Yeah, that really does seem to be my biggest problem with playing Horde this expansion. Everything just feels like waiting for something else to actually happen. There’s no sense of urgency or intent with the faction leaders, because they keep taking these tiny, vague baby-steps in the obvious direction, but are mostly just in a holding pattern until the writers finally decide to flip some switch in four or five months.
Even Baine’s little rebellion feels more out of some wishy-washy circumstance pushing him into the absolute bare minimum level of action, when he should have so much more agency with his decision.
Even then, he behaves oddly at that. To assume fanatical loyalty to Sylvanas and then kill a bunch of Horde for that reason? He doesn’t even try to open negotiations with his own. When the Alliance is baring down and destroying Zandalar he says ‘perhaps we should open negotiations!’ but doesn’t think of such a thing when Sylvanas is doing her thing? Bah humbug I say!
I’d say this is Bad and Contreversial; due to the non-existent nature prior to Alleria’s Void fetish. The lack of lore and details have left much to be desired. And for what lore we’ve gotten; its been pretty rough. From Umbric’s little banter about the Void Elves never believing in the Horde’s ideals to the lack of attention to whispers in the void elf.
There’s potential to fix it but its easy to be cynical about Blizzard’s attention to Alliance detail. Void Elves existed as a middle ground for the blood elf model to be playable; without comitting to High Elf theme. (Which in truth, high elves differ no more than your run of the mill human.)
There’s many things that need to be addressed about a void elf to help make things feel more alive like other Allied races.
Numbers within the ranks?
How new void elves are made post introduction?
Can Void Elves use the light like we see in the game?
Why can’t void elves return to the Horde?
Will we see more direct attention to the struggle of controlling the void’s alluring whispers?
There’s many things to work on but those are the main points that make me struggle as a void elf roleplayer.
I’ll join the grim crowd and agree that Baine Bloodhoof is not good writing.
The concept of Baine is excellent: a dissenter, a voice of reason and peace in a society that does not value either of those things, stalwart and intractable.
The execution (hurr) of Baine is miserable: a cowering toady who only laments on what’s right long after the time to act has passed.
Baine is the “thoughts and prayers” character. Lots of nice words, no real action to demand investment.
Yeah, speaking as someone who is 100% on board with Void Elves and ~loves~ their aesthetic… calling them “good writing” is a huuuuuuuuuuuuge stretch. For starters, unlike literally every other allied race, they had no presence whatsoever within the game prior to recruiting them. The closest thing you can really point to is Alleria, but she’s so far disconnected from the playable ones, both visually and culturally. It’s so bad that even the reputation to unlock them makes no sense!
And even worse, they feel like they have no actual tie to the Alliance beyond “hey, we… got kicked out of our club, mind if we chill on your couch?”
I would’ve been so much happier if everything stayed exactly the same, but instead of random Blood Elf exiles, Void Elves came from the Silver Covenant. Have them follow Alleria on some diplomatic effort to recruit the Ethereals, but it goes just as poorly as everything with Umbric and all of them get a bad case of the Void.
Plus, kill three birds with one stone: we get playable High Elves, Blizzard still gets to make them look unique from just Blood Elves with blue eyes, AND they have an ironclad reason to never be asked “High Elves when???” ever again.
Most folks have already said a lot of what I would say, often better than I ever would so I’ll try not to repeat it.
My thoughts sum up BfA feels a lot like Batman vs Superman. The only reason they had to fight was because it was the name of the movie, so the plot bent over backwards to justify the fight and the whole thing felt contrived and ultimately mediocre. That’s what I feel is a major problem with the fighting in BfA, it’s the theme of the expansion so the factions have to fight so the plot is forced to make it happen in ways that make us feel confused and frustrated.
I could repeat a ton of different ways Blizz could have made the war work but I’m not going to get into that.
So in regards to bad vs controversial writing.
I listened to a podcast from some comic creators regarding world building. One area they touched on is how can you ruin your world and that’s by establishing something in your narrative and then going back on it later and breaking your reader’s immersion. Retcons are nothing new in Warcraft but there’s a lot of that happening in BfA which is what I deem bad writing. Whether it’s some world building thing or a character, there’s been a lot of changes made for the sake of justifying BfA’s plot which is leaving a lot of us with a poor experience.
Blizzard is great at presenting a world for us to explore and experience. My favourite quests so far in the game is running around doing side stories in zones helping the local population. That’s what I think made Legion enjoyable for so many, while the zones themselves were pretty on theme with the expansion (they’re not going to age well) your classhall quests often involved lesser known characters and locations from around Azeroth. Further enriching the world we all love to play in.
This is Blizzard at their best, not forcing us to tag along with MAJOR LORE CHARACTER but instead have us in our own adventures fighting monsters, helping locals and just exploring and being a part of the world.
okay cause a number of you replied to me about baine:
i mean he’s good relative to the rest of the horde
saurfang or perhaps lor’themar is the closest ‘good’ character and saurfang started a world war on superfluous at best reasoning and if i listed all the wrongs lor’themars done id be here forever
compared to the closest possible comparisons he’s a saint; following his conscious and returning derek to the proudmoores instead of towing the line and obeying sylvanas quietly and obediently is an unheard of stance of moral fortitude
If a story that is supposed to bring awe, excitement and connection to a game world instead elicits ::insert .gif of bully bewildered by happy hands club in Napoleon dymanite:: as a reaction, it’s bad.
The problem is, it’s not consistent. And it took forever (multiple expansions) for him to reasonably act on that moral high ground, and it feels hollow when he didn’t act on it sooner. I’m not even sure he’s comparatively better because being passive during these various atrocities is still being complicit in them. It’s like he learned nothing from Hellscream’s rule.
Baine is pretty obviously meant to be the Horde’s conscience and voice of reason in this story, but the implementation of him was badly fumbled. I can see what Blizzard was going for and I appreciate them for making at least that effort to preserve the Horde from more mustache-twirling, but the way they actually did it just makes it worse.
Would have been cool if Baine was strangely pro Sylvanas and we didn’t know why, only to have it revealed later that she had some means of controlling him. They could have given him an epic moment where he finally got free and went ham.
No. Absolutely not. He actively advocates for treason despite everything. Saurfang would never actively help the Alliance. While Baine has multiple times. I don’t understand why people think this “Horde character helping the other faction” trope is good writing. We’re in a war setting. There are multiple ways he could have done this without helping Jaina or seem like he didn’t want to help her. He could have killed Derek. He could have just set him free and tell him to make his own choice.
I agree there was bad writing in BfA. Im not sure I can pinpoint it. But I do agree with those who believe the climax happened at the beginning, and nothing after that can live up to it. The Burning of Teldrassil feels like an end-of-Xpac thing… How do we ever live up to that now?
They sort of shot themselves in the foot there a little.
Don’t worry: if you find it frustrating, you only have literally every other horde character obediently and spinelessly carrying out sylvias will
Cause that’s what it means to be horde, right? To obey without pause, question, or consideration? To throw your consciousness, your principles, your SPINE to the wind as long as there’s a promise that someday, at some point, by someone, it’ll pay off?
That the horde will succeed and thrive not by learning from the mistakes of the past and striving to be better than their forebears, but by obeying the warchief no matter the cost?
I mean, wouldn’t pissing off both the Alliance and the Horde be suicide for Baine anyway?
So why would he oppose the current Horde and continue to butt heads against the Alliance too? How does that make him any better of a character?
His best bet if he wants to work against Sylvanus is to NOT piss off the people who has a mutual grudge against her.
Especially considering his father died from a tyrant warchief as well. So submission isn’t an option for him since his father directly stood up to a mad warchief.
It makes zero sense for him to NOT actively work against Sylvanus even if it means helping an enemy.
Think of the term, “An unjust law is no law at all.”
There’s no reason for me to think it is unjust to commit treason at this point since this is basically the second psychopsthic warchief in a row.
I mean… they are, though. Saurfang and Baine have been the only voices of dissent–
And wait a minute, why is it “treason” when Sylvanas has already pretty much trampled the honor the Horde allegedly holds so dear? Or is it that once again, the Horde’s “honor” is malleable depending on whatever nonsense it wants to justify in a given moment?
I’ve found it strange that some of those characters who were opposed to Garrosh, even before he tipped headlong into Sha-Town, are oddly silent this time around.