Players Must Reject Blizzard Divisiveness

[Minikin]

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

said it a hundred times here. it might not have a major effect on the story but faction biased people will only have a negative effect on the story. People who type up foolishness like "i wish the alliance would wipe out the horde!" "i hope we destroy the alliance!" dont understand that its a sub based game. Similarly people who want the horde to be some evil faction while at the same time typing up blog posts on how its not actually evil just add more inefficiency to the mix.

[Relapses]

All of this "community revolting" nonsense always seems to lead to one single natural conclusion: Game design by democracy. Not only should Blizzard stop trying to tell their own story, they should make sure that all salient points of their story check out with the player approval board.

Hell, you could even spin it from a cost-savings angle. No longer will they need to pay people to come up with ideas, just find the highest up dooted fanfiction on forums or reddit and make it a reality. What's there to lose?

[Tarba]

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

Lore writers are retarded. And that's the main reason I stoped playing.
People should simply do that. Let only people who don't care about the lore in the game, so they can still make the shittiest random Z movie scenarii.

[Aresk]

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".

I like the sentiment, but what are you proposing? How do we get Blizzard to be more in touch with its playerbase? Is there something specific to get their attention? Flood their mailboxes with handwritten letters or the like (I'm not being sarcastic here; I've sent handwritten letters to Blizzard in the past)? We can entertain ourselves with discussions in this thread all day, but I don't feel like it will really accomplish the goal of pushing Blizzard to change anything.

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.

The Alliance story in RoC has direct tie-ins to the current Alliance through Jaina and Theramore. Additionally, it has been heavily implied that Bolvar Fordragon, the Regent Lord of Stormwind in Classic, was a Lordaeronian (I don't think his kingdom of origin has ever been specified, but the fact that he sent Taelia to Kul Tiras due to the Scourge suggests he's from the area around Lordaeron). Ultimately WC3 tells the story of the Horde far more than the Alliance--Alliance get the Alliance and Night Elf campaigns in RoC and Night Elf in TFT (total 3), while Horde get Horde in RoC and Alliance, Undead, and Horde in TFT (total 4)--there are still tie-ins. There's more to the factions than just the playable races.

But yes, Horde got most of the races from WC3, particularly if you only look at the playable races in WoW.

• Alliance - Humans (Kul Tirans playable, the rest not), Dwarves (Alliance), Elves (Horde)
• Horde - Orcs (Horde), Tauren (Horde), Trolls (Horde)
• Scourge - Human [Acolyte/Ghoul/Necromancer] (Horde), Abominations (Not Playable), Crypt Fiend (Not Playable), Gargoyle (Not Playable), Banshee (Not Playable), Destroyer (Not Playable), Frost Wyrm (Not Playable), Dreadlord (Not Playable)
• Sentinels - Night Elf (Alliance), Dryad (Not Playable), Faerie Dragon (Not Playable), Mountain Giant (Not Playable), Chimaera (Not Playable), Hippogryph (Not Playable), Keeper (Not Playable)

Alliance get three (one only given this expansion), while Horde get five.

I'm not trying to advocate that WC3 representations are the canonical representations for all the races, but it's a good metric for understanding the initial appeal when WoW released, since from a lore point, that was pretty much all we had to go from at the time. Blizzard isn't beholden to preserving the same attraction to the races that informed players' original choices, but when the thread is about listening to the playerbase, some merit should be given to that initial draw. Forsaken can be new champions of life imbued with a profound faith and desire to exist in harmony with the living, following Calia's example, but you're going to lose those fans who liked a bleak race with little to no respect for the living and a penchant for cold pragmatism and human experimentation.

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).

I can relate to that experience. When I started WoW, the Horde seemed to be the external monsters, while the Alliance seemed to be the internal monsters. That really drew me to the Horde, particularly coming off the way they were coded in WC3 and Classic (with the Forsaken being an exception). The Alliance started cleaning house, ousting Lady Prestor, turning Magni to diamond, and making efforts to support the Horde in the Shattering (with Baine) and into Siege of Orgrimmar (Vol'jin's rebellion), while the Horde's increased aggressiveness made me shy away from them, culminating in my swapping from a Horde main to Alliance main midway through Legion; worgen offered a good external monster to satisfy what I was looking for in a race, while the story made them seem less internal monsters than the Horde. I still care about Horde lore and have continued playing my Horde alts, but I just can't seem to invest in the faction the way I did up through the end of WoD.

[Super Dickmann]

The Alliance story in RoC has direct tie-ins to the current Alliance through Jaina and Theramore. Additionally, it has been heavily implied that Bolvar Fordragon, the Regent Lord of Stormwind in Classic, was a Lordaeronian (I don't think his kingdom of origin has ever been specified, but the fact that he sent Taelia to Kul Tiras due to the Scourge suggests he's from the area around Lordaeron). Ultimately WC3 tells the story of the Horde far more than the Alliance--Alliance get the Alliance and Night Elf campaigns in RoC and Night Elf in TFT (total 3), while Horde get Horde in RoC and Alliance, Undead, and Horde in TFT (total 4)--there are still tie-ins. There's more to the factions than just the playable races.

RoC definitely builds up the Horde more so than it does the Alliance, but it's not actually because the story is about the orcs - indeed, you can effectively cut the orcs entirely and barely affect the plot, which is far more about the night elves, Arthas and those they come into contact with. It's because the Alliance as itself has next to no role - Lordaeron, Dalaran and Kul Tiras feature, but Dalaran appears for one mission before it is eliminated, Lordaeron is entirely zombified and has its last human remnants removed by the end of TFT and Quel'thalas is tied to the Illidan plot. None of this translates directly into WoW except in the most tangential possible sense, like the example you use with Bolvar - Stormwind is never mentioned in WC3, gnomes don't exist and dwarves only have one character of any note who is a stereotype more relevant on a personal level to Arthas than as a showing of any race. With the exception of the night elves, who arguably lose out more of what made them relevant in the inclusion but beside the point, everything Alliance in Vanilla comes from before WC3. And it doesn't suffer as a result of it - on the contrary, the Alliance have a much better set of zones and story quests at then and an actual overarching nemesis and conspiracy with the Defias. The Horde's only equivalent to this is the Scarlet Crusade, which is Forsaken-exclusive. By contrast, the orcs have barely any contact with the Dark Horde and they get involved with Moira solely because it'd be a nice thing to do.

I use Vanilla to Wrath as a benchmark because it's said to be like WC3 and was before the Horde had more of its WC2 elements return, such as orcish clans we don't immediately kill, a focus on their warlike aspect and so forth, which that particular strain of argument claims is the issue. Over time, both factions have had more and more elements return and be fleshed out, generally for the better.

I'm not trying to advocate that WC3 representations are the canonical representations for all the races, but it's a good metric for understanding the initial appeal when WoW released, since from a lore point, that was pretty much all we had to go from at the time. Blizzard isn't beholden to preserving the same attraction to the races that informed players' original choices, but when the thread is about listening to the playerbase, some merit should be given to that initial draw. Forsaken can be new champions of life imbued with a profound faith and desire to exist in harmony with the living, following Calia's example, but you're going to lose those fans who liked a bleak race with little to no respect for the living and a penchant for cold pragmatism and human experimentation.

This is the more relevant part and one I agree with you a lot more on - the races are products above all other things, niches for certain players. The orcs have the benefit of attracting at least two broad playerbases, that have a fair amount of overlap and like both aspects of them, since the race is still contiguous. There was a niche in the orcish playerbase that was not filled until Wrath and active attempts were made to abolish it as a playable option in Cataclysm after pretending that nothing before WC3 and its two living orcish characters existed.

While the state of the orcs is absolutely dire right now and Mists was a travesty, the race is conceptually robust and rich enough that it can support both products especially with the Mag'har now an option. Focusing on either aspect in its entirety will piss off some of the playerbase to no real benefit. It's also why the Forsaken's changes are as dire as they are - they have been sold as one thing for fifteen years, and no amount of retcons to try and fail to make an in-story direction palatable will change the fact that it's fruit juice being to people who've got wine from this brand for a decade and a half.

@Jastall

I will give you the first part. Looking back at Legion, that did spectacle mostly the correct way - there was a lot of stupid shit, no doubt, but it was all in service of something that the game could generally deliver on. Even Vol'jin getting merc'd was tonally appropriate even if it was storywise a massive mistake that ended up hampering the Zandalari plot and was also unnecessary if they wanted to do a Sylvanas as Big Bad story. BFA is much more guilty of this - in aspiring to tell a more meaningful story that they aren't equipped to they fill it with extraneous boring crap, like how most of the Horde War Campaign is pointless or infuriating and that it is telling the message undercuts things. I harp on it a lot, but the bit where Rexxar has you use a bomber aircraft to drop azerite explosives on fighting troops but unlike say, the plague at Lordaeron these bombs have enough IQ to form allegiances and only target red markers is cowardice on the part of the narrative and a perfect example of this. The game can deliver self-contained emotional stories that have genuine depth to them, but the main plot has always been high camp spectacle that is best used as a backdrop to whatever's going on that has more meaning. Like Suramar with the Legion or the faction war to the conflict with Deathwing/The Lich King.

[Soon-TM]

What's there to lose?

I know you were trying to sound smart, but given what the story has been since WoD at least, I don't think a lot would be lost if Blizzard made a sort of community pageant. I don't think it would actually be any worse than the terrible (imo) levels of fanfiction of BfA.

[ravenmoon]

Mnor tidbit - you care about highborns, not Night Elves.

Highborne ARE Night elves. I care about Highborne because I care about night elves.
(I believe I answered you more fully earlier)

[Soon-TM]

Highborne ARE Night elves. I care about Highborne because I care about night elves.
(I believe I answered you more fully earlier)

Night elves are as highborne as blood elves are, i.e. it really doesn't mean a lot. NEs proper in WoW appeared in WC3, and they were described as this rigid, theocratic, matriarchal society, averse to arcane (and with good reason, mind you) and quite xenophobic. Actually, the whole NE/BE opposition could be described as anti-arcane vs pro-arcane elves. By making the arcane a major element of a hypothetic new NE society, you are pretty much likening them to BEs/highborne, even better - since they've never had to suffer from magical withdrawal, a major them for both.

In other words, it would be "all the advantages without the disadvantages", while also stealing a major theme from other races. It's as if e.g. Dwarves were described as the best, fiercest, most bloodthirsty warriors ever, while keeping everything else unchanged. They'd get to steal one of the major selling points of Orcs (in this example) without the disadvantage of a militaristic society.

[Relapses]

I know you were trying to sound smart, but given what the story has been since WoD at least, I don't think a lot would be lost if Blizzard made a sort of community pageant. I don't think it would actually be any worse than the terrible (imo) levels of fanfiction of BfA.

This is a terrible fucking idea. Here's a better one, though: If you don't like the story (or the direction its taking), don't buy the fucking game.

[Varodoc]

Don't let the community write the story, God please don't. Most people in here have no clue of how basic storytelling works. Especially Sylvanas fanboys.

[Tuor]

Night elves are as highborne as blood elves are, i.e. it really doesn't mean a lot.

Not really. The race of both Night Elfs and Highborne is the same, they Kaldorei. The Blood Elfs do descent from Kaldorei Highborne but they shifted into a diferent race, they became the Sindorei.

[ravenmoon]

Night elves are as highborne as blood elves are, i.e. it really doesn't mean a lot. NEs proper in WoW appeared in WC3, and they were described as this rigid, theocratic, matriarchal society, averse to arcane (and with good reason, mind you) and quite xenophobic. Actually, the whole NE/BE opposition could be described as anti-arcane vs pro-arcane elves. By making the arcane a major element of a hypothetic new NE society, you are pretty much likening them to BEs/highborne, even better - since they've never had to suffer from magical withdrawal, a major them for both.

In other words, it would be "all the advantages without the disadvantages", while also stealing a major theme from other races. It's as if e.g. Dwarves were described as the best, fiercest, most bloodthirsty warriors ever, while keeping everything else unchanged. They'd get to steal one of the major selling points of Orcs (in this example) without the disadvantage of a militaristic society.

No, that's not true, Blood elves are as Highborne as they are night elven. Because Highborne became a race, and that race has it's own name, Highborne as its meaning goes is purely Night elven. Now the Sunstrider Highborne descendants that are now are race, you tie to the highborne, but as much as you tie to the night elf the Highborne is. they're as much Highborne as they are night elves.

Are you trying to say that the e xistence of night elven highborne is stealing a major theme from the blood elves? If so then you don't understand what the Highborne are and you are assuming blood elves are highborne - rather than a new highborne culture/race of their own. - in which case how can night elves who are highborne and have that facet of them be "stealing a theme"

What is the blood elf theme? Red, golds, daylight, the Light, the sun, arcane magic, magical city, magical forest.

Exactly what of this do they share with Highborne as a separate group and what do they share with Night elves as a whole? Ans? is Arcane magic, magical city, magical forest - shared with both Highborne and Night elf as they are as a whole now.

The arcane, and magical elven city is not an exclusive theme or purview to blood elves and horde elves. It originates in the night elf and is a significant part of what makes the night elf a night elf - even though the arcane users amongst the Darnassian faction aren't that many. You really can't accuse an elf group of stealing the theme from an elf group , especially it's parent group it is supposed to come from and suppose to have attributes from it.

From the night elves, the blood elves receive arcane mastery and ability and Ranger forestry ability and mastery. They learnt the light on their own, and share that with humans. The day, the sun, the red gold motiffs and tehir architecture, that's all their own. The highborne don't have any of those things amongst them.

[Soon-TM]

This is a terrible fucking idea. Here's a better one, though: If you don't like the story (or the direction its taking), don't buy the fucking game.

I will buy whatever the !@#$ I want, and will write whatever the !@#$ I want about it wherever the !@#$ I want. And the best part is that you are powerless to stop me

[Relapses]

I will buy whatever the !@#$ I want, and will write whatever the !@#$ I want about it wherever the !@#$ I want. And the best part is that you are powerless to stop me

Did I ever say you couldn't? Holy shit bro. Calm down.

[Soon-TM]

Not really. The race of both Night Elfs and Highborne is the same, they Kaldorei. The Blood Elfs do descent from Kaldorei Highborne but they shifted into a diferent race, they became the Sindorei.

The differences are political/ideological, rather than biological. As we can easily infer, Bob is very busy banging Thalyssra, something that wouldn't be endorsed publicly if they belonged to different species (exception of human+high elf, because for some reason that's cool).

[Tuor]

The differences are political/ideological, rather than biological. As we can easily infer, Bob is very busy banging Thalyssra, something that wouldn't be endorsed publicly if they belonged to different species (exception of human+high elf, because for some reason that's cool).

We know they a diferent species because Nordrassil didn't granted imortalaty to any of the Sindorei group. But the tree did granted imortality to both NElfs and Highborne (that is the real reason why the highborne rejoined NElfs).

[Skytotem]

Don't let the community write the story, God please don't. Most people in here have no clue of how basic storytelling works. Especially Sylvanas fanboys.

No one is suggesting Blizz let the community writr the story, just that they address some of the more glaring issues, like Baine...

[LordVargK]

I can never understand why Blizzard's writing is so "bad." I've read a lot of books. I've watched a lot of movies/TV shows. I'm played a lot of games. And Warcraft's story is one of my all-time favorites.

Genuine question, those of you who don't like the writing, what is an example of something that you would consider good and why? Warcraft has story holes, but so does everything else I've seen. There's lots of back and forth non-sensible stuff, but so does everything else that is a long-running story. I just honestly don't understand why Warcraft is allegedly "so bad" despite it doing exactly what everyone else does, but in my personal opinion, better. I can count on one hand the number of things I didn't really like whereas it far exceeds that with other stories.

I admit, I have never read one the the Warcraft books. But i read the abstracts and from that I got the feeling that those books were made for children. Especially the newer ones. The writing style, the dialogues (Anduin is the worst offender here, don't get me wrong, I like him as a figure, but his dialogues are sometimes incredibly cringeworthy), the absolutely direct way in which everything gets described... I don't know. I have read many youth books in my life and I would consider the warcraft books the lightest among them. They seem to be easy reads. Does not fit my taste.

Then there is the story of WoW. You just feel that the story is especially written to fit an MMORPG. Things like Belfs joining the Horde after fighting trolls and undead for millennia just to give the Horde a beautiful race. The ongoing conflicts between Alliance and Horde, which cannot get resolved, because of gameplay limitations. It makes sense in the game, but not for the sake of the story.
Glaring oversights like the (absence of the) Vindicaar. You know that those are just expansion limited features. Again, okay in a (multiplayer) game, but absolutely not for a coherent story.

Then there's the fact that Warcraft went back to Orcs vs Humans, with some other characters appearing at the side. Nearly every Alliance story focusses around humans. Most of the Horde story around Orcs (Sylvannas is the exception here). But honestly, I would consider Sylvannas a human at this point, just in another body.
Ans that's my biggest gripe with the Warcraft story as a whole. Every character is pretty humanized. Even undead have feelings. Elves think and act like humans. Their incredible age, their sometimes 10000 years of experience is never brought up. They just behave like humans and treat them as equals. Orcs are humans with honor. Gnomes, goblins and dwarfs are smart, crafty humans.

Numbers don't matter either in WoW. War upon War upon War. The Horde being nearly extinct, which is their reason to band together? Mild inconvenience. 90% of all Highelves dead? Who cares! Every life is pretty much irrelevant anyway.

Yeah, that's the rule of cool. But it's absolutely atrocious storytelling and worldbuilding.

Bottom line is: I value world and story integrity. Two things that had to be abandoned with WoW and that get abandoned more and more as new writers take over. Letting multiple writers write one character will never have a good outcome.

Oh, for something that I consider good:
I liked Arthas' story in W3. He was a tragic hero, in the Greek sense, he had really difficult decision to make and his ambition got the best of him at last, as he was slowly more and more corrupted. There's really nothing that compares to him in WoW.
Maybe Anduin. I like him as well. He has equally hard decisions to make: After realizing the value of peace in Pandaria, he repeatedly had to forgive his enemies and fight his own allies to achieve his goal. I see honestly like him, he is the "reverse" Arthas in some sense.

Don't be confused by my criticism: There are many beautiful or interesting (short) stories in WoW. But the mainstory really falls flat in comparison and within the greater picture.

[Soon-TM]

Letting multiple writers write one character will never have a good outcome.

Especially when the newest batch of writers seem to just dgaf about what those before them did, and start dropping hard retcons on pretty much every major character and factions. Sylvanas and the Forsaken are perhaps the most glaring examples.

On another subject, it's evident that no faction can truly win in a faction war. But in early WoW, writers had managed to make the AvH stuff a little more believable, e.g. the bits of story for Vanilla's BGs. It was only during MoP that they abandoned any pretense of nuance and went the easy way: Alliance => good, Horde => bad.

I agree with the part about Warcraft books though. The only one I found actually interesting was Illidan, by King. But most of Golden's stuff is quite eye rolling, as is EVERYTHING of Knaak's. Rhonin and his army of !@#$ing raptors? Give me a break, dude.

[TheFirstOnes]

I'm going to put this entire situation into a summary you can understand:

Faction Wars suck in general. They sucked in Classic. They made NO fucking sense in WoTLK and TBC. They were forced in Cata, and WoD. They were cringe as fuck in MoP. And don't get me STARTED on Legion/BFA.

This is why the lore is good when the attention isn't focused on the Alliance/Horde conflict. Whether it be the Shadowlands, N'Zoth (Ik he was rushed, but hear me out), the Legion, etc, the lore was always amazing there. The LK was a great villain with a perfect build-up and execution. The Legion threat was handled well, despite it feeling rushed. The first half of WoD was STELLAR until Blizzard gave up on the expansion as well as anything relating to do with AU Draenor. The Azshara, Wrathion, and N'Zoth plots were good for what they were, EXCEPT for the last portion of it (Was the cringiest shit I've seen in my life). And overall, the lore for those situations were nice.

I think Blizzard's come to accept this, which is why the Alliance and Horde are now in an armistice.

- - - Updated - - -

"But they were in peace before"

In MoP, almost no treaty was signed. The Alliance and Horde decided to just not fuck around with each-other for a bit. And then, after a couple months, or years and shit, maybe peace would be an option. Here, in BFA, an actual fucking treaty exists for the first time ever...

- - - Updated - - -

Only took them WAY too many fucking wars to get this shit done right.

- - - Updated - - -

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Garrosh_Hellscream_(tactics) See, they planned an armistice. Or at least a treaty, and they were preparing for a new beginning: Something we saw a small amount on at the beginning of Legion, but that shit never fully gave way.

As you can tell: Ashran exists, Alliance and Horde tensions were still slightly going, and after the Broken shore, the Alliance/Horde war practically started again. And in the middle of a Legion invasion no less.