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  1. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by Blayze View Post
    That's in-keeping with Thrall's powers in canon, though. The Lost Isles quests prove that he can wreak stupid amounts of chaos with the backing of the elements, and to my knowledge there's only been a couple of times (While training in Lord of the Clans, and again after Ragnaros sent all the elements batshit crazy) that they even so much as hesitated to help him. Granted, a lot of that is by necessity as it's exactly what happens with player and NPC shamans as well--it wouldn't work well if every single time a shaman player cast a spell, they did an emote begging the element in question for their aid, nor would it work if they got refused on occasion.
    Problem with this is, Thrall would be up against similarily powerful entities and against other Shamans a whole lot of them. In the lost isle quests he was electrocuting fleeing soldiers out on see without any meaningful support, that isn't anything to go by.
    Quote Originally Posted by Blayze View Post
    Not so much a defeat as a Pyrrhic victory.

    On the one hand, the Alliance loses most of the forces they committed to the assault after taking what some believe was a gamble and what others believe was the safer choice (Leading to the chance to have actual depth in Alliance politics instead of Varian and Everyone Who Agrees With Him versus Team Meanie McBadface, but on the other hand), the Horde has not only lost a lot of forces as well on either side of the civil war, but must ALSO now deal with the resulting power vacuum and whatever power plays happen in its wake.

    That's a hell of a lot more interesting than "everyone teams up to beat the Big Bad because he's basically Hitler."
    Erm, no? What exactly did the Alliance win? Oh right, nothing.

    In your scenario the Horde would have an massive internal conflict with tens of thousands dead and the army being splintered and exhausted. Yet when the Alliance arrives in full force Thrall and a handful of Shamans would easily destroy the ENTIRE Alliance military forcing the survivors to flee in panic. It's a flat out defeat, a humiliating and emasculating one at that.
    The Alliance would be worse off than the Horde, having been defeated easily by Thrall and a few Shamans alone. It would mean the Alliance can't hold a candle to the Horde when the Horde is at it's weakest, it would turn the entire faction in one big and pathethic joke. Thrall defeating all their military, Varian, Jaina, Tyrande and all the other strong characters they do have.
    What's next? He rides on a giant sea wave to Stormwind and summons a volcano below the city burning it down before making the sea engulf both Teldrassil and Azuremyst Isles while using the Mountain to crush Iron Forge and you claiming that it would be a pyrrhic victory for the Alliance and give them a chance to actual depth in Alliance politic and character development?

    You would actually manage to top Cataclysm that way, by a great deal. It would be completly unenjoyable for the Alliance half of the player base who don't even get to actually participate in the raid and it would be unenjoyable to a great many Horde aswell who actually want a strong and capable Alliance. I for one want an Alliance who makes for a great antagonist for the Horde (and vice versa), someone I can take seriously and "pride" myself in fighting. You'd make them a joke I couldn't take seriously the same way Cataclysm did just far worse.

  2. #42
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    How about you let the story unfold before you try and fix it?

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  3. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by Blayze View Post
    snip
    I think that there are two major problems with your idea in this instance.

    First, the Alliance does not want to eradicate the Horde. Quite the contrary. It is by sheer misunderstandings that their conflicts occur in World of WarCraft. And there is no reason for the current Alliance and Horde to fight each other, since they are both on the side of good generally. The only way to have genuine conflict is for one side to be the bad guys, and there have not been clearly and largely bad guys in WarCraft ever since the second game. At this point trying to ignite a conflict is just lame. It's forced conflict and not natural. As you yourself pointed out it's only stupid reasons they are fighting over.

    Secondly, you assume that World of WarCraft's story is canon. There is no final verdict on this matter. And there won't be, no matter what is said, even by Blizzard, until a WarCraft IV gets released or is announced to never be a possibility to be produced.

    That being said, I do agree with your opinion that at times the Alliance and the Horde should tackle completely different content. This homogenization is unacceptable for a game with such an immense turn-over in profits. If it was Rift, which does nice but only that, I would understand it. But for a game that makes hundreds of million in profit each year, "lack of resources" is such a bad excuse. The same goes for racial campaigns, class quests, and all other concepts that would make the game that much more interesting and varied, but are not attempted due to aforementioned lack of resources.
    Last edited by Drithien; 2013-04-03 at 03:24 PM.

  4. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by grisset View Post
    There's a big problem with your post: you assume the Alliance wants to see the Horde destroyed. Hint: it doesn't.
    This is pretty much what I came in here to say.

  5. #45
    Hmm, turning a story right around to make it Horde focused with Alliance coming out with no gains and potentially endless losses.

    I have a feeling OP is Metzen in disguise.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Florena View Post
    Yeah, that's a great idea. Instead of having it as a raid both sides can enjoy have the Alliance do nothing, have the Garrosh story resolved without their involvement, and then show up to get their asses handed to then by a tidal wave. That won't make anybody mad or alienate any factions. >_>
    After Cataclysm, are you still surprised that today's WoW players think this way? Horde players have had it great for so long that they basically feel the game is about them and them alone.

  7. #47
    While I think your idea is interesting it would piss of a lot of alliance players because they'd lose to already weakened horde.

    Additionally, and I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, it would double the development time/cost because you would have to make two different raids with different bosses, etc. Because of this you would then cause tons of problems with WF races. Because one side would no doubt be easier than the other unless the bosses have the exact same mechanics as well just different names in which case you're wasting dev resources for lore only.

  8. #48
    First, the Alliance does not want to eradicate the Horde.
    Even if you limit their desires to "merely" wanting to eliminate the political entity that is the Horde, letting the Horde as a whole weaken itself rather than waste your own resources is the smart thing to do. It still counts.

    It's forced conflict and not natural.
    I'd argue the exact opposite: I'd argue that what is forced conflict is for us to continuously get distracted by an unaffiliated Big Bad every time it looks like the faction war might actually go anywhere.

    Secondly, you assume that World of WarCraft's story is canon.
    I've long since learned with Blizzard that the most recently published source of lore is always the correct one, even when it contradicts other sources. This is why I'm looking forward to the Warcraft version of the Book of Cain so much--I want to see how long it takes before they retcon something and thus render the whole book worthless as a source of lore.

    unless the bosses have the exact same mechanics as well just different names in which case you're wasting dev resources for lore only.
    Not necessarily. Completing the raid could require doing both halves of it, with the aid of disguises to let us run the other half with some in-universe justification, say, from Lorewalker Cho like has been done before. It wouldn't cause problems with the World First race at all--they'd be doing it anyway and they'd be able to run both halves without making a character of the opposite faction.

    So no, it wouldn't be a waste of dev time, money or resources at all.
    It became clear that it wasn’t realistic to try to get the audience back to being more hardcore, as it had been in the past. -- Tom Chilton

  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by grisset View Post
    There's a big problem with your post: you assume the Alliance wants to see the Horde destroyed. Hint: it doesn't.
    That's the whole reason they exist.

  10. #50
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    First: Don't try to fix what isn't broken

    Besides that you would like to "fix" the whole story of WoW ? A story that is developed for years by many many different people ? You sir have a way to high opinion of yourself, but maybe we see some bestseller books from you in the future, I doubt it.

    There is nothing to fix.

  11. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by Florena View Post
    Yeah, that's a great idea. Instead of having it as a raid both sides can enjoy have the Alliance do nothing, have the Garrosh story resolved without their involvement, and then show up to get their asses handed to then by a tidal wave. That won't make anybody mad or alienate any factions. >_>
    And on top of that, it's, yet again, Thrall pwning the overpowering force, this time it being the entirety of the Alliance military force. Because the "Green Jesus" stigma really needed some reinforcement.

    So yeah, I don't really see this as an improvement.

  12. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Deathgoose View Post
    And on top of that, it's, yet again, Thrall pwning the overpowering force, this time it being the entirety of the Alliance military force. Because the "Green Jesus" stigma really needed some reinforcement.

    So yeah, I don't really see this as an improvement.
    Hey, I haven't gotten to the epic sequel yet--the one where he dies like a chump because that's how death really happens. :P

    You sir have a way to high opinion of yourself
    That's not quite it; it's more a negative opinion of Blizzard's collective writing ability when applied to a medium such as the MMO genre. They proved with Heart of the Swarm that they can write well when the characters are the whole focus, but that's what I feel is the biggest difference between Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo--it felt like every other satchel Cain dropped talked about how "brave heroes" stopped each threat from the previous games, and if you had a drinking game where you took a sip every time an NPC praised you in Warcraft, you'd be dead within the hour.

    They're capable, incredibly so given the passion, hours of hard work and polish they put into what they create--it's just a shame that applying Warcraft's story to WoW has necessitated getting rid of some of the things that make stories interesting, such as the "The Bad Guy Wins" and "Evil Versus Evil" tropes--not to mention all the permutations of "X and X Morality."
    Last edited by Blayze; 2013-04-03 at 05:06 PM.
    It became clear that it wasn’t realistic to try to get the audience back to being more hardcore, as it had been in the past. -- Tom Chilton

  13. #53
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    Quote Originally Posted by Blayze View Post
    Now let's apply this thinking to the Siege of Orgrimmar.

    What we know so far is that Garrosh antagonises the rest of the Horde so much that they rebel against him, and that the Alliance are trying to take him down as well at the same time.

    Now why the hell would they want to do that? The Alliance has a perfect chance to allow two groups full of people they want to see dead to weaken each other, then go after the survivors with fresh forces.
    I wouldn't be surprised if the Alliance attacking Orgrimmar was the original idea to inspire the much demanded 'Alliance pride' people have been whining about since Cataclysm favoured Horde, and that the Horde starting a civil war and Garrosh changing his personality AGAIN is only done so they also have a reason for the raid.

    Yeah, I'm turning your idea around 180 degrees. I don't think the raid was meant for the Horde storyline and the Alliance got added to it, I think the raid was meant for the Alliance storyline and the Horde was added to it.

  14. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Hardstyler01 View Post
    I wouldn't be surprised if the Alliance attacking Orgrimmar was the original idea to inspire the much demanded 'Alliance pride' people have been whining about since Cataclysm favoured Horde, and that the Horde starting a civil war and Garrosh changing his personality AGAIN is only done so they also have a reason for the raid.

    Yeah, I'm turning your idea around 180 degrees. I don't think the raid was meant for the Horde storyline and the Alliance got added to it, I think the raid was meant for the Alliance storyline and the Horde was added to it.
    Either way, it sucks when one faction plays tagalong--but at least it's not Wrath, with neutral factions stealing the thunder of every faction-specific group that had a reason to go after Arthas, such as the Ebon Blade replacing the Forsaken, the Argents replacing the humans and dwarves, the Blood Elves and High Elves too busy mocking each other to do much else and barely even a mention of Ner'zhul and any possible reason the orcs might have to go after the guy who blew their planet up in an attempt to save himself.
    It became clear that it wasn’t realistic to try to get the audience back to being more hardcore, as it had been in the past. -- Tom Chilton

  15. #55
    I think we should all just accept that there was never a time when Warcraft had great lore. It is now, and has always been, "ok". The lore shouldn't get in the way of the game, and it doesn't, mission accomplished.

    Hell, even Warcraft 3 didn't have that great of a story. It was revolutionary because it was an RTS with a pretty good story, which didn't happen a whole lot. It's just standard fantasy stuff. Most of the characters are one dimensional. None of them are overly interesting or engaging. So let's not pretend we are critiquing James Joyce here. It's more than good enough for what it is, but it will never be great.

  16. #56
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    Quote Originally Posted by SherbertLand View Post
    That's the whole reason they exist.
    The Alliance was originally formed by humans (and later other races) seeking help to defend themselves from the demon controlled and fel blood drinking orcs bent on claiming Azeroth for themselves after destroying their own planet. While they stay allied and help each other with problems (including those caused by conflict with Horde members) regularly, their primary goal is not to eradicate all races not allied with them.

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Crym View Post
    The Alliance was originally formed by humans (and later other races) seeking help to defend themselves from the demon controlled and fel blood drinking orcs bent on claiming Azeroth for themselves after destroying their own planet. While they stay allied and help each other with problems (including those caused by conflict with Horde members) regularly, their primary goal is not to eradicate all races not allied with them.
    And the Horde was created as an Alliance of necessity. All the races of the Horde would have been eradicated if alone. The forsaken were once humans but when they were turned and broke free of The Lich King's will, their human families considered them abominations. That's a betrayal. The Tauren were nomads at best that couldn't defend themselves from the centaur. The trolls were obviously hunted down like animals. The orcs have always been at war with the humans. The blood elves were betrayed by the Alliance. Goblins were actually sunk by the Alliance weren't they? The Horde and Alliance conflict is a race war, either side will annihilate the other if given a chance.

  18. #58
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    Quote Originally Posted by SherbertLand View Post
    The Horde and Alliance conflict is a race war, either side will annihilate the other if given a chance.
    I fail to see any evidence of this. The Forsaken would make everyone like them if given the chance, and Garrosh would certainly force everyone under him, but most of the rest of the races seem mostly content to just have their border skirmishes and largely leave each other alone.

  19. #59
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    Why some people blatantly ignore the fact that Garrosh HAS WMDs and IS willing to used them?

    That's why the Alliance is taking the best possible choice, using the internal conflict of the Horde to manage to have a safe landing at the beaches of Durotar. The Alliance already tried to attack Orgrimmar before and they lost their entire fleet. Also, Theramore is still very fresh on their memories, so not playing safe this time is nothing short of being completely stupid.

    The problem is not the writing, it's the players that don't built the entire puzzle with the given pieces.

  20. #60
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    Stories Are alwayse improvable, but sometimes you just have to accept what you get and move along.

    Till now Blizzard has a far better story than your suggestions however. Please, do not arrogantly think yours is better, or that blizzards version is crap.

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