Alliance Internal Conflict

The guy was a sovereign king but he was a sovereign king who had accepted the position of advisor to Anduin, and therefore accepted a place under Anduin, and who lead the attack in Stormheim using Stormwind assets. Anduin could have very easily stood Genn down from his position of authority in Stormwind and restricted Genn’s authority and ability to use or command Stormwind’s military assets.

Genn is a king without a kingdom and extremely dependent on nations like Stormwind to provide him the logistics to support what exists of his administration.

By doing nothing, and not even publicly renouncing the attack, he all but told the Horde that an unprovoked attack on a horde fleet and the attempted assassination of a Warchief was endorsed by Stormwind. That alone should have been grounds enough for the Horde to go to war with the Alliance after the Legion was out of the way logically. Of course Blizzard’s world rarely follows logic. It is like saying Theramore was an unprovoked attack, ignoring the fact it had been the staging ground for a massive Alliance incursion into Horde territory during the time of the Cataclysm, on pair with the Horde’s infiltration into Ashenvale. But Blizzard wanted to claim it was an unprovoked attack so we all had to ignore it made not sense to call it that.

Genn didn’t know why she was there. He outright states this in the quest right before you go to the village outside the temple of Eyir. He was just hungry for blood. It is pure coincidence that what he was doing had a ‘good’ effect. The Journal doesn’t mean much when the man himself says he doesn’t know what she is there for.

Maybe that was what they were going for but for me I never got that sense from it. Honestly I can’t see how Daelin’s actions lead to this. Was he even mentioned once on the Horde side of things? The Alliance rarely does bad things and when they do, they are usually given justifications out the wazoo.

Yes we do. Before the Storm mentions Anduin gave both her and Genn a private dressing down afterward and nothing else. He was angry at both of them but didn’t punish them beyond telling them off.

He was at the Hunter Order hall.

You don’t bring it to Genn. You bring it to a Worgen in Dalaran. It is assumed it is handed on to Genn. Even then, the reality is Genn outright states he has no idea why she is there. That is a canon statement by the character. It is pretty damn definitive.

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I did mean Brennadam, shows what I get for trying to rush a post in.

That said, the Horde player can still find the journal and keep it from the Alliance, so it puts the journal in a position where it can’t be canon, not without a specific Word of God (which wouldn’t surprise me if they just piled on extra ex-post facto justification for the Alliance at this point).

Perhaps you don’t, but a lot of Horde players do, because Blizzard loves to undermine our justifications and take away any legitimate reasons for Horde characters. It’s a much keener loss to feel when you get so little of it to begin with.

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I’m well aware a lot of Horde players do. They want so bad for Genn to be in the wrong, because if he was in the wrong then Sylvanas getting stopped in her plan to enslave more val’kyr suddenly stops looking like the stupid plot point it was.

I don’t care if it was justified or not because at the end of the day, Sylvanas was trying to enslave the val’kyr. Which was a no-no and would have been stopped anyway. If anything I feel more people should have been more upset at that little plot point because it showed they were very committed to having Sylvanas be as unnecessarily evil as she could be prior to the BfA “twist” where she was ‘evil all along’.

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But this is what I mean.

The original attack is not justified by anything. That he later finds a reason to justify it does not mean that, at the time the attack was launched, it was justified.

I’m aware you and a lot of Alliance players don’t care because you have heaps and heaps and heaps of justification and motivation for your actions in BfA and beyond. The Horde has none of that. When people try to say that it doesn’t matter or argue it away, it gets a negative reaction like… hm. Not using you in a specific sense, here, but rather a more collective sense:

"We already have so little motivation. Why are you trying to take away one of the few things we could hold on to?"

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You misunderstood me. Which is fine.

When I say I don’t care, I mean it completely. I do not care that Genn attacked Sylvanas, justified or no. I personally think it was a stupid introduction for the zone and was totally out of place.

Just like I think Sylvanas random@$£ quest to steal val’kyr was stupid and out of place. We’re in the middle of a Legion Invasion. Her suddenly going rogue was stupid on its own. The Alliance figuring out and stopping her was dumb because it didn’t even gel with the rest of the narrative anyways.

I think the biggest issue with Stormheim was not guilt so I can whine endlessly about how any bad thing the Alliance does is justified or how the Horde is constantly villain batted. It’s how that stupid plot point shouldn’t have even been there at all.

But please, tell me I only care about making sure the Alliances nose is clean.

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Did I say this?

I am talking about the frustration felt by Horde players who feel their motivation is being undermined and stolen.

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And that was always going to be the case if Sylvanas was going to steal val’kyr.

Which is conveniently never brought up.

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Honestly this is a fair complaint. Blizzard seems to write the factions in a way that just isn’t appealing and leaves the players wanting.

For the Alliance it is constantly having the Horde do bad things and then we just have to accept the Alliance giving them a slap on the wrist and believing the Horde will change. From a narrative perspective that is very frustrating.

Just as it is frustrating for the Horde players to have to be villain batted and have no say in the matter.

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It’s frustrating and stupid. And why I so desperately want them to just stop at it.

Give both factions storylines that don’t hinge on the other faction. Make them self contained and fun. Damnit make every player feel like a hero and be happy for a change.

Hell I’d even go so far as to make stories where the factions never interact with the other faction. Azeroth is a stupid place there are more than enough things to go to war with.

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That is exactly what I want.

I am tired of the faction stories where we are at war. I don’t want to have any interaction with the Horde and vice versa. Let us have self contained story that develop each faction without the other faction’s involvement.

When Blizzard tries to write story to develop one faction involving the other one it is usually at the detriment to one or both of them.

You know what i hate more about stormheim? everytime i see a horde poster defending that i cant help but feel we shoudnt done squat just to see odin screwing up the horde, we easy saved their faction and the rest of the world but the only thing we’re charged is an assasination attempt, and now that we even know more about what happened they still keep up that position.

genn got lucky sylvanas was going to screw over a faction that was actively fighting against the legion however thats not even part of the argument they never bother to mention that, most of the time they posture from the position that their warchief had an assasination attempt, that is a half truth at best because it lacks any of the context.

i know this is morally grey at best and i really wish that we had more characters that the horde would love to hate but this argument seems to me ridiculous.

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In my head, I separate it as two events instead of one prolonged encounter: the initial ambush, and then the tracking/following segment to find out what Sylvanas is up to. The latter is indefensible for Sylvanas no matter what. I would just get annoyed that the initial sucker punch is apparently inarguable as well. It’s already enough of an uphill battle trying to find a reason to hate a character who’s basically the symbol of when your own faction started going to crap and already has an understandable emotional reason for doing what he did, but then add on “well there was a letter” and “he was right in the end” and I’m left in a weird situation where the horde player character canonically dies for a short time and on a meta level, that’s still not enough to feel invested in whatever conflict the game’s trying to sell. :man_shrugging:

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I’d be totally for that.

Just spit balling here, but an expansion where if you play Alliance: The Brotherhood uprising has returned, except this time many of Stormwind’s civilians are starting to believe the Brotherhood’s values make sense… Night Elf rebuilding needs to start and driving out Satyrs from a new home is required but something has emerged from Hyjal, something that could risk the great tree’s life and perhaps all of Kalimdor. Dwarves and Gnomes discover world ending technology and the moral dilemma in how to deal with it. It’s time for the Worgen to claim back Gilneas, with most of the Alliance nations dealing with their own problems, this task relies solely on the shoulders of it’s children. It’s time to go back home.

All while never running into Horde as an enemy. Maybe an npc here and there but nothing major.

Then for Horde: A Troll uprising needs to be dealt with, will it be diplomacy to entice them to join the Horde or war? Something seems unsettling though, what or who have they invoked to make them this confident? This time maybe you do need to get close to the voodoo. Tauren settlements in Feralas have been under attack by invading Centaurs from Desolace and need Kalimdor’s superpower for assistance, fight them back to the wastelands they deserve. The Goblin corporate world has become more cut throat than ever. Blackfuse, Steamwheedle and Pinchwhistle Cartel trade deals have become deadly involving frequent assassinations. Help Gazlowe secure Bilgewater Cartel as the premier massive conglomerate on Azeroth and help find who’s behind the assassinations to be locked away in the empty vault for life… or death.

With hardly an Ally in sight.

This would give players some decent replayability wanting to see each of these stories.

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Its only ridiculous because you don’t like it.

OH NO A ONE LINER ! BAM MY ENTIRE ARGUMENT HAS BEEN DESTROYED.
i knew i shodulve known better than post my opinion on the story forums!

Also i disagree.

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I mean Genn and Stormheim was pretty clear. He believed that the Horde and Sylvanas in particular had backstabbed the Alliance and cost Varian his life. In the cut scene, he sure wasn’t yelling “For Odyn!” or “To save Eyir”.

The Horde, with justification, should have felt that it was an attack on their War Chief in the middle of an existential struggle with the Legion.

All the facts that came to light later don’t change what Genn’s motivation was in the moment - vengeance, pure and simple.

As someone who primarily plays Alliance, I am fine with that. It gave me my favourite cut scene from Legion (Occasionally competing with the end of Nighthold cinematic) and felt like the Alliance finally got a shot in on Sylvanas after waiting since Cataclysm for a chance at one.

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The Problem is, we weren’t.

Sylvie could have easily made the excuse that she found a means to improve the quality of life for her people immensely (which would not be a lie, Primes do have that power); and provided them a more stable vision for the future. But she doesn’t. Genn’s attack on her and the Horde in Stormheim is only ever mentioned once, used by Saurfang as justification for his belief that Anduin was too weak to resist Genn and Tyrande’s pressure to pre-emptively attack the Horde (which they were doing btws). Due to Aduin’s horrific lack of response to that event, making him appear unbelievably weak at best and outright approving or complicit at worst.

In both Faction Conflict stories, if you look at the events proceeding them, its the Alliance that’s acting aggressively. During the Garrosh period, Varian outright declarers war on the Horde and attempts to attack its leaders (which goes nowhere), and then enforces trade sanctions against the Durotar Horde thru the NEs that causes a mass-famine. Which enrages Garrosh, not just because it forces him to realize the Alliance gets to decide if his people get to even live (let alone prosper), but get to do so for an event that cost the lives of 4000 Horde Soldiers; alongside the the Alliance’s 5000. But, once Cata rolled around none of this mattered. It was totally invalidated.

The “Fourth” War was the same sh*t. The Horde made no openly aggressive moves against the Alliance all throughout Legion or leading up to BfA. While the Alliance attempts an assassination against the Horde’s new WC, with nothing concrete to justify it. Slaughters Horde civilians in Silithus for mining a resource the Alliance had no claim to (which was absurdly weakly justified). And even fills Org with so many SI:7 agents you could trip over them, to send the deliberate message “we are always watching”; in response to the Gathering (which was not an aggressive act against the Alliance). And yet, the WoT was totally unjustified and out of nowhere.

The absurdity of Sylvanas’ argument to Saurfang in A Good War wasn’t that the assumption that “They’ll Attack Us Eventually” was wrong, its that “they were attacking us already” but none of it was allowed to count. Truly, at some point, Blizzard decided that while the Horde had to be antagonistic towards the Alliance, the Alliance could NEVER be antagonistic towards the Horde. Thus, they go way out of their way to insulate the faction from their own breif moments of aggression.

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I don’t feel that you are so much responding to what I actually said in my post so much as using it as launching point for your argument against Blizzard’s writers.

I don’t have any particular interest in treading over that well-worn ground, so I will leave you to it.

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What you said was that the Horde should have felt like it was an attack on their Warchief; and as longwinded as my response was … it does just boil down to the sad reality that we weren’t allowed to feel that way. Even though we had no idea what she was really doing either, with how it was presented it came off like what Genn did was very “Ends justified the means”.

It created a great cinematic and moment, but who the villain was and who the hero was in that scenario was very clear. And the Hero sure as hell wasn’t the group that was on that fleet that Genn and Rogers bombarded out of nowhere. You are right though, I’m sure the Alliance players did get to feel good about that little shot at her for Cata. It was long overdue.

@Dardillien – just wanted to get this in before I forget it when I read the rest of the replies to this:

The game, unfortunately, doesn’t allow for people to opt out of content, and there are many, MANY players who don’t want to be part of the “gray and evil” crowds. Several of my RP characters wouldn’t actually do a lot of things in that vein, but because there are quests and rewards, and you can’t continue forward without doing them, it gets done OOCly.

The point being, I don’t know that WoW is meant to teach players to be morally gray or evil; showing it happening in the game? Yes. Players actually being that? Not really. And the few times that we’ve gotten those choices recently (I don’t recall there being others before BFA,) they don’t really seem to have much impact on our future gameplay and choices therein.

I’ve maintained that the day that an MMO offers choices that actually affect the way we interact with the world and the outcomes are defined by that–is the day we will have reached a new height in MMO gaming. This is very hard to do right now, and no company has wanted to try and iterate upon it because it would take a LOT of work writing out all the various different choice variants and their eventual outcomes, but to then also have them exist in a contiguous world in which players continue to get to play. And by that, I mean that their choices actually create eventualities within the game world that other gamers have to deal with and respond to. And I honestly don’t think that’s possible right now. The only way it will ever be even remotely probable is with some dedicated AI technology adept at writing quests and adapting gameplay–both, on the fly. Either that or as quaterly, monthly, or bi-weekly installments that radically change the game so that if you’re not constantly playing in the world, you’ll never get “the whole story.” It also requires for developers and writers to have an idealized story arc in mind that can be changed by player actions and decisions.

One of the ways Blizzard -could- do this is by adding factions to the game. Allowing players to join neutral factions for instance like the Cenarion Circle, the Argents (because they keep changing their name designations,) the Earthen Ring, etc. Or allowing them to join evil organizations like the Syndicate, the Scarlets (because they also change their name designations,) the Royal Apothecary Society, the Old Gods, or even more recently Sylvanas Loyalists. But this would require having teams (and money,) interested in developing story-lines and quests that were specific for those factions. You can still tell the story like you do now, but if, for example, you see more interest by players playing through certain scenarios, you can iterate on that in later patches or expansions while still maintaining your overarching story goals.

It would be a lot more difficult to do, and it would definitely take either more time, more manpower, or both, and hence why I feel like the things you are asking for are things that, while neat, just aren’t feasible in the current iterations of MMO’s. I could very well be wrong, too. I know a lot of people have hyped up FFXIV, but I couldn’t get through the starter area. Still, they say the story is well written. That said, I don’t know how nuanced it is.

Lastly, I do think the writers are trying to write more nuanced characters, and I think that’s a good thing. We’ve seen some darkening of Anduin, for instance, in a few little in-game snippets, though the latest book gives some good insights into where that might be going. I get that a lot of people dislike there being this kind of character development outside of the game, though. Unfortunately, I have yet to see Blizzard manage those nuances in game in the ways they have been in outside books. If it can be done, I’d like to see it, but so far…as far as I’m concerned, most of their attempts at this come off to players as ham-fisted or others seem out-of-the-blue inconsistent.

This is why I keep saying that in-game ‘lore’ books would be nice–to have historians recording things with bias (obviously) but also giving us some in-the-game proof of ideologies and the in-game peoples’ versions of “the story.” That way, when our personal views differ from how the writers view the world, we can at least look at those books and go, “Oh well…I guess most people thought X. And while my view is clearly different, this is why Y and Z happened.”

Mostly, though, they’ve done that in sources that aren’t in the game, like books, comics, shorts, short stories, and audio dramas. And while I mostly keep up with a lot of that, many people either don’t know it exists, don’t want to pay for it because they’re all ready paying for an MMO and feel they shouldn’t have to study outside sources to get that information, have a hard time absorbing written material as opposed to visual, or can’t afford it.

I do think a lot of story directions have been alluded to in past books and materials, and sometimes in the game; and I do think there are moments of gray, characters of gray, and obviously evil in our WoW universe. It’s just rare that we get to participate in it with our player characters. And for the most part, I’m pretty happy with that. I get that there are players like you and others, though, that want something more. I just don’t think WoW is going to be the game to deliver that experience for you, unfortunately. Not in its current iteration.

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