That’s up to the player’s discretion. To say they never had a strong faction feel is quite disingenuous. The Horde having these moments of struggle to their identity and what they value makes you connect back to their original inception of “Misfits banding together to survive in a world that doesn’t want them.”
The problem is that we’ve had to repeat this story with BFA. Where the Horde commits another atrocity and forced to face what they value. This all came at the expense of everyone and spits in the story of Mists of Pandaria. Had the expansion began with Alliance aggression and the Destruction of Undercity; the expansion would’ve gone completely different… Or at least in story terms.
The Alliance has always struggled with its faction identity post Wrath of the Lich King. Where the focus of factional war comes into place; and where Blizzard’s lack of care in story writing shines at its worst. Humans constantly pushed to the forefront. The saviors of all the other members of the Alliance.
Never any risks taken or agency created for the Alliance to take the first action. The Alliance is riddled with races that never get any attention, or when they do. Its in small, unimpactful doses that never do much for the entire narrative. We just wait for Stormwind and its seemingly endless amount of human soldiers tackling everything.
I disagree the horde never once confronts its issues with its warlike culture in mop, cause everything bad was garrosh, garroshed turned on the horde, sylvanas at least never turned on them like garrosh did.
Garrosh’s actions still were put into action by the rest of the Horde. Garrosh’s actions were at a desire of glorious progress for his people. All his warmongering means were to take the people of Orgrimmar out of the desert and into a new age. But without any sort of support from the other Horde leaders; he made his own council and essentially his own yes-men.
Garrosh’s actions were caused by the Horde’s own refusal to work with Garrosh. He didn’t respond well to the death threat from Vol’jin, and any sort of trust from Baine Bloodhoof was tarnished with his father’s attempt of Mak’gora and death. So much damage was done by the Horde’s negligence, and Thrall’s misguided belief in Grom Hellscream’s son.
They may not have openly said “We failed to guide him”. But the lesson is quite strong that everyone refused to work with Garrosh so he had to do everything on his own. Trying to uphold the title and honor with no form of aid. That sort of responsibility on someone who KNEW he wasn’t ready for the title was narrowly the Horde’s undoing.
Or it’s massively negative and serves to remove any sense of pride in having chosen that race as your favorite to play with sweeping messages of how useless and weak they are. Because then that can be used to show how heroic Humans are as they swoop in to save their vassal state damsels.
Garrosh was an unrepentant orc supremacist who had a secret police force that attacked/imprisoned/killed anyone who dared criticize the warchief. He didn’t want guidance from the likes of Vol’jin or Eitrigg, he wanted absolute obedience.
I think that most of the Horde knew that the Alliance was out for blood and didn’t believe they would be satisfied with just Sylvanas. Even if Anduin is a pacifist, he has Genn whispering in his ear and most Horde races don’t really trust the Alliance to be particularly fair or even handed in whatever retribution they demand, particularly amongst the orcs, trolls and undead. The Blood Elves haven’t had it much better either.
Your right though. The Horde was tainted by it but don’t worry. Blizzard will just pretend they aren’t and it is all good. That is how Blizzard writing operates. If your going to enjoy WoW, your going to have to get used to it.
Again, Anduin, who did nothing to censure Genn, his closest advisor, when Genn attempted to assassinate a warchief during a war against the Legion. From the Horde’s perspective Anduin didn’t look like much more than a puppet with Genn being the power behind the Throne and even before what happened to Liam, Genn didn’t have a reputation for diplomatic solutions which didn’t involve a lot of dead Horde.
This is a guy who voted to have all the orcs, man, woman and child, put to the sword at the end of the Second war. Putting them in internment camps is one of the reasons he left the Alliance. That isn’t someone you expect any mercy or concession from unless it is forced.
Of course, it doesn’t make the Horde any less genocidal monsters who followed Sylvanas around by the nose for most of the expansion, beyond grumbling a bit until he raised some dead human. It probably would have made sense to reign in her power way before that but apparently the racial leaders have less influence over their own people than Sylvanas did for some reason.
Doing this dance, not once but twice, has well and truly turned any claim the Horde had to being honorable or noble into something empty and hypocritical. Frankly in the final cutscene with Saurfang I found myself actually agreeing with his assessment of the horde. It is all a lie. It was almost insulting to have Anduin claim he knew better as if an Alliance prince knows jack all about the culture and ways of the Horde beyond what he might have read in books or heard mooed by a frankly naive and hesitant Baine.
This time there was a change, there were two alliances so to speak, the black moon Army that didn’t communicate with the other alliance and the alliance forces
I mean, it arguably makes sense. The Alliance is at its core a mutual defense pact, so their terms for victory in war as a faction remain the same: stop whoever has attacked them from continuing to attack them. They have the same basic kingdoms they’ve had for hundreds or thousands of years, and generally aren’t really interested in living where the Horde’s living, so there’s no built-in impetus for trying to seize new lands.
Even before any actual schism the Horde’s always comprised of two distinct groups. Originally it was Doomhammer’s primary Horde trying to secure a new home and Gul’dan’s cohorts who were the Legion’s minions, then switched to only being after personal power. Ever since then the Horde’s still been philosophically split between those who see it as a bulwark against their enemies and those who see it as an apparatus for consolidating military power to conquer and expand.
While there could be more internalized conflict Alliance-side, it’s hard to make the same such starkly contrasting motivations work as the source of such conflict because frankly the Alliance has never been interested in selling itself as a Conquer the World Club in search of new conquerors to join up. The only Alliance leader who ever flirted with such a mindset was Classic-era Fandral, and that was only because he thought the night elves should probably be ruling the rest of the Alliance to secure their own safety rather than cooperating, which among other things put him at odds with his own people. A mentality that seemingly got erased when Stormrage retconned him into a universally trusted figure for the sake of everyone getting to be surprised when he turned out to be a traitor.
Consequently, even Sylvanas’ whole justification of the WoT to Saurfang fell flat because by that very nature of the Alliance, even if the Genn-minded members try harassing the Horde again, they don’t really have the means to compel the entire faction to mobilize behind such action unless the Horde does first. We even have precedent for it; Kul Tiras clamored for the Alliance to do something about the Horde killing Daelin and destroying his army, and they were told to go jump in a lake. The Alliance is fundamentally a defense pact to such a degree that they’d sooner let a member-state leave than have that kingdom force them all to throw their weight into a war it unilaterally started.
Meaning even if she was right about such individuals continuing to antagonize the Horde, if the Horde didn’t respond with full-blown mobilized aggression in all likelihood the Alliance (especially under Anduin) would have refrained from putting its unified might behind a retaliation, even to the point of driving the antagonizing parties to quit the faction.
all that is good on paper even if it is questionable that horde leaders know if he was actually punished or not, and like. how can he even punish him?.
But the thing is, is completely idiotic that even people like baine or lor’themar didn’t tried a diplomatic solution first,like hell i can see them turning their back on her since day 1. When daelin was going full hitler not even jaina was siding with him even if it cost her reputation and be treated as a traitor by her nation.
Why we don’t see such sacrifies for peace in the horde side?.
it’s pretty infuriating that the only reason why anduin acted it was because of teldrassil because of course that is the only way that he would do anything at all.
That is kinda the point? It is a CYCLE of Hatred afterall. Maybe that cycle is broken now, maybe not, we will probably have to wait at least a few more expansions.
I wouldn’t say it was better, but it was far more interesting in the context of choice in loyalty vs Honor. The Horde were making all the calls, deciding every action, and every step in the War was in the Horde’s endeavors. The Alliance’s only shining moment was the Battle of Dazar’alor. Everything else was just poorly done.
I, personally enjoyed the Horde story more than the Alliance. Maybe because I simply hate human-focused stories as is.
