Players Must Reject Blizzard Divisiveness

[Skytotem]

I am of the opinion that the reason Blizzard has been able to skate by with their atrocious writing is that so many players buy into the "Who has it worse" feud with regards to the bad writing or favoritism.

Despite the faction wars usually having some of the worst writing I've also felt that they could be some of the best if Blizzard BOTHERED to have consistency and attention to detail.

Rather than arguing about how the In-Universe characters are dumb, or who has suffered more (Alliance for being passive and losing things to neutrality, Horde for getting villain-batted and losing characters to being raid bosses and such) we should push together for Blizz to get more in touch with its playerbase and their concerns with the lore. It's been YEARS we shouldn't still be seeing them making the same mistakes and reading people being angry about it as "Engagement".


#LoreUnion

[Feanoro]

I'm automatically dismissed as an Alliance zealot, but I've been saying for a long time:

- WC3 Horde players are pissed at their faction being dragged through the mud
- WC2 Horde players are pissed at their faction being forced to be peaceful
- Alliance players are pissed for their faction being treated as passive, irrelevant, and a plot device for the Horde

The core problem is Metzen set up an impossible division in the Horde and then refused to pull the trigger. Thus, we keep swinging back and forth between the two Horde factions, with Blizz trying to cater to each. So much time is spent on the Horde that there's nothing left for the Alliance (aside from the writers openly stating they have no interest in the Alliance). Result, everyone is pissed, everyone feels they were done dirty and the other guy has it better.

[Skytotem]

I'm automatically dismissed as an Alliance zealot, but I've been saying for a long time:

- WC3 Horde players are pissed at their faction being dragged through the mud
- WC2 Horde players are pissed at their faction being forced to be peaceful
- Alliance players are pissed for their faction being treated as passive, irrelevant, and a plot device for the Horde

The core problem is Metzen set up an impossible division in the Horde and then refused to pull the trigger. Thus, we keep swinging back and forth between the two Horde factions, with Blizz trying to cater to each. So much time is spent on the Horde that there's nothing left for the Alliance (aside from the writers openly stating they have no interest in the Alliance). Result, everyone is pissed, everyone feels they were done dirty and the other guy has it better.

Exactly, but it's not as difficult to reconcile the Horde's two directions as people make it out to be, Blizz has just made it seem difficult because they've failed so much.

[Varodoc]

WC2 Horde players shouldn't even exist. It was made clear in WC3 that the Horde is trying to improve after decades spent doing the Legion's dirty work. That's the very core of the faction. Blizzard should stop trying to cater to these people who still live in 1995. Hopefully there will never be a Garrosh 3.0 in the future.

[ravenmoon]

I am of the opinion that the reason Blizzard has been able to skate by with their atrocious writing is that so many players buy into the "Who has it worse" feud with regards to the bad writing or favoritism.

Despite the faction wars usually having some of the worst writing I've also felt that they could be some of the best if Blizzard BOTHERED to have consistency and attention to detail.

Rather than arguing about how the In-Universe characters are dumb, or who has suffered more (Alliance for being passive and losing things to neutrality, Horde for getting villain-batted and losing characters to being raid bosses and such) we should push together for Blizz to get more in touch with its playerbase and their concerns with the lore. It's been YEARS we shouldn't still be seeing them making the same mistakes and reading people being angry about it as "Engagement".


#LoreUnion

It's a good point, but the problem is people, watch this thread descend into fighting, Instead of coming g together. Blizzard have pushed this divide in their narrative. Fans take sides of their favourite, but forget they are not living in the game and have 3rd person view, so they can put aside the bickering g and unite to insist on a better narrative.


Problem is, when people like me suggest a better narrative, focusing on my race, Instead of hordies going "hey, I like that night elves come off better, here is what I'd like to do for Tauren and Nightborne, " they instead attack me and what I suggest in what I can only conclude is an "I dont want your guys to look better than mine , so no" attitude. I noticed a particular bunch of horde fans has been doing this a lot, promoting g that divisiveness instead of cohesion, high elf discussions epitomised this.

It's a mentality they have to shake, I care about nelves so obviously I write pieces on them, they'd rather knock that than come up with interesting or more thorough variations of what blizzard writes for the races they like.

Until they can overcome this , what you propose wouldn go very far.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

If people want to be bloodthirsty they can go elsewhere, No Blue Horde, sorry that the Horde has to go through its "BACK IN THE GOOD DAYS WE PILLAGED AND WER MONSTERS, GOOD TIMES" but don't force it on everyone else.

[deenman]

WC2 Horde players shouldn't even exist. It was made clear in WC3 that the Horde is trying to improve after decades spent doing the Legion's dirty work. That's the very core of the faction. Blizzard should stop trying to cater to these people who still live in 1995. Hopefully there will never be a Garrosh 3.0 in the future.

I dont get how people even make this connection with wc2 and wc3 horde with today,that horde is long dead,thrall wasnt even born or was a baby if i recall,also development wise the horde wasnt even yett planned as a faction when warcraft 3 came out,it could have gone tottaly different with the races not being part of any locked in faction

[Aucald]

You're fighting an uphill battle against people's natural tendency to form cliques, tribes, and factions unfortunately. I don't disagree with the sentiment but you'll find that the people who don't have some kind of faction identity to be a general rarity - and probably not the most involved in the actual game story, to boot. The more enmeshed or involved you with enjoying or being interested in the Warcraft narrative universe the more likely it is that you carry an essential bias one way or the other, be it for the Horde or the Alliance. The game is designed to foster that kind of set-identification as well.

[Super Dickmann]

Warcraft 3 is no more a sacred horse than Warcraft 2 - the shift in Wrath and Cataclysm towards a more warlike Horde that hearkened back to the elements that Warcraft 3 had shafted was a direct result of both player demand as a result of how passive the faction was and the lack of inter-faction conflict and what a narrative wasteland Thrall's orcs were given that they had about three characters and had resolved the only two stories you could tell with people who have no internal conflict or issues in Warcraft 3 - that being tying up the Legion loose end with Mannoroth and Grom and tying up the Alliance don't believe we're good boys storyline with Daelin. What works in a multi-faction RTS doesn't work in a two faction MMO.

[Skytotem]

You're fighting an uphill battle against people's natural tendency to form cliques, tribes, and factions unfortunately. I don't disagree with the sentiment but you'll find that the people who don't have some kind of faction identity to be a general rarity - and probably not the most involved in the actual game story, to boot. The more enmeshed or involved you with enjoying or being interested in the Warcraft narrative universe the more likely it is that you carry an essential bias one way or the other, be it for the Horde or the Alliance. The game is designed to foster that kind of set-identification as well.

What we need to push is that people can absolutely back the "lore" friction and divisiveness, like enjoying the faction war or things like that, but still unite with other players and acknowledge when the writing is bad without it turning into a measuring contest for who has it worse.

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Warcraft 3 is no more a sacred horse than Warcraft 2 - the shift in Wrath and Cataclysm towards a more warlike Horde that hearkened back to the elements that Warcraft 3 had shafted was a direct result of both player demand .

I don't believe this is true. People wanting there to be better reasons to fight the Alliance are NOT the same as people wanting to be evil, and most importantly, Blizz has never said this was the result of player input.


Even if it was at the time, it's clear it has not panned out and we as a playerbase need to move forward and demand a more refined, more detailed, storytelling.

[Varodoc]

Garrosh was a very unpopular character back then, so much so that the vast majority of Horde players couldn't fathom why Blizzard would replace Thrall, such an iconic character, with Garrosh, who was a dick for the entirety of WotLK. The Horde fanbase very clearly was not interested in the world conquest that Garrosh offered. It is therefore not a surprise that Blizzard quickly got rid of Garrosh.

[taishar68]

I really don’t think a large enough portion of WoW players are passionate enough about the lore to make Blizzard re-evaluate the writing arcs. I’m not saying they don’t work hard at, or that they don’t care at all, I just think if something does not impact the amount of people playing, it becomes less of a priority in terms of responding to feedback.

Not to mention that writing is such a subjective medium, and I get the sense that if the folks involved in the process are all happy it seems unlikely to me they would make any wholesale changes.

[Super Dickmann]

I don't believe this is true. People wanting there to be better reasons to fight the Alliance are NOT the same as people wanting to be evil, and most importantly, Blizz has never said this was the result of player input.


Even if it was at the time, it's clear it has not panned out and we as a playerbase need to move forward and demand a more refined, more detailed, storytelling.

The War in Warcraft thing is a meme now, but it was verbatim the reasoning given by Blizzard to amp up the faction war in Wrath and going into Cataclysm. Thrall himself was extremely popular at the time, and Garrosh very unpopular, but the overall direction of the Horde away from Noblesavage Incorporated was the result of a popular push. One that has panned out, Thrall and Garrosh consistently tie on polls and in terms of player reaction on basically every platform the game is discussed.

On the latter point I agree, but the argument made about Warcraft 3 being the definitive version of the factions is nonsense and most of the people championing it don't actually believe it, they're just trying to score points against an opposing fanbase, since they themselves don't touch the noblesavage playable races with a ten foot pole. Case in point, the only element of the playable Alliance to feature in WC3 are the Night Elves - none of the human kingdoms that are playable even up to Wrath appear at any point, the dwarves have one character with little exploration and both Quel'thalas and Lordaeron, mainstays of the WC2 Alliance, are used only as Horde. Yet to this day, people quite rightly claim a connection to these things because when they were introduced, that was who they were catered for.

[Aucald]

I really don’t think a large enough portion of WoW players are passionate enough about the lore to make Blizzard re-evaluate the writing arcs. I’m not saying they don’t work hard at, or that they don’t care at all, I just think if something does not impact the amount of people playing, it becomes less of a priority in terms of responding to feedback.

Not to mention that writing is such a subjective medium, and I get the sense that if the folks involved in the process are all happy it seems unlikely to me they would make any wholesale changes.

I've always considered that posting regularly in the lore forum for a given game basically implies you have a preset level of passion - enough that you'll actually enter into conversation to discuss the story of a video game. If you don't really care about said game, it seems unlikely that anyone would really do that, at least to me.

That is one thing that's kind of always confused me, actually. There are a *lot* of people on this subforum who are very vocal about this distaste or dislike of the game's story, and yet very regularly participate in the various conversations surrounding it. If you don't like it or aren't interested in it, it seems odd to me that you'd essentially waste your time talking about it as opposed to doing something else you actually enjoy. I mean, people are free to do whatever they like at the end of the day, but that still seems weird to me.

[Asrialol]

I've enjoyed the story in legion and BFA. I'm no author nor have I got any degree when it comes to writing lore or stories, thus I cannot say if the writing is bad or good. All I can say is that I've enjoyed the storylines in quests and cinematics quite a lot from a gameplay perspective.

[Artelia]

Garrosh was a very unpopular character back then, so much so that the vast majority of Horde players couldn't fathom why Blizzard would replace Thrall, such an iconic character, with Garrosh, who was a dick for the entirety of WotLK. The Horde fanbase very clearly was not interested in the world conquest that Garrosh offered. It is therefore not a surprise that Blizzard quickly got rid of Garrosh.

Speak for yourself. There are so many people that wants same thing that Garrosh wanted.
People who don't like things are just more loud. Same with Vol'jin or Sylvanas or even Thrall. All of them use some agenda that some people like.
There are people who want united faction and people who hate Alliance as real enemy.

[taishar68]

I've always considered that posting regularly in the lore forum for a given game basically implies you have a preset level of passion - enough that you'll actually enter into conversation to discuss the story of a video game. If you don't really care about said game, it seems unlikely that anyone would really do that, at least to me.

That is one thing that's kind of always confused me, actually. There are a *lot* of people on this subforum who are very vocal about this distaste or dislike of the game's story, and yet very regularly participate in the various conversations surrounding it. If you don't like it or aren't interested in it, it seems odd to me that you'd essentially waste your time talking about it as opposed to doing something else you actually enjoy. I mean, people are free to do whatever they like at the end of the day, but that still seems weird to me.

I wasn’t trying to impugn anyone who is passionate about lore; I am fairly passionate about the lore and story myself, I just don’t think there is a large enough portion of the player base that cares deeply enough about game lore and story to make Blizzard change story arc direction, as the OP suggests should happen by our active feedback.

[Super Dickmann]

@taishar68

This is the correct take. While we bitch here, it's mostly an exercise for the fun of it. The only times changes are done on story bases is when there's a proper outcry across multiple channels where even people tangentially interested in the lore get salty about something. In as much as anyone here can do anything it's to draw attention and magnify these things - from Vol'jin's dialogue with the Alliance player in 5.3 to more recent examples like Tyrande's Silence in WoD, the Darkshore rewrites or the entire loyalist questline. Most of these things are entirely cosmetic, but they are the kind of changes that happen after outcry.

[Arrashi]

I've always considered that posting regularly in the lore forum for a given game basically implies you have a preset level of passion - enough that you'll actually enter into conversation to discuss the story of a video game. If you don't really care about said game, it seems unlikely that anyone would really do that, at least to me.

I would argue that for many of us, said passion was completely brutalised by blizzard in past few years.

Hell, i don't even want to mock the writing and story anymore because its so bad its just not fun anymore.

[Aucald]

When I first started playing WoW, in what now seems like another age of humanity altogether, I was coming from the story of WC3 where the Horde had redefined itself - going from the chaotic evil Horde of WC1/WC2 to the essentially chaotic good Horde of WC3. The major shift being that the good vs. evil dichotomy no longer defined the major factions, but had graduated to one of law vs. chaos, with both sides being essentially good and desiring peaceful but separate coexistence with their own systems of values and codes of ethics. It was in that atmosphere that I chose to make my original main character a member of the Horde, as I preferred (and still prefer) chaotic good to lawful good, and the Horde felt like the more dynamic and narratively richer of the two playable factions.

For me, the rise of Garrosh and subsequent warmongering culminating in Theramore made me seriously reevaluate that stance, and that's when I drew up my first real Alliance character and decided to take in their side of the story of WoW, so to speak. Since factionalism was on the rise I wanted to ensure I understood both sides of the story. While my main is still Horde I no longer really feel like I have a strong bias anymore, and I now play my Horde DK and my Alliance Hunter at about the same basic level. Like Saurfang within the narrative, I don't really feel as if the Horde is a force for good anymore, at least not collectively - they slipped from chaotic good to chaotic neutral for me, with Sylvanas' regime shading closer and closer to chaotic evil. That's not the really the Horde I set out to experience in the halcyon days of '04, and why I don't really evince any pronounced Horde pride (if I ever did).