The greatest failures of the horde.

[omeomorfismo]

One guy complains the Horde is irrelevant to the plot.
Next guy complains the Alliance is irrelevant to the plot because they claim the Alliance only reacts to things the Horde does and doesn't initiate things themselves.

Which is it?

i mean, to be fair both are right.
in the faction conflict plots, after the battle for undercity where varian started the world war, every single time the horde was the active character and alliance was passive or warped to ignore its previous acts (like all the stromheim plot in bfa, the attacks on the forsakens boats in wrath, even the varian's declaration of war)
in the big bad guy plots effectively the horde is irrilevant. to the point that they could be even cutted from the game and nothing would change.
probably the only exception is uldir, but take the entirety of legion, there is even a single horde character in the story? there are belves in the attack of suramar, thats all.

[Soon-TM]

Still prefer that over the creepy guys that literally want to lick Sylvanas' undead rotting feet and defend unrestrained mass murder of civilians, but I guess we just disagree there.

Looks like I struck a nerve there. Also, gj implying that I am pro-Sylvanas, I knew that there was more !@$# flying towards the Horde as soon as she was made Warchief.

[Schattenlied]

None of the above, their greatest failure was following Sylvanas into a pointless war in the first place, instead of telling her to get stuffed.

[Raisei]

Looks like I struck a nerve there. Also, gj implying that I am pro-Sylvanas, I knew that there was more !@$# flying towards the Horde as soon as she was made Warchief.

I was actually refering to the people in most of the many "Sylvanas is evil/not evil" threads, not you specifically. Sorry if you took it that way.

But my point stands. I will always prefer people that have a functioning moral compass (even if that makes them a bit arrogant in the process) over those that defend the outright mass murder of civilians and I am time and again baffled in this forum how often something so obvious gets denied by the Sylvanas fanboi cult.

You might not be one of the cult yourself, but apparently you prefer them, so I can only wonder, how? Just because they are not Alliance? You must after all realize that they are not pro-Horde either. What is it about honest and good people that makes you hate them so much?

[mickybrighteyes]

Baine should have got the punishment Zelling received... and then have Zelling in Baine's place for the following events. But instead of Baine as Warchief stand in we just have a series of failed warchief wannabes like that orc in the Vulpera scenario and a LOT of Mak'gora

[cparle87]

i mean, to be fair both are right.
in the faction conflict plots, after the battle for undercity where varian started the world war, every single time the horde was the active character and alliance was passive or warped to ignore its previous acts (like all the stromheim plot in bfa, the attacks on the forsakens boats in wrath, even the varian's declaration of war)
in the big bad guy plots effectively the horde is irrilevant. to the point that they could be even cutted from the game and nothing would change.
probably the only exception is uldir, but take the entirety of legion, there is even a single horde character in the story? there are belves in the attack of suramar, thats all.

I get what you're saying. Guess we'll have to wait for Word of God to tell us who was responsible for taking out each raid. As for Legion, both factions took a back seat and basically released their champions to serve in faction-neutral all-inclusive order halls.

[Super Dickmann]

Baine should have got the punishment Zelling received... and then have Zelling in Baine's place for the following events. But instead of Baine as Warchief stand in we just have a series of failed warchief wannabes like that orc in the Vulpera scenario and a LOT of Mak'gora

Baine should not have been involved in that story at all and if they insisted on doing this beat, he should've been the one to stand up to Sylvanas at Lordaeron over the raising of his people. The total non-reaction to what is a massive cultural taboo to the orcs and is implied to be one for the tauren as well as contrasted by them absolutely losing their shit over one (1) undead human being mind controlled in a society that has had slavery for its entire existence except maybe Vol'jin's reign is among the stupidest elements of the plot. And the fact that it's not Forsaken who even take issue with it but Baine who takes issue on their behalf and Zelling who, good character though he is, has at that point been part of the Horde and the Forsaken for 1 patch is another part where the failures in execution are as bad as the failure in intent.

@cparle87

That both factions do a story doesn't mean that that story has equally resonant themes to both factions. Thrall handed out quests to both factions in Cataclysm but he's still the former Warchief of the Horde and his story was still entirely about his relationship with orcish shamanism, his position as the orcish Warchief and his regret over his friend in the Horde Cairne and his Horde successor Garrosh. Ditto, a story where you kill orcs on behalf of a WC2 Alliance wizard representative of the Alliance human mages or a story where not one orc has a role vs. the corruptor of the orcish people in favor of the same human mage, the draenei racial leader and two returning WC2 Alliance characters, along with class halls that're either faction agnostic like the Warlock one or involve saving Stormwind and the subversion of the SI:7 leader in the rogue one or the revival and exclusive iconography of the Alliance human paladin organisation have far more connection to one faction than the other. And that faction is the Alliance.

[mickybrighteyes]

Baine should not have been involved in that story at all and if they insisted on doing this beat, he should've been the one to stand up to Sylvanas at Lordaeron over the raising of his people. The total non-reaction to what is a massive cultural taboo to the orcs and is implied to be one for the tauren as well as contrasted by them absolutely losing their shit over one (1) undead human being mind controlled in a society that has had slavery for its entire existence except maybe Vol'jin's reign is among the stupidest elements of the plot. And the fact that it's not Forsaken who even take issue with it but Baine who takes issue on their behalf and Zelling who, good character though he is, has at that point been part of the Horde and the Forsaken for 1 patch is another part where the failures in execution are as bad as the failure in intent.

Oh I know well that Baine shouldn't have been involved there. But they were set to have him shoved in somehow and there were other times it felt like different writing teams were juggling things behind the scenes... Like how about that "Thunderbluff will burn" line... But seriously. Zelling was executed on the spot for treason but Baine who was responsible for bringing him along had to get ushered off to an elaborate cell for mustache twirling side plot and forced divide among the faction because 'loyalty to the horde' or 'loyalty to the best thing about the horde' (and this being what baine is described as? What the flying fuck.... this is prolly right up there with that forsaken guardians of life bullshit).

Just the whole thing is a mess beyond words and it's... just a train wreck. And yet we're still going to get more from people trying to morally grandstand over everything and remind us that whatever we might have thought doesn't matter cause it was all lies to justify a genocidal maniac having their way.

[Super Dickmann]

Oh I know well that Baine shouldn't have been involved there. But they were set to have him shoved in somehow and there were other times it felt like different writing teams were juggling things behind the scenes... Like how about that "Thunderbluff will burn" line... But seriously. Zelling was executed on the spot for treason but Baine who was responsible for bringing him along had to get ushered off to an elaborate cell for mustache twirling side plot and forced divide among the faction because 'loyalty to the horde' or 'loyalty to the best thing about the horde' (and this being what baine is described as? What the flying fuck.... this is prolly right up there with that forsaken guardians of life bullshit).

Just the whole thing is a mess beyond words and it's... just a train wreck. And yet we're still going to get more from people trying to morally grandstand over everything and remind us that whatever we might have thought doesn't matter cause it was all lies to justify a genocidal maniac having their way.

I think is that there was a version of this where Baine had a more prominent role in the climax and where Thunder Bluff really was targeted. There is a hell of a lot of focus on that in that cutscene and an emphasis on Sylvanas attacking it over that, with the united front making their stand there. This is added to by how Baine is entirely functional in the heritage scenario that came out in the same patch as his escape but he's allegedly too injured and totally off-screen in 8.2.5. Couple that with how abrupt the transition from Dustwallow to the Barrens is and my suspicion is that there was a lot of extra stuff that was supposed to be there conceptually but got cut.

[sillag]

the poll results really illustrate that the greatest failure of the horde was the players embracing sylvanas's fascist conquerer horde when blizzard hadn't expected or intended them to do so

they obviously tried in their incompetent way to write a story where the horde players would be uncomfortable with what was going on under sylvanas then get the payoff of revolting against her with saurfang and freeing the horde. but as we saw in the betas they hadn't prepared for what actually happened: the majority of horde players unironically embraced sylvanas and thought genocidal conquest was the right way for the horde.

the story was always going to be bad but the horde playerbase made it worse on themselves. we ended up with the loyalist questline that went nowhere and muddied the waters and took development time away from where it was sorely needed in this shitshow of a story, and even now at the end after a cutscene where sylvanas pulls the loyalist player aside to say "fuck u, and fuck the horde, and fuck the living, ur on ur own now and next time we see eachother im going to kill u then everyone else in the world" horde players are still staunchly loyal to her and think she is a heroine who should be redeemed

now obviously the blame doesn't lie with all horde players but it is the majority, and they share the blame with blizzard's terrible, garbage writers who started us down this road in the first place. but the intention of the story was clearly for the horde players to righteously reclaim the true honor of the horde, only for blizzard to discover that the players never actually gave a fuck about that.

[Sangris]

the poll results really illustrate that the greatest failure of the horde was the players embracing sylvanas's fascist conquerer horde when blizzard hadn't expected or intended them to do so

they obviously tried in their incompetent way to write a story where the horde players would be uncomfortable with what was going on under sylvanas then get the payoff of revolting against her with saurfang and freeing the horde. but as we saw in the betas they hadn't prepared for what actually happened: the majority of horde players unironically embraced sylvanas and thought genocidal conquest was the right way for the horde.

the story was always going to be bad but the horde playerbase made it worse on themselves. we ended up with the loyalist questline that went nowhere and muddied the waters and took development time away from where it was sorely needed in this shitshow of a story, and even now at the end after a cutscene where sylvanas pulls the loyalist player aside to say "fuck u, and fuck the horde, and fuck the living, ur on ur own now and next time we see eachother im going to kill u then everyone else in the world" horde players are still staunchly loyal to her and think she is a heroine who should be redeemed

now obviously the blame doesn't lie with all horde players but it is the majority, and they share the blame with blizzard's terrible, garbage writers who started us down this road in the first place. but the intention of the story was clearly for the horde players to righteously reclaim the true honor of the horde, only for blizzard to discover that the players never actually gave a fuck about that.

Yeah, how dare the Horde players not want to fight against their Warchief and their own faction for a second time after the first one was already shit! Who could have expected that, since Horde players just LOVE to kill their own faction NPCs and leaders! Clearly the Horde playerbase is to blame!

[Thage]

My general vote would actually be Thrall's rationale for settling in Durotar. You can trace this action back to almost all of the troubles the Horde faced post-WotLK and moving on into today.

Durotar wouldn't have been an issue had Thrall and the rest of the orcish leadership made any steps to futureproof their situation. Some basic irrigation and a little encouraging along the land to create a biosphere that could support traditional agriculture by the shaman and druids would have solved about 85% of the orcs' problems with basic necessities and prevented Durotar's ecological collapse leading up to the war in Northrend (as noted in Heart of War). Growing Durotar into farmland, and perhaps having the druids create forests in the flatlands outside Razor Hill, would have allowed Durotar to sustain its population, provided attempts were made after the initial harvest to replant. This would have allowed Thrall to pull the Warsong out of Ashenvale, leading directly to improved relations with the Sentinels (who wouldn't have felt so pressured to join the Alliance for reinforcements against Horde encroachment in their territories), which would have allowed Thrall to establish a proper trade route into Ashenvale so the kaldorei could harvest their lumber as befits their ways and send it down to Durotar in exchange for, say, meats and spices obtained from the Horde's operations in the Barrens.

A few orc-made channels and a few months' dedicated work from the tauren, troll, and orc shamans and tauren druids, perhaps even enlisting the aid of the night elves as part of the Ashenvale withdrawal deal, and Durotar could be just as lush and sustainable as the other capital territories.

On-topic: The Horde's worst failure in the Fourth War would likely be losing both Warfronts as well as failing to prevent the Alliance's ensuing attack on Dazar'Alor. I can only imagine those three events in quick succession did a number on the Horde's morale, especially considering what a meat-grinder the war was in general and how soon the Horde went back to war after returning from Argus. Battle fatigue after losing two major theatres of war and a Pyrrhic victory in a third would hit even the hardiest of orcs after years on years of nonstop battle with scarcely a few weeks to breathe.

- - - Updated - - -

I think is that there was a version of this where Baine had a more prominent role in the climax and where Thunder Bluff really was targeted. There is a hell of a lot of focus on that in that cutscene and an emphasis on Sylvanas attacking it over that, with the united front making their stand there. This is added to by how Baine is entirely functional in the heritage scenario that came out in the same patch as his escape but he's allegedly too injured and totally off-screen in 8.2.5. Couple that with how abrupt the transition from Dustwallow to the Barrens is and my suspicion is that there was a lot of extra stuff that was supposed to be there conceptually but got cut.

I get the feeling we were supposed to have a scenario where Thunder Bluff took a big hit from the loyalists, with your scenario changing based on whether you were Alliance/rebel or loyalist, and that was why the Alliance-Rebel Coalition was so depleted by the time it came to march on Orgrimmar's front gates, thereby necessitating Saurfang's Hail Mary where he lures Sylvanas into a mak'gora and hits her buttons until she outs herself in full view of everyone.

Unfortunately, instead of that we got the war subplot squeezed down to make room for the Old God subplot which honestly should have had its own expansion after Shadowlands, with the Old Gods and naga making their move while we're busy fixing the afterlife and tying up the loose ends with Sylvanas and Nathanos.

[sillag]

Yeah, how dare the Horde players not want to fight against their Warchief and their own faction for a second time after the first one was already shit! Who could have expected that, since Horde players just LOVE to kill their own faction NPCs and leaders! Clearly the Horde playerbase is to blame!

if you wanna cry then cry at blizzard. they had faith the in the horde playerbase to not embrace fascism but the horde players failed them.

its like if i try to tell you a story about the hare and the tortoise having a race and the hare rushes far ahead of the tortoise in the beginning then stops for a nap, foolishly allowing the slow yet steady-paced tortoise to overtake him and win the race. but then you respond with "damn, the hare was really the smart one in that situation, he did everything right. i hate tortoises. irresponsibility is admirable and steady work ethic is stupid"

blizzard simply didn't account for the horde playerbase to be as infantile as they were and bfa is the result.

[Minikin]

What do you guys think was the horde greatest shame during bfa? Let me know your reason in the common.

How in the nugget is preventing Zul from reaching ghunn a horde failure?

[Sangris]

if you wanna cry then cry at blizzard. they had faith the in the horde playerbase to not embrace fascism but the horde players failed them.

its like if i try to tell you a story about the hare and the tortoise having a race and the hare rushes far ahead of the tortoise in the beginning then stops for a nap, foolishly allowing the slow yet steady-paced tortoise to overtake him and win the race. but then you respond with "damn, the hare was really the smart one in that situation, he did everything right. i hate tortoises. irresponsibility is admirable and steady work ethic is stupid"

blizzard simply didn't account for the horde playerbase to be as infantile as they were and bfa is the result.

Oh please. Get off your high horse. You're in no position calling half of the playerbase infantile since you're not exactly a paragon of maturity yourself here. I mean seriously, calling Horde players who did side with Sylvanas fascists? Most people thankfully can discern fiction from reality and enjoy certain storylines and methods in a game without condoning it in real life. No one in the Horde asked for the dogshit that is BfA either. We already had the same story just 3 expacs prior and Blizzard didn't even have the decency to at least switch the factions for their creatively bankrupt garbage storyline.

And don't act like it's only the Horde players that are constantly whining, there are quite a few posters on these forums that immediately throw hysteric fits whenever the word "Horde" is even mentioned.

[Soon-TM]

Literally every character has shit writing right now.

Maybe, but at least all of them work to advance their faction and/or cause... Except Baine, the guy is just an Alliance bootlicker, who didn't give a flying !@#$ about Sylvanas raising Tauren corpses in Lordaeron, but got righteously outraged the moment she tried to do the same with a human corpse from an annointed bloodline.

- - - Updated - - -

the poll results really illustrate that the greatest failure of the horde was the players embracing sylvanas's fascist conquerer horde.

Blizzard really, REALLY screwed it when it started using 20th century categories to portray a world whose populations live somewhere between early Renaissance and early industrial era (except for LF/standard Draenei, I guess), i.e. 15th to 18th century. I guess we should start calling Anduin a dictator, because there is no free press and there have never been elections EVER in Stormwind

[Super Dickmann]

I get the feeling we were supposed to have a scenario where Thunder Bluff took a big hit from the loyalists, with your scenario changing based on whether you were Alliance/rebel or loyalist, and that was why the Alliance-Rebel Coalition was so depleted by the time it came to march on Orgrimmar's front gates, thereby necessitating Saurfang's Hail Mary where he lures Sylvanas into a mak'gora and hits her buttons until she outs herself in full view of everyone.

Unfortunately, instead of that we got the war subplot squeezed down to make room for the Old God subplot which honestly should have had its own expansion after Shadowlands, with the Old Gods and naga making their move while we're busy fixing the afterlife and tying up the loose ends with Sylvanas and Nathanos.

I think it's down to a more mundane level of misunderstanding between the writers who did various segments when compared to the more major reshuffling that happened between the cinematic/marketing and the product. If you go purely by the cinematics, then the narrative is fairly clear regarding the balance of power between Alliance and Horde - Sylvanas holds the advantage and the Alliance is low on resources, with Anduin having to use conscription to keep up, flowing into the next cinematic where this comes up way after where she's cast as gaining power and them having less people than her and having Saurfang instead win out by tricking her. But in all of 8.1 this is reversed and the Horde is losing and the only major things to happen afterwards is that retardation with Derek failing and the dunking in the sea, which shouldn't account for the discrepancy. These changes, save for some egregious elements like how the Horde war campaign was totally pointless are fine, since the Alliance was already going to get shafted in the conclusion, so Blizzard also having them be losing on top of that for most of the conflict would've been a bucket full of salt in the wound, so I can see why they did it this way.

Issue is - 8.2.5 acts as a follow through of the earlier Saurfang cinematic, not of the previous bit of in-game story. I agree with your take on what should have been and in general it would've been better for them to push the Old God stuff into its own expansion, which would also have helped put Sylvanas on the shelf for a year or two while they figured out what they wanted to do. It'd also have prevented a situation where the inciting incident, the themes of the conflict and the resolution have next to nothing to do with one another. You can cut everything Old God-related out and the faction story's major beats would not change, ditto, N'zoth in no way manipulated anyone involved in the factions. His subplot wasn't done badly, but it just doesn't gel very well.

@sillag

You're right in terms of what Blizzard intended to do, but they fucked up by default. I don't think it took up resources though - the loyalist questline only had unique quests associated with it at the very end and it was largely reused assets. Unless Patty Mattson charges by the word and that final spiel they had Sylvanas go on bankrupted them and kept them from implementing the story beats with Thunder Bluff.

Re: Audience reaction - People don't want to listen to a one-note anti-war message when the entire purpose of the game is killing things and where regardless of resolution sucking out souls, mind control, necromancy and so on which are cast as the peak of evil will still be practiced since they're the main gimmicks of classes. Film at 10.

Ditto people don't want to listen to an institutional critique of a fictional command structure where the safeguards of that structure is what ends up resolving the conflict, kneecapping the entire message, and where the alternative presented is hereditary absolute monarchy. And that was already done once before and was crap then too for all the above reasons.

[Cernunnos]

Not dealing with Gul'dan early enough.

Orgrimm Doomhammer was suspicious of Gul'dan, but let him continue as head of the shadow council. Had Orgrimm dealt with Gul'dan earlier then his betrayal and splintering of the Horde to go off and search for the tomb of Sargeras right as the Horde were poised to conquer the majority of the eastern kingdoms (Ironforge would have fallen eventually to a prolonged siege with the Horde controlling all the surrounding lands).

Gul'dan along with Cho'gall took 1/4? 1/3? of the Horde's total forces to search for the tomb, this meant the Horde didn't have enough forces to hold onto the lands they held at the time and to continue pushing north into Lordaeron, spread too thin the Horde were defeated at the assault of blackrock spire by the alliance forces.

[Raisei]

No one in the Horde asked for the dogshit that is BfA either. We already had the same story just 3 expacs prior and Blizzard didn't even have the decency to at least switch the factions for their creatively bankrupt garbage storyline.

Actually they did. The only reason there is a loyalist storyline at all is because Blizzard was nice enough to please the morally bankrupt part of the Horde that wanted to go along with Sylvanas after she commited genocide. There was on outcry in the fanbase when the Saurfang questline was on the PTR. People DEMANDED to be allowed to be the evil Horde again.

What they apparently did not realize even after 15 years is that the bad guys get their asses kicked in WoW and if you willingly side with the bad guys you will not be on the side of the winners in the final patch of the expansion. I mean, did those guys really delude themselves into believing that they would somehow destroy the Alliance in a whirlwind of blood and steel and rule Azeroth at the feet of their Dark Lady, when that would break the entire game's mechanics? There was no way that would ever happen.

Really, from the time Teldrassil burned it was clear that Sylvanas would be loosing this war, just like it was clear that the Legion would not destroy Azeroth and N'zoth would not bring Ny'alotha about.

As for switching the factions, it would just not work. There is simply no believeable character on the Blue Team that you would see commiting an atrocity like Teldrassil. There were some close calls, but always those characters realized that they did not want to be genocidal monsters.

Jaina could have been pushed into that role yes, but that would have meant a preceeding event on the scale or malice of Theramore again from the Horde side, because she is just not someone that coldly rationalizes genocide without a direct reason. If the order of events had been different, with Derek being raised first and him actually succeding in killing Kathrine and Tandred then Jaina might have lost it and wiped Orgrimmar of the face of the planet, but even then, the act would not have the same meaning as Teldrassil because 1) The Horde braught it on itself, or Sylvanas did in any case, 2) Orgrimmar is not a settlement of innocent civilians.

Sylvanas and the Horde was just a much more obvious and logical choice as the prime Warbringer and the Horde playerbase has retroactively proven it correct by demanding to be able to support her instead of doing the right thing and fight her.

[Arrashi]

All the edge lords shouting "kill Baine" are getting really old. Grow up. Literally every character has shit writing right now, not just him. Besides, the original "Kill Baine" meme started as a way of trolling furries, making its more recent (and obnoxiously self-serious) iteration all the more laughable.

And baine still menages to be the worst.