Reconciling The Horde

[Skytotem]

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

There's plenty of room to play Forsaken without being SO EVIL that it makes it grating to the rest of the Horde, if Blizz would bother to make the Forsaken SMARTER about hiding it, or who they target.


Instead of vivisecting ALLIANCE forces (y'know, the one global political-alliance-superpower that poses a threat to the horde) put bandits on the table, or criminals that you buy from Alliance nobles, or evil cultists that work for the scourge or legion or whatever...

Instead of sewing a bunch of orcs into abominations without their permission, get a bunch of orc volunteers to try alchemic treatments that turn em into Dire Orcs, temporarily or otherwise.

Instead of poisoning land so that only you can live in it (which alienates your allies) create ways to collect the poison/corruption from land that you clean up and run off with it. Belfs and others would LITERALLY BE PAYING FORSAKEN to gather useful research material, it's a win win!

[omeomorfismo]

There's plenty of room to play Forsaken without being SO EVIL that it makes it grating to the rest of the Horde, if Blizz would bother to make the Forsaken SMARTER about hiding it, or who they target.


Instead of vivisecting ALLIANCE forces (y'know, the one global political-alliance-superpower that poses a threat to the horde) put bandits on the table, or criminals that you buy from Alliance nobles, or evil cultists that work for the scourge or legion or whatever...

Instead of sewing a bunch of orcs into abominations without their permission, get a bunch of orc volunteers to try alchemic treatments that turn em into Dire Orcs, temporarily or otherwise.

Instead of poisoning land so that only you can live in it (which alienates your allies) create ways to collect the poison/corruption from land that you clean up and run off with it. Belfs and others would LITERALLY BE PAYING FORSAKEN to gather useful research material, it's a win win!

lol no, thats not a (pre bts) forsaken, simply is not.
forsaken are in a convenience ally, they hate the living, they use polluting and corruption as warfare. if you took this away you are destroying the race.
im not winning anything from your suggestion, in the contrary, im loosing the rp blizzard itself sold me 15 years ago.

[Super Dickmann]

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.

Pandaria and Warlords both had decent settings. Legion had among the weakest, since it was too separated, kind of like with Cataclysm's leveling zones. Shadowlands has conceptual problems up the ass that come with definitively confirming what happens after you die.

Regarding the Night Warrior, past just liking the eyes, it is a bit of drama - but it's a representation of that aspect of the Night Elves given some kind of visual form. Removing it will involve removing those elements as well - the one positive that could come from Teldrassil was to help them regain their only good characterization. The scores of nameless, faceless NPCs being restored is all well and good for them, but entirely not worth it to us consuming the story if it means we remove the last member of the cast who's not part of the hivemind in Tyrande. The protagonists, who are all permutations of the same dude, are beyond wretched and will be with us for all time - Sylvanas is easier to fix because she has room to actually have her story to conclude. Ditto, she'd be better as the final baddie of the expansion solely by virtue of having preexisting baggage rather than existing solely for the sake of this expansion. She just needs to have a consistent characterization fit for purpose for her last trek as a baddie. To define and separate the playable cast as distinct from one another and also give them a long form role in the narrative going forward is far more difficult since there's so many of them vs. just one character.

[Raisei]

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.

True, but how is the faction war story different? It also can never achieve anything then lead to a ceasefire/peace, it will never lead to a satifying conclusion as BFA has very clearly shown. It is my believe that the idea of BFA is to end this cycle of war and peace to focus on stories with more interesting ideas.

The problem of the faction war comes up through the stakes. Sylvanas and Garrosh absolutely wanted to eradicate the Alliance and everyone knows that that will never be achieved, just as the Alliance will never destroy the Horde, ergo by setting the stakes so high you immediatedly know that it will never happen and all the drama falls flat. It only leaves annoyance by both sides (like with how the Alliance is pissed that they cannot make the Horde bleed for Theramore and Teldrassil and the Horde lost Garrosh and Sylvanas because they had to be the sacrifical lamps for the plot).
In this regard MoP was probably better thought out. Conquering Pandaria from under the Pandas was a reasonable goal for each faction and while one's success would have meant the other's failure it would not have meant their eradication. It would not have made everyone happy, but it would be actual consequences.

I think what we need is a Cold War. Set things up in a way that makes clear that if we openly come to war again it will be the end for all of us, but leave the tension, have people act in the shadows as spies, have skirmishes, negotiations, proxy wars but do not go to all out war, because that just does not work.

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.

This is too simplified. Is the entirety of the Horde's identity that it is at war with the Alliance? If so (and people in this forum at least seem to think so) then that identity is incredibly bland and literally one-dimensional. You complained in another thread that the Horde is not treated as individuals with races having no seperate identity, so reducing them to this one "Horde Kill Alliance" identity is counter productive.
It is I think a result of the faction war plot that this happens. It just overshadows any other identity trait a race might have because they have to focus on war. This robs us of interesting plots that could be told around the races when they have a moment of reprieve from the constant war. Like the new Talryssa/Lorthemar bonding and the subsequent possibilities for Nightborn and Belfs or we will have some nice drama when Bolvar meets Taelia and if and when there is a royal wedding.

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.

There is no doubt we will have conflict. I just think it will and should be a different kind. SLs will be the usual big bads (probably, but twists in the story are rare) but after that there is still things we need to resolve. There is Talanji with a grudge and Tyrande too so the group hug of Horde and Alliance is not yet close.
The message of BFA was a different one of course and I can't say I dislike it too much, when Varian went to his death he did it just after thinking Sylvanas betrayed him (or the Horde, since she was not even Warchief), so his warcry was "For the Alliance", then in the BFA Trailer we had the leaders each go "For the Horde/Alliance". Then in the pre-Mak'gorah cutscene the characters finally realized that what they are fighting for is neither faction, but the survival of everyone's home Azeroth. Ergo Saurfang after awesomely echoing his son's words when that one attacked Arthas, died "For Azeroth" holding Varian's sword. There is an evolution and continuity and it makes sense.

I know it is not the one that many people want, but it does have a certain amount of charm that makes it hard for me to hate it. I would like to see if the writers can makes something of this so I am not yet damning everything to hell. We will soon enough be back at each other's throats, so we can try something different for a change and who knows, maybe it actually works.

After 15 years the story is allowed to move on from the faction conflict is all I am saying.

[Super Dickmann]

True, but how is the faction war story different? It also can never achieve anything then lead to a ceasefire/peace, it will never lead to a satifying conclusion as BFA has very clearly shown. It is my believe that the idea of BFA is to end this cycle of war and peace to focus on stories with more interesting ideas.

Disregarding for a moment that the ideas that follow are not actually more interesting, I entirely agree with you that the same problem you have with world-ending threats is the one you have with an extermination-focused faction war. We know that the stakes are too high to ever be realized. It's impossible for there to be a follow-up so we have a foregone conclusion. The faction war story is no more cyclical than is the big bad story - it's just the other kind of conflict the game can do, that being between player-involved factions instead of playable vs. unplayable. BFA and Mists are more direct repeats than say, the Legion is of the Scourge, but they both exemplify types of conflict. And both are fairly far removed from say, Ashenvale, Stonetalon or Silverpine questing.

I also agree entirely with the rest of your post - the stakes are the issue and raising them too high is the problem. But this is also the strength of the faction conflict over the big bad story. You can have the factions win. You could conceivably have either party win in Stormheim and the story would be able to go on, indeed, it'd have a bunch of openings for either option. Compare and contrast what a loss in even the lower tier of big bad focused zones would go - we don't get the Tear of Elune, so the Legion wins. You could do a story where the Night Elves fully evict the Horde from Ashenvale and not only would the story not collapse, but it could remain as a status quo for years on end without opening up plot problems. You can't do that with say, the Twilight's Hammer taking over a zone and then leave it at that.

Even large-scale wars, like you mention with Pandaria, can have a conclusion, provided the stakes are set appropriately and the participating leaders are rational actors. Not moral actors, they could be mustache-twirling dickheads for all it matters, but purely by virtue of having the kind of temporal and material concerns that entirely inhuman baddies don't have, they can decide when to stop fighting. The vast majority of wars in history didn't end with one side wholly taking over the other. You could collect resources or trade territory or kill some characters, all achievable within the game and still come to a satisfying conclusion in the process. All stories you simply can't tell when the adversary is Satan and he has no reason not to fight to the last man. That was the error done with the permutations of Sylvanas and Garrosh in their Mists-equivalent - these aren't characters who wouldn't lay off for purely practical reasons, they've done it before, but they were turned into such and the stakes raised in a way that completely nullified one of the main benefits of a faction based conflict. The Horde and Alliance aren't even key here, you could do the same with any such division, the components that matter is that they're between defined societies the player can participate in who can conclude the conflict as rational actors. That's why I'm not outright dismissing the Shadowlands covenant just yet, like I talked over with Jastall.

This is too simplified. Is the entirety of the Horde's identity that it is at war with the Alliance? If so (and people in this forum at least seem to think so) then that identity is incredibly bland and literally one-dimensional. You complained in another thread that the Horde is not treated as individuals with races having no seperate identity, so reducing them to this one "Horde Kill Alliance" identity is counter productive.
It is I think a result of the faction war plot that this happens. It just overshadows any other identity trait a race might have because they have to focus on war. This robs us of interesting plots that could be told around the races when they have a moment of reprieve from the constant war. Like the new Talryssa/Lorthemar bonding and the subsequent possibilities for Nightborn and Belfs or we will have some nice drama when Bolvar meets Taelia and if and when there is a royal wedding.

You're missing my point, it's not me who's saying that the Horde has no role in these expansions, it's those expansions themselves that show as much. I take it you don't need me to explain to you why Saurfang would have more beef with the corruptor of the orcish people who's original incarnation was the architect of both their home getting destroyed and the wars he feels guilty about than Khadgar. Or why Thrall might have something to say about meeting a variant of the dude who had his parents killed. Or that you don't get much higher in terms of fixing past mistakes than going to the world of the people who used you as proxies and kicking their ass. Yet there are no orcs on Argus, no orcs meet Gul'dan, no orcs meet Kil'jaeden. Saurfang tries to commit suicide against randoms and Thrall gets erectile dysfunction and doesn't even mention Gul'dan. Ditto the blood elves and Forsaken and Arthas. Instead, that is off-loaded to Alliance-coded characters like Fordring.

To give you an example I've used before - Thrall in Cataclysm. On paper he's neutral, in practice he's trying to stop Deathwing and everyone one wants that. But despite having a yellow name tag his story is focused entirely on his relationship to orcish shamanism, his decisions as Warchief of the Orcish Horde, and whether he lives up to these. Disregard for a moment how poor the execution was - conceptually this is a Horde story. An Alliance player functionally can experience it, but they'd get next to nothing out of it except annoyance they can't call Thrall out on some of the stuff happening in parallel. That's why that story is so hated by Alliance players, and is still called back to this day when it comes to what to avoid. That's the case with following an original Silver Hand paladin against Arthas instead of the people who's home he destroyed, having the only reference to Ner'zhul's orcish past as a shaman be in an Alliance sidequest, following the WC2 Alliance trio in WoD and Legion and it even flows into BFA's faction war. There is no chance for the orcs to take issue with the desecration of their dead which is a massive taboo, when they turn, it's on the basis of things that resonate far more with Alliance players - Jaina and her family, that very few who are actively engaged in the Horde story give a shit about.

There are stories to tell in a hot war and and in a cold one, there's stories to be told in the rebuilding. But I am extremely skeptical that they'll be told and historically, they haven't been.

There is no doubt we will have conflict. I just think it will and should be a different kind. SLs will be the usual big bads (probably, but twists in the story are rare) but after that there is still things we need to resolve. There is Talanji with a grudge and Tyrande too so the group hug of Horde and Alliance is not yet close.
The message of BFA was a different one of course and I can't say I dislike it too much, when Varian went to his death he did it just after thinking Sylvanas betrayed him (or the Horde, since she was not even Warchief), so his warcry was "For the Alliance", then in the BFA Trailer we had the leaders each go "For the Horde/Alliance". Then in the pre-Mak'gorah cutscene the characters finally realized that what they are fighting for is neither faction, but the survival of everyone's home Azeroth. Ergo Saurfang after awesomely echoing his son's words when that one attacked Arthas, died "For Azeroth" holding Varian's sword. There is an evolution and continuity and it makes sense.

I've ragged on BFA for years now and I will continue to do so, so at least for this topic I won't be bludgeoning this dead horse too much, but it does get into what I'm referencing above - the imagery and beats of BFA resonate a lot more with one kind of audience than another. Someone who is more invested in Jaina for example has fewer issues with the whole Jaina brother rescue malarky than someone who plays Horde. Alliance players to whom this is a side bit doesn't have an issue with Baine 'Upset a human and I'll kill all your crewman' Bloodhoof. The story assumes universal associations and interests among a playerbase much as it assumes its cast is universal because of their faction belonging, and that's what really gets it down. It's a story alien to its setting and prior stories, at war with its premise and core components, the main story of which has only destroyed, not created much of anything. We have fewer characters, fewer story opportunities in a blander world at the end of it than we did before. Okay, so maybe I've hit the dead horse here too. The 'payoff' of having one of the last remaining named orcs have to be told that the Horde should exist by the teenage human king, whereupon he kills himself, removes a character of 15 years, and destroys the Horde's 25-year old structure to become a poor imitation of the other faction, who's values he admits are superior and who he can only aspire to, is the nadir of it.

[Lolites]

Aren't we smarter than Blizzard though?

been around this and similar forums for some time, and i can honestly say "we" are not

[Raisei]

Disregarding for a moment that the ideas that follow are not actually more interesting, I entirely agree with you that the same problem you have with world-ending threats is the one you have with an extermination-focused faction war. We know that the stakes are too high to ever be realized. It's impossible for there to be a follow-up so we have a foregone conclusion. The faction war story is no more cyclical than is the big bad story - it's just the other kind of conflict the game can do, that being between player-involved factions instead of playable vs. unplayable. BFA and Mists are more direct repeats than say, the Legion is of the Scourge, but they both exemplify types of conflict. And both are fairly far removed from say, Ashenvale, Stonetalon or Silverpine questing.

I also agree entirely with the rest of your post - the stakes are the issue and raising them too high is the problem. But this is also the strength of the faction conflict over the big bad story. You can have the factions win. You could conceivably have either party win in Stormheim and the story would be able to go on, indeed, it'd have a bunch of openings for either option. Compare and contrast what a loss in even the lower tier of big bad focused zones would go - we don't get the Tear of Elune, so the Legion wins. You could do a story where the Night Elves fully evict the Horde from Ashenvale and not only would the story not collapse, but it could remain as a status quo for years on end without opening up plot problems. You can't do that with say, the Twilight's Hammer taking over a zone and then leave it at that.

For all it's shortcomings, I like how SWTOR did these things. All planets where the PC goes during their campaign have a canonical winner to their plot, usually dependend on which side arrived later to turn the tide, but that did not end the story. I guess the scale helps here though. Fighting over Planets in a galaxy tend to give a decent distance between the theaters of war. Azeroth is after all not that big.
So yes, it could be done if the stakes are chosen reasonably. That just never seems to be the case, it is always eradication or peace. In fact, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Anduins ceasefire the first written contract of that sort between the factions? I cannot remember there being anything after Mists, just posturing and the trial, but no negotiations, no politics, nothing.
It is quite telling if Sith Lords that draw strength from hatred and murder have more political savvy to see ways out of a conflict then these two (the most fun moment was when it was actually the Empire pushing for the Treaty of Coruscant) *sigh*

Even large-scale wars, like you mention with Pandaria, can have a conclusion, provided the stakes are set appropriately and the participating leaders are rational actors. Not moral actors, they could be mustache-twirling dickheads for all it matters, but purely by virtue of having the kind of temporal and material concerns that entirely inhuman baddies don't have, they can decide when to stop fighting.

That is indeed a problem. The kind of warfare we get presented with is always "total war". Neither Sylvanas nor Garrosh knew how to do it any other way because that were their characters. Garrosh wanted to be a glorious military leader and he actually was on the best way there (even I admit that he was a brilliant tactician) when he turned into a fashist and racist, Sylvanas is not a military leader but a terrorist that was thrust into a position of leadership where she had no buisness or skill being, that her endgoal could only be the destruction of Stormwind with the eradication of it's people was forseeable.

The Alliance is in that regard not much better. Anduin fights a war he does not want focussing entirely on the Banshee, with Jaina, as you have pointed out before, wasting their chance won in Dazar because it would make them look bad. Both are not rational, they wanted a moral victory and the only way to take down the Banshee was to take down the entire Horde between them (thouch one should give some credit to how Anduin more or less played Saurfang to prevent this outcome).

I prefer the way the Alliance handles things over the genocidal Horde, but neither side is rational in their approach.

The vast majority of wars in history didn't end with one side wholly taking over the other. You could collect resources or trade territory or kill some characters, all achievable within the game and still come to a satisfying conclusion in the process.

Indeed, take the 100 Years War. 100 years of on and off warfare between England and France, yet both countries still exist. It is all possible.

You're missing my point, it's not me who's saying that the Horde has no role in these expansions, it's those expansions themselves that show as much. I take it you don't need me to explain to you why Saurfang would have more beef with the corruptor of the orcish people who's original incarnation was the architect of both their home getting destroyed and the wars he feels guilty about than Khadgar. Or why Thrall might have something to say about meeting a variant of the dude who had his parents killed. Or that you don't get much higher in terms of fixing past mistakes than going to the world of the people who used you as proxies and kicking their ass. Yet there are no orcs on Argus, no orcs meet Gul'dan, no orcs meet Kil'jaeden. Saurfang tries to commit suicide against randoms and Thrall gets erectile dysfunction and doesn't even mention Gul'dan. Ditto the blood elves and Forsaken and Arthas. Instead, that is off-loaded to Alliance-coded characters like Fordring.

Hmm, you definately have a point there. I always treated Khadgar as basically a plot device, not truely associated with either faction so I never much gave a thought about him being so prominent in these stories, but it is true, several characters could have been more involved. I suppose the only reasoning is, that it is not "their" Gul'dan. This one as a person himself has actually more backstory on Darenor with Khadgar (trying to have him assassinated, the Garona plot, and that corrupted Warden) then with any of "our" Orcs.

To give you an example I've used before - Thrall in Cataclysm. On paper he's neutral, in practice he's trying to stop Deathwing and everyone one wants that. But despite having a yellow name tag his story is focused entirely on his relationship to orcish shamanism, his decisions as Warchief of the Orcish Horde, and whether he lives up to these. Disregard for a moment how poor the execution was - conceptually this is a Horde story. An Alliance player functionally can experience it, but they'd get next to nothing out of it except annoyance they can't call Thrall out on some of the stuff happening in parallel. That's why that story is so hated by Alliance players, and is still called back to this day when it comes to what to avoid. That's the case with following an original Silver Hand paladin against Arthas instead of the people who's home he destroyed, having the only reference to Ner'zhul's orcish past as a shaman be in an Alliance sidequest, following the WC2 Alliance trio in WoD and Legion and it even flows into BFA's faction war. There is no chance for the orcs to take issue with the desecration of their dead which is a massive taboo, when they turn, it's on the basis of things that resonate far more with Alliance players - Jaina and her family, that very few who are actively engaged in the Horde story give a shit about.

BFA was indeed quite schizophrenic in that regard, telling each faction halve the story but sending them into the same instances. I can tell you that many in my guild asked several times what the heck we were doing in Uldir and why Zul was suddenly dead and what the heck is Motherload and King's Rest even about?
I suppose it is unfair to compare WoW to other games when the story is considered since that was never the focus of the game (different from SWTOR) but still, I think they can do better.

There are stories to tell in a hot war and and in a cold one, there's stories to be told in the rebuilding. But I am extremely skeptical that they'll be told and historically, they haven't been.

In general I see this too, up till now that was just never a priority. WoW players come for the gameplay not the story so these kinds of stories never much mattered. I do see a change here though. BFA has done a lot better in storytelling even if it is not the perfect story that we wanted to see. But all games are becoming more cinematic and story filled, so I am hoping that WoW keeps on evolving in that direction WITHOUT dropping the gameplay. There are decent signs for this on the horizon so I am gonna try to keep hoping.

[omeomorfismo]

@Raisei
of all the thing sylvanas can be, surely she is a military leader.
she was the commander of silvermoon forces, she was the chief of the banshee in the lordaeron scourge, she was the one that won the plaguelands civil war.
i mean, even reducing her to a terrorist still would define her as a military leader to be fair...

[Raisei]

@Raisei
of all the thing sylvanas can be, surely she is a military leader.
she was the commander of silvermoon forces, she was the chief of the banshee in the lordaeron scourge, she was the one that won the plaguelands civil war.
i mean, even reducing her to a terrorist still would define her as a military leader to be fair...

It was a judgement in regard to her prefered tactics not her title or acomplishments. She is mostly trying to spread fear and destroy her enemies spirit, hope and reason to fight by targeting civilians or sending mind controlled assassins to murder their families.
From a modern standpoint she is a walking warcrime, which fits her character as it is a result of her attacking Arthas openly at Quel'thalas instead of ambushing him and loosing badly with that tactic.

[omeomorfismo]

It was a judgement in regard to her prefered tactics not her title or acomplishments. She is mostly trying to spread fear and destroy her enemies spirit, hope and reason to fight by targeting civilians or sending mind controlled assassins to murder their families.
From a modern standpoint she is a walking warcrime, which fits her character as it is a result of her attacking Arthas openly at Quel'thalas instead of ambushing him and loosing badly with that tactic.

this is still being a military leader.
then to be fair she effectively ambushed continually arthas in all his advance throught eversong. only in the warbringer we saw her confronting him, clearly for scenic purpose, in open field. it anyway was just before the last elfgate, making it the last desperate attack...

i mean, its ok disliking a character, but warping so hard an interpretation isnt normal....

[Skytotem]

lol no, thats not a (pre bts) forsaken, simply is not.
forsaken are in a convenience ally, they hate the living, they use polluting and corruption as warfare. if you took this away you are destroying the race.
im not winning anything from your suggestion, in the contrary, im loosing the rp blizzard itself sold me 15 years ago.

So you think the Forsaken are defined by being -obviously- stupid evil and self destructive or...?

[omeomorfismo]

So you think the Forsaken are defined by being -obviously- stupid evil and self destructive or...?

yes sure, these thing are fundamental part of their characterization. so?

[sillag]

if anything bfa shows us that the horde can never be reconciled, the entire faction is an immense failure of writing and even though they tried to have this be the expansion where the conflicts in the horde were brought to some kind of resolution they only succeeded in making them worse than ever

there are a few main issues, mainly that the horde has no identity. the horde's cultural values shift moment by moment, as different writers have no unifying direction for it, and the result as we've seen is the majority of the players embrace the fascist, genocidal horde that the writers were hoping to finally eliminate in bfa. the reaction of fascist-leaning horde players to the idea of turning against sylvanas forced blizzard to add the lackluster loyalist storyline that they clearly never intended, but at that point the damage was done.

the horde cannot reconcile as it is, it needs to excise the corrupt, violent and evil portion of itself. but when blizzard tried it, the horde playerbase threw their toys out of the pram and demanded to be allowed to play out their fascist fantasies in their video game. and since wow is just a product, blizzard caved in and catered to them. now we see that the horde can never develop because the players won't allow it to, it will always awkwardly include leaders like baine trying to be honorable and the slaving, murderous horde that the horde playerbase can't turn away from. and as long as that is true, the horde will always be a laughable, schizophrenic failure of faction writing.

there is no way to fix the horde until blizzard musters up the courage to oppose the overwhelming majority of fascist-leaning horde players - a problem they created themselves. but they never will, because in the end they care more about sub fees than any message their game was supposed to have.

[Mungho]

What I saw, was that a LOT of the Horde players who wanted to side with Sylvanas was out of spite from having to turn on yet another warchief.

[Super Dickmann]

For all it's shortcomings, I like how SWTOR did these things. All planets where the PC goes during their campaign have a canonical winner to their plot, usually dependend on which side arrived later to turn the tide, but that did not end the story. I guess the scale helps here though. Fighting over Planets in a galaxy tend to give a decent distance between the theaters of war. Azeroth is after all not that big.
So yes, it could be done if the stakes are chosen reasonably. That just never seems to be the case, it is always eradication or peace. In fact, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Anduins ceasefire the first written contract of that sort between the factions? I cannot remember there being anything after Mists, just posturing and the trial, but no negotiations, no politics, nothing.
It is quite telling if Sith Lords that draw strength from hatred and murder have more political savvy to see ways out of a conflict then these two (the most fun moment was when it was actually the Empire pushing for the Treaty of Coruscant) *sigh*

SW:TOR Vanilla is the best at portraying the kind of conflict I'm talking about and it does it because it knows what its factions are. No bones are picked about what the Empire or the Republic are, the game knows that their engagement is absolutely what the game is about and uses it fully. The factions can win or lose and both fit in what the story being told is. And as you point out, the Sith - who are contractually bound to act in hostile ways and follow their baser, negative impulses still end up as rational actors despite this and can enter treaties or limit conflict after the point. Warcraft has no such limitations and it has had both of its 'warmonger' characters, Garrosh and Sylvanas, previously follow such patterns as well. But because it is at war with its purpose instead of following it like SW:TOR, it's avoided the plotlines that are the most rational to it despite them being both ideal for this medium and leagues more true to real life.

That is indeed a problem. The kind of warfare we get presented with is always "total war". Neither Sylvanas nor Garrosh knew how to do it any other way because that were their characters. Garrosh wanted to be a glorious military leader and he actually was on the best way there (even I admit that he was a brilliant tactician) when he turned into a fashist and racist, Sylvanas is not a military leader but a terrorist that was thrust into a position of leadership where she had no buisness or skill being, that her endgoal could only be the destruction of Stormwind with the eradication of it's people was forseeable.

I heavily disagree with your reading of both, especially Sylvanas, since unlike Garrosh she was neither materially obligated to wage war, nor wanted it all that much for all of her tenure until BFA. She isn't incompetent, far from it, but because her people don't reproduce, even with necromancy on the table every conflict needs to be a cost-benefit analysis to make sure she doesn't lose out on it. Garrosh on the other hand was thrust into an existing war, had every reason to wage it, was successful at it and is within a culture where war is key. Yet both have been depicted as staving off conflict where necessary to focus on other questions. It's not the nature of these characters that prevents these stories, as the have acted in such a fashion before, it's their role as vehicles for an incompatible message. Until BTS, Sylvanas never has a specific issue with Stormwind and she didn't even want to go to Gilneas - if you had any character who was fit for an Empire-style evil conqueror who nevertheless could lay off because it would be counterproductive, it was her. Garrosh is in a different category altogether. Anduin and Jaina do fit the other branch of this, but once again, this isn't cohesive or necessary - you could just as easily, keeping BTS if you really want to, have Genn push Anduin to go after Sylvanas at Lordaeron and have it be an actual victory, and you could have Jaina become a hawkish, but measured figure, who doesn't want to wipe out the Horde like her dad after a development like her BFA one, but would be a watchdog and wouldn't mind pressuring them if it comes down to it. The characters can be salvaged, easily so, unlike someone like Baine, who has far too much baggage, making Anduin, Jaina or Bob work is easy, it's a deliberate choice to not do it.

Hmm, you definately have a point there. I always treated Khadgar as basically a plot device, not truely associated with either faction so I never much gave a thought about him being so prominent in these stories, but it is true, several characters could have been more involved. I suppose the only reasoning is, that it is not "their" Gul'dan. This one as a person himself has actually more backstory on Darenor with Khadgar (trying to have him assassinated, the Garona plot, and that corrupted Warden) then with any of "our" Orcs.

I don't dislike Khadgar, but I also disagree heavily with your argument. He is still Gul'dan, with all the associations thereof - arguing that it had to be Khadgar after him (not after the Legion I stress, since the Guardian story works for him and him fighting the Legion is cool) is post-hoc - he has to do it in Legion because he did it in WoD. But he shouldn't be doing it in WoD. And the plotlines i mentioned, on top of simply fitting very well, have the added benefit of making their intended route more poignant. Having Saurfang think he's overcome the mistakes of the past by fighting the Legion but then nevertheless following along in the BFA war, on top of simply making him more prominent also enforces the theme of personal responsibility that he is meant to be going through. And while I dislike Thrall, having him at least talk to the figure who killed his folks is cool. Khadgar and Gul'dan aren't even aware of each other in the Second War - Saurfang is intimately aware of what he did and is personally affected by it, as is the entire orcish race.

BFA was indeed quite schizophrenic in that regard, telling each faction halve the story but sending them into the same instances. I can tell you that many in my guild asked several times what the heck we were doing in Uldir and why Zul was suddenly dead and what the heck is Motherload and King's Rest even about?
I suppose it is unfair to compare WoW to other games when the story is considered since that was never the focus of the game (different from SWTOR) but still, I think they can do better.

Yeah, there was a lot of that in BFA in general. The story is meant to be confused by a bipartisan player who does both questlines and done so abstracted from the in-story position shown. Put another way, the story for Horde is written in such a way that it assumes you know that Jaina is now a good girl and she doesn't want to hurt you so saving her brother is great and desirable, and you care for her because you, the player, have done all those quests, despite the sum of the Horde only content having her as the main party defeating you and the end boss of the most recent at the time raid. The story for the Alliance is written as though you both know and care about Zandalar, despite this stuff being completely tangentia land dealing with characters you never encounter and don't care about, the success of which would arguably be favourable to your wargoals.

@Mungho @sillag

Spite for the writers is a motivator for some and I'd be kidding if I said I didn't enjoy the knots they had to tie themselves in after Dagger in the Dark 2.0 crashed and burned on test realms, but it's not all of it. The Sylvanas Horde is superior to what we have now on its own terms when it comes to my enjoyment and the purpose of the game. The goals of the game - that being conflict between as many parties as possible to be as variable as possible and allow the maximum character opportunities are better achieved by a caricature-like BFA Horde compared to the peacenik drum circle there is now. The Horde as is - which has ditched the core elements and culture of virtually every race, most of its cast, its 25-year old structure and has as its core value to ape the other faction and hope to one day be as good as it is serves no purpose. While they'll likely backtrack this and eventually merge the factions, be it next expansion or a week from now in a hidden announcement, the highlight of this whole carfire is when Ion cunted the story team beyond repair by saying the factions are going nowhere, casting their preachy bullshit into the trash where it belongs in service of what the game is actually about and always has been.

[LilSaihah]

there is no way to fix the horde until blizzard musters up the courage to oppose the overwhelming majority of fascist-leaning horde players - a problem they created themselves. but they never will, because in the end they care more about sub fees than any message their game was supposed to have.

You don't think people actually pick their factions based on political leanings, do you?

[sillag]

You don't think people actually pick their factions based on political leanings, do you?

for a lot of horde players they do, and it's really undeniable - you don't have to look far to see many wow fans who identify strongly enough with the horde to brand themselves with tattoos, etc.

but the horde doesn't really stand for anything other than fascism and genocide. most of the horde races have strong alt-right themes of genocide, racial purity, racial supremacy, manifest destiny, military dictatorship, and everything that makes incels cum in their pants in delight. you'd only be fooling yourself if you pretended this aspect that permeates almost the entire faction's lore wasn't a factor for a large number of horde players. bfa brought it to the forefront by making it the focus of the horde in the faction war, blizzard's intention was obviously for the players to see it as a bad thing and rally against it, supporting baine and saurfang in bringing honor back to the horde, but the horde players failed the writers' expectations and doubled down on fascism. from here there's really no salvaging the faction. ultimately the horde players are the faction, and blizzard isn't going to write them as good if the players themselves are going to have such a visceral reaction to being told murdering children is not morally justifiable, because then the horde players will unsub.

so there's really nothing that blizzard can do now apart from continue to awkwardly ignore the schism in the horde, and if anyone asks pretend it isn't there. meanwhile the horde faction continues to be a breeding ground for the alt-right. great job, blizzard.

[Darth-Piekus]

if anything bfa shows us that the horde can never be reconciled, the entire faction is an immense failure of writing and even though they tried to have this be the expansion where the conflicts in the horde were brought to some kind of resolution they only succeeded in making them worse than ever

there are a few main issues, mainly that the horde has no identity. the horde's cultural values shift moment by moment, as different writers have no unifying direction for it, and the result as we've seen is the majority of the players embrace the fascist, genocidal horde that the writers were hoping to finally eliminate in bfa. the reaction of fascist-leaning horde players to the idea of turning against sylvanas forced blizzard to add the lackluster loyalist storyline that they clearly never intended, but at that point the damage was done.

the horde cannot reconcile as it is, it needs to excise the corrupt, violent and evil portion of itself. but when blizzard tried it, the horde playerbase threw their toys out of the pram and demanded to be allowed to play out their fascist fantasies in their video game. and since wow is just a product, blizzard caved in and catered to them. now we see that the horde can never develop because the players won't allow it to, it will always awkwardly include leaders like baine trying to be honorable and the slaving, murderous horde that the horde playerbase can't turn away from. and as long as that is true, the horde will always be a laughable, schizophrenic failure of faction writing.

there is no way to fix the horde until blizzard musters up the courage to oppose the overwhelming majority of fascist-leaning horde players - a problem they created themselves. but they never will, because in the end they care more about sub fees than any message their game was supposed to have.

I find it hard to believe that people who were in majority against Garrosh and in favor of Thrall are now pro Sylvannas. The fact that those who are in favor of war gathered here in this forum doesn't say much. On the contrary it is a very small sample against all the rest. I wish I knew why Blizzard ever bothered to pamper up to their needs ruining the game for the rest creating a downhill after Wrath of the Lich King. Hopefully Blizzard learned their lesson and they can now focus on more interesting scenarios.

[Tharivor]

for a lot of horde players they do, and it's really undeniable - you don't have to look far to see many wow fans who identify strongly enough with the horde to brand themselves with tattoos, etc.

but the horde doesn't really stand for anything other than fascism and genocide. most of the horde races have strong alt-right themes of genocide, racial purity, racial supremacy, manifest destiny, military dictatorship, and everything that makes incels cum in their pants in delight. you'd only be fooling yourself if you pretended this aspect that permeates almost the entire faction's lore wasn't a factor for a large number of horde players. bfa brought it to the forefront by making it the focus of the horde in the faction war, blizzard's intention was obviously for the players to see it as a bad thing and rally against it, supporting baine and saurfang in bringing honor back to the horde, but the horde players failed the writers' expectations and doubled down on fascism. from here there's really no salvaging the faction. ultimately the horde players are the faction, and blizzard isn't going to write them as good if the players themselves are going to have such a visceral reaction to being told murdering children is not morally justifiable, because then the horde players will unsub.

so there's really nothing that blizzard can do now apart from continue to awkwardly ignore the schism in the horde, and if anyone asks pretend it isn't there. meanwhile the horde faction continues to be a breeding ground for the alt-right. great job, blizzard.

Imagine unironically thinking people are RL actual fascists because they play on a different team than you in an entirely fictional fantasy video game.

[Soon-TM]

Imagine unironically thinking people are RL actual fascists because they play on a different team than you in an entirely fictional fantasy video game.

To be fair, he isn't the only one. There seem to be certain folks in these boards who definitely have issues separating fiction from RL... Now that is worrying