Blizzard's stories are getting more nuanced, to their total detriment

[Iandore-thrall]

After playing the horde stories in this expansion, I have determined that the horde is just as evil as they always were, but there is no more metzen to try to tiptoe around that with claims of “nobility” to go along with their “savagery.” The horde is now savage in general, and it is played completely straight. Yet people are still treating them as if they are honorable just because they falsely call themselves honorable. They never were honorable, just like the ussr was never a classless society, but the rhetoric does not have to mirror reality.

evil characters must now claim they are evil and have red arrows above their head, because apparently just looking at the actions of the characters to determine what they really are is too hard.

sylvannas & the forsaken are concentration camp holding mass murderers. The mag’har recruitment scenario has them shown to be racist, brainwashed, slave-holding ethnic cleansers who get along with sylvannas because they have that in common with her. The nighborne are ambitious, mass murdering addicts who swore an oath to kill the alliance because the alliance pointed out what they were and that they needed to change their ways. The nazmir questline involves you making a deal with the wow devil because the horde high command thinks that will get them power.

People get angry and call this bad writing. They claim that the actions of the horde do not match their rhetoric, as if mass murdering psychopaths are also very truthful people and would never tell a lie. The imperial Japanese soldiers were informed the americans were the aggressors in ww2, and when they found out that was a lie the command structure actually committed suicide in shame. They were lied to as tyrants lie to their soldiers to get them to do evil things, but this playerbase would call that bad writing because it isn’t spoonfed to you that “this is bad m’kay.”

What evil does well though is project, and that is portrayed here and it adds nuance to the story. Weak, effete andiun is portrayed as a warmonger by sylvannas by projection. The draenei in the mag har scenario are peaceniks who care only about global warming (not kidding) and racial harmony, yet the actually brainwashed and actually tyrannical mag har accuse the dranei of everything the orcs are actively doing. More projection. But -again- because it is played straight, people do not question it. So anduin is a warmonger and the draenei are brainwashed tyrants, despite paying attention in game proves the horde races are just bsing 24/7.

you could have a questline of orcs murdering and entire village, and the quest would be called “we are the good guys,” and people would call it bad writing to imply that those who murder an entire village could also be disingenuous about what they are.

So the ultimate irony is, that by injecting nuance into the game’s story to make the writing better, they ended up making the playerbase claim the writng is terrible because it is a little too subtle for them now.

[Ohgodmyeyez-hyjal]

The mag’har recruitment scenario has them shown to be racist, brainwashed, slave-holding ethnic cleansers who get along with sylvannas because they have that in common with her.

Err… what? The Mag’har were being forcibly converted to a Light-based religion or killed if they chose not to do so. They joined because their world was dying and they were being wiped out by the Lightbound and Yrel’s Draenei.

Are you getting your whole ‘ethnic cleansing’ bit from WoD, or…?

[Tentaclatrix-kelthuzad (Tentaclatrix)]

The mag’har recruitment scenario has them shown to be racist, brainwashed, slave-holding ethnic cleansers who get along with sylvannas because they have that in common with her

Ummmmm, what?

[Iandore-thrall]

@Tentaclatrix-kelthuzad

@Iandore-thrall

The mag’har recruitment scenario has them shown to be racist, brainwashed, slave-holding ethnic cleansers who get along with sylvannas because they have that in common with her

Ummmmm, what?

@Ohgodmyeyez-hyjal

@Iandore-thrall

The mag’har recruitment scenario has them shown to be racist, brainwashed, slave-holding ethnic cleansers who get along with sylvannas because they have that in common with her.

Err… what? The Mag’har were being forcibly converted to a Light-based religion or killed if they chose not to do so. They joined because their world was dying and they were being wiped out by the Lightbound and Yrel’s Draenei.

Are you getting your whole ‘ethnic cleansing’ bit from WoD, or…?

Nowhere was it written that the orcs were forcibly converted. The naaru showed the draenei what the orcs (and the world) would become if left unchecked and the draenei declared war on the orcs to save the world from the orcs. Out of charity, they offered the orcs a chance to convert and some did, the rest were fenced off in gorgrond which is now a junkyard wasteland thanks to the orcs destroying the environment. If you actually read the text, all the dranei care about is racial harmony and getting rid of the global warming caused by the old iron horde industrialization.

The orcs then claimed the non-savage orcs were brainwashed, as they cannot understand why anyone would leave the orc master race otherwise. It is not hard to find real-world examples of this same sentiment. This is where the derisive name “lightbound,” as if they were slaves now, came from.

The orcs accuse the dranei of being “fanatics” (that word is thrown out every sentence by genderbent thrall), yet it is the mag har who scream “I will destroy all who oppose warchief hellscream!” in their flavor text.

They claim the draenei want to destroy all different from them, when the first part of that scenario is ethnically cleansing ogres because they dare stage a slave uprising and then there is a lot of flavor text about killing lightbound orcs because they are race-traitors.

The reason you go kill the ogre slave uprising is because (and the game outright tells you this) slamming the jackboot on the ogres calms down genderbent thrall!

I could go on, but I wrote a detailed, play-by-play of that scenario here and would just be repeating myself:

Just finished the mag'har scenario, the draenei lightbound orcs did nothing wrong

As per usual, the writing in this expac makes the horde truly evil. Now, they always have been, but at least metzen isn’t there to force a tiptoe around it anymore. The mag’har are a strange mix of industrialized and savage in that they are just as bad to the environment as they are to any non-orcs. They turned their lands into a junkyard where you can also get enslaved and your skin turned into a loincloth. From reading the npc and quest text, they seem like if garrosh was carbon copied doz…

But this is my point in the OP here, because the orcs are played straight as evil people are, they are taken at face value without question. The mag har by action are oppressive psychopaths, but by rhetoric are some oppressed group of heroes. So they playerbase ignores all that the mag har actually do because they could never imagine the mag har are liars.

[Swiftraven-moon-guard (Swiftraven)]

what is this I don’t even

[Bretherezen-nesingwary (Bretherezen)]

Nowhere was it written that the orcs were forcibly converted.

Yes, they were. You need to go brush up on it again, because Yrel and those Draenei were Naaru & Light worshipping Zealots finding anybody and everybody they could, killing them outright or brainwashing them to be fanatical zealots of the Light themselves.

[Rea-llane (Rea)]

Except for, maybe, the part where the Mag’har were given a timeline to accept conversion to the light or else… which, by the point we shows up, the clock hits zero and the Draenei literally show up on the Orc’s doorstep with an army to either make them become lightforged or dead.

[Averyx-quelthalas (Averyx)]

The Horde is 100% evil and I agree with everything you said about their races.

That being said, doesn’t mean the story is nuanced or isn’t crap, SPECIALLY because the writers themselves believe the lie that the actions the Horde take are actually ambiguously good. Writers don’t know how to portray something like that because they are unskilled and the only thing they do is think about Sylvanas pants instead of actually thinking on how to craft a story, so they decide to make the horde do evil things instead of actually nuanced stuff , then they commit themselves to say “but honor though” and therefore pretend all the evil things they wrote about the horde can just disappear because they say so.

All because Blizzard writing team is obsessed with “subverting expectations” ever since people praised them for making good orcs back in warcraft III but they lack the capacity to actually subvert expectations beyond a nominal thing. So they simply keep throwing evil deeds on the Horde and then say “but they aren’t so evil” because they think they are “subverting” something. Add to that, their desires for their own type of fan fiction (because they write more like fans desiring a result, than actual writers trying to tell a story) that show all over the lore and what you get is a lazy and wish fulfilling effort not worthy of being called good fiction.

In the end, The story isn’t nuanced or well crafted, is simply messy and badly developed with conflicting intents and lack of responsibility, the later instead just replaced by fanboyism.

[Rea-llane (Rea)]

Honestly… my issue is that there is a disconnect between the Horde PC and the Horde as a faction.

I don’t mind if the Horde is supposed to be evil… but they need to make the story of the Horde PC consistent with that instead of having us go out and do all these heroic deeds for the greater good only to have the faction leaders go off and do these evil things. If my faction is evil, then let me do all the fun evil things for once. Let us be the ones running down citizens in Brennadam instead of not making the Horde PC aware that this was even happening until the Alliance players held it up as an example of Horde doing evil things.

[Bretherezen-nesingwary (Bretherezen)]

That’s something I brought up on the old forums before they were set aside for these:

We PC characters, no matter Horde nor Alliance, are protected from plot armor by all accounts. Nothing we do, no matter how grave it is, unjustifiable or otherwise incredibly heinous, has, can or ever will actually be held against us, or we actually made accountable for those actions as things stand in-game.

We just cannot be touched.

It… Annoys me to know that I can go up against an in-game legitimate group like D.E.H.T.A, for instance, completely piss them off, and no recompense comes my way. Not even a slap on the wrist. Those people are pretty crazy set in their ways, and as far as I know, would kill somebody for Hunting in a no-Hunt location. But I don’t even get hate mail. Go figure.

I also hate how my character can take part in events such as the Burning of Teldrassil and the Alliance will eventually forgive my PC without a word of it, and then somebody like Sylvanas will 100% take the fall for me.

Not that I at all think that this is how it is going to happen, because I don’t think that’s how things will honestly go down. It’s just an example. There’s at least 25 other in-game scenarios where this happens. The more extreme being the fact that we on the Horde aided Garrosh’s Horde in planting a Mana Bomb inside of a certain zone and then unleashing said Mana Bomb on a certain fortress… And then Garrosh turns to us, pats us on the back, tells us it’s okay and re-conscripts us in to the Horde once more, just after executing the guy in charge after annihilating the remainder of his forces when TECHNICALLY SPEAKING we were a part of his forces as well, and arguably are the ones that even enabled the event to happen unnoticed by the Alliance in the first place.

@Edit:

Yes, yes, we all know what happens after that place is Mana Bombed. But honestly? I don’t recall there even actually being a time when I couldn’t step foot inside of Dalaran. I went through all of those quests, then simply walked right back in to Dalaran and got scrutinizing stares from NPCs. Oooooh~

[Averyx-quelthalas (Averyx)]

Honestly… my issue is that there is a disconnect between the Horde PC and the Horde as a faction.

I don’t mind if the Horde is supposed to be evil… but they need to make the story of the Horde PC consistent with that instead of having us go out and do all these heroic deeds for the greater good only to have the faction leaders go off and do these evil things. If my faction is evil, then let me do all the fun evil things for once. Let us be the ones running down citizens in Brennadam instead of not making the Horde PC aware that this was even happening until the Alliance players held it up as an example of Horde doing evil things.

I mean, you did burn Teldrassil.

[Rea-llane (Rea)]

And the fact that we did so was so out of left field(in context of the way the event unfolded, not that the burning was announced with BfA). Not to mention that the Horde PC didn’t even get to take part in the actual burning.

The Horde part stops with defeating Malfurion and… then Sylvanas got sassed in a cutscene and decided to throw away all strategic value in what the Horde was trying to do because of it… with absolutely zero interaction on the part of the Horde player.

The Alliance got the chance to try to save civilians from the burning… and the Horde got a cutscene with no interaction with the event itself. We step into a cutscene with our forces on the shores of Darkshore and exit it with a smouldering ruin… and it was to the point where the whole reason for the Old Soldier cinematic was to express reaction of the Horde to the suddenness and unplanned nature of the burning through Saurfang’s reaction to it. Sure, there are those who are all for Sylvanas’s Horde but the Old Soldier is supposed to be much more representative of the Horde’s reaction to Sylvanas’s action as a whole in canon.

[Iandore-thrall]

Except for, maybe, the part where the Mag’har were given a timeline to accept conversion to the light or else… which, by the point we shows up, the clock hits zero and the Draenei literally show up on the Orc’s doorstep with an army to either make them become lightforged or dead.

When you were ethnically cleansing the ogres who dared to challenge slavery, you end up killing a lightbound ambassador who was having a meeting with the ogre revolutionary leader at the time.

The army is then called in immediately after. kill a an american ambassador in the name of your racial pride and you would get american marines on your doorstep within the day.

When the dranei army arrive, they say their beef with the orcs is the orcs killing the planet, and would be willing to work with them if they put down their arms.

Keep in mind I actually played this scenario and read all the quest/flavor text. I heard the same rhetoric you are spewing now and so I paid extra close attention to what was happening. All of you are full of it.

Nowhere was it written that the orcs were forcibly converted.

Yes, they were. You need to go brush up on it again, because Yrel and those Draenei were Naaru & Light worshipping Zealots finding anybody and everybody they could, killing them outright or brainwashing them to be fanatical zealots of the Light themselves.

Not even the orcs say that. They just say the converts are brainwashed, implying that there is no way they would ever “betray” their precious master race otherwise by becoming civilized.

I am talking about actual in-game actions, not memes surrounding the scenario or you falling for in-game rhetoric and ignoring in game actions. Ironically, you are proving my point that the playerbase just goes by whatever in-game characters say as if they are all perfectly honest.

[Bretherezen-nesingwary (Bretherezen)]

Ironically, you are proving my point that the playerbase just goes by whatever in-game characters say as if they are all perfectly honest.

I mean, you’re not wrong on the account that they are claiming those Orcs are ‘brainwashed’ in the manner that you describe. However, you’re wrong to think that Yrel and the Naaru that is ‘leading’ them didn’t just turn in to a fanatical cult of Light worshippers on a cleansing of the entire planet, and unjustifiably were the aggressors that unprovokingly went after the Orcs, who were now practically peaceful without their tyrannical and warmongering Warchiefs presiding over their every action.

Orcs follow their 'chief. That is how it has been, that is how it always will be. Every now and again, once under a blue moon, will you have an Orc that falls out of line and says, “We shouldn’t be doing this.” Broxxigar, Thrall… Hell, you know who they are. But they are probably 1 in of every 1,000 or 10,000 Orcs who develop that mindset.

You have Mag’har left behind after all was said and done that would god-honestly rather not fight a Naaru and Light-empowered Yrel and her newfound fanatical cult of Zealots after they were issued the ultimatum of, “Convert or die” because of the “Greater good of the planet demands it.” BS. That’s shoddy story writing and you know it.

[Iandore-thrall]

Ironically, you are proving my point that the playerbase just goes by whatever in-game characters say as if they are all perfectly honest.

I mean, you’re not wrong on the account that they are claiming those Orcs are ‘brainwashed’ in the manner that you describe. However, you’re wrong to think that Yrel and the Naaru that is ‘leading’ them didn’t just turn in to a fanatical cult of Light worshippers on a cleansing of the entire planet, and unjustifiably were the aggressors that unprovokingly went after the Orcs, who were now practically peaceful without their tyrannical and warmongering Warchiefs presiding over their every action.

Orcs follow their 'chief. That is how it has been, that is how it always will be. Every now and again, once under a blue moon, will you have an Orc that falls out of line and says, “We shouldn’t be doing this.” Broxxigar, Thrall… Hell, you know who they are. But they are probably 1 in of every 1,000 or 10,000 Orcs who develop that mindset.

You have Mag’har left behind after all was said and done that would god-honestly rather not fight a Naaru and Light-empowered Yrel and her newfound fanatical cult of Zealots after they were issued the ultimatum of, “Convert or die” because of the “Greater good of the planet demands it.” BS. That’s shoddy story writing and you know it.

nu-gorgrond is a literal junkyard. The air is permanently orange with toxic waste. No plants have survived.

The first orc you meet in nu-draenor is a laughing skull orc that sneaks up behind you. If you talk to them they say “no, I wouldn’t know anything about flaying people alive I do know how to flay people, and I can give you a demonstration.”

The second one you meet is called an “impaler” and he tells you he wants to slit the throats of the race-traitors.

The other orcs all say the same master race bs that they will kill anyone who challenges their great leader or their traditions. yawn.

you are threatened at the point of a weapon by genderbent thrall to “pay homage” to the orc clan banners. hellscream shows up and says genderbent thrall is a hothead, and WHAT CALMS HER DOWN IS KILLING OGRES; just so happens the ogres at the ogre internment camp are staging a slave uprising. you are then tasked with killing the uppity ogres to put them back in their place. In the quest text you are informed that the orcs regularly have to put these ogres back in their place every few years by killing the revolters.

In the process of killing the ogre king leading the uprising, you kill a lightbound ambassador. A small regiment THEN gets called.

When you wipe out the small regiment THEN the entire draenei army comes.

I can really tell you didn’t actually play the scenario.

[Willkiller-korgath (Willkiller)]

Interesting take on the situation.
Juxtaposed with the "Sylvanas is an anti-hero thread.
Both are wrong of course, but interesting.

[Iandore-thrall]

Interesting take on the situation.
Juxtaposed with the "Sylvanas is an anti-hero thread.
Both are wrong of course, but interesting.

No need to claim I am wrong, when horde players are more than happy to prove my point for me in the replies.

[Bravefighter-wyrmrest-accord (Bravefighter)]

Yup, horde is evil… I’m still going to play on this side, I don’t care for your alliance propoganda!

[Iandore-thrall]

Yup, horde is evil… I’m still going to play on this side, I don’t care for your alliance propoganda!

you just reminded me of the two night elf questlines for horde in alliance and desolace. Both involve you totally destroying their cities and / or corrupting some ancient force.

[Averyx-quelthalas (Averyx)]

And the fact that we did so was so out of left field(in context of the way the event unfolded, not that the burning was announced with BfA). Not to mention that the Horde PC didn’t even get to take part in the actual burning.

The Horde part stops with defeating Malfurion and… then Sylvanas got sassed in a cutscene and decided to throw away all strategic value in what the Horde was trying to do because of it… with absolutely zero interaction on the part of the Horde player.

The Alliance got the chance to try to save civilians from the burning… and the Horde got a cutscene with no interaction with the event itself. We step into a cutscene with our forces on the shores of Darkshore and exit it with a smouldering ruin… and it was to the point where the whole reason for the Old Soldier cinematic was to express reaction of the Horde to the suddenness and unplanned nature of the burning through Saurfang’s reaction to it. Sure, there are those who are all for Sylvanas’s Horde but the Old Soldier is supposed to be much more representative of the Horde’s reaction to Sylvanas’s action as a whole in canon.

I mean, the Alliance doesn’t get any say when leaders do stuff either, players in general. We always just follow NPCs directions in whatever scenario, but you do get to do evil things for the Horde.

Problem also comes for Blizzards idea of portraying the other faction badly to the other side so they start to divert or omit sstorylines for one faction.