Ok, but like…
I’m not talking about that.
Could I go on for paragraphs about the moral dichotomy of the Horde as presented on paper and the Horde as presented in-game?
Absolutely. It’d be a thirty minute read, no doubt about it.
But that isn’t my point at all.
My point, the point of highlighting the disparate presentation of the Horde not-murdering, is that some Horde players focus on the faction conflict because again: It is the only time we see our characters do anything.
Give a choice between going full genocide in BfA or having the orcs actually give a damn crap about taking the fight to the Legion after everything the Legion’s meddling put them through, and I’d easily bet the majority of Horde players around here would vote for the latter.
I don’t think you’d find anyone around here choosing “Baine sits in a corner while Thrall sits by” over, say, “Thrall and Baine take Horde players on a journey through the Shadowlands to learn the truth of the Ancestral Plane, while Tyrande and Alliance players do Night Warrior stuff”. Hell, if these options were given to the players to decide in the Shadowlands early development, you might find the forum-factions reach true unity as we all voted for the latter. Except for the contrarians.
But we have seen, in every situation, that when Blizzard’s writers have the Alliance and Horde willing to work together to save Azeroth or the entire cosmos, they prefer to fixate on just heroes from one faction.
And this isn’t Horde griping because IT IS BAD FOR BOTH FACTIONS, PERIOD.
The Horde is irrelevant. But the Alliance have to play the alignment of Stupid Good, because they just suddenly forget that last week, the same guys standing beside them had swords at their neck. Tyrande has to be written to be fine with working with the Horde, beyond some snide initial comments. The same Horde who have invaded Ashenvale three times, Darkshore twice, then burned down a Teldrassil. And all she can be presented to say in reference to that? “This world tree will not burn.” And then invite us over for a dinner party, because everything’s good now and she just forgot that we tried to eliminate her people. Because she has to forget. Because Horde players need content too, but only Alliance characters are included in the narrative.
So now Tyrande looks like she suffers from clinical Goldfish brain.
This isn’t about forum RP. This isn’t about “Alliance bad” rhetoric. It’s not even about morality.
It’s about how when Blizzard removes faction conflict, the narrative for both sides has historically suffered for it, and it’s hard to trust that the fourth or fifth time’s the charm.