Realistic portrayal of the Alliance within World of Warcraft

[TheFirstOnes]

So he literally went from a cripple to a powerful god like being deity in just a few expansions? Sounds mary sueish

Lots of people overpowered Anduin, even throughout BFA. He's only powerful now cause he's amp'd up by the Jailer.

[VladlTutushkin]

Some, maybe. In my opinion the reluctance to commit genocide is what sets the Alliance so drastically apart from the Horde. We could have annihilated the Horde several times over but we are not doing it because that would make us just like them.
Which is exactly the realization that Jaina arrives at during Warcrimes. She is glad she did not destroy Orgimmar, because she would have become just like Garrosh and she doesn't want that. Same for me.

I like being on the right side and not having to constantly defend what my faction does because it keeps piling warcrimes on top of warcrimes whenever it is bored. I don't need some grimdark fantasy world where everyone stabs everyone in the back because it is convenient and the kiddies go nuts when a guy crushes another guys skull with his bare hands.

Is that realistic? Sure. Reality sucks. Humans are monsters. But why would I need that in my fantasy world? I could just as well watch the news or read from authors like Martin that pander to the blood-thirsty crowd.

The Alliance is the faction of heroes, so it can't just go around genociding, because that is not it's identity.

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For now. When the Horde gets that itch again the Draenei will be the next.

Well that would have being as you said IF:

1) Alliance wasnt constantly shown as pathetic, inept and incapable of even self-defense.

2) Horde players will claim that Alliance is just as bad or even worse then the horde regardless and so people cant really enjoy that status since it either depends on your personal point of view of morality or can be endlessly disputed like the dude below just did by appealing to “but you kill kobolds in droves”.

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Nah, at least the Exodar (and Silvermoon, for that matter) is 100% guaranteed against fire and... Everything else, even if only because Blizzard has shown time and time again that it cannot/doesn't want to revamp the Draenei/BE starting zones. Which I'm fine with btw, since they are probably some of the most immersive zones ever made in WoW.

Now, as far as Gnomes are concerned...

Hey. Would that be “totally rad” to Void the Sunwell and have Silvermoon sucked into the Void like that floating island of void elves? Also it will have FLYING then. One small detail - all blood elves there will either die in horrible agony or go void elf and join Alliance and be completely loyal to the cause.

[TheFirstOnes]

Night elves are refugees BECAUSE of High King and Alliance and Gilneans were promised Gilneas to be retaken and yet no moves were done to achieve that for years by the Alliance.

Probably because the Forsaken held sway over it. Why do you think Turalyon's now thinking of taking back Northern EK? Cause Sylvanas and the Forsaken are smacked.

[BrintoSFJ]

My question is : why is the human king always the alliance leader? Makes little to no sense to me.

[Combatbutler]

2) Horde players will claim that Alliance is just as bad or even worse then the horde regardless and so people cant really enjoy that status since it either depends on your personal point of view of morality or can be endlessly disputed like the dude below just did by appealing to “but you kill kobolds in droves”.

Genocide is genocide, since the Alliance already does it there is no reason for some of their ranks to commit a massacre against the horde here and there, thus fleshing out a decent cycle of hatred, instead of this wishy washy nonsensical garbage.

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My question is : why is the human king always the alliance leader? Makes little to no sense to me.

Humans are easier to write

[VladlTutushkin]

Genocide is genocide, since the Alliance already does it there is no reason for some of their ranks to commit a massacre against the horde here and there, thus fleshing out a decent cycle of hatred, instead of this wishy washy nonsensical garbage.

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Humans are easier to write

I can start arguing on why kobolds are different from “civilised” races of Azeroth and why we actually take quests from those of “beast” races who are not mindlessly aggressive but that seems pointless here.

And genocide of a horde race? In a same root as Teldrassil was? Sure. Just dont expect an ounce more then what Alliance got out of that. You will get like, a pinch of retribution on a whole loaf of depression and humiliation.

[Eggroll]

As a Night Elf I despise Anduin Wrynn.

In fact, he's a disgrace to the name 'Wrynn.'

As a fellow Night Elf, I concur!

He broke Varian's promise to end the Horde would they fail to uphold honor again (Siege of Orgrimmar)
Also he dishonored Varian's last written words to him...
"I now believe as you do, that peace is the nobelest aspiration. But to preserve it, YOU MUST BE WILLING TO FIGHT!"
Taken from the Legion cinematic trailer.
Anduin just shits on his father's memory. He IS indeed a disgrace to the house Wrynn.

[Raisei]

Night elves are refugees BECAUSE of High King and Alliance and Gilneans were promised Gilneas to be retaken and yet no moves were done to achieve that for years by the Alliance.

1) The Nightelves would be refugees because of Sylvanas and the Horde. End of story. The High King did not destroy their home. Stop trying to deflect. Darkshore is even retaken now, but they can't live there anymore. No way to regrow that World Tree.

2) The Nightelves are not refugees since they just went to the other World Tree in the north and live there now, according to Shadow's Rising. Thanks to Sylvanas they won't need much room anymore. Yes there are still some NPCs called "refugee" in SW, I know. These will be removed when there is a revamp of the Kalimdor map and the Nelfs get a capital again. Canonically they moved, the game just hasn't caught up with that change because we are worrying about reality being destroyed atm.

3) The Alliance wasn't in a position to retake Gilneas for quite a while. Too many cosmic threats and too many mad Warchiefs allying with said cosmic threats. Genn seems to understand this, else he would hardly be at Anduin's side and Tess is probably extremely relieved she does not have to go back to a life as princess.

[Eggroll]

1) The Nightelves would be refugees because of Sylvanas and the Horde. End of story. The High King did not destroy their home. Stop trying to deflect. Darkshore is even retaken now, but they can't live there anymore. No way to regrow that World Tree.

The night elves are refugees because Anduin did not send any help to aid Teldrassil against the Horde onslaught, neither did the space goats living next door. They just let the enemy prevail. We will never know why.

[Combatbutler]

I can start arguing on why kobolds are different from “civilised” races of Azeroth and why we actually take quests from those of “beast” races who are not mindlessly aggressive but that seems pointless here.

They are just the easiest example, civilized races are butchered as well, like Vrykul and Naga, the latter having one of the most advanced civilization on the planet

And genocide of a horde race? In a same root as Teldrassil was? Sure. Just dont expect an ounce more then what Alliance got out of that. You will get like, a pinch of retribution on a whole loaf of depression and humiliation.

I don't give a fuck about the factions as they are, Horde and Alliance are non entities and meaningless, its members devoid of motives or real interaction, I would love to see them collapse at one point, then have a timeskip of a few centuries, creating new ones with a vastly different roster.

In essence I care for a overarching consistent story, which currently does not exist.

[Pheraz]

Anduin wouldn't of been able to inherit the High King title. Because that's a military rank, bestowed upon Varian by a count between the Alliance's leaders.
If this was actually real, the Dwarves would've either cut themselves off from the Alliance, the Night Elves wouldn't co-operate with the Humans anymore, Genn would focus on trying to reclaim Gilneas, the Gnomes would side with the Dwarves because Anduin being named High King would just reek of corruption. He's just a boy, not fit to rule the Alliance as a military leader.
Obviously the leaders of the races besides Humans would look very, very weak towards their people. They would think that their leaders are weak, that they don't care about them. That they bow down before the Humans. The races of non humans would revolt against their leaders.

The Humans, as a side note, are culturally taking over the Alliance as some sort of Imperialistic government. The state that every race is donned in Stormwind armor tells enough.

If we were really realistic, the Elves wouldn't allow themselves to get governed by a Human. But that ship has sailed.

Anyway, let's say Anduin wouldn't have been able to be High King. His kingdom, his lords would've already tried to usurp him by the point of the battle for Lordaeron, as he is weak military wise and weak physically wise (it's canon that Anduin SUCKS as a sword fighter, even his warrior of a father gave up on him). He doesn't interact with the Lords and nobels of Stormwind anymore, hell Varian didn't either after WotLK. It's like they all died or something.

Ah but, I forgot. This IS Blizzard. I forgot that, they don't do those storylines anymore. Nope, only Marvel-esque storytelling allowed here. Something something writers and twitter something. You know the deal.

Only fictional storylines of extraterrestial threats are allowed here. No infighting allowed, unless you faction is the Horde.

BUT WAIT:
Somehow, somehow, the Orcs were content with Sylvanas being named Warchief, despite the Orcs having almost no good standing with the Undead thanks to the Wrathgate, Garrosh Hellscream and his propaganda against them, aswell as their "dishonorable" tactics on the battlefield. Imagine Sylvanas being named Warchief in the heart of Orgrimmar and no Orcs within the city made up of mostly Orcs would dispute that claim of title and challenge her to a mak'gora.
Sylvanas has neither interacted much with the Horde apart from her involvement with the Lich King one dungeon and that one time she took the spotlight from Vol'jin, because the writer's were already setting her as Warchief before the dude even got stabbed from a demon. Besides those moments, all she interacted with was the throne in her Throne room and the Forsaken.

So I guess even both factions get screwed logically wise and this whole ordeal is just a fallacy of writer's just writing whatever the fuck they want instead of being consistent and truthful to the source, but who gives a SHIT when you can just write that everything's happy with eachother in this perfect world of Azeroth and you can just go back and retcon and change things to your liking because you're too uncreative to come up with anything new so your only solution is to change things that happened before your time because you think you somehow come off as creative in doing so but instead you just disrespect the whole franchise with your gibberish and bias towards your favorite characters.

Remember, in WoW Gameplay is always more important to the game designers than the lore or roleplay (sadly).
I think the only reason why they force stormwind with their stupid king wiliam lion theme all over our faces as the main city with a portal room, and center the "lore" around this is that they tried to have multiple cities in the first expansion and ended up with ghost cities.
If they would start to make alliance and horde less human / orc centric, they need to give people an actual reason to hang out in let's say "teldrassil 2" (lol) or undercity 2
You quest there, you leave there, and you never come back outside of nostalgia.

But I understand it is hard to design a game about multiple main cities when you do want actually cities with live in there and not just ghost towns.

The warfronts were a point in the right direction but then sucked because the gameplay was too easy, repepetive and stupid. But this kind of stuff should be made again but this time with good gameplay.
Give people a reason to be anywhere, or like blizzard would say it "it is fun" to be in city XYZ

[Combatbutler]

The night elves are refugees because Anduin did not send any help to aid Teldrassil against the Horde onslaught, neither did the space goats living next door. They just let the enemy prevail. We will never know why.

Anduin not helping is a dick move, the draenei on the other hand are behaving as usual, putting their fingers in their ears ignoring the problem, until it affects them.

[VladlTutushkin]

1) The Nightelves would be refugees because of Sylvanas and the Horde. End of story. The High King did not destroy their home. Stop trying to deflect. Darkshore is even retaken now, but they can't live there anymore. No way to regrow that World Tree.

2) The Nightelves are not refugees since they just went to the other World Tree in the north and live there now, according to Shadow's Rising. Thanks to Sylvanas they won't need much room anymore. Yes there are still some NPCs called "refugee" in SW, I know. These will be removed when there is a revamp of the Kalimdor map and the Nelfs get a capital again. Canonically they moved, the game just hasn't caught up with that change because we are worrying about reality being destroyed atm.

3) The Alliance wasn't in a position to retake Gilneas for quite a while. Too many cosmic threats and too many mad Warchiefs allying with said cosmic threats. Genn seems to understand this, else he would hardly be at Anduin's side and Tess is probably extremely relieved she does not have to go back to a life as princess.

Anduin did not retaken Ashenvale which he could have done. He didnt even tried diplomacy to achieve that.

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They are just the easiest example, civilized races are butchered as well, like Vrykul and Naga, the latter having one of the most advanced civilization on the planet



I don't give a fuck about the factions as they are, Horde and Alliance are non entities and meaningless, its members devoid of motives or real interaction, I would love to see them collapse at one point, then have a timeskip of a few centuries, creating new ones with a vastly different roster.

In essence I care for a overarching consistent story, which currently does not exist.

Vrykul start most fights like that and worship objectively evil entities from Lich King to Helya.

Naga are old god servants and it was alluded that they bear old god taint from birth which makes them evil in a same way Black Dragons (corrupted) are.

[Smallfruitbat]

As a fellow Night Elf, I concur!

He broke Varian's promise to end the Horde would they fail to uphold honor again (Siege of Orgrimmar)
Also he dishonored Varian's last written words to him...
"I now believe as you do, that peace is the nobelest aspiration. But to preserve it, YOU MUST BE WILLING TO FIGHT!"
Taken from the Legion cinematic trailer.
Anduin just shits on his father's memory. He IS indeed a disgrace to the house Wrynn.

Another Night Elf main here, waiting to see the disgrace of a King taken apart for his treason.

A few threads ago, someone referred to the short story 'Elegy' as 'Fuck you, Night Elves.' It pretty much sums up Blizzards writing of the races outside of Humans. It's almost as if they have to be dumbed down or forced to make obvious mistakes to make the humans look good.

Anduin's role seems to have been to be a walking clique, wise beyond his years, spider sense warning him when he's about to make a bad decision, beat your swords into plough shares and hope the light will protect you when the big bad horde come stomping through.

I'm sure Magni loved Anduin, same for Velen and Aunty Jaina, but you've got to think after all their collective experience they should recognise the malleable boy King is not ready for such leadership.

[Combatbutler]

Vrykul start most fights like that and worship objectively evil entities from Lich King to Helya.[

Naga are old god servants and it was alluded that they bear old god taint from birth which makes them evil in a same way Black Dragons (corrupted) are.

The point is the Alliance is willing to slaughter them, because they are enemies, even in their sleep. It is not about taint or anything like that, they are simply an enemy to get rid off,simply because they pose a threat.

[cparle87]

What kind of infighting was there? Jaina looking sad into the camera for 2 cinematics?

Did you completely forget about Ashvane and the civil war she fought? Hiring pirates to attack her own city? Arming them with azerite weaponry to blow one of the gates to the bay surrounded Tiragarde to pieces?

[Raisei]

Well that would have being as you said IF:

1) Alliance wasnt constantly shown as pathetic, inept and incapable of even self-defense.

I don't feel that way. We won all conflicts with the Horde and kept the moral high ground on top. No matter how depraved their methods get, we beat them every time in the end.
We have much better characters, so much so that many Hordes feel the constant need to claim them for themselves (like Alleria and Valeera), while they fall over themselves crying about the characters they have (Baine).
All in all it's pretty nice being Alliance. Would be even better if the Horde wouldn't be allowed to torch our cities every 2 years, but that is just what they are.

2) Horde players will claim that Alliance is just as bad or even worse then the horde regardless and so people cant really enjoy that status since it either depends on your personal point of view of morality or can be endlessly disputed like the dude below just did by appealing to “but you kill kobolds in droves”.

Oh yes they do. It's adorable. They are wrong of course, but that truth wouldn't get into their heads if you pounded it in with Bolvar's hammer. I suppose it makes them feel better to believe this nonesense. Who likes to be on the wrong side after all.

[Combatbutler]

Oh yes they do. It's adorable. They are wrong of course, but that truth wouldn't get into their heads if you pounded it in with Bolvar's hammer. I suppose it makes them feel better to believe this nonesense. Who likes to be on the wrong side after all.

Fanboying about a faction, ignoring the obvious is what is adorable here. Genocide is a dime a dozen in the warcraft universe, the Alliance merely pulls its punches in relation to the horde for whatever asinine reason.

[Jackstraw]

We won all conflicts with the Horde and kept the moral high ground on top.

See this is one of the things that irks me the most, alongside can do no bad Anduin, with the "current" writing.

Everything the Alliance does gets a pass because it would tarnish it. So the Horde does not exist for anything other than a foil to further the Alliance centric plot.
However the overall perception is that the game is heavily Horde favored.

This makes absolutely no sense.

[Raisei]

The night elves are refugees because Anduin did not send any help to aid Teldrassil against the Horde onslaught, neither did the space goats living next door. They just let the enemy prevail. We will never know why.

Why? Because the fleet was too far away, that is why. There really is no mystery there. Anduin desperatedly tried to get people there, but couldn't. Sylvanas tricked them all and by the time the ruse was revealed it was too late.