Alliance development

Lore Story Forum
101

This is a long thread so unsure of this has been touched on (I have not read the whole thing) but given the influx of Horde leaders that have expressed interest in working with the Alliance (if not outright friendliness like Baine and Thrall) doesn’t it seem like the direction Blizzard wants to take the factions in is working with each other instead of giving them their own segregated development? Wouldn’t It make sense then that what is next for the Alliance is more Horde friendly characters being developed in an effort to reciprocate those friendly feelings of cooperation?

I know OP probably doesn’t like that idea, considering how much he dwells on everything ‘The Horde’ (Blizzard) have taken from the Alliance and all of the revenge he thinks he’s denied, but if BFA is meant to be the end of the faction conflict then those old grievances will become plot points for the villains within each faction, not the heroes.

(Characters holding grudges, even justified grudges, have consistently been shown in a negative light in the BFA narrative. I’m not saying that might not change going forward, but it’s certainly not something the current writers are willing to explore with any amount of positivity.)

So, yeah, maybe the way the Alliance can be developed without having to take anything from the ‘red bois’ Is instead to work with them to build something new, together, that belongs to them both. Something that all the players, regardless of faction, can enjoy.

Honestly it turns my stomach too, considering I’d have to put up with you smug, self righteous, sanctimonious ‘blue bois’ but then that is the lot of the Horde. Even when the Horde is supposed to be at war with the Alliance, somehow they still manage to write things in such a way that the Horde still end up working with the Alliance, often against some or all of the rest of the Horde.

It’s a farce, but that’s our lot as WoW players.

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102

Night elven fans are getting annoying. Theramore and Lordearon are literal graveyards/uninhabitable and Gilneas still has not been reclaimed. Not to mention Darkshire and Nethergarde have fallen and Westfall is still a bandit infested zone that if you finish is still ends with Sentinel hill burning.

You guys are not the only one that have suffered devestating defeats in the course of WoW’s story and personally at this point part of me kinda wants Blizzard to keep delaying giving you guys a new capital(and mark my words, as long as WoW needs new expansion hubs the chance of getting a new Night elven style capital will always be on the table) everytime I keep seeing this “woe is my favored race” post.

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103

AH, I understand it now!

Could’ve replaced Genn in some places as I thought Genn left for Darkshore. At least Falstad has his moment to shine.

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104

The major issue with that is that it wouldn’t actually be Alliance development. This would be Horde development of characters who don’t want to fight the Alliance.

While I agree, more characters need to be brought up that can work together without a lot of arm twisting, the Alliance, on it’s own needs to be able to develop without involvement of the Horde or instigated by the Horde.

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105

you know what? that would be actually be fine if that means that they can show their teeth again. i would not see them as villains for wanting justified revenge no matter how much blizzard tries to put it in a bad light. and doesn’t necessarily needs to have involved the horde at all or at least not too much.

So you do understand how it feels.

i said it many times if i wanted to help horde i would play horde and viceversa.
Blizzard wants to have two factions as enemies? so be it, they should stick to it and not force anyone to help their enemies when we need to kill the monsters of the week.

106

No, you misunderstand. The Horde already has characters that don’t want to fight the Alliance. Most of the racial leaders at this point, Horde side, are either actively friendly to the Alliance or are at least looking for peace between the factions.

The development for the Alliance would be existing characters beyond Jaina and Anduin pushing for peace while new characters would be introduced to take the place of those who don’t (such as Tyrande and maybe Genn.) Meanwhile you’d also be getting Alliance characters who are actively friendly towards the Horde (think of how Baine treats Anduin, But Alliance side and with feelings of friendship for say, Rokahn or Lor’themar.)

It would be an all new direction for the Alliance to work with the Horde, building things together instead of in parallel to one another. Yes you could say it was ‘Horde development too’ but it wouldn’t be Horde development exclusively. I think that’s what Blizzard is pushing for because, frankly, they don’t seem to know how to develop either faction exclusively.

Having been a Sylvanas loyalist and still very much supporting Sylvanas despite the current plot, I’d advise against supporting Blizzard having free reign to show characters you like in a bad light so long as they get to ‘show their teeth’. It just drags everything that was ever good about them in the mud as they escalate trying to make the characters more and more despised.

While I personally may want the Alliance to have to suffer losing a character on that alter of ‘plot device’, I wouldn’t wish it on a friend.

Ah, but Blizzard doesn’t want two factions as enemies. That’s has been made painfully clear that all they want is the occasional ‘misunderstanding’ between the factions that they can quickly push aside for whatever their next big idea might be. The faction conflict, for Blizzard, is just unimportant filler, and whatever animosity the players may develop for their opposites in game is something to be teased and made fun of, nothing to be taken seriously.

If Blizzard wants to have their cake and to eat it too, they will. They are the ones in charge of the story, so they get to have their way, no matter how illogical and idiotic that way may seem.

Yes I absolutely understand your frustration and disgust, but for now papa Blizzard says we have to grin and bear it if we want to keep playing in their sandbox.

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107

Ah you are right I did misunderstand. But my overall point remains the same; this would still be “Alliance development requires Horde involvement.”

108

This is like the most woke statement regarding this expansion, cant believe only horde characters have liked it so far.

Dunno I for sure dont want to see alliance players go through what horde players did, not sure why SOME alliance players want the horde to go through what they did (its not fun for either side, why someone would wish that upon someone else is beyond me), but it is a common theme iv seen amongst some forum goers.

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109

I don’t think it’s that they don’t want to give the Horde it’s own stuff. It’s just that it’s easier to write Alliance style stuff. The Horde in general, diverges in a lot of ways from your usual fantasy material. It’s in many ways strange, exotic, and just not very familiar.

And since the most conventionally attractive, sympathetic and easiest to relate to characters in WoW tend to be humans and elves of one stripe or another, they slot more easily into this conventional fantasy material.

Like Kul Tiras vs Zandalar. One is a fantasy take on Victorian England and all the principle characters are essentially stocky Englishmen. Pretty standard character types, themes, and aesthetics that most players are already familiar with.

The other is a caste based society that blends elements of Mesoamerican, West African, and Carribean cultures. Your main characters are 8ft tall blue scaly tusked people, snakemen, and little humanoid foxes.

So when it comes time to create a singular neutral experience -i.e. one that’s supposed to have the most broad appeal- the less traditional fantasy stuff gets left on the chopping block, or reduced to the role of side story/exotic curiosity. Or dungeon/raid fodder.

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110

I don’t know. The fact that any suggestion of dishing out a Teldrassil-style crushing defeat to the Horde is met with a large amount of whining, hand-wringing, worry-worting, and out right derision while Teldrassil was dished out on the Alliance without a second thought is not something that has escaped my notice.

And that was after hitting us with Theramore.

The bigger problem for me is the devs. I have no confidence in them anymore. At this point I do not plan on purchasing Shadowlands when it comes out and will vet it thoroughly before buying it.

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111

At the same time, Tyrande to being written as executing a Theramore style operation is met with a large amount of whining, hand-wringing, worry-worting, and out right derision that she’ll be hit (however softly) with the villain bat.

Afterall, Theramore was the beginning of Garrosh’s slide from ambitious warchief to villain, resulting in stuff like the death of Baine, the purge of Dalaran, the Horde Civil War, and the Siege of Orgrimmar.

The simple fact is that Blizzard doesn’t let anyone just run roughshod over the opposing faction without an equal amount of guilt tripping attached.

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112

I haven’t read many of the other replies and going by the few I’ve skimmed, I probably won’t (I’m low on time, positivity, and patience right now for entirely not-WoW-related reasons), but I think there’s a lot of story to be had in rebuilding, and in building a lasting peace.

I’m not saying it’d be easy, and I’m not saying I think Blizzard can do it. But I’m weary of the attitude that the only war is interesting, only killing each other is interesting, that villans are objectively more interesting than heroes, that building peace is boring, or that people who want peace are all non-violent hippies who don’t understand the reality of the world. They’re like the people who think Captain America is dull and boring because he tries to do the right thing. I believe their assumptions blind them to the complexity of the character, his internal and external struggles with it, the ways he affects the people around him and sparks their internal and external struggles, and the conflict that springs from his desire to do the right thing.

I’m not saying they’re wrong. I’m saying they see things from a very different perspective and different set of beliefs and assumptions than I do.

So yeah, I can see a way forward that doesn’t focus on trying to destroy the other faction. But I’ll be surprised if Blizzard does.

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113

Captain America is interesting.

But his entire thing is reacting to and playing off of others characters and a world that’s considerably more cynical, pragmatic and less idealistic than he is. If the world actually lived up to Captain America’s standards and values, there’d really be no conflict.

But conflict is the essence of drama.

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114

Cap isn’t as reactive as the Alliance, despite arguably being more of a lawful good overdrive character than even Anduin. He’s gone on covert missions to assassinate dictators, secure WMD’s, and set out to stop wars before they had a chance to start by crossing more than just a few borders less than legally.

The conflict and drama comes from the internal struggle over whether he is going too far. If he is in fact curtailing freedom in his effort to protect it. If, by imposing his morals on the world, he isn’t any better than any other two bit dictator who uses force to accomplish their own impositions.

Much like the Alliance there is often some clearly evil party that makes it obvious Cap is in the right to do what he does, but it’s that lingering doubt and self awareness that makes the character both compelling and human.

If Anduin could capture a little of that, I think he’d be well on his way to being more likable.

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115

No you really aren’t. You think you are but watching that character become cartoonishly evil and villain batted will just anger you. Just look how many people got angry about that Fire Druid NE in Firelands who lost her daughter to the Horde. Hell, in her case she had been introduced as a villain and Alliance players were still upset at her treatment.

Your playing a two faction game. It is a reality that in neutral content that most of the time you will either be working with a third party (and therefore not for the Alliance) or along side the Horde. Situations like Naz’jatar and the Isle of Thunder would be the rarity.

In the end Blizzard isn’t making two games. Having two different, unrelated paths doubles their workload. Horde has had to, and will have to, work with the Alliance wether we like it or not, no matter how many time Alliance players argue that it doesn’t count because the Alliance character was ‘neutral’ at the time.

This has been the reality of WoW for years and frankly has been more stark on the Horde side where the Horde players has had to work with current or former Alliance Heroes far more often than the Alliance players have had to work with Horde.

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116

Captain America himself doesn’t sit around looking over dossiers and deciding who he personally should go out and kill/overthrow/stop before they’ve made it clear they intend to act.

People above him acting in considerably more cynical, pragmatic and less idealistic ways send him on these missions. That, or he’s reacting to something someone else has specifically already done.

For Anduin to capture that, he has to stop being the highest authority in the Alliance that the majority of other characters agree with. He needs to be someone who is ordered to do morally questionable things and choose not to do the or be the dissenting opinion when everyone else is looking at the situation in shades of gray and black.

With him being in charge and more or less setting the standards for peace going forward, the conflict is only going to come from people defying him.

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118

I think one of the issues has been the more horde leaning neutral groups like the earthen ring have been absent in recent expansions

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119

How many horde leaning neutral groups can you actually name? Blizzard hasn’t really developed many. Hell, in the end Horde players tend to work with the Explorer’s League and Brann and that was after they created the Reliquary to be the Horde’s Explorer’s League.

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120

The earthen ring and uhh lol they really need a few more would benefit both factions. More horde characters and less alliance characters being neutral.

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121

I’d take it. Anything that undoes this utter disaster of an expansion is okay by me.

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