Very well said. It reminded me of something I said in an old thread, speaking on Sylvanas’s fight with Saurfang.
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Fair
I guess to me It’s less about “what” the answers are and more about “how” you get them. In WoW the answer is usually “wait for an expansion to give you the answers”; in DS, it’s “read a lot of item descriptions, talk to a lot of NPCs, and explore the living daylights out of the world.”
IOW, a good videogame mystery uses the mechanics of the game to introduce and solve a mystery, which I feel like WoW rarely does, even when a lot of questions went unanswered.
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Yeah this has especially been the case in BfA, where with all these cinematics they really really made the “wait and see” out to be literally “wait til we release a video that gives you the answer”. Not to mention the way the game has released all these novellas and books over the years to add to the lore, rather than letting you discover it through the games world.
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This has puzzled the heck out of me - Nathanos never stood any chance at winning this fight, because Tyrande doesn’t take any damage, and that’s pretty clear. I always read the situation as “Despite huge power-ups, Nathanos wasn’t able to do a damn thing” and I’ve kind of been at a loss that the popular perception is that he somehow was the winner in this fight.
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It’s one of those cases where the Alliance “won”, but doesn’t feel like they won.
To sound petty, it wasn’t a “big enough” win. It really came off more like a stalemate than a win. The power-levels, pre-fight power-ups, were perceived to be something like this:
- Tyrande/Malfurion
- Malfurion/Tyrande
- Val’kyr
- Nathanos.
Okay, that’s a bit hyperbolic, but you get the jist. The idea is that, even before power-ups, Tyrande and Malfurion were perceived to be much stronger than any Val’kyr or Nathanos. Especially from an Alliance player’s perspective, wherein Nathanos is basically a very, very, very talented archer, certainly not someone the average adventurer would want to 1v1, but nowhere near the levels of Tyrande or Malfurion.
Then, the Alliance-side plot is basically “Tyrande is doing this super dangerous ritual in desperation to get this volatile, massive power-boost.” She and Malfurion were already perceived to be far more powerful than some archer, and now one of the two has gone Super Saiyan.
Nathanos is Sylvanas’ lapdog. Sylvanas, who orchestrated the burning of Teldrassil, the biggest, most heart-wrenching event in recent Kaldorei-player memory. This is it! We’re getting him! Tyrande is pissed, and we’re pissed, and we’re about to [Ctrl]+[A] → [Delete] Nathanos, get vengeance, really hurt the Banshee, no problem!. The hype is real-
Wait, he got away? That’s it? And he rezzed our friends and took them with him? And now we have to fight them?
Oh! Okay, I get it. We’re going to defeat him in the war front.
No? He’s just…
Oh, a tweet - several months later - said we won.
okay
It’s another one of those dozens of cases of BfA narrative where Blizzard hit us with the “tell, don’t show” philosophy. So yeah. We were told we won, but that’s definitely not what a victory is supposed to feel like, so we don’t feel like we won.
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I understand what the Alliance appears to want, which was to style all over one of the few remaining Horde heroes. That doesn’t mean that what you got wasn’t a victory - and posts like these never seem to remember that the Horde player has to play the game, too.
Related (and honest) question: has a champion of either side ever actually died as a result of the opposing faction’s actions? I feel that the overwhelming majority of established lore character deaths occur as the result of a third party. Please note that I ask this question in good faith, so I hope it’ll be answered that way and not by somebody dredging up every NPC on both sides to be killed ever.
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Between Nathanos being always condescending, and everything about the undead elves, the only solace we get from that scene is killing the val’kyr, which while being the equal to a horcrux, isn’t much of a character.
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I don’t think that’s fair. There’s this perception that the Alliance wants to trample across all things Horde. We don’t. We want to trample across Sylvanas, who burned down our home and masacred our people. We knew they wouldn’t let us take out someone as important as Sylvanas, but… her lapdog? That seemed reasonable. It was the hope that we’d get some of Teldrassil repayed that we hung onto. When that didn’t happen, it was very disappointing.
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Well, if I can be honest, that perception comes from things such as the repeated “Why did the blood elves/nightborne join the HORDE?!” complaints we seem to get, as well as the frequent requests for God Mode hero characters to solo the Horde army down to the Barrens, as well as deny Horde players any and all feeling of equal stake in the story.
Tell me: do you think Horde players could have called for the head of any Alliance character with any justification?
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To be frank, and maybe this is dodging your point, but why do you care what Alliance fans want? Blizzard barely listens to the Alliance fandom in general. But when they do, they end up twisting our wishes into something else.
You could replace “Alliance” with “Horde” in your statement and it would make just as much sense. If we were talking about who Blizzard was likely to listen to, we probably wouldn’t be posting in this forum, since they don’t listen to any of us.
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The thing people cling onto is that Nathanos was still able to have Delaryn and Sira raised, even though he never had a chance in the fight itself. It was more annoying that the Val’kyr that did the raising wasn’t even targettable for the scripted fight. It was worse on the PTR when the scenario told you that your goal was to stop the Night Elves from being raised:
Blizzard’s solution when it went live?
They simply changed the scenario stage description to:
- Stage 11: The Queen’s Pawn
Confront Nathanos
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I feel like Delaryn and Sira are the Horde player’s Rastakhan: something you feel literally zero excitement about having gained, but which infuriates the other side for having lost.
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The Horde players didn’t even gain Sira, since she went off with Sylvanas. And Delaryn went off with Calia, which makes a lot of Horde players actively not want anything to do with her rather than just having passive disinterest.
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I use “gain” in a relative sense, since killing Rastakhan was not a real gain for the Alliance either. Just trying to illustrate the point that in both cases there was a “meh, who cares” victory for one side paired up with a “LET HATRED AND RAGE GUIDE YOUR BLOWS” loss for the other.
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thats the point… shes the villain
Jaina. Any blood elf could easily call for her head. Actually, I really liked it when we were rescuing Baine, and a blood elf showed up and was like, “Vengeance time.” I was like, “Yeah! Call her out!”
And we’ve totally asked to have a more interesting narrative. The Alliance feels weak and passive. We want to be active and, yes, even violent (it’s Warcraft, after all). We’re distinctly aware that the “villain-bat” isn’t fun at all, and we’re careful what we wish for, but I think most of us would be totally okay with giving the Horde more of our characters to hate. It’s why we hate “Crying King” Anduin Wrynn being our mascot. Unfortunately, that stuff is kinda out of our control.
Also…
I guarantee you, if Blizzard had given Blood Elves to the Alliance in the first place, there wouldn’t be a single person today pitching a fit because the “Blood elves should have been a Horde race!” It was a decision made because of OOC faction-balance, not lore-friendly or faction-aesthetic, reasons. Which is why there’s so much disjunction there.
Additionally, as I’ve said recently, I’m furious the Nightborne were given to the Horde, but not because I dislike the Horde. (I mean, as an Alliance-homeboy I kinda do, but like… Prior to BfA, it was the was begrudging respect of any rivalry.) It was that my Alliance character saved Suramar, I became emotionally-attached to Suramar, and then the Nightborne turn around and helped burn my home down. It’s a sense of betrayal. I’d have totally understood Horde players being upset if the Alliance got them instead. In an ideal world, they’d have become playable, but neutral. But, if they have to pick a faction, I do agree with the Horde because, stealing from Aviala again…
As for the rest…
I’m not going to apologize or try to explain things for which I have little context. But, I will say that if the message was, “Alliance players want the Horde’s characters all trampled”, then I don’t believe that to be the case. I will extend a generic apology for that sentiment. At least I’ve never meant it that way. Legit, I just want Alliance-side Nightborne, come on Blizzard and vengeance/retribution against Sylvanas in any way.
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Yea, but all villains should pay for their crimes eventually and be killed by the heroes. Instead they don’t tell us anything about Sylvanas, let her destroy everything people loved and then redeem her afterwards as if nothing ever happened.
Generally, I can agree with or understand the rest of the things you said in your post (so please don’t think I’m ignoring them) but I wanted to address this particular point here. Perhaps even my name-twin Pellex will chime in, because I know this is a topic that he has discussed his own personal feelings on at some length.
That being said, I would have said Jaina if you asked me to answer that question I asked of you. Jaina is the only Alliance character whose presentation even approaches antagonistic for the Horde - and yet, the narrative is also constantly making it difficult to do that. We’re supposed to be sympathetic to Jaina. We help Baine thwart what was probably an assassination plot against her. We break in to Orgrimmar to free Baine - and work with Jaina. As Horde - as BLOOD ELVES - we have to side with Jaina against the Sunreavers, survivors of the Purge. The narrative never addresses the Purge - the narrative paints that Blood Elven magister as in the wrong, consumed by bitterness, unable to let go of past hatreds, not as an avenger trying to bring justice to his wronged people.
Rexxar’s odd, misplaced dialogue hints at a narrative where Jaina was out of control, excessive. Offscreen, she has tried to commit an atrocity - onscreen, she’s made decisions that were questionable at best and needlessly hostile at worst. But the Horde player has none of this. The Horde player is not only asked to forgive Jaina, but also to believe that she was right, and they were wrong to be angry with her.
I do not think that Jaina should be made into a character for the Alliance to turn against. (Or Tyrande, for that matter.) Having a faction turn against its characters is painful - it’s not a satisfying narrative unless laid out carefully long in advance. I’m incredibly frustrated that Blizzard made Sylvanas into a villain for both sides, because I think she could have occupied the position that Jaina should occupy. Her side cheers her - the other side hates her. And that’s okay. Baine and Anduin can show sympathy for the other side but also understand that they need to put their people’s needs first. Nathanos can be a smug as$hole to everyone, but he’s OUR smug a$shole. Trollbane can be proud leader of Stromgarde and anti-Troll racist grandpa at the same time. I feel like Blizzard is unable to write their characters in this way.
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An MMO video game with 2 years between major plot developments is gererally a poor medium to try and tell a mystery with anyway.
It’s not a 2 hour movie, or a novel you can read in a week or even a TV series you watch over several months.
The massive wait causes severe problems.
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