Horde and Alliance presentation and perception. From NPCs to Playerbase.

[Dalheim]

Yeah, i remember when seeing Thrall was something significant (outside of Orgri i mean). Also villainy is not a good story but i will not lie when i say that some Horde players seemingly liked it and refuse to accept more mellow or mild story based on Horde’s “good” side. Well, i also see lots of Alliance people howling for blood and demanding a chance to inflict a genocide or some kind of horrible war crime on a Horde. Its one thing to have a reason of resources (like Garrosh) which no longer even exist with additon of Zandalar, Highmountain, Suramar and other zones and thats another to be continuously attacked and exterminated or displaced (Gilneans, Night elfs) by the Horde or just harassed by them without any way of striking back meaningfully. Thats frustrating and idk if Blizz can solve that problem. Its just too convoluted and deepply embedded in their own bad writing

There's one thing being good and ''noble savage'' Horde.

People hate Spineless Baine Horde and 100% Villain Horde..

[Mehrunes]

At least be honest and say "disproportionately moreso for Alliance issues than Horde issues." Baine defends the Horde plenty.

And as far as I'm concerned Derek doesn't count against him in that regard. Derek was a forsaken being deprived of free will. That's a Horde issue. By the end we even see Derek ultimately leave his family and follow Calia into her attempts of joining/aiding the forsaken.

When did Derek join the Forsaken? And brainwashing (let alone attempted brainwashing) is still not depriving someone of free will in the way that the Forsaken have been.

We've had 10,000 "Everybody hates Baine" threads, don't make another one. There is literally nothing Blizzard could do that would redeem him in your eyes at this point. Talk about the Horde/Alliance presentation.

But how Baine is presented in the game is a subject related to Horde/Alliance presentation as he's an important element of the Alliance one. Stop playing backseat moderator because you have no arguments.

It was only ever brought up because of you proving my point. How is Blizzard supposed to make factions players like and identify with when you enter every single piece of content dead-set on hating every single character within them?

This is nothing more than a straw-man the size of a universe. @Super Dickmann disliking Baine because of how Baine was presented doesn't mean they enter "every single piece of content dead-set on hating every single character within the factions". What if I told you that contrary to your attempts at pretending that Blizzard is infallible because you judge them by the "intent" of their writing (despite the fact that you're divining that "intent" out of fish entrails given how you are kinda not Blizzard, as well as the fact that by that metric no story is ever bad because basically no writer deliberately sets out to write a bad story) it's possible for Blizzard to miss the mark while making factions like and identify with and they for many people they did precisely that when they tried to homogenize the Horde with the Alliance by turning every important character within it into a sniveling Alliance sycophant like Baine?

Will we do the same stuff for all of Shadowlands? The second information comes out about the covenants we bicker for literal YEARS about how terribly written they all are the milisecond they hit PTR?

If it is terribly written why wouldn't it be criticized for being terrible written? Because Blizzard can do no wrong? How about you for once contemplate on why people are criticizing Blizzard's writing (and do so without projecting your "Blizzard's intent" onto the whole thing) instead of being outraged that ungrateful plebs dares to criticize the god's gift to manking that is Blizzard and its storytelling?

The reason why I said disassociating the player with the factions is that issue of identity = people get riled up. Their character is associated with a faction full of NPCs that they've deemed terrible for whatever reason, they take this out on Blizzard by absolute nonstop obsessive hatemongering. BFA focusing on said factions and their characters all the more. Directly interacting with the player and actively attempting to stoke affiliation of your character with your faction. All this to fuel the emotional reaction to the events of the expansion, which only lead to the hatetrain getting far, far, FAR worse. To the point where all I have to do is say the word "Baine" or "Sylvanas" and people will yell and bicker for hundreds of pages.

Yes, yes, Blizzard is a poor innocent victim that can do no wrong. Because what stellar "focusing on said factions and their characters" they did for the Horde. Saurfang disobeyes the Warchief twice, goes AWOL, deliberately lets himself be captured by the enemy which breaks all kinds of Orc values, harps about honor while changing what it means every time you see him (and only to end the expansion with the conclusion that he never knew honor, making all his prior blabbering and moralizing all the emptier), refuses to be freed by the Horde and abandons the Orcs he was a racial leader of in the process, escapes prison only when motivated by a human teenager (to whom he admits he let himself be captured because he hoped said teenager would beat the Horde for him because god forbids he took matters into his own hands, let alone dealt with Horde problems within the Horde and in a Horde way), refuses to cooperate with Warchief's agents and then goes on a murder spree killing no one but Horde members.

Gee, whyever would Horde players dislike that. Oh, I forgot, because of their "abslute nonstop obsessive hatemongering". Any other reason is simply impossible

God forbid people weren't mindless Blizzard drones and were actually capable of developing emotional reactions to Blizzard's emotional fuel that were different to what Blizzard may have wanted them to be when they were shoving a green human and bull shaped human down Horde player's throats. Oh, wait, that's precisely the case. Because humans aren't a hive mind subservient to the Blizzard overmind. Which should have made it rather obvious that just because they fueled emotional reactions doesn't mean those reactions would have to be positive. And that given their cheap moralizing, and lazy storytelling that instead of developing the factions in a logical manner where they are actually distinct entities homogenizes the shit out of them and forces the human potential on everything in their story the negative emotion was more than likely to say the least.

[Grazrug]

Baine ain't a noble savage. He's a spineless coward and perhaps the weakest, most boring character of the whole story.

[Soon-TM]

You are ignoring that Baine is hated because no leader in any society would praise the enemy for bombing their own citizens and then exile anyone defending their nation from invasion.

Realistically Baine's head should be in a pike.

The funniest part is that Baine didn't give a flying !@#& when Sylvanas raised fallen Tauren during the siege of Lordaeron. His righteous fury only came up when Sylvanas raised Auntie Jaina's little older brother lmao.

[Mehrunes]

The funniest part is that Baine didn't give a flying !@#& when Sylvanas raised fallen Tauren during the siege of Lordaeron. His righteous fury only came up when Sylvanas raised Auntie Jaina's little brother lmao.

Derek's actually older than Jaina. Tandred is the younger brother.

[Soon-TM]

Derek's actually older than Jaina. Tandred is the younger brother.

Alright, my bad then, I will edit my previous post.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I signed up for the Horde because I wanted to be an honorable outcast.

When I looked at WoW, I saw the classical heroic faction of knights and dwarves, and... what's this? Heroic beastmen? Beastmen who are not evil, but just trying to make their own way in life? And they're just as capable of heroism as the knights in shining armor? Sign me up!

The Horde had a really interesting story. The Orcs were trying to claw their way back to redemption, after having given in to a very, very bad idea and having practically destroyed their world and their culture, setting them back decades. The Forsaken were a people who were destroyed, trying to find meaning in their new, twisted existence. The Blood Elves were - like the orcs - trying to rebuld after having nearly been wiped out. The Trolls and Tauren were societies of beastmen who took pity upon the Orcs and the Forsaken, and seeing potential in them, decided to help them out.

That is the Horde I signed up for. A Horde made up of people with an inglorious past, seeking to shake off the chains of the past and to better themselves. To become the ideal, righteous, honorable Horde told to them in stories.

Cata made me nervous, because it had the Horde leaning towards the traditional, evil bad guy beastmen like in classical stories, with Garrosh becoming Warchief and Sylvanas invading Gilneas and killing tens of thousands of innocent people. Still, it was only really just Garrosh and Sylvanas. The narrative went out of its way to establish them as bad guys who do not represent what the Horde is supposed to be. Every other Horde character reviled Garrosh and Sylvanas. It was clear that people like Saurfang, Etrigg, Rexxar, Vol'jin, Baine, Lilian Voss, and Lor'Themar represented the true Horde, and our belief was justified when Garrosh was eventually overthrown and Vol'jin became Warchief. Although the Horde and the Alliance got barely any screentime in WoD (with WoD just being about heroes adventuring through Draenor and uniting the people there to fight the evil, Iron Horde), Vol'jin being Warchief gave me hope that we would return to getting the Horde I would be proud to be apart of.

Then Legion happens, and then Suevanas becomes Warchief and there was all that crap, which I've already talked quite extensively about, so I digress.

BFA killed my investment in the Horde.

When Suevanas invaded Darkshore and Horde druids began slaying their fellow Druids, when Horde heroes began slaying their fellow heroes who they had just stood with against the Iron Horde and the Legion with, killing their comrades without question, ugh. When the tree was burned and hundreds of thousands of innocents killed for no reason, and absolutely no one in the Horde turns on her, ugh. At most, Baine and Saurfang protest meekly but they still went along with all this crap. It's as if the whole Horde stood with Sylvanas. The scene where people began talking against her behind her back was too little and FAR, FAR too late. By that point I had just stopped caring about the Horde. They were all guilty and I just wanted to switch to Alliance.

I'd rather they just pretend that Vol'jin didn't die and BFA never happened. Horde and Alliance stood by each other to save Azeroth just like they did in WoD and Legion, no conflict at all.

[kansor]

Saurfang had a very good exit given a story that should not exist and had his character get progressively worse up to that point, and despite what a ruin it left the Horde in, both his final conversation with Anduin regarding honor and his confrontation with Sylvanas were appropriate notes. He goes from being a hypocrite who views himself as a sole moral authority to freely admitting that he's wrong and his conception of the Horde not matching reality, then from shying away and letting Horde lose their lives while leaving resolving the situation to others to taking the most Horde possible means - Mak'gora and refusing to engage in battle because he acknowledges all groups involved in the Orgrimmar stand-off as Horde. It was a good send-off, having Shalamayne in hand aside.

I WAS surprised that they had Saurfang confront his own hypocrisy. If you were going to tell the story in a serious way, that would be important, because the basis of his hypocrisy is the very same contradiction on which Thrall's "New Horde" was premised: the idea that you can reject the Old Horde's militarism while retaining the honor ethic in which those militaristic values are inscribed and upheld.

As a reformist leader, that's the kind of line Thrall had to walk, but it's a contradiction all the same, and it's what led to Garrosh. We clown Blizzard for saying the Horde needed to resolve its internal issues in BFA when that's what MOP was all about, but there's a sense in which it's true. Garrosh was a reactionary -- he proposed to solve the contradiction of New Hordeism by just going back to the old ways. But the conclusion of MOP entailed simply a reaffirmation of New Hordeism; the contradiction that gave rise to Garrosh hadn't been solved. So that was destined to boil over. Ultimately, if it wants to modernize, the Horde needs to abandon the nostalgic appeals to "honor" altogether.

Saurfang did seem to acknowledge this, though he apparently wanted to redefine "honor" ("the Old Horde never had honor to begin with...") rather than abandon it. So, what was the result of this realization? How did his behavior change? It didn't, at all. Several hours later he proceeded to challenge Sylvanas to mak'gora in the old orcish way and die just as he'd always wanted. That this, through a heavy handed deus ex machina, actually caused him to win was a total accident; he could not have predicted it. He challenged her because he wanted to satisfy his private fantasies and die a martyr with a big crowd watching.

In this light, there's nothing revelatory about Saurfang's statement that the Old Horde never had honor to begin with. The Horde had already definitively rejected the deeds of Blackhand & co. That's what the Garrosh arc was all about. What it needed to reject was its hypocritical attachment to "honor". And that's what Saurfang refused to do. Saying that the Old Horde never had honor is not only a way of refusing to confront the past, it's entirely missing the point, which is that all the atrocities you just condemned functioned not in opposition to, but in spite of, in tandem with, and often because of the exact honor system you want to rescue and salvage from that historical circumstance.



The "we are all Horde, on both sides of the wall" is a pretty self-serving statement as well. It's a way of scapegoating Sylvanas in preparation for installing your own regime -- "no, it's not you the people, you are Horde, it's just that the nasty lady was a traitor".

Because if you look at what Saurfang's rebellion actually was? It was very different from the Darkspear Rebellion that threw out Garrosh. It was a small group of globalist elites (we're told they are greatly outnumbered by the Horde forces within Orgrimmar, even when combined with the Alliance troops), funded, incited and armed by the Alliance.

In fact it's pretty funny how much more successful Anduin's conquest of the Horde, using soft power, was than his father's more heavy-handed approach. For one, because Anduin created the rebellion (by releasing and abetting Saurfang) himself, he owned it from the start, whereas Varian never had full control of the Darkspear Rebellion, with the result that an actually pro-Horde leader (Vol'jin) was installed.

[Varitok]

Baine ain't a noble savage. He's a spineless coward and perhaps the weakest, most boring character of the whole story.

He's among the most consistent characters in the game. I'm sorry he didn't murder a few innocence like some GoT knockoff.

[Hyeonh]

When I played Horde i got behind them real fast with the theme of Misfits trying to carve out a place they can call home as a family and as comrades. But i really hated it when they started to portray the horde in a more black and white style story instead of every side has something more complicated going around the world and it's factions that made it easier to get invested in.

In the Horde Orcs were still struggling with remnants of the loyalists to the Burning Legion and dealing with them as a whole, the trolls just wanted a place they call home together with the Orcs and Tauren so they worked together to get it back, and the Forsaken were the odd ones out in a world that rejects them and former friends and family wanting to kill them so they found companionship within the horde. In Burning crusade they brought in Blood Elves who felt betrayed by the Alliance and for their own survival they join the horde and later fight against the very prince they once loved together with the Horde.

Alliance also had their own problems and complexities that needed to be solved. Humans were struggling hard from inner and outer problems from Onyxia meddling from the inside causing the Defias to happen, Not only that Red Ridge and Duskwood were being besieged by foreign threats like Blackrock Orcs and at the time Mysterious Worgen. the Dwarves were dealing with an unfinished civil war with The Dark Iron Dwarves and the King faced a dilemma with Moira being pregnant with a son that will inherit both Kingdoms. Night Elves for the worst deal in their home as they have to recover from the Burning Legion's invasion, the nightmare that turns their friends against them, and also deal with Orcish incursions in Ashenvale at the same time.

[Soon-TM]

He's among the most consistent characters in the game. I'm sorry he didn't murder a few innocence like some GoT knockoff.

Yes, he's always consistently been a Purity Sue, that much is true. In that regard, he's much more consistent than his antithesis Sylvie, who went from your typical lawful evil character to Saturday morning cartoon, 5D chess master villain

[Super Dickmann]

Great post in general, fun to read, so much so that I wrote a wall of text in response, ended up closing the tab by accident and this is now Take 2. Bear with me here, I'll give this shit a lot more thought than it's due.

I WAS surprised that they had Saurfang confront his own hypocrisy. If you were going to tell the story in a serious way, that would be important, because the basis of his hypocrisy is the very same contradiction on which Thrall's "New Horde" was premised: the idea that you can reject the Old Horde's militarism while retaining the honor ethic in which those militaristic values are inscribed and upheld.

I'd argue there's actually several conflicts here and Mists indeed addresses only one of them. Namely, that there were contradictory bases for Thrall's new Horde that go back to the fact it doesn't actually stem from him at its core but from Orgrim. On one hand, the foundation of the Horde is the same - it is the position of the Warchief as absolute military leader, it is the militarism that informs all orc clans because to be anything else on Draenor is asking to be killed, it's the shamanism strains of which they all have in common and it's their loss in the wars and the history that comes with it. While all these are things you could extend to the races that would follow, the core of it is inherently orcish, these structures stem from the orcs and I'd argue they aren't really contradictory within that context - the orcs have unified before successfully when they brought down the Gorian Empire, that's where the idea of the Warchief comes from past just the Legion - both the Blackrocks and the Frostwolves, two of the clans that Thrall based his policies on were successful not despite but because they were also being militaristic, to not be would be against what the orcs are. It's when the outside elements come in that this changes.

Because Thrall isn't just influenced by Drek'thar or Orgrim, but by his upbringing under Blackmoore and by the political expediency that allowed him to succeed and expand after Orgrim died, but that also made him make some godawful choices, setting up in Durotar and making his people dependant on the dole chief among them. The influence of his human upbringing is why while he does set up a sedentary lifestyle, it's not of hte kind the clans had, but closer to the humans and why he's far more open to expanding to other races and making them full members of the Horde, which wasn't the case with Orgrim who mostly had the other races as allies and Blackhand, who had them as subjugated tools. Yet even the races that had many traits in common with the orcs like the trolls and tauren, still had core differences that'd crop up later - they had chieftains, but not of the Warchief variety, they were not regimented in the same style and the tauren were used to evading problems, not engaging them, see the centaur - once they'd set up, they wanted to be safe. Ditto the Darkspear who've been hunted. And because of their numbers and conditions, they could do so, where the orcs could not. Still, those guys and the orcs who came around to Thrall and his views - of which Saurfang is a representative, represent that aspirational element of the New Horde - shamanism, redemption and so forth, as well as unity among the races, that the orcs were just one part of the Horde - he is a product of Thrall's Horde as much as the old one.

And so is Sylvanas, who represents the political calculus Thrall was involved in that made him succeed in the first place - her view of the Horde is entirely transactional, ditto the blood elves and goblins to a lesser extent, the values that it presents are there as a fig leaf and the real purpose of the Horde is as a political tools to solve the grievances of its members and advances its interests. That's after all all Thrall imposed on her and them - do whatever you like, just help out. We won't look too closely at what those apothecaries are doing or the naaru in your basement and my boy Gallywix, we won't ask you too much about those slaves. We actually have a few of those in the Ring of Blood and Rehgar's a stand-up guy.

Both however are products of the New Horde and in their separation from the orcish core are both alien to an outside context party like Garrosh. That's why he clashes with both - he clashes with Sylvanas and Company because they are alien to the values and culture of the Horde as he knows it, he clashes with the tauren and trolls because beneath the surface similarities, they still aren't orcs and don't treat the orcish institutions in the same way, on top of many of them being unable to pull their weight. The Mists story then is whether the Horde will be meaningfully orcish or not with the answer being no as Garrosh is toppled and the orcs ultimately turn on him because yes, they've absorbed the heroes of the Second War but they've also absorbed the other races as members of the Horde. At this point, you've kept all the institutions of the Horde but expelled all the racial and cultural context that made them what they are. Working from that point, you can see what story could be told with Sylvanas and Saurfang that touched on such themes, we even see hints of that in BTS.

Sylvanas doesn't want to impose orcish norms on the other races, she doesn't want them to act like she would have and she allows them to practice whatever cultural norms they want provided they fight - she doesn't care past that point. This is an entirely transactional arrangement where waging war is not a matter of seizing resources, avenging slights or so forth, though all these can be used in argument, but political calculus to advance the interests of the Horde, all backed by the combination of the militaristic hero worship of the Second War-era heroes, the hollowing out of the orcish warrior culture and the compromises made up to that point that have put her in that position in the first place. Her population doesn't have to like her personally, they just have to accept her as an avatar of their grievances who can competently execute them - and when Saurfang brings up the figleaves of honor and so on, they don't work, no better showing of that when he first goes on with her, enjoys himself and even after she burns the tree he finds himself internally rationalizing the decision and putting it together, showing how he's either been robbed of or given up on the tools to meaningfully oppose this form of thinking, brought home by how the things the New Horde did bring up and preserve from Garrosh - racial unity, shamanism and so forth, are the same ones used to commit a much greater crime in Teldrassil than what was managed before. From there, you could explore what either approach entailed - the Horde as a transactional war machine without interest in its people's cultures vs. the Horde trying to find some unifying point after they'd removed what held it together before. But BFA isn't that story.

I've already gone on way too long, but there's two things that damage the BFA Horde story badly that get little attention and tie into why the whole above spiel, while intended given Danuser's interview, falls apart in execution. The first is that there's no actual ideological reckoning - Sylvanas is not a representative of Sylvanas's own views, they're just cover for her retarded plan, and because of this, her views were never affirmed or rejected. At last counting, her views are actually dominant - her Horde is more powerful than the rebels and Alliance combined and only fails because her views are not actually her views - she doesn't care about grievances, self-interest or what have you, she just wants to kill people and so when she leaves, her followers abandon her. Which leads into point number two - the loyalists' motivation is nonsensical bullshit. BTS handles this the best by stressign that she has to constantly pander because people rightfully mistrust her and that she's being buoyed by her success and by the positions she represents - i.e militarism, victory and revenge, peace through strength. This is echoed in the interviews given by the devs that mention that people follow Sylvanas because they think she can end things and because of what she stands for. But if that were the case, if Sylvanas really were followed because of her beliefs, then her departure should change nothing - her points have the weight they do despite who she is, not because of it. Why then do people turn over the city to the people who until recently they were against, were willing to kill and mocked on the streets as they were paraded along? And if she is followed for herself personally as surely she must be if they don't actually care about her platform all that much, then why would they turn on her even then? There's no way to square the people of the Horde as an entity because no matter what their rationale it'd have fallen apart at some stage and so the conclusion of the story falls apart.

[Ardenaso]

Horde druids began slaying their fellow Druids

nope, the Horde druids were all quarantined in Silithus and the invasion was kept a secret from them

[Feanoro]

Cut to observe forum rules

Well written. Meanwhile, Alliance story is "Golly guys, if we just keep forgiving these massacres, maybe they'll love us eventually!" Also, found Anduin's theme song for the Alliance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGDmSHuBAec

[Super Dickmann]

Well written. Meanwhile, Alliance story is "Golly guys, if we just keep forgiving these massacres, maybe they'll love us eventually!" Also, found Anduin's theme song for the Alliance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGDmSHuBAec

Hopefully one day he'll upgrade to this, it's still on theme.

Speaking of, if you forage through the interviews, while you'll never find even the barest suggestion that the night elves would matter, I do think it was considered at one point for Anduin to have more of a storyline about living up to his father. It's mentioned that Lordaeron would be about him showing he can be like his dad and demonstrating his manhood, something that much like the diatribe about Sylvanas and Saurfang's ideological struggle that never ended up coming to pass squares with BTS' build-up and the BFA hype materials but not the game itself. I'm fairly sure there was a version of this story where Anduin, to prove his advisors he's a king, perhaps to bring justice for the Gathering and after provocation by Sylvanas attacked Lordaeron unprepared and the fact that it went as poorly as it did for him was a plot point.

Reading up on this stuff does make some of the coyness about whether Teldrassil or Lordaeron would come first funny, since there's a big chance they didn't know themselves until late into the process.

[kansor]

I do think it was considered at one point for Anduin to have more of a storyline about living up to his father. It's mentioned that Lordaeron would be about him showing he can be like his dad and demonstrating his manhood [...] I'm fairly sure there was a version of this story where Anduin, to prove his advisors he's a king, perhaps to bring justice for the Gathering and after provocation by Sylvanas attacked Lordaeron unprepared and the fact that it went as poorly as it did for him was a plot point.

Which would make it all the more impactful when Anduin's own soft power approach ultimately ends up more successful than his father's kick in the door approach, which blew up in Anduin's face at Undercity.

Thinking about the best way for the BFA story to go, I can't decide whether I would prefer a "done right" version of the story we were promised, with a big war that ends in a convincing peace, or a more realpolitik version of the story we got, where the Alliance uses soft power and internal division to neuter their opponent, the races who actually lost things in the war (the undead and night elves) get silenced, and the real winners are the Davos types like Baine and Valeera. The latter story is more realistic, to be frank...

[Super Dickmann]

Which would make it all the more impactful when Anduin's own soft power approach ultimately ends up more successful than his father's kick in the door approach, which blew up in Anduin's face at Undercity.

Thinking about the best way for the BFA story to go, I can't decide whether I would prefer a "done right" version of the story we were promised, with a big war that ends in a convincing peace, or a more realpolitik version of the story we got, where the Alliance uses soft power and internal division to neuter their opponent, the races who actually lost things in the war (the undead and night elves) get silenced, and the real winners are the Davos types like Baine and Valeera. The latter story is more realistic, to be frank...

Any version of the story would be improved exponentially by the removal of retcons of the BTS sort re: the Forsaken and simply more realistic character writing. My preference, on the condition that I'd have to make as few changes as possible, is for them to have done the story that was alluded to - commit fully to the Alliance/Horde angle with the focus being on the two leaders, both new to their posts dealing with the inherent contradictions of their characters with the post they occupy. In Anduin's case, it was matching his father's legacy and tempering his own goals for peace with the counsel of his allies. You could have him go for Lordaeron half-cocked because it's his idea of what his dad could've done and then, as you suggest, have him over their opposition work through Saurfang in a way that's both subversive - showing Shaw's influence and his maturity from the direct approach he was less used to and fitting with his character to spread peace.

This'd of course cause friction with the night elves and the in this scenario un-neutered Kul Tirans when it was discovered. Horde-side, you could either keep the current track with Sylvanas but simply play it to the hilt in the sense we talked over earlier. Have the Vol'dun story as its microcosm - just like how in the end Korthek is killed but his people still keep his values of conquest, have the Horde ultimately renounce Sylvanas the person but not the ideology that they followed her on, at least not in their entirety, creating a lasting schism that is the reason the war ends because, coupled with N'zoth, and with all real leadership candidates dead the Horde is unable to capitalize on either policy. The Council in that case would be less a gathering of identical enlightened monarchs so much as a ramshackle arrangement of competing interest groups. Anduin would accept this, since his own troops were spent and he viewed Sylvanas's removal as the main thing, but the others would not and no longer following him and with the Horde in disarray, the Alliance would get decisive victories in Darkshore and Arathi as in canon. They'd however not be able to claim a full victory because of the heavy losses incurred prior and it'd end up in a sort of chilly detente enabled by the inroads Anduin'd set up with guys like Bob and Baine who'd be limiting the Horde response and withdraw their own forces.

Besides, Valeera and Baine are less Davos types than they are the clueless dupes thereof, with the story we actually got almost being a parody of that sort of mindset except played entirely straight, complete with an enlightened minority of visually different but ideologically identical elites swaying the masses, who were only brainwashed into holding their beliefs and actually want to agree with them. It's a baffling bit of writing.