few remaining and famous Heroes be Anduin's bitch, yes, that was the Horde.

- didn't have that massacre's fallen corpses violated to leap up and side with their killers

Boo hoo, you lost two no name Night Elves who had never appeared before.

- magically had more forces remaining at the end despite Chief Bootlicker reporting "defeat is a matter of weeks"

That applies to everyone in WoW. And the fact that the Horde spent all of BFA losing to the Alliance should tell you something.

- had all the atrocities committed swept under the rug because that one mean undead blood elf flew away

The Alliance's atrocities haven't even been brought up for the past few expansions, so get in line dude.

Would you like me to go on?

Yeah, I would like to hear more of your deluded rant. Seriously Alliance stan entitlement, as long as the Horde exists, they'll always claim that Horde player somehow has it better then them.

"Boo hoo, we went to a council!" Yeah, which means more of your characters making appearances to talk, argue, scheme and so on, as enjoyed by writers who liked GoT. Meanwhile, one by one ours are being written out or ignored in favor of Anduin Crybaby the Nontoxic.

A council composed of an Alliance plant(Baine), slave of Alliance plant(Lor'themar), a leader with a long history with the Alliance and no history with Horde and tried to convince the Forsaken to join the Alliance(Calia), then basically nothing for everybody else combined with more of the Horde's culture being thrown in the trashcan. That is a victory for the Alliance.

Not even likely, it's well known there was writing conflicts, "misunderstandings" if we're being charitable/corporate speak on Garrosh. You can see Metzen's mindset about Thrall when post-retirement Blizzcon he asked "When will the Horde get its TRUE warchief back?"

Metzen hasn't written for the series in years.

[Feanoro]

snip

Thanks for letting me know not to take you seriously, complete with insults. I leave you with an old favorite on the subject of atrocities.

[KrakHed]

Thanks for letting me know not to take you seriously, complete with insults. I leave you with an old favorite on the subject of atrocities.

Replace Hillsbrad with Teldrassil already, you incompetent ninny. The Horde kills the people responsible for that. Might as well show pictures of the Scarlet Crusade and hold that up as an Alliance atrocity.

Infracted.

[Feanoro]

Replace Hillsbrad with Teldrassil already, you incompetent ninny. The Horde kills the people responsible for that. Might as well show pictures of the Scarlet Crusade and hold that up as an Alliance atrocity.

1) Not my image, and yes it's dated. If it was mine (or if I had any real ability with paint), I'd put Teldrassil and Brennadam, along with choice selections from the blighting of Darkshore.

2) Posted in response to someone who clearly isn't interested in anything but his "Horde are victims" narrative.

[Jastall]

Why they'd even go through this whole personality purification process with the Horde, if their plan really is to write interesting stories for the Horde. By interesting I'm thinking of stories that enable conflicts, both inter-faction and outward, which is something Horde always did better than Alliance and was part of its appeal in the first place.

I might be pessimistic, but looking at the cast we're left with and new characters introduced, I really doubt they'd be introducing anyone new and it all just looks to me like a giant setup for Avengers of Azeroth kind of story lines we're possibly be getting in the future.

I wouldn't say the Horde lost much in terms of personality in the first place. Sylvanas was already turned into a monologuing edgelady long ago, Nathanos was Sylvanas without tits, Saurfang had a cool story in concept but terrible in execution, and Gallywix was close to being a meme character in the game proper.

The Horde's been fucked ever since they appointed Garrosh Warchief and gave me more reasons to hate my boss than to hate my supposed enemy. We've been riding that bullshit wave from Cata onwards, and our roster's been a joke since they killed Cairne offscreen, made his son a spineless damsel, had Thrall go through Metzen's midlife crisis, turned our Warchief into Hitler, and killed our other Warchief via trash mob because muh faction war has to happen. BfA was just them trimming off the caricatures that remained.

At this point I'll gladly take Avengers of Azeroth over Game of Warchiefs season 8.