Reconciling The Horde

[Verdugo]

Mate, the alliance is literally just a punching bag for the horde to piss on. It's absolutely beyond me how you could turn the glaring horde favoritism into the opposite.

Horde leadership being composed of Alliance puppets has something to do with it.

[Shoggoth]

Blizzard doesn't care.

[Soon-TM]

The Horde can could fight the alliance while treating its own people with respect properly.

Small correction there. Because with the current writers, Horde is ruled either by a bunch of pathetic Alliance lapdogs or by moustache twirling psychos. Therefore, what you say is pretty much impossible, desirable as it may be.

[LordVargK]

No, in place of executed racial leaders, wiser figures should be put in place.

Good icentive is everything.

Belves siply need to be restored to their previous incarnation and you will get quite warlike elves.

Okay, then exchange Belfs for Forsaken, since the Forsaken were traditionally the "we don't want to be undead, please help us!" race.

And the leaders that seek peace are the "wiser" leaders. No sane leader would seek a war against an somewhat equal opponent, especially if there are even greater powers out there threatening your kingdom/federation.

[Fetus Rex]

Okay, then exchange Belfs for Forsaken, since the Forsaken were traditionally the "we don't want to be undead, please help us!" race.

And the leaders that seek peace are the "wiser" leaders. No sane leader would seek a war against an somewhat equal opponent, especially if there are even greater powers out there threatening your kingdom/federation.

No problem for me. BE should be the most grey race of them all.

Naa. It's always good to use an oppurtnity and fuck up the enemy.

[Schattenlied]

2. Trolls, especially Revantusk, try to help the Forsaken or belfs hold onto territory in northern EK against resurgent stromgarde.

Considering the war is now over this one wouldn't make much sense.

[LordVargK]

No problem for me. BE should be the most grey race of them all.

Naa. It's always good to use an oppurtnity and fuck up the enemy.

I mean yeah. In the current world of Warcraft where logic does not apply, humans and orcs have the reproductive cycle of rabbits (and about the same average lifespan...) and war fatigue (meaning that soldiers and civilians lose the will to sustain a war) isn't a thing, using every opportunity to "fuck up" the enemy seems like a good idea.

In more coherent universes, that care about numbers and realism, this would seem like absolute madness.

[Powerogue]

I think we're at an impasse here. Two irreconcilable differences:

1) We have people who want to play an evil faction. Straight up. Some of them make excuses, some don't, but that's what's happening.

2) The faction wars need to end, both so the Horde can reconcile within itself to heal and just because people are tired of it as a narrative in part since it is impossible for this MMO's story to conclude with a faction being destroyed.

We can't have both.

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Horde leadership being composed of Alliance puppets has something to do with it.

Who?

Baine never followed a single order from the Alliance, only his own moral compass.

Saurfang could be said to have followed an instruction from Anduin, but he's dead now.

[Darth-Piekus]

I think we're at an impasse here. Two irreconcilable differences:

1) We have people who want to play an evil faction. Straight up. Some of them make excuses, some don't, but that's what's happening.

2) The faction wars need to end, both so the Horde can reconcile within itself to heal and just because people are tired of it as a narrative in part since it is impossible for this MMO's story to conclude with a faction being destroyed.

We can't have both.

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Who?

Baine never followed a single order from the Alliance, only his own moral compass.

Saurfang could be said to have followed an instruction from Anduin, but he's dead now.

There was never an impasse. There is the majority who are against a faction war and a vocal minority gathered up on mmo champion thinking that Blizzard should bend over to their faction war and end all life needs over everyone else instead of playing another game.

[Fetus Rex]

I mean yeah. In the current world of Warcraft where logic does not apply, humans and orcs have the reproductive cycle of rabbits (and about the same average lifespan...) and war fatigue (meaning that soldiers and civilians lose the will to sustain a war) isn't a thing, using every opportunity to "fuck up" the enemy seems like a good idea.

In more coherent universes, that care about numbers and realism, this would seem like absolute madness.

If resources management was a thing then the Horde should have deployed mana bombs en masse, but yeah, there are no limitations in WoW.

[Super Dickmann]

There was never an impasse. There is the majority who are against a faction war and a vocal minority gathered up on mmo champion thinking that Blizzard should bend over to their faction war and end all life needs over everyone else instead of playing another game.

'One of the core mechanics of the game for fifteen years is fringe'. I wish I could perform enough mental gymnastics to reach that point naturally. BFA generated a fuck lot of hype over its premise and based its entire marketing over the factions for a reason - because selling it for what it actually was was impossible because that bit is hated. Support for and against is cyclical - the closer we were to a preachy Mists pastiche the less people want the factions, the more they're reminded of the alternative, the more popular it gets. Rinse and repeat. All caused because Blizzard think they're too good for what worked up to Cataclysm and they did successfully again in Legion where the faction conflict, not based on stakes impossible to the game like the wholesale destruction of the opposition, could be a bigger or smaller part of a given story, but was extant at the same time as the main narrative.

All problems with the faction story stem from writers at war with their own premise and the core precepts of the game - they know that the factions aren't going anywhere on a marketing level and that they and their unique playable races are the vessels for player interaction, but they insist on homogenizing them and doing message mongering, they know that a world war story will always fail because no playable race will ever be destroyed, yet still raise the stakes to that level condemning to always cop out. The latter applies even to non-faction plots and it's why every baddie except the other faction has been underwhelming since at least the other faction can win temporary victories, seize territory or kill characters without the story collapsing. But stakes are such that if even one bad guy had succeeded during the course of Legion questing the plot could not proceed.

[omeomorfismo]

There was never an impasse. There is the majority who are against a faction war and a vocal minority gathered up on mmo champion thinking that Blizzard should bend over to their faction war and end all life needs over everyone else instead of playing another game.

lol sure.
if the dh questline in legion is a sign of something, where accordling blizzard only a minority chosed altruis, surely isnt that the majority want sing kumbaya toghether

[LordVargK]

If resources management was a thing then the Horde should have deployed mana bombs en masse, but yeah, there are no limitations in WoW.

Well, ressources might not be unlimited. But manpower certainly is.

[Fetus Rex]

Well, ressources might not be unlimited. But manpower certainly is.

That's why Garrosh started breeding programs. The guy knew what's what.

[Jastall]

Everyone is well aware of what the future story will be, because it's been the status quo in the faction-lite expansions for more than a decade now. It's following a character that's either literally or thematically Alliance against baddies who can't achieve anything. See following Khadgar in killing orcs despite him having no link to Gul'dan, doing it again in Legion where WC2 Alliance characters are all the main protagonists while the race that has the most to do with demons except the draenei gets nothing or Wrath where the revenge plot of two Horde races was off-loaded to a generic human paladin. The future, as the past, is where Alliance characters lose their more defined and interesting traits to be open for overall consumption, turning them bland and boring and the Horde races are absent. The factionless future is that, but with all pretense out of the window.

The baseline of every story is conflict, the baseline of a two-faction MMO focused entirely around combat with a bunch of different races, classes and the combinations thereof is for as many avenues of conflict as possible between those to enable as many spins of gameplay and story as possible. Anything else is the writers purposefully gimping themselves for a message the medium is unequipped to tell.

Shadowlands looks to be an exception. The big neutral character looks to be Bolvar, who is about as removed from Alliance aesthetics and thematics as a human can possibly be unlike, say, Dadgar, and now serves as the Highlord of the Ebon Blade which is about as good as neutral factions get if you ask me. Aesthetically the Covenants lean a bit towards one faction or another (more accurately one race or another) but characters wise the split seems pretty even from where I'm standing; Alliance gets Uther, Tyrande and Mograine so far who hardly counts now IMO, Horde gets Draka and Kael'thas, with obviously the main villain being an ex Horde because if there's one thing said Horde consistently does right, it's creating eviler offshoots.

Not that I much care, I'm absolutely going to hang out with the bois in Maldraxxus to get my sick transmog and forget that I'm even part of the Horde every chance I get, much like I did in Legion when I was pals with Odyn. Screw the Alliance, screw the Horde.

[Varodoc]

People who wanted to play the "Evil faction" just chose the wrong game. The Horde was never meant to be the "Evil faction", that was made clear in WC3. And before anyone mentions this, the Forsaken were the insignificant minority, not the norm.

[Super Dickmann]

Shadowlands looks to be an exception. The big neutral character looks to be Bolvar, who is about as removed from Alliance aesthetics and thematics as a human can possibly be unlike, say, Dadgar, and now serves as the Highlord of the Ebon Blade which is about as good as neutral factions get if you ask me. Aesthetically the Covenants lean a bit towards one faction or another (more accurately one race or another) but characters wise the split seems pretty even from where I'm standing; Alliance gets Uther, Tyrande and Mograine so far who hardly counts now IMO, Horde gets Draka and Kael'thas, with obviously the main villain being an ex Horde because if there's one thing said Horde consistently does right, it's creating eviler offshoots.

Not that I much care, I'm absolutely going to hang out with the bois in Maldraxxus to get my sick transmog and forget that I'm even part of the Horde every chance I get, much like I did in Legion when I was pals with Odyn. Screw the Alliance, screw the Horde.

Shadowlands takes an interesting route with it theoretically by introducing separate 'factions' to fill the same niche, but since they're self-contained and lack baggage along with the weirdness of the setting they're not limited in the same way the Horde and Alliance are. Jury's out on how it pans out, but I do think that this is a good approach. It helps that virtually all the characters are so changed as to make them in name only - see Draka being in an afterlife that's about strength (and honor), despite the equating of the two being something the Frostwolves in general and she in particular reject. And while Bolvar is definitely more Alliance than he is Horde and I've given my issues with the Ebon Blade in Wrath before, they were great in Legion and he has room to be a decent character in this version even if I'll definitely miss the best outing by the Lich King since the RTS. Taken from us too soon.

In a vacuum it might work, or it might not, we'll find out soon, but it's not something they've done before so extensively. It's the implications for the characters that'll actually carry on that I'm irritated with, as well as how we got there - everything seems to be pointing in the direction of neutering Tyrande before she even gets to do much of anything, there's being forced to bust Jaina out of prison and of course hunting down yet another former Horde leader as a prominent expansion baddie. All the elements new to Shadowlands have potential, but the existing cast and the existing baddie are a diseased albatross around their neck.

P.S: Top tier pick. Maldraxxus has an orc + Forsaken vibe with a Scourge aesthetic, so while I love what will likely be pre-blandification Bastion, the aesthetics and themes of Maldraxxus are right up my alley.

[Jastall]

Shadowlands takes an interesting route with it theoretically by introducing separate 'factions' to fill the same niche, but since they're self-contained and lack baggage along with the weirdness of the setting they're not limited in the same way the Horde and Alliance are. Jury's out on how it pans out, but I do think that this is a good approach. It helps that virtually all the characters are so changed as to make them in name only - see Draka being in an afterlife that's about strength (and honor), despite the equating of the two being something the Frostwolves in general and she in particular reject. And while Bolvar is definitely more Alliance than he is Horde and I've given my issues with the Ebon Blade in Wrath before, they were great in Legion and he has room to be a decent character in this version even if I'll definitely miss the best outing by the Lich King since the RTS. Taken from us too soon.

In a vacuum it might work, or it might not, we'll find out soon, but it's not something they've done before so extensively. It's the implications for the characters that'll actually carry on that I'm irritated with, as well as how we got there - everything seems to be pointing in the direction of neutering Tyrande before she even gets to do much of anything, there's being forced to bust Jaina out of prison and of course hunting down yet another former Horde leader as a prominent expansion baddie. All the elements new to Shadowlands have potential, but the existing cast and the existing baddie are a diseased albatross around their neck.

P.S: Top tier pick. Maldraxxus has an orc + Forsaken vibe with a Scourge aesthetic, so while I love what will likely be pre-blandification Bastion, the aesthetics and themes of Maldraxxus are right up my alley.

Continuity is Blizzard's greatest weakness in writing, which is saying something. So yeah, to me it seems a given that creating an all-new setting with a (mostly) all-new cast of characters would work out better than shit like WoD trying to go "member this??" while trying to distance itself from it at the same time.

I always found the Night Warrior business to be completely unnecessary bullshit; the NEs shouldn't require it to be proud and fearsome. So I don't much care if they end up ditching its power to revive the slain NEs of Teldrassil or some other brand of death magic nonsense.

No contest to Sylvanas in particular being far too much baggage. Best case scenario, she's the expansion's Gul'dan and dies in the first major raid so we can focus on the actual Shadowlands characters. Worst case scenario she becomes an even worse plot tumor and is either the actual big baddy or gets redeemed/proved right in a most contrived and unsatisfying way because life is pain or whatever.

[Skytotem]

Considering the war is now over this one wouldn't make much sense.

Oh it wouldn't have to be through armed conflict, I think it'd be really interesting to see the political wheeling and dealing.

[omeomorfismo]

People who wanted to play the "Evil faction" just chose the wrong game. The Horde was never meant to be the "Evil faction", that was made clear in WC3. And before anyone mentions this, the Forsaken were the insignificant minority, not the norm.

but you know, forsaken player want continue to play forsaken. shocking, i know....