Anyone else tired of Horde Civil war?

[Super Dickmann]

The way the Horde is and the nature of the cultures it includes means it is either rallied in a war of conquest or they are fighting among themselves. If we look back into lore that has been the case since it started existing on Draenor. You cannot have a warmachine structure of a warrior culture be peaceful with itself and others.

Isn't that why the Horde is interesting? You have the evil undead, sophisticated (pretentious and smug) elves, the tribal Tauren, greedy nature destroying Goblins, warrior culture Orcs leading, etc.
All bound together... For no actual reason.

So whoever is WARchief there will be inner problems, clashes, occasional genocide outside.

That's true. One of the main benefits of the Horde is that the cultures in it are incompatible and clash, and that through the Warchief they're all forced in a certain direction that itself creates friction. Even Doomhammer had to struggle and put up with Gul'dan and so forth.

The problems are two-fold. The first is with the Horde's opponent. The Alliance is neither threatening nor interesting and is instead shown to be our disapproving nanny who needs to get us into order. That wasn't the case in WC2, where we were out to kill each other and wasn't the case in Mists up until 5.4, because Varian wanted to win the war and the Alliance was shown to be willing and able to fight in Cataclysm. But everything in BFA is a non-stop reminder of how perfect Anduin is, how happy everyone is with him, how he's universally loved and how the Alliance entirely agrees with him that peace and love is the only option. So do the people we're meant to like Horde-side.

I don't know how it is Alliance-side, but Horde-side that's absolute bullshit. The Alliance has been fighting these people for thirty years now, they've been the victim of genocide more than once, with the last time being under a Horde that was supposedly reformed and they had promised to destroy if it lost its way again. Constantly, the Horde is shown to be the actor here, not just Sylvanas acting on her own. And yet the Alliance wargoal is to remove Sylvanas and then hug it out, and everyone expects and agrees that this will work. It guts the Horde story because there's no sense of threat except in the meta sense that once we lose, we'll become just as much of a boring holier than thou mess as you guys.

The second is the outcome, which is what it's tied into. The Horde hasn't won a war since WC1, so about thirty years both in and out of setting. The end goal of all of these things is always the same. We're supposed to realize that the values of Thrall, who made the orcs destitute and starving in a desert because of an ideology of racial guilt, raised the heroes of WC2 into cult by giving them statues and naming shit after them, yet the narrative paradoxically insists we should dislike them, is the way to go. Every time the Horde is set to learn that it was actually nice and peaceful all along and even in Mists, that was bullshit. It's even more bullshit now. If Blizzard would commit to the faction war status quo with an Alliance that wants the Horde destroyed, explaining why it can be barely held at the seams by an authoritarian ruler while everyone in it was pulling at different directions, that'd be fun. But it just doesn't happen. It's always a cop out about muh honor or muh family, and how forgiveness for the people you have nothing in common with and had been fighting and killing for thirty years makes perfect sense, especially without any sanctions, structural reform or disarmament.

[Super Dickmann]

The other complaints about your last paragraph though also just seems like an MMO product problem to me. Majority of players probably aren't interested in such an elaborate or sensible storylines where attention is paid to all the detail.

Let's face it, most people playing this game barely even know that there actually is some lore and storyline going on or care for it as they play the game. For most players it's about having fun using their combat abilities.

The MMO format is actually an advantage in what I'm talking about. Realistically, everyone knows neither of the factions is going away and that PvP will be part of the game. Even if at the end of this we get the Baine-Anduin Unifaction and people will be able to group for PvE, war mode will still exist, so will faction exclusive content and PvP. Rather than playing off of this and having the default be that the Alliance wants to defeat the Horde and the Horde wants to defeat the Alliance, we have this piffle the Alliance wants to heal the Horde and make friends and the only one who wants to beat the other side, Sylvanas, is someone we're meant to go against and overthrow.

People play this game, like you say, to kill bad guys and the people playing the wrong colour. Fighting is the whole point. Peace is not just nonsensical story-wise, it goes against the purpose of the game. Hence why at the very least a cold war status quo is the rational solution and characters that want to fight since that's what we want to do as players, should take the forefront.

[therealbowser]

There isn't a Horde "Civil War" going on.

That said, I can sympathize that the situation is irritating.

[steelballfc]

That's true. One of the main benefits of the Horde is that the cultures in it are incompatible and clash, and that through the Warchief they're all forced in a certain direction that itself creates friction. Even Doomhammer had to struggle and put up with Gul'dan and so forth.

The problems are two-fold. The first is with the Horde's opponent. The Alliance is neither threatening nor interesting and is instead shown to be our disapproving nanny who needs to get us into order. That wasn't the case in WC2, where we were out to kill each other and wasn't the case in Mists up until 5.4, because Varian wanted to win the war and the Alliance was shown to be willing and able to fight in Cataclysm. But everything in BFA is a non-stop reminder of how perfect Anduin is, how happy everyone is with him, how he's universally loved and how the Alliance entirely agrees with him that peace and love is the only option. So do the people we're meant to like Horde-side.

I don't know how it is Alliance-side, but Horde-side that's absolute bullshit. The Alliance has been fighting these people for thirty years now, they've been the victim of genocide more than once, with the last time being under a Horde that was supposedly reformed and they had promised to destroy if it lost its way again. Constantly, the Horde is shown to be the actor here, not just Sylvanas acting on her own. And yet the Alliance wargoal is to remove Sylvanas and then hug it out, and everyone expects and agrees that this will work. It guts the Horde story because there's no sense of threat except in the meta sense that once we lose, we'll become just as much of a boring holier than thou mess as you guys.

The second is the outcome, which is what it's tied into. The Horde hasn't won a war since WC1, so about thirty years both in and out of setting. The end goal of all of these things is always the same. We're supposed to realize that the values of Thrall, who made the orcs destitute and starving in a desert because of an ideology of racial guilt, raised the heroes of WC2 into cult by giving them statues and naming shit after them, yet the narrative paradoxically insists we should dislike them, is the way to go. Every time the Horde is set to learn that it was actually nice and peaceful all along and even in Mists, that was bullshit. It's even more bullshit now. If Blizzard would commit to the faction war status quo with an Alliance that wants the Horde destroyed, explaining why it can be barely held at the seams by an authoritarian ruler while everyone in it was pulling at different directions, that'd be fun. But it just doesn't happen. It's always a cop out about muh honor or muh family, and how forgiveness for the people you have nothing in common with and had been fighting and killing for thirty years makes perfect sense, especially without any sanctions, structural reform or disarmament.

the Horde core building doesn't allow to have "peace" with alliance specifically, when the alliance are the reason the Horde are formed, if this expansion - somehow - move to direction where there will be no peace between them, that would be better ending, like if Saurfang and his supporters fails, and the horde falls into conflict regardless of whom is the Warchife.

- - - Updated - - -

There isn't a Horde "Civil War" going on.

That said, I can sympathize that the situation is irritating.

there is, when you chose the time of war to change the structure of your own faction, that leads to Civil war.

[Super Dickmann]

the Horde core building doesn't allow to have "peace" with alliance specifically, when the alliance are the reason the Horde are formed, if this expansion - somehow - move to direction where there will be no peace between them, that would be better ending, like if Saurfang and his supporters fails, and the horde falls into conflict regardless of whom is the Warchife.

Yeah, my preferred version was that Saurfang brains Sylvanas with an axe, but the Alliance keeps their promise to end the Horde if it loses muh honor again. You have a fight, and then the Old Gods show up, so you have an excuse to put it on the back burner and keep the Cold War going. Sadly, Saurfang was reborn in the light of Our Treasure and this won't happen.

[steelballfc]

Yeah, my preferred version was that Saurfang brains Sylvanas with an axe, but the Alliance keeps their promise to end the Horde if it loses muh honor again. You have a fight, and then the Old Gods show up, so you have an excuse to put it on the back burner and keep the Cold War going. Sadly, Saurfang was reborn in the light of Our Treasure and this won't happen.

my version would be that Saurfang fails - somehow - , the war continue, old god rise, Slyvanas gone missing, new warchife forced to continue the war until Sylv come back, and you have this drama of if/when Sylv will come back, when the new warchife is trying to hold the Horde.

[Irian]

I just want everyone to stop for a second and laugh about the fact that Blizzard wrote a story, decided they didn't write it with a good enough ending and their solution to this is to almost beat-for-beat write the same fucking story.

This Horde civil war is ridiculous because we've already seen this story. It's literally MoP. Replace Garrosh with Sylvanas and Vol'jin with Saurfang and the story beats so far are almost identical. It's actually kind of embarrassing and I feel kind of bad that I ever gave a shit about a story that clearly doesn't give a shit about itself.

At this point, it doesn't even matter if it ends differently. Writing the same story with different characters and then trying to justify it with a slightly different ending is almost worse than just repeating it. Do they expect people to be surprised when Sylvanas doesn't have a SoO?

[etheldald]

The problems are two-fold. The first is with the Horde's opponent. The Alliance is neither threatening nor interesting and is instead shown to be our disapproving nanny who needs to get us into order. That wasn't the case in WC2, where we were out to kill each other and wasn't the case in Mists up until 5.4, because Varian wanted to win the war and the Alliance was shown to be willing and able to fight in Cataclysm. But everything in BFA is a non-stop reminder of how perfect Anduin is, how happy everyone is with him, how he's universally loved and how the Alliance entirely agrees with him that peace and love is the only option. So do the people we're meant to like Horde-side.

I don't know how it is Alliance-side, but Horde-side that's absolute bullshit. The Alliance has been fighting these people for thirty years now, they've been the victim of genocide more than once, with the last time being under a Horde that was supposedly reformed and they had promised to destroy if it lost its way again. Constantly, the Horde is shown to be the actor here, not just Sylvanas acting on her own. And yet the Alliance wargoal is to remove Sylvanas and then hug it out, and everyone expects and agrees that this will work. It guts the Horde story because there's no sense of threat except in the meta sense that once we lose, we'll become just as much of a boring holier than thou mess as you guys.

basically, the problem is anduin, he is an inferior version of wc3 jaina not only that his concept as a character is repeated.
but also in his case,the entire narrative is around him, how everyone around him is wrong and he is right, he has the right answer to everything.
he already "tamed" 2 of our most "morally gray" characters he doesn't need to challenge his morals if the other side is pure black, and neither if he can win without resorting to questionable tactics in order to win, he didn't had his stratoholme moment either.

Now, i truly hope that releasing saurfang comes back to bite him in the butt and when tyrande finds out she would go full nuclear on him,with the chance to create a much needed internal division and not with anduin making everyone around him agree with everything he does.
so or blizzard starts developing him to make him face challenges or blizzard should just kill him or exile him so the alliance can chose another "leader" who don't want to hug the horde until is healed.

or at least, the alliance should listen to jaina's advice and at least TRY to dismantle the horde. or where they reach a status where they are unable to keep fighting for now but as soon as the alliance is recovered, they should attack the horde again.
it was stupid that varian didn't demanded anything in return for theramore, if anduin does the same s... for teldrassil (that it was way more worse)then i don't want to think what will happen.

[Krokks]

What do you expect from a faction with those races? Especially a faction that has zombies in them.

[deviant010]

The story is predictably. Saurfang will raise a rebellion and join forces with the alliance. They will win and Sylvanas will be put on trial and Saurfang will be the new warchief. Sylvanas will escape from the trial and travel to another dimension where the scourge rules Azeroth. She will control the scourge as the new lich queen and attack current Azeroth. The start of the following expansion WoTLK 2.0 where we go back to Northrend to defeat the lich queen. /boring

[Niaraa]

for me this is normal, a tribal organisation with stuff like mak'gara arn't stable rivallry against leader/chief must be strong in society like that

[Sangris]

I think most of us are. Not only is it blatantly rehashed from only 3 expansions, but it is also within the same goddamn faction. That also seems to be what a lot of these "SYLVANAS FANBOIS REEEEEEEEEEEEEE" yelling people don't seem to get. Many of us siding with Sylvanas don't do so out of sympathy for her, but rather because we're dead sick of rebelling against our Warchiefs and supporting that death roulette meme that Blizzard set up and keep going.

[Lyssander]

I would not mind if Blizzard wrote it well. They don't.

[shise]

You need to realize one thing tho, the Horde was created by Sargeras as a tool to invade Azeroth.

The Horde was a bad thing from its very begining, however, some of the Orcs realized this and tried to change it. Then again, they realized it (or acted) too late, right after they won the first war (and even through the invasion of Stormwind but at that point, they were too deep in).

The only thing they could have done is try to negotiate with the Alliance to share Azeroth.. instead there was more war, and yet again with chances for peace they went with two rulers who only wanted irrational destruction for both, The Horde and the Alliance anyway.. Garrosh and Sylvanas, although let´s see what really drives Sylvanas in a few months.

It is only natural that the Horde has a civil war going on as there are two kinds of Horde... those who want to be forged in Honor and live their lives good and those who see nothing else than pointless war against the Alliance.

Obviously, the Alliance i defending their world and remain united to do so.


That being said, the Horde doesn´t need to be an evil faction.. it is all about the Warchief they chose and now, once again, they will have a good chance to change for good.

[Frozenbeef]

God yes, it's pretty much MOP except they have changed orcs for Sylvanas loyalists...

at this rate you are going to run out of possible warchief candidates...

If in 3 expansions time Gallywix is warchief i'm going to be pretty pissed..

[Duckz0rs]

Yeah, I'm sick of it. At this point the Horde, that I've been following since WC2, can be ended for all I care for all the reasons @Wildberry and @Super Dickmann mentioned.

As some others mentioned the Horde consists of races that are inherently incompatible for the large part. This is fine! It doesn't always have to end in some civil war scenario. The irony is that there's another perfect example of this that actually works: the Council of Three Hammers, especially pre-Legion. They hated eachother to the core, but worked together. Moira held Ironforge hostage and despite the fact that Varian had to step in to show them The Way, they actually learned from this event and grew.

@Wildberry You know, the funny thing about MoP's breaking point for me wasn't the specific action, but the way it happened. I didn't mind that Garrosh attempted to assassinate Vol'jin, it's that he tried to assassinate Vol'jin. Despite Vol'jin being one of my favourite characters at that point, he was treasonous and absolutely had to be punished. It was a breaking point for me because of the way Garrosh went about it.

By trying to assassinate him, for me personally, he turned from a possible Doomhammer into Blackhand. It felt extremely out of character. While, from a militaristic standpoint, it was the right way to do it, minimizing risk for himself, it isn't the Orcish way as I see it. Had Garrosh dragged Vol'jin out in the open and dueled him himself, I'd have fully supported Garrosh. That also feels more like Garrosh, the hot-headed fighter that he is, would do. Sending an assassin after an opponent feels like the least Garrosh-like option out there. Character assassination, if you will.

[Trumpcat]

Having the thread in mind so far and how we all agree that infighting and faction conflict is boring due to nothing ever changing, would be interesting if Blizzard pulls a surprise and actually change things.

But things did change in Cata and that was not well received. I personally think the redone world and quests were better, but it introduced a permanent change and story advancement. You can't go back to Vanilla the way you can go back to Wrath.

So I wonder, we ask for meaningful changes, but having shown that we hardly tolerate change, could we handle it without warring over the Internet and rage unsubbing? What if Tauren joined the Alliance for example?

Probably safe to assume any signifficant changes will affect the main characters, who are not us. Like Varian dying or Illidan becoming a martyr. While gameplay wise nothing will change.

[Arrashi]

I just want everyone to stop for a second and laugh about the fact that Blizzard wrote a story, decided they didn't write it with a good enough ending and their solution to this is to almost beat-for-beat write the same fucking story.

This Horde civil war is ridiculous because we've already seen this story. It's literally MoP. Replace Garrosh with Sylvanas and Vol'jin with Saurfang and the story beats so far are almost identical. It's actually kind of embarrassing and I feel kind of bad that I ever gave a shit about a story that clearly doesn't give a shit about itself.

At this point, it doesn't even matter if it ends differently. Writing the same story with different characters and then trying to justify it with a slightly different ending is almost worse than just repeating it. Do they expect people to be surprised when Sylvanas doesn't have a SoO?

And this is what happens when writers lack any form of self-awareness or criticism. Danuser and that other lad shown that perfectly during last interview.

[Super Dickmann]

Having the thread in mind so far and how we all agree that infighting and faction conflict is boring due to nothing ever changing, would be interesting if Blizzard pulls a surprise and actually change things.

But things did change in Cata and that was not well received. I personally think the redone world and quests were better, but it introduced a permanent change and story advancement. You can't go back to Vanilla the way you can go back to Wrath.

So I wonder, we ask for meaningful changes, but having shown that we hardly tolerate change, could we handle it without warring over the Internet and rage unsubbing? What if Tauren joined the Alliance for example?

Probably safe to assume any signifficant changes will affect the main characters, who are not us. Like Varian dying or Illidan becoming a martyr. While gameplay wise nothing will change.

Cataclysm was too ambitious. It was the peak for the Horde as a nuanced force and for the faction conflict as actually good, but revamping all the content made it dated. Warfronts themselves blow, but using old world zone updates the way they do to advance stories is a solid approach and it also stops the landmass clutter we're doing.
This kind of periodic thing and regional struggles would be how I'd advance faction stories in non-faction war expansion. Or the Cataclysm thing, but applied to fewer zones and made max level.

[JacobusRex]

I'm tired of the faction war, let alone horde-leadership musical chairs... Let's rehash this concept in a minutely different way every 3 expansions! No, let's not. We've proven that the Horde and the Alliance are perfectly capable of moving past grudges and even coexisting in guided peace. A faction war, let alone a civil war, are just forced at this point because of their bad writing in Mists of Pandaria. (Great expansion to play, horrible story.)