Is there anyway to get races to have unique cultures again?

[bullseyed]

Players want to see the Alliance be the Aggressor not the Victim.

You haven't been paying attention if you think the Horde aren't the victims of the WoW story. The Horde is a collection of races that have been genocided to near extinction and found each other to hold on for survival.

[Hitei]

very wrong. WoD had a constant human pressense. Fucks sake the engineering building was run by a human.

"Because WoD and Legion pretty much lacked humans outside of the group that shows up with the adventurer to help deal with the threat."
How is that very wrong? You just restated exactly what I said. Hello?

There hasn't been a single expansion in wow without gnomes, but you expect there to be an expansion where human beings, the most populous race of the largest two factions in the game, are just randomly completely gone?

What are these "many races" you're talking about?

[Woggmer]

You haven't been paying attention if you think the Horde aren't the victims of the WoW story. The Horde is a collection of races that have been genocided to near extinction and found each other to hold on for survival.

And Blizz always makes the Horde look like the bad guy even though they're the victim... It's practically a meme at this point. They've ran out of leaders to corrupt or turn evil now since both Sylvanas and Gallywix are gone. Baine isn't much of a bad guy, and Lor'themar hasn't shown any sign of corruption, he's been playing it safe. All the other members of the Horde don't get enough screen time to even pose a threat or make people be weary of them.

Again, Blizz needs to consider making an Alliance leader a possible villain.. making an Alternate Timeline version of one (aka Horrific Vision Alleria) doesn't count because it doesn't impact the world in anyway other than "Oh, well this MIGHT happen".

[Claymore]

I dunno, I suspect Blizzard has sort of painted themselves in a corner, that by even HAVING interesting cultures, people are going to label it "racist".

Case in point; Orcs are a relatively primitive race that values honor and glory. Nothing about that jibes with Mages or Priests, yet Mages were added in Cataclysm and now Priests are coming. But people want to argue "well how come an Orc CAN'T be a Mage or a Priest?!", like it's some kind of political or ideological conundrum.

Races in Warcraft have ALWAYS been synonymous with "culture", but now people claim that "having Trolls speak with a Jamaican accent is racism, and having Zappyboi not know about... something... is basically Blizzard insinuating that Jamaican people are stupid". I've literally seen people make that leap.

I LOVE WoW (at least, I did at one point), and I certainly care deeply about its Lore. But even I have to say, people take some of this stuff WAY too seriously.

[Combatbutler]

They did, in Legion, in Val'sharah.

They did not, there's a human settlement in it.

[Aleksej89]

Blizzard does not have proper writers to even make the main story work coherently.

Its all very low budget and the writers are both incapable and uninterested.

[Feanoro]

@Woggmer @bullseyed Yes the Horde are definitely the victims here.

[Toppy]

@Woggmer @bullseyed Yes the Horde are definitely the victims here.

You do realize a major reason horde players get upset by this, is that a huge portion of them hate how blizz kept ignoring the lore they built up from WC3 to villain bat them into oblivion, right?

[Linkedblade]

so, in other words, you completely missed OPs point.
when youre playing an orc, youre playing an ORC. they are not supposed to act like humans, they are not supposed to have the same values or morales as humans, and they are sure af not supposed to have the same culture as humans.
making everyone a goody two-shoes (by human standards) is the most boring thing that can happen in a fantasy story like WoW.
in other words, the horde is in the absolute worst spot its ever been currently, cause its not the horde anymore. its the red alliance.

Not a goody two shoes, but that's thralls story line. Trying to tow the line between orc valor and human honor. And as a fresh conscript for the horde, you probably have been raised on Thralls principles.

[Feanoro]

You do realize a major reason horde players get upset by this, is that a huge portion of them hate how blizz kept ignoring the lore they built up from WC3 to villain bat them into oblivion, right?

Then those players should stop siding with the fans of the WC1-2 Horde just because "they're not Alliance". Blizz pandering to them is the reason you're villain batted.

[Toppy]

Then those players should stop siding with the fans of the WC1-2 Horde just because "they're not Alliance". Blizz pandering to them is the reason you're villain batted.

Those fans of WC1 and 2 barely exist and have never much existed. Its why any time blizzard panders to them, they get nothing but ridicule from the horde base.

The majority of the Warcraft fandom starts with 3.

[Khaza-R]

Unpopular opinion but I think how they handled the Forsaken in SLs was one of the better ways to go about it. We got a bunch of unique perspectives and motivations explained which gave a better picture of who the Forsaken are. It provided flavor but without really forcing a single mindset on the PC.

By contrast the Night Elf story was terribly done and everything pigeon-holed to be from Tyrande's perspective. We should of really gotten to explore the Night Elves as whole. Some probably individuals reeling from depression and others consumed with hatred and thoughts of vengeance. It would've added so much more depth than what we got in SLs.

[frapes]

Blizzard lost its chance to put the War back in Warcraft when they decided we should all play together instead of exploring options were we would have 3-4 different factions with different political agendas, which is something that could be easily supported with the so many factions and subfactions that exist nowadays in game. This should have given what the OP asks.

Instead they decided that lore should be written by mentally handicapped people, writing the same thing over and over again while making changes to accommodate the flavor of the month hero and in the end they fucked it up so badly and changed the lore so many times that they had to bring time travel and parallel universes in the game to unfuck the fuckery but that resulted in fucking the game more.

[Tiev]

The Forsaken and Orcs were evil monsters for the vast majority of WoW, that's true. But why would you want to return to that? Now that they are led by a Council of peace, they can begin their journey of atonement for their countless crimes. It seems like a devolution to want to return to the dark times (Classic-8.2.5) when Forsaken and Orcs were unhinged murderers.

If anything, it's the Alliance that needs far more work and attention. As it stands now, the Horde is pretty much in the best spot it's ever been. United and on the path to redemption. Meanwhile, the Alliance still has this "High King" position that doesn't really make a lot of sense, for an... alliance. Furthermore, Alliance races like the Draenei and Night elves never had a traditional concept of "King" like humans do (especially since the Alliance NEs are those who OPPOSED Queen Azshara), so it's strange that they acknowledge this position.

I'll answer that from my point of view: Because that's boring. I wanted redemption for Jamie as a character but not for the Lannisters as a house. Or the Boltons.

[Feanoro]

Those fans of WC1 and 2 barely exist and have never much existed. Its why any time blizzard panders to them, they get nothing but ridicule from the horde base.

The majority of the Warcraft fandom starts with 3.

Then please explain the outpouring across every single WoW related forum, social media, etc of cheering and jokes for Teldrassil. Please explain how WC3 Horde fans were dogpiled and shouted down as "traitors" and "not Horde" on all those. Please explain why that was the case right up until it became obvious that the Lich Queen was going to be written losing.

You know, since fans of the evil Horde barely exist.

You didn't experience that? Too bad, the internet remembers. Hell, search these very forums, the "traitor" rhetoric only died down due to SL.

[Super Dickmann]

You didn't experience that? Too bad, the internet remembers. Hell, search these very forums, the "traitor" rhetoric only died down due to SL.

Can confirm, noblesavagery and its consequences have been a disaster for the Horde and the only reason Sadfang won polls vs. Sylvanas on this forum by thin margins of 10% is because, despite Blizzard's best efforts, the Alliance also has a playerbase and they also visit forums. The people who cheer on the Horde as a vegetative entity of hunter-gatherers without any meaningful plot to speak of who then complain that the Horde has been made bland are the equivalent of the Alliance players who keep crowing about vengeance yet react like you've shown them the sign of the cross at the mere prospect of conflict that doesn't have them as saints. Be it Thrall or Anduin, the archetype they represent is narrative poison.

[Toppy]

Then please explain the outpouring across every single WoW related forum, social media, etc of cheering and jokes for Teldrassil. Please explain how WC3 Horde fans were dogpiled and shouted down as "traitors" and "not Horde" on all those. Please explain why that was the case right up until it became obvious that the Lich Queen was going to be written losing.

You know, since fans of the evil Horde barely exist.

You didn't experience that? Too bad, the internet remembers. Hell, search these very forums, the "traitor" rhetoric only died down due to SL.

I mostly remember a bunch of Alliance fans always pushing about how horrible the Horde is and constantly trying to imply that being a horde fan makes you a terrible person and trying to force a false narrative about how Horde are all cheering this while Horde fans constantly kept saying this story direction was stupid.

[Super Dickmann]

I mostly remember a bunch of Alliance fans always pushing about how horrible the Horde is and constantly trying to imply that being a horde fan makes you a terrible person and trying to force a false narrative about how Horde are all cheering this while Horde fans constantly kept saying this story direction was stupid.

Just the first mmo-champ poll that comes up in google as an example. Even when the other option was a complete puppy-eating cartoon, a deliberate caricature, the margin of preference for being eternally stuck in the Founding of Durotar as Alliance support characters was thin.

[Venziir]

It's hard to see past the first few expansions anymore it kind of feels like every race became the same renaissance village as of late though.

Every defining attribute of the races like trolls being savage, draenai religious zealots, forsaken broken and evil and orcs blood thirsty has slowly been worked out of the game.

Is there anyway to get any of that back at this point?

BFA showed us a ton of troll culture, plenty of evil forsaken, and even gave us the Lightbound Draenei. In other words; what are you even talking about?

[Varodoc]

I'll answer that from my point of view: Because that's boring. I wanted redemption for Jamie as a character but not for the Lannisters as a house. Or the Boltons.

On the contrary, the Lannisters didn't deserve redemption in the first place. They are just soldiers who are fighting their lords' war to be paid and maintain their families. The scene with Ed Sheeran is meant to humanize and portray the Lannister soldiers as just normal people you can have fun with, who sadly are forced by circumstances to be on the "other side" compared to the main characters.

However, orcs were never normal people. WoD proves this. Orcs are an inherently genocidal and warmongering species, they thrive on war. WoD trailer literally opens with Grommash noting that "war" is the "lifeblood" of "Draenor". Orcs are inherently war-like and thus they must atone and redeem themselves for the many war crimes they committed.

Orcs were never normal people, their entire nature is wrong and evil. Again, WoD proves this. But maybe now that they are under a democratic government, they can start a journey towards enlightenment.