Because I genuinely feel our apparent position is directly related to yours. Because Blizz truly seems unwilling to allow the Alliance to have any real tangible flaws or nuance, it falls on the Horde to shoulder them alone. And bare in mind, I like that the Horde and its people’s have flaws. It makes them more “Human”. I just don’t like that such flaws are enhanced tenfold by the Alliance only being allowed to be virtuous; the Horde subsequently not being allowed to have any virtue at all beyond being submissive and friendly to the Alliance; and above all I don’t like Blizz’s apparent writing ideology of Flaws = Evil.
The Alliance playerbase has it bad, but never “justifiably questioning why this Faction is allowed to exist” bad? Never in a way that players like Kerserd can understandably only get their narrative satisfaction from a story through the utter destruction of your Faction. Yes, it may suck to be the Super Friends forced to pull your punches, but its something special to be “Nothing”. To have our supposed “Heart and Best of the Faction” be symbolically a Plot Device who’s characterization always is an afterthought to what the story needs of him. To look back on a decade of unbelievable neglect, and realize Blizz will never even attempt to repair the damage they’ve caused. And the best you can hope for in future stories is to merely be the optional sidekick in the stories of the real heroes of this game. The Alliance.
EDIT: Fore example, I’m just honestly shocked we got Rokhan and Gazlowe made Racial Leaders in 4 lines of unfindable dialogue in game (rather than a Tweet like Saurfang was).
Again, and I present this in relation to your second paragraph. I am not getting into a “who has it worse” conversation with you. It’s pointless because it’s an apples to oranges comparison, and because from the moment you start doing it, it looks like you’re invalidating the other person’s position.
The Horde’s issues largely come from issues with relatedness and autonomy. They are forced to be evil for the sake of the writers’ grand vision, and this kills motivation. The Alliance’s issues largely come from issues of perceived competence and autonomy (although those problems are not evenly distributed across the faction). Despite their paper wins, it’s impossible to take them seriously in the faction rivalry, especially in my case, the Night Elves.
These are existential problems for the factions as concepts, and in my opinion, for the franchise. Now, we can go back and forth for hundreds of posts trying to square that circle - and try come to the conclusion that a thousand threads before this one failed to arrive at - “who has it worse” - or we can acknowledge that these issues are issues and stop trying to “one-up” them.
It makes no sense to do so, especially when they share the same root cause and a similar remediation plan.
And part of this need for this is that they aren’t fighting an opponent who on paper should be able to match them. So Blizz functionally has them pull their punches (either through getting hit with the stupid stick, or through their morality being used as a tool against them). This is a structural consequences of that aforementioned neglect, as the Faction and its characters are never really built up. We started out far weaker than the Alliance, and then around the time we started catching up MoP happened … and Blizz never bothered to attempt to repair that damage. Instead, in a very SLs sort of way, we ran off following another Horde-spawned villain into another dimension to escape/ignore the fallout.
Because the Horde is kept weaker than the Alliance in many, many ways (both artificially and developmentally) Blizz has to really muck up the Alliance to pull off a Horde aggressor story. Really unsatisfactory. Which means, the only real way to circumvent that fundamental flaw in concept (without putting the time and effort into building up the Horde to be an appropriate dance-partner and threat) is to simply make the Alliance the aggressors in such a story. However, since Blizz wont do that, that means … shortcuts to cheat their way to their Antagonistic Horde narrative they want. Thus … BfA.
This is especially true of the Kaldorei as compared to all the other races of the Alliance. If you compare humans with their earlier counterparts from the original Warcraft all the way up to Reign of Chaos, you see nothing has really changed; humanity remains the public face of the Alliance.
Meanwhile, the race of battle-hardened guerilla Amazon-esque warriors who literally call upon an army of nature spirits and wild animals, the same race that pushed Grom Hellscream to the point of needing to drink demon blood to have a fighting chance…has been relegated to crying as their tree home burns to the ground.
The cinematic of the Darkshore Warfront only barely captured that original spirit of “we will mercilessly slaughter you if you invade our forest home,” and even that was flushed all over again with the injustice that was the “victory” cinematic.
I don’t get the impression that the Horde is weaker - and I know that you will reply to me with the hard lore, but you also know what my reply will be.
The Horde’s themes overwhelmingly support the idea of the Horde being strong. There’s a “metal album theme” vibe that the Horde very effectively hits - and the faction exudes a dynamism and confidence that the Alliance could only dream of. Those themes got you a metal band, they got developers enthusiastically screaming “for the Horde!”, they got you buckets of commissioned art, your victories are largely presented while ours are largely hidden. You attract the anti-hero people, the outcasts, you’ve got the emblem that has the most brand equity. The Horde has a lot of bombastic, and presenting-as-powerful elements in its favor.
The Alliance in contrast looks wimpy, boring, generic, and as though it exists so that the Horde can have something to beat up.
These visual elements easily contradict Nathanos telling the player that they’re losing on all fronts, or the Developers telling the playerbase that the Alliance totally won both warfronts. If you want to talk about relatedness issues, and the Horde being made to look like fools for following an evil Warchief again - I’m happy to have that conversation, but again, that’s an autonomy and relatedness issue - not a perceived competence issue. Again, we have different problems.
This dynamic is hurting you, and this dynamic is hurting me. We need to undo it for both our sakes.
Sigh … the fact that any time I make an argument its “Lore can’t count, just use surface interpretations of events”. Then I use actual in game content, and you retort about how “thematically” and “aesthetically” a different story is being told than what the content leads you to believe. Then we devolve into some weird abstracts about “competence”, when even the playable WoT did not support the idea that was in any way competent. Then when you add in the actual juicy content and lore … that factor is magnified.
Despite how you may feel, the Horde won one battle in the entire expansion of BfA. It was portrayed as us barely mcguffining our way through that single victory we had to win to be the villains of the story. Then from that point on, it was loss, after loss, after loss. And that reality is supported by the playable content as well as “hard lore”. But since we’re essentially just arguing interpretation of events here if “hard lore” and actual in game content is not allowed, then this discussion wont go anywhere.
It’s “not allowed” because visuals overwhelm text in terms of memorability and impact.
That’s the issue in a nutshell. As I’ve stated many times by now - when you show the player one thing but tell them something else, what you showed them will win almost every single time. You said you were a fan of Lindsay Ellis too, right? Watch the Transformers video on how they framed Megan Fox. As Ellis explained - if you look only at the text, Megan Fox’s character is quite possibly the most impactful and complete character of the film. The text contains a pointed critique of the tendency of men to underestimate and devalue women. But what does the camera tell us? What does it overwhelmingly focus on? What does the audience take away from that? Most importantly - what chance did the text stand of being remembered by even audiences of a film critic? Go back to Ellis’s twitter poll at the beginning of the video - and that answer is clear.
Now apply that concept the Alliance as a competent actor. That is the struggle we’re going through here, and it’s why a lot of us feel the way that we do.
… and how people feel about the experience is a lot more important than what they understand to be true about it, at least where enjoyment and the subsequent sales are concerned.
I never said the Alliance was a competent actor, I just take issue with your dogmatic assertion that the Horde was. When in order to make and back that point you have to just ignore both in game content AND supporting game lore to do it. Which means that rather than it being something tangible, its based off the initial feeling and reaction to the surface level traits of events.
And FEELINGS are not FACTS. And arguing FEELINGS is never productive. Because (as you said) the facts have no room in those discussions. The entire argument/discussion boils down to nothing more than how you interpreted those surface level traits. Which is something Lindsey Ellis would NEVER assert. Because neither Feelings or Interpretations are in any way universal.
Except Lindsay Ellis did assert that. Again, her point about how Megan Fox was framed was that the facts of the text were at odds with the feelings that the camera gave to the audience. Now, are feelings universal? No, but nothing is. Despite this, subjectivity at the margins does not translate into subjectivity at the whole. This is why critics do tack to general rules like “show don’t tell”, “Checkov’s gun should be fired”, or most relevantly “Framing and Aesthetics supersede the rest of the text. Always. Always. Always.”
I am not ignoring the facts of the lore - I’m putting them in their proper place instead of assuming that they effectively counterbalance or edge out the overwhelming power of visual media. Because two of the rules that I just mentioned tell me quite plainly and quite surely that they don’t. Why? Well, consider the following facts.
The human brain can process entire images that the eye sees for as little as 13 milliseconds
People following directions with text and illustrations do 323 percent better than those following directions without illustrations.
90% of the information that the brain receives is non-verbal.
People remember up to 80% of what they see, compared to only 20% of what they read.
Viewers retain 95% of a video’s message compared to 10% when reading text.
A minute of video is worth up to 1.8 million words.
You can find my sources for each of these statements in my thread on Scrolls of Lore - post 300.
Given these facts, we do not get to assume that the audience, whether they are lore nerds like us or not, experience the story in line with the text when the text is contradicted by the visual media. We know from these facts that the visual media is more impactful. It’s the higher-order term in the equation - it drives how your audience ends up perceiving your story when the two factors are pitted against each other.
That perception? That drives audience satisfaction. That drives purchasing decisions. That ultimately determines how your story is consumed - regardless of whatever arcane lore details you have that the audience didn’t get because of the writers’ failure to clearly present them.
But your entire argument hinges on the presumption that the Audience garnered the same emotional response and had the same interpretation as you. That is the crux of your stance here, to the point where actual content beyond the “aesthetics” and “visuals” are invalid. And something tells me that you as “An NE RPer who quit the game in WoD because you believed that Blizz would not handle the race to your liking, and only paid for a month of WoW to discuss on the story forums” are liable to have some pretty strong biases going when interpreting that visual stimuli. Most viewers of these events (especially those getting their content from the Cinematics) aren’t liable to come away with the same context or emotional weight as you a devout NE fan. Your emotional investment is in the NEs, that’s not true for everyone.
I don’t think the general audience really give a crap about Teldrassil. They know its meant to be a tragic, horiffic act, but I doubt there is much emotional resonance beyond that. I also doubt there is “much” association with the Horde, as if we’re using those cinematics as the impetus for “feelings” about events … the Horde isn’t really featured in the Warbringers: Sylvanas short. The catapults are there, but the only “Horde” faces we see are of the two traitors Sylvanas and Nate. With only a single image even featuring Saurfang’s back. From then on, the focus of the cinematics (and the emotional crux of them) is on Saurfang and his guilt over that tree. Ending in his martyrdom and death. And sadly, not on the victims of Teld (which means that unless you’re invested in the Lore, you have no idea what the cost was of the burning).
The “overwhelming power of visual media” failed to properly portray the magnitude of Teldrassil to the “General Audience”, and rather hooked its emotional resonance with Saurfang and Anduin. Not to Teldrassil and its victims. So, unless you’re playing the actual game and paying attention to the subtantive content … you would not get the “incompetence” of the Alliance. And, if you are paying attention to that lore … you’d notice how competence is severely lacking on either side of that mess of a BfA story.
Why do I get the feeling this arguement from Kyalin is boiling down to You don’t agree with me, therefore the lore doesn’t count, but if you agree the kaldorei are eternal victims, than the lore very much counts
It just feels like she/they hand wave away ALL the lore you point out, saying it doesn’t count
I’m more annoyed people said “Horde shouldn’t be this good” when the nelf leadership has always been amateur at best and besides got a good helo from ol’ Shawn which made the Horde’s job more easier
Well, even then. I we are truly looking at BfA through the vantage of “Visual Media” and a “General Audience” standpoint … then outside of the Warbringers: Sylvanas cinematic (which again, does not really feature the Horde, the only faces seen in it are the two established traitors to the Horde) when do we also see the NEs represented? Well, Terror of Darkshore and Blightcaller’s Fate. Both of which shows NEs being overwhelmingly dominant, and establishes the focal points for vengeance are on Sylvie and Nate. “Tell her we are coming”. “Where is she?” Not on the greater Horde as a whole.
Then we look at the other cinematics. Old Soldier, Lost Honor, Reunion, Safe Haven, Crossroads, the Negotiation, and Reckoning all strongly point to Sylvanas being the villain and members of both the Horde and Alliance opposing her. While the Battle of Dazar’Alor cinematics on both sides portray the Alliance as the dominant force. So if we’re operating solely off of the cinematics, then outside of the Battle for Lordaeron Alliance side cinematic and Naz’jatar … when “competence” is a factor, its firmly in the Alliance’s wheelhouse. You have to actually view the substantive content to see how incompetent everyone is.
Something that would’ve made BFA’s story only slightly more tolerable for me would have been to not have Saurfang be all suicidal and mopey, and have him see Syl taking the horde down a dark path and do what he promised he would with garrosh.
Saurfang lost alot of his hype because of this imo, but I have nothing to actually fix bfa while keeping the story beats it had. My only fix would’ve been have Teld be an actual occupation not a genocide, then the alliance responds in kind. (Even though syl would never allow lordaeron to be captured so that would end unsatisfactory for alliance.) but if she did then when we gave the war continue on we learn Syl has been taking orders from the jailer to escalate the war so we stop her then both factions get the hubs they lost back then we start the train of old god stuff.
I think the major problem is when are the writers going to get the horde off the Genocide is bad,mmkay? just so they can Find themselves train. BfA is a dumpster fire that’s best left dead and buried by everyone
It would have been better if bfa never happened lest you get rid of the faction war and stick to old gods, making Teld an occupation though eliminates the genocide portion though.
Teldrassil would’ve worked SOO much better if it was something N’zoth and Queen Azshara secretly had a hand in, to escalate the war. Could’ve been justified that N’zoth was using the burning as a distraction to give himself enough time to get free of his bonds.
Would’ve painted Sylvanas in a much better light, if you ask me and they could’ve played off as a mystery as to why this giant magical tree went up in flames so easily
It still involves losing capital cities, unfortunately. And it doesn’t really solve the problem of the horde effectively being the one to start the war yet again.
With blizzards refusal to do anything involving a grey act alliance side, without 33 mountains worth of justifications, that sadly leaves only one other faction. It’s just the writers are so incompetent they really can’t come up with anything original, without destroying the lore that’s already been setup
I’m admittedly a little more hardline and I know I would have hated BFA even if the alliance struck first, because I would have just viewed it as the horde deserving it on a story level after Cata/MoP. And I was never interested in fighting the alliance anyway. But at least I could have just squinted my eyes through it and waited until the next expansion.