What do you think of Steve Danuser's lore work as Lead Narrative Designer?

[Schmilblick]

He think all wow players are 5 years old children and I'm sure even those don't like the absurd lore.

[mickybrighteyes]

I think of his work in the last expansions as highly as I think of the writing and acting in The Last Airbender movie.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean? There's a movie? I only remember the James Cameron one.

[Mehrunes]

The rest of the Alliance is, through the context of the Alliance's very purpose, bound to retake Lordaeron and establish it as an allied kingdom once again because it is still Alliance land under occupation by undead creatures in the aftermath of the Third War. The Alliance has reclaimed capitals of its own from the Horde in a similar fashion in the past; Stormwind's ruins were occupied by the orcs during the Second War and Stormwind was reclaimed once more. Admittedly, the royal line of Stormwind survived, but there are a number of candidates who could take on the mantle of reclaimed Lordaeron's Regent Lord - chief among them being Turalyon - which would be identical to the way the blood elves presently run Quel'thalas, having installed a military figure as the de facto leader.

Again, alliances don't get land claims on territories held by their members even if they are still members. There's no such thing as "Alliance land", even more so when the kingdom in question isn't even a member of the Alliance anymore (because it outright doesn't exist).

Also, while the Orcs did keep Stormwind during the Second War, we know nothing about the state of things at the time Stormwindians returned there. The Orcs who kept it may just as well had taken part in the battle of Blackrock and got captured there and then. The recapture of Stormwind's ruins was also done by Stormwind itself. And Stormwind, unlike the Alliance, had a claim on its former territory because it's a state.

[Combatbutler]

Also, while the Orcs did keep Stormwind during the Second War, we know nothing about the state of things at the time Stormwindians returned there. The Orcs who kept it may just as well had taken part in the battle of Blackrock and got captured there and then. The recapture of Stormwind's ruins was also done by Stormwind itself. And Stormwind, unlike the Alliance, had a claim on its former territory because it's a state.

One of the biggest mistakes of the warcraft universe is the superficial focus on the factions, instead of the member states within, which should all have their own agency and agendas, tip toeing the line of strong allies or fair weather friends depending on the situation, pity there will never be such a thing.

[Raisei]

The 'helpless' farmers around the glades aren't anymore or less helpless than say the bandits and gnolls running around Elwynn forest. A number of the living are actively treating the 'forsaken' as hostile scourge in general. Experimenting on them IS villainous but mind you the same is being done by the living barely across the lake. I.E. experimenting on these "things" not even assuming they're sentient. A flip side that can also be a grey area morally.

You really do not see a difference between harmless farmers and bandits that kill and rob anyone in sight? Or Gnolls who do the same? That is some interesting stance.

That the living are experimenting on undead is quite normal... I mean there was this thing only a few years prior... what was it called.... oh yes... the damn SCOURGE ravaging an ENTIRE human kingdom. Of course human don't much care about undead "unlifes". It's exactly the same argument that the other Horde posters bring up when whining about Orc Camps or anything else.
The undead have been a monstrous enemy that murdered the humans without any hesitation and the Forsaken have done NOTHING to distinquish them from the Scourge (especially at that point). In fact them possessing free will and STILL murder people in insane experiments and make them into new Abominations makes them even WORSE then the Scourge.
It is such a hypocrasy to afterwards demand that all these monstrous enemies are treated fairly and humanly because they are sentient now.

As to afflicting the curse on others? While this argument actually spans a few eras of the wow storyline... the living have made it abundantly clear at times that undeath is an abomination and should be destroyed. It was the status quo before the Forsaken established any ties with the horde, it is the status quo among the humans all throughout much of the storyline with very little changing outside of the Before the Storm arc and some token characters of beyond saintly demeanor. The argument about being slaves to the curse is at odds with "Well everyone thinks we're expendable so fuck it"...

Again. Of course the humans considered the Undead monsters to be destroyed they had seen the friggin SCOURGE. Lordearon and Quel'thalas were almost completely destroyed by the undead. Of course the humans hate them. Sylavans had a minimal chance to change this outlook, she could have kept her word to Garithos and continue to work together with the remaining human kingdoms, instead she murdered Garithos' troops to the man. There is just no reason why the humans should think anything else.

Yes but this point gets weird post Arthas. Where she DID care some amount. This was why she disobeyed Garrosh and fucked up Gilneas with Blight

And she made a point to make actions that directly mitigated her own people's losses. If it was JUST keeping herself alive... she could bugger off and vanish. Not make disliked decisions to mitigate losses. Getting figureheads who have declared distrust of her out of bad situations or prevent her forces from being used as someone else's meatshields.

You need to really read Edge of Night one of these times. She didn't care one bit about the Forsaken beyond their value as her inhuman shields against death. They were her tools, her weapons. And that is why she disobeyed Garrosh and mitigated their losses. If they all die she looses her shield against death. She literally quoted that in the fight on top of Torghast when speaking of the Val'kyr that literally gave their lifes for her: "The archer does not mourn the loss of her arrows."

I am not sure how you manage to hear these lines and still believe she ever saw the Forsaken as anything but expendable tools. She would have killed each and everyone of them if it bought her a single day of being free from the pain of the Maw.

First option would have been her actions in Gilneas because protecting her forces, even as an extension of her defense is still helping her people, but the inner monologues and motivations were retconned after the fact and never addressed post Chain Nipple Daddy developments...

I would say she "maintained" her people as one would maintain a weapon that is of no use when it breaks. That this kept the Forsaken "alive" was a meaningless side-effect when we are dicussing her reasons and motivation. This is complete and utter self-serving.

But they left in calling for the retreat at Broken Shore. Now being named warchief afterwards might be 'self serving to you.... but you also seem to think wiping out a certain group isn't all that bad because 'they're already dead' or something so I will just agree to disagree... but if you try and argue that SAVING OTHER PEOPLE is "entirely self serving" I'll just have to shake my head.

Here is the thing. Blizzard is unable to make up their minds about who or what Sylvanas is. Mostly she is a villain and that is why there are tons of evidence for her self-serving actions and blatant disregard for any life but her own. But now and then something weird happens and she is presented in a different light. The scene on the Broken Shore is one of these where suddenly she actually seems concerned about Vol'jin and the Horde, something that goes completely contrary to her overall character. The same goes for these remorseful looks at a mind-controlled Anduin. It was only month ago that she tried to mind-control Daelin into murdering his entire family in their sleep, but doing the same to Anduin is somehow crossing a line? Pleaaaase. It's just Danuser who cannot accept that his waifu is a villain through and through.

I find your blatant accusation of racism not surprising, because you know you are wrong and so shouting "racism" is your only out. But of course anyone with a few braincells reading this can see that my argument is based on facts and the treatment of the Undead (and my acceptance of it) is based on the ACTIONS these same Undead have taken not the fact that they are Undead. The same as the Interment Camps were completely justified considering the actions the Orcs have commited before, not because of their green skin. But nice try.

[Ersula]

You need to really read Edge of Night one of these times. She didn't care one bit about the Forsaken beyond their value as her inhuman shields against death. They were her tools, her weapons. And that is why she disobeyed Garrosh and mitigated their losses. If they all die she looses her shield against death. She literally quoted that in the fight on top of Torghast when speaking of the Val'kyr that literally gave their lifes for her: "The archer does not mourn the loss of her arrows."

I am not sure how you manage to hear these lines and still believe she ever saw the Forsaken as anything but expendable tools. She would have killed each and everyone of them if it bought her a single day of being free from the pain of the Maw.

The more interesting detail is that I doubt any character would behave differently in that situation. The Valkyr work for the Jailer & are clearly going to ressurect her whether she wants it or not. She's in this crap situation, and any other character would carry on the same way she did. And there's no clear way for her to make a statement that she cares about anything other than herself, because its clear her only option is to undo the entire paradigm. She would have to assume the forsaken are also doomed to the maw, so in that way, she's doing this to save their souls, even if she is self-interested.

Also "Harmless Farmers?" you have to look up the relationship of agriculture & warfare, because those farmers were working for the Scarlet Crusade, a hostile force trying to occupy Lordaeron. That & those "Internment Camps" were explicitly not allowed, that's the whole point of the Sludge Fields questline. You like to focus on one very specific detail in the canon & ignore everything else.

[YogSoggoth]

Absolute trash. He's a disgrace of a writer.

[Raisei]

The more interesting detail is that I doubt any character would behave differently in that situation. The Valkyr work for the Jailer & are clearly going to ressurect her whether she wants it or not. She's in this crap situation, and any other character would carry on the same way she did. And there's no clear way for her to make a statement that she cares about anything other than herself, because its clear her only option is to undo the entire paradigm. She would have to assume the forsaken are also doomed to the maw, so in that way, she's doing this to save their souls, even if she is self-interested.

You are making a ton of really reaching assumptions that you cannot in any way support. To start, nowhere ever did Sylvanas ever complain about being kept alive by the Val'kyr. She explicitly states in Edge of Night that she is determined to keep living so that she doesn't have to return to the Maw. And it is also quite something to say that anyone would do as she has done.

She had complete free will after Arthas control was removed. No one gave her orders. What did she do? Murder innocents, brew plagues to kill the living and undead... and so on and so on. I very much doubt everyone would have done that. Sylvanas already had a bad character when she was alive, treating her subordinates and fellow soldiers as tools just as she later did with the Forsaken. Think about it, when Arthas attacked Quel'thalas she refused to snipe him down even though she could have done easily. Instead she wasted the lives of her soldiers just so "it would never be said that Sylvanas Windrunner used unsavory tactics". Her pride and selfishness is the reason for Quel'thalas downfall.

I don't think I will even adress the mental gymnastics it took you to write that she's doing this to save the Forsaken souls. If you have ever read any charaterisation of this character then you know this is ludicrous. She literally murdered dozens of Forsaken, some in the same experiments earlier and a another batch in Arathi. Knowing they would be send to the Maw. You cannot be so blind to not see that she doesn't give a crap about them, their souls even less.

Also "Harmless Farmers?" you have to look up the relationship of agriculture & warfare,

I know, but this is soemthing very different. Farmers would be pulled in to fight in an army and the victory in the medival battles was decided by numbers and sometimes by smart tactics. It has nothing to do with individual fighting skill. The Forsaken attacked them on their farms where they very definitely did not have several fighters to rally against them. And even if they were halve-way skilled in combat, what would they do against a raiding party of like 10 enemies that you can't even kill by stabbing them?
Not to mention that they have their families there and the Forsaken took those as well. In the Arthas book it is explicitly a young girl that is used in Sylvanas experiments and she gleefully watches as that girl dies a horrible death through the plague. How you can stand to keep defending her and finding excuses is amazing.

because those farmers were working for the Scarlet Crusade, a hostile force trying to occupy Lordaeron. That & those "Internment Camps" were explicitly not allowed, that's the whole point of the Sludge Fields questline. You like to focus on one very specific detail in the canon & ignore everything else.

The Scarlet Crusade is not a good bunch, but calling them out for trying to occupy Lordaeron when Sylvanas as an elf from Quel'thalas is doing exactly that for decades, is a funny way to argue the point. I mentioned hypocracy earlier. Thank you for proving my point so nicely.

You misunderstood me here. I was refering to the Orc Camps after the Second War that the Horde posters in this forum often bring up as an evil act commited against poor innocent creatures.

[geco]

Also "Harmless Farmers?" you have to look up the relationship of agriculture & warfare, because those farmers were working for the Scarlet Crusade, a hostile force trying to occupy Lordaeron.

Waiting.
So would you agree that the Kaldorei have to kill Horde soldiers as well as their civilians?

And no one should tell them anything because the Horde is an invading force.

[SinR]

I said it on the News Post:

Jaina: I'll never trust you Sylvanas!
Uther: Trust me Jaina
Jaina: OK we cool now


11/10 righting write their

[Syegfryed]

Waiting.
So would you agree that the Kaldorei have to kill Horde soldiers as well as their civilians?

they kill soldiers and civilains alike, the alliance as whole does that.

And no one should tell them anything because the Horde is an invading force.

invading force fighting another invading force, as, everything was troll land.

[Ersula]

And no one should tell them anything because the Horde is an invading force.

I think you're trying to insinuate The Scarlet Crusade are a rightful part of the kingdom of Lordaeron, rather than a religious cult disavowed by King Terenas. Rather than the actual citizens of Lordaeron, transformed by a plague. Good luck with that, because the Alliance can't even cope with that logic.

Or that you're talking specifically about Orcs. Which I expect these factions to fight over resources, not that they one side is morally wrong for doing so.

[Magnagarde]

I think you're trying to insinuate The Scarlet Crusade are a rightful part of the kingdom of Lordaeron, rather than a religious cult disavowed by King Terenas. Rather than the actual citizens of Lordaeron, transformed by a plague. Good luck with that, because the Alliance can't even cope with that logic.

"the actual citizens of Lordaeron, transformed by a plague"

That's one way to call the remains of dead people raised into undeath using necromancy and domination straight out of the Maw, who continued to do identical things once they regained control over their actions, while being lead by an undead high elf that - prior to the Third War - last saw Lordaeron when she spent a night in Nathanos' barn. I wager you'd call the Stormwind graveyard the Stormwind forum then?

I don't think I will even adress the mental gymnastics it took you to write that she's doing this to save the Forsaken souls. If you have ever read any charaterisation of this character then you know this is ludicrous. She literally murdered dozens of Forsaken, some in the same experiments earlier and a another batch in Arathi. Knowing they would be send to the Maw. You cannot be so blind to not see that she doesn't give a crap about them, their souls even less.

The Scarlet Crusade is not a good bunch, but calling them out for trying to occupy Lordaeron when Sylvanas as an elf from Quel'thalas is doing exactly that for decades, is a funny way to argue the point. I mentioned hypocracy earlier. Thank you for proving my point so nicely.

None of the playable races, save for the Forsaken themselves, would care about the Forsaken in a well-written setting, as would befit a faction called "the Forsaken". There is absolutely no logical in character reason as to why the Horde and the Alliance haven't dealt with the Forsaken already. The proceeding of the Forsaken to the Shadowlands being facilitated by both the Horde's and the Alliance's living is something at least a sizable part of either faction should logically strive for at this point. The defiling of the dead, their remains and necromancy in general is something almost all Horde races frown upon. The Garrosh era had the potential to do this, but Blizzard failed his character. There truly was no better time, save for WoW's launch, to create 3 or even 4 factions than the time of his Horde.

As opposed to their RTS era, Blizzard's writers are scared to write a story that revolves around fundamental hostilities that are natural; the living versus the undead, conflicts based on race and cosmic allignment within the factions. Multiple kingdoms and kingdom-cities perished in Warcraft III and the only kingdom-city that so far perished in WoW is Theramore and even that was used to permanently stamp out orcish dominion over the Horde.

The Scarlet Crusade as a whole is one of the more believable human organizations because it depicts the descent of humans into madness and zealotry when faced with unimaginable horrors and hardships. They're villains and just like parts of the older iterations of the Horde, they make good villains because their descent into said villainy is easy to understand and explain. And, for all the evil they've committed in the game's story, I find it hillarious that they seem to be the only ones who understood that undead aren't people.

[Alanar]

Well.. everyone had high expectations for BFA and many insane lore elements were finnaly going to be touched.. Zandalar, rastakahn, Nazjatar Azshara and Nyálotha, N'zoth. I can say so much, but button line is I was/am super disappointed with the outcome. Characters that had so much potential or fan favorites, were rushed and didn't get the attention it deserved and things felt hollow in many ways. There is no redoing that or getting excited by a south sea expansion ever again. It was my top 1 hope for expansion since vanilla..

Shadowlands sounded cool and i was excited to find out about the death realm, like everybody else.. but from the terrible maw zone and thorghast to dissconnected and uninteresting zones when you passed the leveling experience things just felt hollow. The story felt slow,confusing,vague and now that we kind of know what is going to happen and looking back what we saw from Zovaal and Sylvanas, nothing was worth the wait or excitement. The drough in and out the game was the perfect mixture for not making it work. Patch 9.2 isn't going to bring me back to see the story in game.. I will see the cutscenes here probably and that's it for shadowlands for me I think.

If he is responsible for the choices made in bfa especially in cutting or pushing that faction war ontop of HUGE lore chaacter introduction and end in 1 patch such as N'zoth and Azshara. Then maybe change of lead is not a bad idea. He doesn't get what players want appearntly for 2 expansions now.. do we really need to give him a third charm after everything?

[Magnagarde]

Well.. everyone had high expectations for BFA and many insane lore elements were finnaly going to be touched.. Zandalar, rastakahn, Nazjatar Azshara and Nyálotha, N'zoth. I can say so much, but button line is I was/am super disappointed with the outcome. Characters that had so much potential or fan favorites, were rushed and didn't get the attention it deserved and things felt hollow in many ways. There is no redoing that or getting excited by a south sea expansion ever again. It was my top 1 hope for expansion since vanilla..

Shadowlands sounded cool and i was excited to find out about the death realm, like everybody else.. but from the terrible maw zone and thorghast to dissconnected and uninteresting zones when you passed the leveling experience things just felt hollow. The story felt slow,confusing,vague and now that we kind of know what is going to happen and looking back what we saw from Zovaal and Sylvanas, nothing was worth the wait or excitement. The drough in and out the game was the perfect mixture for not making it work. Patch 9.2 isn't going to bring me back to see the story in game.. I will see the cutscenes here probably and that's it for shadowlands for me I think.

If he is responsible for the choices made in bfa especially in cutting or pushing that faction war ontop of HUGE lore chaacter introduction and end in 1 patch such as N'zoth and Azshara. Then maybe change of lead is not a bad idea. He doesn't get what players want appearntly for 2 expansions now.. do we really need to give him a third charm after everything?

I can't shake the feeling that they've cut an entire expansion's worth of content and rushed headlong into Zovaal's entrance. The Jailer could've been a hundred times more interesting had they only allowed the players to slowly unravel the mysteries of a figure that seems to be influencing life on Azeroth from beyond the veil.

BfA's faction war could've carried the entire expansion on its own, with the naga and N'zoth deserving to have their own expansion too.

[Alanar]

I can't shake the feeling that they've cut an entire expansion's worth of content and rushed headlong into Zovaal's entrance. The Jailer could've been a hundred times more interesting had they only allowed the players to slowly unravel the mysteries of a figure that seems to be influencing life on Azeroth from beyond the veil.

I agree, he was just out there, there was no buildup to him, I would have liked to unravel more over time and I think Legion was the right time to start with. To make it even more confusing they even changed hes look somewhere after the first feature trailer reveal, which was a model looking very similar to the jailer concept. Why they made him in just a random blue guy versus that epic concept was what everyone was wondering. No one was wondering what hes up to lol. He never made a good impression and hes forgettable, so him rushing to the end is better for us so it ends faster.

. Sylvanas plans were always so mysterious and secret.. that it became vague and annoying. Always had another plan.. muhaha. We didn't know shit for a really long ass time, I stopped caring eventually. The Azshara and Sylvanas deal was another stupid thing imo.

Just lots of weird things imo.

[geco]

I think you're trying to insinuate The Scarlet Crusade are a rightful part of the kingdom of Lordaeron, rather than a religious cult disavowed by King Terenas. Rather than the actual citizens of Lordaeron, transformed by a plague. Good luck with that, because the Alliance can't even cope with that logic.

Or that you're talking specifically about Orcs. Which I expect these factions to fight over resources, not that they one side is morally wrong for doing so.

Do you need to be part of the Alliance or the Horde to be considered a person?

We're talking about invading forces. And it's not just orcs that invade Kaldorei land.

[Super Dickmann]

Both the Horde and the Alliance suffered heavily from Blizzard trying to actively remove the themes these factions revolved around early on. This is why characters like Daelin Proudmoore, Zul'jin and a few others are among my favourites when it comes to factions; they're controversial, they're flawed, yet it is easy to understand them. The races that were forced into the Horde also suffered the errosion of their aesthetical theme. There was an incredible amount of potential when it comes down to the blood elven and the undead. I firmly believe that the undead freed from serving the Lich King's will should've been a faction of their own, with playable undead humans, undead dwarves and undead high elves right off the bat.

For whatever reason I thought I'd replied to this already. I agree with some points here, but I won't surprise you when I tell you that the issue stems far more from the post-TBC Blood Elf situation than the inclusion of the undead into the Horde, which was the more successful inclusion of the two off-theme races in WC3. The reason for this and how the Blood Elf resolution fucks it up come down to the two things that needed adapting into the MMO, that being the multiple races and Thrall's Horde and its storytelling in particular.

WC3 as an RTS has 4 races but even that is deceptive in terms of the campaign, because you've got more perspective than even that per playable race. There's three factions of undead just in the TFT Scourge campaign, all depicted with the same race and two thirds of which are both hostile to each other and playable. All of TFT short of the Night Elves, which also features three separate groups involved, hinges on factions that are hostile to what would go on to be the WoW playable races. Having this many perspective gives you a lot more flexibility in how to tell your story. You can select pretty much any alignment or participant to base the story out of and the mechanics would allow it. You can also actually end a storyline, since you aren't going for a long-form beat. Only the undead and the night elves recur in the main TFT story, with everyone else being uninvolved or new. Even when Thrall and Jaina, the titular orcs and humans recur in the bonus campaign they do it as secondary characters, only the latter of which actually is challenged in any way. When you transition into a two-faction MMO, a lot of this drops off. You have orcs and humans still, along with their hangers-on like the trolls/tauren, dwarves/gnomes, but even if you paste them directly, you're missing 50% of WC3 melee that people were invested into the aesthetic and style of and an even larger percentage of the campaign where much of the affection for the setting comes from. Short of not adapting the factions into Red and Blue, which are core to the early days of the franchise and was also a key gimmick that still has massive marketing potential up to now, you have to somehow square these races into the playable characters because of how many people enjoyed them in the RTS. Your only option with the two-faction setup is to introduce them into the factions as hangers-on, maintaining their own themes but becoming a part of a greater whole, which would require some degree of tuning of their concept.

The other issue that you face when adapting the RTS is that you can no longer close stories or swap perspective. You can't end the story of any given participant, they and their vibe must be suited to long form storytelling and because the story hinges entirely on conflict, they must be capable of initiating conflict. WC3 could have Jaina settle in peace and Thrall build his noblesavage society and then not have to involve either orcs or humans in any meaningful way, to the extent that the campaign called the Alliance campaign in TFT is about the blood elves leaving the Alliance and the orcs are relegated to their own subplot. This isn't much of an issue for the RTS because it can actually then pick up a story with someone else and the fact that these factions are shallow and unsuitable for sustaining conflict doesn't make a difference since you can always go to another well. This also extends to the hangers-on races. In WC3 it doesn't really matter that the only relevant dwarf is a mentor character who largely services Arthas's story, since the story is about Arthas, the playable race is literally called 'Humans' and the story is about Arthas, nobody gives a shit about the dwarves for their own story as there's no expectation they'd have any. Ditto the trolls and tauren being essentially accessories to the orcs with no ability to sustain a story of their own, who's only notable character (Rokhan) has five lines, burgers and fries, doesn't matter because them being accessories is the whole point. The playable race is called 'Orcs'. The same applies to the WC3 Horde as a whole. Thrall may be a static character who never changes or undergoes any real challenge to his beliefs with the real protagonist of the campaign being Grom and the orcs as a whole being perfunctory to the overall Starcraft reprise that is the plot, but the Grom story is good enough and the orc reimagination is interesting enough for the missions it has and wraps up in a satisfying enough that this isn't an issue. They get their happy ending and resolve the only two stories you can conceivably tell with the honorable savage rendition in a fertile land away from enemies, those being with the Legion and the Humans, both of which hinge entirely on their portrayal back when they were actually capable of sustaining any conflict whatsoever in WC2. An MMO however can't cut away from the orcs or humans, it can't make an Alliance story hinging entirely on people departing the Alliance (though the BFA Horde campaign came damn close) and if it lets you play a troll, tauren, dwarf or whatever and has you experience the world through its shoes then these races have to actually have to have some kind of meat to them.

The inclusion of the Forsaken is a successful addressing of both of these issues, well before Wrath and Cataclysm to a greater extent unfucked the core race of the Horde that is the orcs. They are clearly not meant for the people who are fans of the WC3 Horde, their target is people who like the undead from WC3, ideally those from the TFT campaign, but far more so just the general aesthetic of playing a free-willed, but still basically morally screwed, zombie in a fantasy game. If you have a two-faction system and the four WC3 races must slot into either of the two factions, then the Horde is plainly the right pick, given that necromancy in both WC1 and 2 is orc-exclusive, the first Death Knights are as well, which overlap with the Horde (and are outright raised in human bodies too). The Alliance connection is historical, but thematically and aesthetically it'd be ridiculous, dismantling the core part of the Light and the notion of the undead as damned in a way that the recent introduction of Calia, acceptance of warlocks, void elves, etc. etc. has already done. If the undead had to be included, and they did, and had to be on a faction, then the Horde is the faction. But beyond servicing the role of transferring a popular WC3 race to the MMO and filling an existing demand, it also addresses the second problem of storytelling.

Let's not mince words, Thrall's WC3 Horde if transferred to an MMO is dull as dishwater. It can't enter into any conflict and has no need to. Its lands are self-sufficient, its human neighbours are friendly, the night elves at the end of WC3's campaign (which is the last time they meet) are ambivalent at worst. It has no internal issues, the only element to disagree with Thrall is Grom and actually struggle with the prior WC2 orcish characterization and hence have any arc to speak of is Grom and he dies, clearing that up. The story of how to deal with humans who don't accept the orcs have all undergone this sea change was told in TFT as was taming the land around them. Their allies are carbon copies of them, except less developed and lacking the background. To be able to wring any kind of mileage out of a situation where you're expected to longform view the world through their lens means changing all of this. Vanilla did some of this on the orcish end by reintroducing their actual issues with humans, chiefly by moving the conflict with them entirely away from Jaina's faction to Stormwind which never even appeared in the RTS, and adding the territorial dispute with the Night Elves, more on them later, but because Thrall was still partly in his WC3 state, you could only go so far. Thrall was to the RTS and elements of the early MMO Horde what Anduin is to the Alliance now, all purpose conflict elimination, not a political figure acting in the world but a messiah opposition to whom guarantees your evil status. The best Thrall story from there, where he appears only as a message, Of Blood and Honor ends with Thrall threatening the Kingdom of Lordaeron that the Horde was independent, implying that the orc-human conflict would still proceed and these new, noblesavage orcs would still have to compete over the land and establish themselves in the world in opposition to those who aren't willing to cede lands and territories to them and who view them as subhuman, like Uther does. But this doesn't happen. A literal prophet shows up and directs Thrall to a land of plenty, Lordaeron is destroyed and the only other human to stay and who isn't a strawman is Jaina, who's his buddy. Vanilla's approach is noncommittal, which along with development time is why there is no overarching orcish theme the way humans have the Defias or the dwarves have the Dark Iron or imperial mandate. There's no end game conflict that the Kalimdor Horde is some thematic part to. The Dark Horde gets an equal amount of quests in both sides and you're essentially shanghaied into killing Onyxia or saving the dwarf princess while Thrall goes on a bible length expose on how cool it is that the Horde has no ambitions of its own. Wrath and Cataclysm would fix all of this by turning Thrall into a fallible political actor and making his detachment from the orcs and the actual difficulty of turning hunter-gatherers into a human-style feudal farming society while basing them in a desert a plot point, but it started with Vanilla and the Forsaken.

While the Kalimdor races have no overarching plot or conflict, the closest to it is the recurring element of the Grimtotem with the tauren. What it has in common with the only Horde race to have a long running nemesis and actual foe is that the Grimtotem's buddy are the Forsaken. The Forsaken have an actual Defias-style nemesis in the Scarlet Crusade. They aren't led by an infallible god man but by someone who's whole gist is conflict against both an NPC faction in the Scourge and against a playable group in the humans. Rather than needing to essentially rework large parts of the WC3 to make one of the two big races remotely usable in long term conflict and then still whiffing on it in parts of the first expansion, the conflict that comes from a nation of sentient zombies working on a chemical weapon is both self-evident and actually applied reasonably. You don't need reasons to have the Forsaken oppose the Alliance, by default they're damned and the Light considers wiping them out a common good while humans try to seize the lands they had in life, you don't need a reason for the Alliance to oppose the Forsaken, they're zombies engaged in human experimentation who're an affront to their every faith and who are waging a war of extermination against those humans left over on that territory. Most relevantly for the intra-Horde situation, adding the Forsaken achieves a number of goals. For one, it actually draws a line between the constituent races - the tauren vouch for the Forsaken because they hope they can be cured but it's heavily implied and outright stated later that the orcish motive more hinges on having a buffer state in the Eastern Kingdoms. This draws an actual relevant difference between what's previously a hanger-on race and the main race, but more importantly than that it turns Thrall from an unerring figure into a political actor concerned with the balance of powers and securing his flanks and even more relevantly that, limited. The Horde's impression of what it signed up for when it added the Forsaken and what it actually did isn't made painfully clear up until the Wrathgate. Limited information, alliances based on political interest with serious consequences, that's the kind of material that is in the makeup of most of the setting's earliest moments. Both in addressing gameplay and longform story issues, the addition of the Forsaken is a net benefit for the Horde.

It is however extremely easy to fuck that kind of story role up and it's a very thin line. The Forsaken induction into the Horde is based on interests, the Forsaken as in WC3 are a relatively weak regional power who need the aegis of a bigger faction, politically if not in terms of tools, to hold onto and both Sylvanas's interest in the Alliance, the tauren's and the orcish reasoning is fairly clear. There's no thematic mash-up, the races are geographically and narratively separate, with their overlap limited to places it'd make sense and not requiring the introduced race to lose part of itself to collate. If you want to see it done poorly right away, just look at the Night Elves. How did the Night Elves join the Alliance? No one knows, there's no canon inciting incident to this day. Why did they join the Alliance, considering it consists of members they never saw throughout the entirety of WC3? Lol. Why was their bond to their allies so close that not only do they immediately work together but they ditched their gender roles and nocturnal life on their behalf? Haha. These aren't issues that can't be overcome later, since it's primarily a gameplay choice provided thematically you still hold onto the same points. The Night Elves are a powerful, imperial force and more than that, decently xenophobic and trigger-happy. Their High Priestess caps both her own people to free Illidan and also offs the orcs and humans for their intrusion. Yet from the start they are treated as high elf stand in. The faction does not expand and experience friction from their inclusion with it as an acknowledged point, instead their key traits are sanded off to accommodate their inclusion and the only time they threatened to recover was in 8.1, only for it to go down like a wet fart due to the writers' unwillingness to commit and their message mongering. And while that was fine in Vanilla since the humans and dwarves, unlike the orcs and trolls, had a huge amount of meat to their internal storytelling and the conflict that came with it it festered into a problem once the Alliance gradually had all of its conflict-inducing traits demolished from expansion to expansion culminating with BFA where everyone is a peacenik with identical values and elemental void figures and elemental holy figures are so overcome by their shared goodness that they don't clash.

In the Horde, that particular festering wound is the post-TBC blood elves. Including the blood elves as a whole was a sketchy prospect but tying them to the Forsaken gave you an in as did emphasizing the points where they would gel better with the Forsaken than they would with the Alliance, with the requirement not to fit better in the other faction being the absolute bare minimum any race should reach. Their religious attitude was hostile, they were a quasi police state with brainwashing covering up an internal decadence and practiced fel all of which were no-nos. Their addiction gave them a reason to engage with any other race in the Horde. This can somewhat bandage over the fact that visually they don't fit since the theme remains, fitting the same vibe as the Forsaken as being a former Alliance-connected kingdom that's fallen into a state of decrepitude and dishonor and are clawing their way back in a fashion that the firm values of their opposition would not tolerate. By the end of TBC however, all of these elements are expelled, including the tie to the Forsaken. You go from the above to a light-worshipping established ally of the Alliance from WC2, with a strong clergy and a long time of existing who owe their continued existence to an Alliance figure. They are essentially recolored high elves and what was already a sore point that shouldn't have happened, being having to kill Zul'jin as Horde, is not only a joke where he's killed by meme redneck characters while there's zero in-game acknowledgment of the connection due to the absence of WC2 orc elements or even blood elves involved in fighting him outside the trailer, is made worse because an iconic figure is traded for a perpetual sore. And once you have one such sore present, one race that should be on the other faction by all thematic and story grounds but can't move due to gameplay and then you still have to have the characters act like it belongs you water down the Horde. Adding the Forsaken added an element that wasn't like the WC3 Horde, the post-TBC blood elves added an element that was like the Alliance and that's a bridge you can't uncross. Unless corrected with a scorched earth revision of their post-TBC selves you end up inexorably into a space where this element begins to take up screentime as the blood elves did in Legion where the orcs had fuck all to do, it adds more like itself which are thematically at odds with everything in the faction except themselves, that being the Nightborne, and eventually you change other elements to make it fit with it. Starting with Bob going on about racism while trying to defect to the Alliance in Cataclysm as a core plot point opposing Garrosh, leading to the watering down of the orcish role in the Orcish Horde, continuing with the transformation of the Forsaken into humans with a skin condition through Calia done by identical means to the Blood Elves in TBC, also thematically just as appropriate to the Alliance as the worgen and concluding with BFA's elimination of all standing Horde institutions.

You can and did have the orcs and Forsaken in the same zones, clashing but also teaming up based on shared interest, shared difference from the Alliance and some common values in Silverpine and Cataclysm. You did not spend any screen time showing their issue in Mists. But you did have both with the blood elves, much like on the opposite number you had that shambolic bit with Varian lecturing Tyrande about patience. The failure to backtrack from TBC's disastrous ending is the root of overarching issues.

tl;dr Garithos was right. The elves are our misfortune.

[SinR]

Maybe. Maybe not.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Fantastic write up, @Super Dickmann.

The problem basically boils down to Warcraft transitioning to MMO format. More specifically, the appeal of WoW is that you are going to create your own character, and you will play as that character indefinitely. The player is sold various racial, factional, and class fantasies with the expectation that those fantasies will remain throughout the course of the game. You could theoretically have a playable faction in WoW get defeated (ie, the Alliance wipes out the Forsaken and reclaims Lordaeron), but then that raises the question of how you're going to continue satisfying players/customers who bought into a particular fantasy (ie, being Forsaken) and have built up an emotional investment in that over the years. Do the surviving Forsaken players get absorbed into a non-Forsaken faction that they may not like? Or are all Forsaken hunted down and the player is forced to create a new character as a part of an existing faction? Etc. Problems that don't crop up if you're playing a singleplayer game with set protagonists authored by the game's writers, with the factions and the characters not having to last beyond their story arc and being expendable.

Unless corrected with a scorched earth revision of their post-TBC selves you end up inexorably into a space where this element begins to take up screentime as the blood elves did in Legion where the orcs had fuck all to do

This touches on another problem with WoW's storytelling I've noticed. You have all of these various races and factions: Night Elf druids, Tauren Druids, human priests and paladins, Orc shamans, etc, but 90% of the time the world ending threats are resolved by human or elf mages. It feels like Cataclysm is the only real exception to this rule, with Thrall and the Earthen Ring getting to be the main stars who combat Deathwing, and the Cenarion Circle getting a guest star role in the Hyjal/Firelands subplot. But otherwise, whenever the threat of the week shows up, it inevietably boils down to human or elf wizards researching the threat and then going off to defeat them, while everyone else stands around and twiddles their fingers offscreen. It's pretty egregious when you have superpowerful characters like Malfurion who spend 95% of WoW's plot offscreen and inactive.