How should the Horde story have been handled and advanced ?

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Not long ago I did a thread about the way the Alliance story has been handled, as well as to discuss what should have been better ways to handle and write the Alliance lore over WoW's progress : https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...d-and-advanced

So today I am making the same thread but for the second big faction of Warcraft universe : the Horde.

How do you think that the Horde story should have been written and advanced since the beggining of WoW up to this day ? What issues, progresses, success and failures should the Horde have faced since Vanilla ? What should have been its evolution ? And what issues and problems should have been resolved already and how ?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The Horde is not a morally heroic faction. The selling point of the Horde has always been that it's a coalition of genocidal beastmen. There is a reason why whenever Blizzard tells a story about the Horde, it always starts with the Horde going on a conquest spree. That is what the Horde is about and what makes it cool.

The problem is that there is only one logical ending to this kind of story: either the Horde wipes everyone else out (ie, the Horde endings of WC1 and WC2), or they themselves are defeated and dismantled (the status quo as of the start of Lord of the Clans where the surviving Orcs are in concentration camps). Both options result in the elimination of a faction a cohesive state, and Blizzard is unwilling to do that. Also, the Horde has no hope of a sensible, coherent victory over the Alliance, so they're doomed from the get go. Sorry, tribes of thousands of hunter-gatherers wielding bows and axes cannot triumph over kingdoms with hundreds of thousands to millions of people who have farms, industry, machineguns, huge navies, and airships. Also the Horde is incredibly unstable and prone to overthrowing its head of state every 4 years, while the Alliance is politically stable. So we're stuck in a cycle where every single Horde story is about the Horde going on a genocidal spree, having an internal revolution to handwave their responsibility (and try to make the audience forget that these people are culturally barbarians and institutionally fascist), and has the Horde's victims get amnesia and forget what the Horde did to them. It ultimately boils down to lipservice as the Horde goes back to genociding in a couple years, and it makes the Alliance look retarded for continuing to put up with it.

There is only one time in the history of Warcraft where Blizzard tried to break out of this paradigm. In Lord of the Clans and Warcraft 3, when Thrall tries to reform the Horde. Unfortunately, being peaceful beastmen is not interesting to Blizzard, so they undid that storyline and went back to the Horde being conquerors.

I've written my ideal storyline for the Horde before. It pretty much boils down to the Horde just taking the L in the Underhold and being broken up and being forced to confront their cultural and institutional issues. Everyone comes out of this with as much dignity as possible (at least compared to the alternatives). You still get to keep the Orcs, the Tauren, the Trolls, etc, they just aren't apart of a cohesive red team anymore that goes around conquering. This could provide an opportunity for the writers to create new factions (which is a plus in my book). Covenants were conceptually interesting, but Blizzard just can't tell good stories anymore, so nobody cares about the Covenant storylines.

The other option Blizzard could have taken was to never have "a story". Just do the Warhammer Fantasy thing where the story never progresses (except until End Times when GW decided to trash the setting in favor of their Age of Sigmar shit). So the Horde would always be a conquering coalition of beastmen and there wouldn't have to be any consequences. The problem with this is that it makes for a good tabletop wargaming setting, but for a franchise with video games and books that center around telling a story, it doesn't work.

- - - Updated - - -

Another potential option: if Blizzard wanted to have both the Horde and the Alliance, they could have kept the two factions completely separated from each other. Have Thrall lead the Horde back to Outland, and then blow up the Dark Portal. Then the Horde could return to their genocidal ways and go ham on NPC factions nobody is invested in. Thus, the Alliance and the Horde would never be forced to confront each other in a zero sum game that would always naturally end in the defeat of one of the two factions the audience are invested in. But you wouldn't get that blue vs red war.

[aceperson]

they shouldn't have even tried to give sylvanas an out for burning teldressil. kept the part about sylvanas giving azshara the dagger in exchange for destroying the alliance fleet. but then i would've had sylvanas defend her ideology of preservation at any cost. she failed to protect one home by being moral, she wouldn't want to lose a second by being so foolish. cut out nzoth from the story altogether. the dagger is just setup for a coming expansion.

i would've also had saurfang not be an idiot and challenge sylvanas at the start of the expansion. sylvanas would still win, but it'd be a close match with her using her win as a rallying cry that any means is necessary to live. saurfang, having lost, saurfang would go out and find himself in the world of azeroth to be touched on in a later patch or expansion. he would forsake honor, forsake orc tradition, and then be brought back by zappy boi through the ties of family.

the end of the expansion would've been a full siege of silvermoon city. the horde would ultimately lose the battle, sylvanas would break after losing silvermoon twice, the second time without restraint. anduin, being the overly forgiving person he is, would allow the horde to keep existing but instead of a warchief, a council would be made with a member from each race. oh, tyrande would also be part of the siege and absolutely destroy anything she touches.

the following expac probably would be tending to the world, helping characters like saurfang get back on their feet, find a way to help tyrande control her endless power so it doesn't destroy her, and finally address the giant sword stuck in azeroth.

[jellmoo]

Not long ago I did a thread about the way the Alliance story has been handled, as well as to discuss what should have been better ways to handle and write the Alliance lore over WoW's progress : https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...d-and-advanced

So today I am making the same thread but for the second big faction of Warcraft universe : the Horde.

How do you think that the Horde story should have been written and advanced since the beggining of WoW up to this day ? What issues, progresses, success and failures should the Horde have faced since Vanilla ? What should have been its evolution ? And what issues and problems should have been resolved already and how ?

The story at the start should have surrounded how the Horde was dying. The Orcs and Trolls had nothing. They inhabited the harshest, least viable lands in the known world. The Tauren were nomads struggling to figure out how to be more sedentary and living in lands barely better. The story should have really cemented how desperate they were to survive. How children were starving. This forced them to venture into Night Elf lands just to have the resources they needed to survive. Everything from the starting character creation narrative, to the starting quest texts should have hit this home. The Horde should have been on the verge of destruction from the get go.

For the Forsaken, the narrative should have been about their isolation, and how everyone around them reviled them, thought them no better than the Scourge, and wanted their destruction. Their should have been Human and Dwarf army camps setup surrounding them. They should have been looking to figure out a way to survive when they saw nothing but enemies at their doorstep and no way to get out.

The Horde should have been desperate on all fronts. Backed into a corner, just wanting to live, but having a more formidable force (from a resource, tech and organizational level) all around them that had what they needed. The story should have really reinforced why they were in conflict with the Alliance. Why they felt like they had to expand their territory. Why they felt the need to attack.

[Ennalorsilvertongue]

How do you think that the Horde story should have been written and advanced since the beggining of WoW up to this day ? What issues, progresses, success and failures should the Horde have faced since Vanilla ? What should have been its evolution ? And what issues and problems should have been resolved already and how ?

The faction war should have ended up with MoP, with elements from BFA having been baked into that story and Garrosh's character development really having been focused on more; it was unbelievable, and as a result turned him, and the whole Horde, into the villains. That needs to be corrected, and the culminating battle should have served as a point for a tonal shift for the story's direction moving forward.

All that said, when it comes to the details? I actually did a project to rewrite WoW's narrative from Vanilla onwards, including new material (as I personally believe that BFA and on shouldn't be considered canon because of how terribly it's screwed the pooch). You can find it on the wow forums (us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/a-proposed-revision/346231)

[Rhlor]

Not long ago I did a thread about the way the Alliance story has been handled, as well as to discuss what should have been better ways to handle and write the Alliance lore over WoW's progress : https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...d-and-advanced

So today I am making the same thread but for the second big faction of Warcraft universe : the Horde.

How do you think that the Horde story should have been written and advanced since the beggining of WoW up to this day ? What issues, progresses, success and failures should the Horde have faced since Vanilla ? What should have been its evolution ? And what issues and problems should have been resolved already and how ?

Voljin shouldn't have died and BFA shouldn't have been a horde vs alliance story. all mop looks like a waste.

[Clone]

Should have stuck to the WC3 depiction and not write them into living in shitty lands.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I actually did a project to rewrite WoW's narrative from Vanilla onwards, including new material (as I personally believe that BFA and on shouldn't be considered canon because of how terribly it's screwed the pooch). You can find it on the wow forums (us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/a-proposed-revision/346231)

Thanks for the link.

Ogres
Forest Trolls
Wildhammer Dwarves
High Elves

Yeah, these other groups should have had more of a presence. Ogres and High Elves really should have been playable. Would've made more sense of High Elves replaced the Kaldorei in the Alliance (Night Elves had no business joining the Alliance, but I digress) and the Ogres replacing the Forsaken's spot in the Horde. That said, it would be hard to get conflict between the two coalitions going if they didn't have territory located on each other's continents. I don't think it'd be too hard for Draenei to wind up joining the Alliance without the presence of the Night Elves.

In the Highlands, Alliance players would face a more fully fleshed out story as the surviving nobles of Strom struggle against the Syndicate and each other, all vying for power over the ruins of humanity’s first empire. This would be made more complicated by Forsaken’s recent advance into the region, whose own story would focus on undermining Alliance unity in the region, viewing the Highlands as an ideal territory for expansion.

Any Forsaken advance into Arathi would have to go past the Hinterlands, which means the Wildhammer clan would become involved. If the order of the levelling zones were rearranged so that the Wildhammers dealt with the Vilebranch trolls first, they could then mobilize to show up towards the end of the Arathi story. That could feel pretty satisfying.

Silver Hand forces still loyal to the Alliance

Another missed opportunity Blizzard never capitalized on: having Silver Hand paladins who were raised and broke free having to confront their still living comrades who were fighting for the Alliance. Or Forsaken confronting their living comrades and family in general.

We all know that KT comes back, but the characters in game don’t know this. This tease would stoke an immediate suspicion of each other amongst the coalition leadership, and the Argent Dawn rises to the occasion to ease tensions

One thing that Warcraft never did well was the handling of the Forsaken, the Scarlet Crusade, and the Argent Dawn/Crusade.

The Scarlet Crusade and the Argent Dawn/Crusade are fundamentally the same organization. They are fighting against a tyrannical regime that kills people and raises them as undead and enslaves them. Sylvanas does everything the Lich King did: kill people and enslave them. Except for some reason Blizzard decided that Scarlet Crusade are "evil" and the Argents aren't? And Thrall allows the Forsaken into the Horde - a faction predicated on slavery - when he had just spent his whole life as a slave and led his people across the ocean to escape it? What?

Kael’thas, allegedly, retains some semblance of his morality, and has struck a faux accord with the demon lord; his plan is to summon Kil’jaeden fully in order to allow the heroes of Azeroth to slay him.

...

We defeat M’ru and arrive at the final chamber of the Sunwell where we see Kael and Kil’jaeden battling one another.

I always found it weird that we got this official art of Kael'thas confronting Kil'jaeden, but it never happened anywhere in the story.

The Alliance works to lure Gruul out from his cave and set him loose upon the Black Dragonflights breeding grounds. With Gruul going ham, the Alliance sweeps in and begins to destroy the eggs. It’s important, however, for Alliance players to avoid Gruul himself cuz they’ll get crushed for sure; Gruul isn’t an ally, he’s the enemy of an enemy.

That sounds like a really fun mission!

She can’t, however, get past the Greymane Wall, which is heavily defended, due to so much of her forces already being engaged in helping the Horde and the Blood Elves elsewhere. She knows quite well that Thrall would never sanction an invasion of Gilneas.

She recruits the aid of the Goblins of the Bilgewater Cartel, who use their proclivity for explosives to bring down the wall, and open the way into Gilneas.

I think it'd be more sensible to bypass the wall and land on the beaches, as in canon. When Arthas began his massacre in Lordaeron, it seems that his massacre happened quickly enough, and he had the element of surprise. He would have almost certainly prioritized locking down the harbor. A few ships might have quickly set sail and escaped but for the most part Arthas should have had a navy at his disposal. The real question is whether or not most of those ships are still in the Scourge's possession. If they aren't then Sylvanas could easily use them to bypass the wall, though there should be coastal fortifications along Gilneas' coast. There were 7 kingdoms before the First War began so it'd be pretty naturaly for them to try to deter each other and be prepared in the advent of war. Also, when it comes to military campaigns, it's always more efficient to transport by sea than to march over land.

Sylvanas brings the Goblins to Thrall, who is none too happy about what Sylvanas has done in the Eastern Kingdoms. Claiming that she’s put the whole Horde at risk, Thrall threatens to eject the Forsaken - believing he needs to uphold the honor of the Horde, but Cairne, once again, intervenes.

This would require a retcon of Cairne's characterization. In the Shattering novel, Cairne was pissed about Garrosh almost killing those shipwrecked Alliance sailors. Cairne hated Garrosh's warhawk attitude, and then after hearing about an assassination of Night Elf druids, he believed Garrosh was responsible and wound up challenging Garrosh to a fight to the death over who gets to be Warchief. If Sylvanas had attacked Gilneas while Cairne was alive then he would have undoubtedly told Thrall to kick her out or else. (That said, Cairne was kind of a hypocrite since he already tolerated her joining the Horde in the first place, but I digress).

The resolution to the canon Wrath Battle for Lordaeron was stupid (no consequences, stupid moralizing, letting the Horde off the hook, etc), so having the BFA Battle for Lordaeron replace the Wrath version is good. That said, at this point Silvermoon is completely isolated on the Eastern Kingdoms (not that the Forsaken would have been much help against an incoming Alliance army) and should begin negotiations with the Alliance, IMO.

have the Tournament overlook Crystalsong, instead of a grim and bleak ocean to the north.

IIRC the Tourney was supposed to be in Crystalsong, but since Dalaran was so close it'd be loaded in at the same time, the game would lag pretty badly. Dunno why they couldn't have used phasing or LoDs so that when you were at the tourney, the assets on top of Dalaran unloaded, and vice versa.

TBH, the Argent Tournament really makes no sense in Wrath's story. Why are stopping the war and spending our manpower and resources on having a tournament to select a handful of guys to fight the Lich King? Why not just commit all of our guys and resources to fighting the Lich King? If the Tournament is for morale, then why are we hosting it on an underdeveloped continent where a war is going on? What, is the baker's daughter in Stormwind going to get on a ship, spend weeks sailing across the sea, and spend more time travelling by land to go see the tournament? Etc.

I'd think it'd make more sense if each faction had their tournaments at home as a festival of sorts. Orgrimmar already has an arena. The Allinace could build tourney grounds a short distance outside of Stormwind or Dun Morogh. The citizens could easily come down and see the fights. Could make sense as an annual holiday or a regular event.

Back in their capitals, both the Horde and Alliance know damn well that peace isn’t an option now that the Lich King is dead

I'd say it is an option. With Silvermoon as the only "Horde" city on the Eastern Kingdoms, the Alliance could just negotiate to have Silvermoon renounce their loyalty to the Horde. Now the Horde has no assets on the Eastern Kingdoms and there isn't a conflict of interest The only conflict of interest between the Horde and the Alliance is located on a completely different continent, with Teldrassil (and it's territories of Darkshore and Ashenvale) and Theramore being close enough to Horde territories to be perceived as a threat.

To protect Theramore, Jaina likewise could promise neutrality. That just leaves the Night Elves, who never really had any business being in the Alliance, and in WC3 were characterized as being as just as strong as the entire Alliance. The rest of the Alliance has no stake in this conflict so they could probably just let the Elves and the Horde fight it out if they want.

It would be in the Horde's selfinterests to placate the Alliance by scapegoating Sylvanas and let her back as the Forsaken's leader. If she really does want what is best for her people then she should be able to be convinced to just not come back into the spotlight. At that point she just has to worry about Gilneans trying to hunt her down and assassinate her. Most sensible outcome here, I feel.

All out war erupts and the world is shattered by Deathwing, but the armies of the Horde and Alliance are out for blood; they clash and vie for territory regardless of the rampart destruction all around them.

I mean, that's cool, but is this war only taking place in Dustwallow Marsh/Barrens and Ashenvale? Silvermoon is the one and only Horde city in the EK. If they maintained their loyalty to the Horde, then that story ends with an Alliance army marching/sailing up to Silvermoon and conquering it. So that'd mean it's just a Kalimdor war. Why are the Dwarf and Human kingdoms going to sail their armies across the world to fight for one small human colony? I'd feel that this could very easily turn into the American Revolution where you have huge armies fruitlessly chasing guerillas in circles, puzzled as to why the war is still going on despite the fact that they hold all of the important cities, until eventually the coast of financing an overseas war becomes so great that they just pack up and go home.

I think it’d be a solid move to give the Draenei a formal home on Azeroth. Have them turn the Exodar into a proper capital city, rather than a big waste of space.

IIRC in one of the Cata novels, the Exodar was stated to have been repaired. So theoretically it could be flown over to the EK and land in the safety of the Alliance (not that they really need to since their death rays and shield generators would protect them from anything the Horde could throw at them).

There would be active questing involved this time in which players Alliance side uncover Garrosh’s plot, and then try to evacuate its leadership.

Yeah. Scenarios giving us more content was nice, but the Theramore campaign really should have been a full blown questline, like the War of Thorns. Not just a 10 minute scenario with the rest of the campaign being described in a book.

One of the stories I’ve really wanted to see happen on both factions is a recognition of just how much the faction war has cost the Horde and Alliance, and just how extensive the damage has been. In the story, we’ve heard the economy in nearby regions is being sucked dry by Stormwind for war funds and soldiers; we’ve heard the Horde is “on the brink of defeat” and “struggling without supplies” for ages, and yet none of these things are ever manifest in the game.

This would be welcome too, but you run into the problem where the Alliance is so much more numerous and would have such a higher kill ratio that you wouldn't see widespread problems like these in the Alliance. You would have to conceptually change the makeup of the Alliance members so that they are just as few in number as the Horde, or make the Horde far more populous than they really are. Or give the Horde a string of incredible, devestating victories (ie massacres) over the Alliance.

The Gnomes are taking a more active role in Alliance leadership, helping to provide new technologies to help in the recovery process

Yes, industrialists really should have become richer and more powerful in the Alliance as they would have rebuilt ruined cities and mass produced arms and armor and airships for the Alliance military.

New 3 factions is conceptually interesting, but the implementation here sounds very muddy. Changing the affiliations of literally every single character and city? Suddenly prior connections are nullified? It feels like too much. I think having new factions that are mostly unconnected to prior locations and lore would be much easier to digest (like Covenants in Shadowlands, though those suffered for different reasons).

Boats are cool. Yes to boats.

[Super Dickmann]

Don't do Mists, don't do BFA. Don't restore the Sunwell if you add Blood Elves in the first place. Problem solved.

The Horde is extremely easy to write in this kind of story when the writers want to. It's an all purpose conflict generation device if allowed to simply be what it is supposed to. When you struggle against it and try to write it as noblesavages and friends, it bogs down and is unable to have a role in the story, because that shit's boring.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Don't do Mists, don't do BFA. Don't restore the Sunwell if you add Blood Elves in the first place. Problem solved.

The Horde is extremely easy to write in this kind of story when the writers want to. It's an all purpose conflict generation device if allowed to simply be what it is supposed to. When you struggle against it and try to write it as noblesavages and friends, it bogs down and is unable to have a role in the story, because that shit's boring.

So... a perpetual conflict between red and blue with no end? So a stagnate state of being like in Warhammer?

[Super Dickmann]

So... a perpetual conflict between red and blue with no end? So a stagnate state of being like in Warhammer?

Yes. That's what a gameplay where all conflicts are resolved by violence and where your prism into it is one of two playable factions can do.

You can do noblesavages existing in a vegetative state in a complete story, which is why the WC3 Horde works in WC3 despite being perfunctory to the Starcraft retread that is the actual plot. You can also do this because in the RTS you aren't limited to two playable factions but can conceivably make anything playable and so cast the conflict through the lens of any view point. You can't do it in long form pulp fantasy, which is what WoW is, because anything you create needs to be sustained in variations on its present form indefinitely. Whether he happens to be a doctor, a company owner, a satanist making a deal with a devil rather than just divorcing, Spider-Man will still be shooting webs and punching baddies in flamboyant costumes in the face. The same applies to the Horde. It is a brand, a symbol representing a particular axis of conflict.

You can do this whole rigamarole about it learning about the benefits of a council system from an absolute monarchy or you can even start it in a position where it doesn't have much to do besides run errands for its opposite number, like the Kalimdor Horde's total absence of any real plots of its own in Vanilla. At the end of the day all these things are aberrant in not serving the main purpose of it as a pulp storytelling tool which is to have green people hit pink people (and now people of all colours) in the face and vice versa, and so the writers will eventually relapse. Other franchises like Warhammer don't get themselves in this position because they're self-aware of the needs of their franchise hence why everything is penned with the proviso that every playable group must be able to fight every other playable group and itself, but with Warcraft it's a cycle instead because the writers keep thinking they can reinvent the wheel.

[Jshadowhunter]

The story at the start should have surrounded how the Horde was dying. The Orcs and Trolls had nothing. They inhabited the harshest, least viable lands in the known world. The Tauren were nomads struggling to figure out how to be more sedentary and living in lands barely better. The story should have really cemented how desperate they were to survive. How children were starving. This forced them to venture into Night Elf lands just to have the resources they needed to survive. Everything from the starting character creation narrative, to the starting quest texts should have hit this home. The Horde should have been on the verge of destruction from the get go.

That was literally the reason why Garrosh was so hellbent on expansion when he discovered that Thrall decided to have the orcs inhabit an inhospitable land, not because it looked like their original homeworld, as stated in the Founding of Durotar, but because he wanted his race to repent for the sins of their fathers... which was so bloody dumb.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

That was literally the reason why Garrosh was so hellbent on expansion when he discovered that Thrall decided to have the orcs inhabit an inhospitable land, not because it looked like their original homeworld, as stated in the Founding of Durotar, but because he wanted his race to repent for the sins of their fathers... which was so bloody dumb.

As far as the best place to establish Orgrimmar goes, it should be along the coasts. In the long term, a city needs water access and lots of fertile land nearby, and historically coastal cities prosper the most as it the most efficient form of transportation is to ship by boat (and also by zeppelin due to the square cube law, but the Horde has never been depicted as having anywhere near as large of an airforce as the Alliance). If the Horde wants to trade with other nations across the ocean then picking a sport along Kalimdor's East Coast makes sense. I think Azshara might have been the best bet, as it clearly had enough rainfall for trees to sprout up. No idea how good it would have been for farming. If Azshara was ill suited for farming, then Dustwallow Marash might have been a good second choice. Could have gone done what the Aztecs did and build your farms in islands in the marsh. Too bad in canon the Horde never really made use of any fertile land they control for farming. I have no idea how Orgrimmar was supposed to be fed with some pigs grazing off of... well there is nothing in Durotar for them to graze off of. They'd have to graze off of grass in the Barrens or Azshara, though strangely the pig farms in Durotar, not the Barrens or Azshara.

[Eggroll]

That was literally the reason why Garrosh was so hellbent on expansion when he discovered that Thrall decided to have the orcs inhabit an inhospitable land, not because it looked like their original homeworld, as stated in the Founding of Durotar, but because he wanted his race to repent for the sins of their fathers... which was so bloody dumb.

But now the Horde had Hillsbrad Foothills and Aszhara for quite a while.
What exactly did they do with it?

[Super Dickmann]

But now the Horde had Hillsbrad Foothills and Aszhara for quite a while.
What exactly did they do with it?

Fuck knows, the game hasn't touched those parts of the world in ten years or raised the issue after Mists.

[Eggroll]

Fuck knows, the game hasn't touched those parts of the world in ten years or raised the issue after Mists.

Well, they plagued Hillsbrad Foothills, that's for sure. They actually don't know what to do with fertile lands, so why give it to them to begin with?

[Super Dickmann]

Well, they plagued Hillsbrad Foothills, that's for sure. They actually don't know what to do with fertile lands, so why give it to them to begin with?

And that was the last we've seen of these places in terms of development. And the topic of 'giving' it is inapplicable in any case since Azshara was free real estate and Hillsbrad was always Lordaeron.

[Sondrelk]

The Horde is simply in a narrative limbo. They cannot commit to a single facet for long otherwise it reaches a natural conclusion real fast.
If the Horde are noble savages then the logical endgame is them accepting blame for their actions and making peace with the Alliance, effectively ending any story they have.
If the Horde are monsters then the game has to contrive reasons for the Alliance to not just wipe them off the face of the planet, otherwise the logical endgame there is the annihilation of the Horde as a whole.

Any nuance between the two is difficult since there isnt really a middleground that doesnt really betray either, as shown in BfA. If they are noble savages then why are they okay with blatant warcrimes? If they are monsters then why do they listen to Saurfang?
The game could possibly remedy this if it had the time to show the Horde as truly multifaceted and with diverse thoughts, but the game doesnt have time for that. At best we are left to assume a myriad of thoughts on the future of the Horde within the Horde itself, but any attempts at showing this makes the characters come across as apathetic at best, and schizophrenic at worst.

The Alliance doesnt really have this problem because it doesnt have a moral dilemma that it needs to resolve. All it's threats are external, and because the game has focused on the Alliance being stable for so long it will be easier to accept if we eventually get some internal discord.

[Arikara]

Garrosh should have died and Cairne been Warchief. The rest writes itself

Sylvanas should've stuck to what she was actually good at; skulking in the shadows and being highly questionable yet not provably Definitely Bad. You know, instead of the drama queen bullshit we've been getting

Vol'jin should have sucked less and Bane gotten a chance to actually do something of his own before being thrust into a leadership position (and also be less of a moralistic mouthpiece for the shitty writers currently running the show, and just be permitted to be his own character)

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Well, they plagued Hillsbrad Foothills, that's for sure. They actually don't know what to do with fertile lands, so why give it to them to begin with?

That and the fact that despite their supposed lack of ressources and the constant wars they wage that should have greatly worsened the problem, orcs and their allies are still capable of raising armies, building weapons and ships and buildings and are never shown suffering from wood and other materials shortage or hunger or poverty.

The Ashenvale issue has lost all credibility and meaning a long time ago.