Or if the original plot of BFA when Metzen was still on the Team was “Anduin is overruled by the rest of the Alliance and he’s forced to go on the offensive and instigate the Fourth War, Sylvanas retaliates by burning Teldrassil after Alliance seizes all of Lordaeron, etc”.
Because then the Horde is trying to stop the Alliance from waging another war and destroying more land (like happened in Tirisfal).
Girl, Bottegoni.
I’ve said it before, and I know it sounds weird, but… Blizzard doesn’t have an Alliance or Horde bias, but they do have a human bias. Gnomes and dwarves are forgotten, unless they’re diamond-studded. Worgen are told they’re only good because they’re still human. Night elves spent all of BfA being told, “you’re wrong for being angry about the genocide of your people”. Draenei… They’re not in a bad shape, tbh. Got a spotlight in Legion and WoD.
But humans? Humans are soaring.
Like, I get it. It’s weird to say, because humans are kinda the staple of the Alliance, like orcs are of the Horde. But also, that’s kinda the issue? Because the Alliance is waaaaay more than that.
EDIT: Gnomes got a highlight in Mechagon, so that was cool. But, that might be their first highlight since maybe… Wrath? Certainly their biggest since Gnomeregan.
Honestly, “Humans” were pretty inconsequential in Legion beyond Kadghar and Turalyon (and they should be involved given the context of that story). NEs also only tend to get portrayed poorly when pitted against the Horde. They did not do that bad against the Emerald Nightmare or Firelands despite those being very kryptonite conceptually for them. Or the Legion for that matter. While there is definitely more of “Human Potential” in BfA (and certainly in Shadowlands), in Legion it was sort of just a meme.
That being said. I DO at least think that Humans are a comfort zone for Blizz. Too much of one. You can have shakeup events like Zekhan to widen that comfort zone certainly (which is why Trolls finally are getting some positive treatment, and I haven’t a doubt that Bwon’s only not a villain because of the Zekhan effect) … but those events are rare. They are far more prone to simply try to make other Racial Reps convenient for their Human Comfort zone than widen that zone of comfort to naturally include non Human races. Which is certainly observable with what they’ve done to Baine, and Calia’s settup.
Well from where im standing, worst case scenario they laid the groundwork to put him in revendreth with sylvanas at least.
i really want arthas to be sylvanas’ punishment just to see the mountains of salt.
I’m not really going so far back as Cata here, just because… I mean, it’s been (checks google) 10 years (jesus), and they’ve definitely had a big tone shift in how they write WoW since then. I don’t really have a hard cutoff. Maybe War Crimes? Eh…
Anyways, Nelves did pretty good for ourselves in Legion. I won’t deny that. We had three night elf reps, and one zone that was just night elves. Plus, that zone had a great cinematic. I will say, three night elf reputations is a bit excessive, and I just wish they’d made all of Azsuna about the Wardens? Instead of making up a weird ghost-nelf faction just… Anyways. Point is, we did well for ourselves in Legion, for sure.
But, BfA tho… Legion was climbing up a hill, BfA was falling off a cliff.
You got a point there. Especially with Calia. The would-be undead “leader” is the daughter of the king/sister of the “rightful heir”. They made up the least sensical form of necromancy (Light necromancy??? I guess, but like… Also what?) to bring her back. She looks nothing like the Forsaken (tbf, neither did Sylvanas, but at least she was their founder, right?). Like, they 100% went out of their way to push her into the “human” comfort zone. Obviously, these forums don’t like her design, but like… Now, I see why they made her design like that. Again, it goes back to, “Blizzard isn’t accidentally horrible, they are doing this all on intention.”
Its even more fun than that. Calia’s regular messaging is “getting to know her people” … but she’s never once been shown actually doing that. Not even speaking with a single one of their remaining reps. Instead, Derek is now “Forsaken” … and she’s been surrounded by a plethora of very recently Undead Alliance characters. Who in no way have been actually Forsaken, nor represent the Forsaken experience. So, it comes off less like they’re building her up to the Lead the Forsaken, but more simply gentrifying them. This is especially scary when you consider what she wants to do (reunite the dead and the living), and what the Forsaken Identity itself is conceptually (an identity created by those who don’t have enough of their lives left to return to, so they had to create new ones to survive).
Yes, Sylvanas manipulated this identity for personal gain … but that does not invalidate its importance or necessity for many undead. What Calia as a SOLO leader alone thematically says is that only those who are lucky enough to not only have living family left, but family that would accept them back, are worth a damned. And those identities created by the majority that likely weren’t that lucky are unacceptable. They’re better off dead. Which is why it is so damned important (both for the remaining Forsaken characters and themes) that if she is to be A Forsaken leader, she needs an equal counterbalance built up to facilitate the Forsaken half of the Forsaken identity. While Calia and her supporting reps facilitate the Citizens of Lordaeron half. Which ties right back to that dual identity of BtS.
Dwarves are hardly forgotten. Wrath had the brothers reunite. We found out abit more about their titan heritage(so did the gnomes btw). Brann was/is pretty much anywhere the explorer’s league is present. We had an entire zone in Cata dedicated to the Wildhammers. MoP had Moira given the spotlight. WOD hardly had any race specific content aside from the orcs/draenei.
Legion, had Magni, abit of Brann and Moira getting spotlights.
The gnomes were always the harder race to give content because lorewise they never really prolific. Having said that Blizzard adds whenever it makes sense. Hell, it was thanks to a gnome the Dwarves as a species even exists.
Jaina spent near 4 expansions being told that you can’t let your anger control you. You don’t have to forgive, you don’t have to forget, but you can’t end up being the very monster you claim to hate.
Cata was ten years ago, Wrath twelve. Hardly any healthy development.
I was unaware of the Moira thing. So, I looked it up on wowpedia, and this is literally the first line about her Blood in the Snow “spotlight”.
One day, King Varian’s scouts
Ah lol Her “spotlight” is actually just a quest chain, buddy-love movie with Varian. Even in the “dwarves’ spotlight”, they still gotta cram their Wrynn-love in there.
By this point, Magni basically has nothing to do with the rest of the dwarves. Hell, he’s not even a dwarf any more. He’s a dwarf-shaped diamond. He woke up from his nap under Ironforge, said, “I’m speakin’ for Azeroth now, got more important things to do than figure out which beards are running this dump”, and yeeted off.
Like I said, gnomes got some cool content in BfA, but that was their first major content since Gnomeregan. Their first major content in almost fifteen years. They got some attention in Wrath, with a base or two in Northrend, but that’s hardly any major attention. And, again, it was twelve years ago.
Draenei got a lot of focus in WoD, and I won’t deny that. But, it wasn’t even our draenei? It was alternate versions of our Draenei. Also, we got a castle, and that castle was definitely human-themed. Velen got some much-needed love in Legion, and the Lightforged Draenei were hella cool, so they came out of Legion well. Regardless, I will say that they aren’t struggling.
Right, and I wasn’t really here for MoP, but… From what I can tell, they consistently portrayed her as the one who was wronged. The Kul Tiras storyline is basically about how bad she feels about everything she did. She’s definitely painted in a sympathetic light.
Tyrande gets the same treatment, the same message, but she’s just one misplaced arrow shy of being turned into a raid boss. Again, I wasn’t here for MoP, but my impression is that Jaina has never gotten that treatment.
I don’t think the skin tone of High Elves ever really defined them, and Blizzard has a track record of bucking those trends dating back all the way to Warcraft 3 when they fleshed out the orcs background, turning them from totally evil to only sometimes evil but mostly just brutal but honorable.
So the idea that Blizzard is suppose to adhere to the rules that may or may not have been set by Tolkien (although still take inspiration from his works), doesn’t really hold water.
The stupid nuances of IRL human race and representing fictional races in fiction are at play here. I don’t care about the skin colour in the slightest, it’s the “”“principle”"", if one could deem to refer to it as such, of representing them as the same IRL “race” of people. Nit picky nonsense, if I do say so myself. But I still think it’s dumb. Have 'em all Asian, or whatever, but IMO it should have been consistent.
Literally inconsequential, but I’ll go to many lengths to complain about that abomination of a filum.
She had blood in the Snow, she was present during the siege of Ogrimmar, she had a comic where she and her dad reconnected and she was part of the Order hall for priest/was part of the Dark Iron recruitment.
Considering said chain probably endeared her to people as oppose to wanting to have her chucked down Ironforge’s lava I’d say it was a good scenario.
The fact quite a few Horde players do not make that distinction tells me this is a personal thing. They keep complaining that people like Magni/Khadgar are just as much Alliance as say Thrall was in Cata.
Even ignoring that we have had Brann running around and we always had a Dwarf NPC or two always being part of expansions.
Operation Gnomeragan happened just 10 years ago. Blizzard has always been fairly slow in giving races the spotlight. As show by how long it took for the draenei to get content.
Depend on how you view. Yrel at the very least is as Alliance partisan as possible:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yrel+voice+hots
That is not how it was present. It was presented in a way that you can’t simply take out your anger on everyone, regardless of their level of guilt or innocence. That justice cannot lead to genocide.
Then you were here when everyone was saying that Jaina is goinb to end up a raid boss due to her whole dismantle the Horde advice to Varian.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone say having nuance, no matter how inconsequential, in their story is a bad thing.
I actually wonder if it’s precisely because they’re the only race based firmly on Anglo-Europeans and Anglo-Americans originally. They’re firmly White Anglo Saxons with Protestant-Anglican-Catholic overtones.
There’s no “risk” if they mess up their story, unlike the way many of the other races (e.g. Night Elves, Tauren, Trolls) are based on IRL subaltern groups that carry more risk.
Especially, well *gestures around * look at how everyone reacts when they attempt and without exception mess up Every Other Race.
This isn’t true. Within antiquity mythologies and subsequent folklore, elves come in at least two separate races. Tolkien, inasmuch he’s the father of both Warhammer and WoW, even established caste hierarchies within the elves; their homogeneity is because he considered them almost like the “lower” angelic race below Maiar, as a sort of metaphor for “unfallen humanity” (so no expulsion from Eden, and no separation of ethnicity post-Babel).
But a misconception is that pre-Babel, humans all looked the same.
Plus, Elves are the Eevee-volution of WoW.
Plus Sylvanas has the loaded baggage of
Calia is a Blonde (Light-Undead) Human whose only trauma is “I don’t know where my husband and daughter are” and “My brother went crazy and I feel bad about it sorta”.
MUCH more manageable for Blizzard.
I couldn’t agree more. I find it hard to believe that anyone was happy with BFA story regardless of their faction.
i agree however there are people that doubled down the support for muh queen even after all this time, hard to believe but yeah it is what it is.
I think a lot of people support her to spite blizzard for making her a villain.
She was a villain since Warcraft 3, and a really clear and obvious villain since vanilla WoW. There are just lots of people slow on the uptake because she has a waifu body and sang a sad song once.
I know some did but i cant shake the feeling most did it to simp for sylvanas, i admit it could be confirmation bias since well at the start of the expansion you could see the posts of people simping for muh queen and the wow reddit still has sylvanas fanart, plus we dont have hard numbers for squat.
maybe, I cheered for at the start because I though horde be good in this faction war. She could of been cool to fight under if she was honorable.
Then it was to spite blizzard and hope another civil war wouldn’t happen. Now I am must sick of it lol and want to move on.
To date, Orcs have taken a backseat to a Troll, and a Undead elf ruling the Horde as Warchief. Meanwhile the Alliance has had only humans calling the shots, and probably always will be because of the human power-fantasy fixation that poisons the faction. Blizzard has gone out of their ways to cripple or undermine other races that could possibly rival Stormwind and prop it up as the only possible cornerstone of the Alliance. They just cannot tolerate another race having the spotlight for the faction.
I’d be lying that if High King has to stick around, I want to see a non-human High King/Queen not only to break up the story stagnation and lack of diversity that cripples the Alliance as a faction; but to watch the die-hard Alliance (and MHP’s) fanboys lose their minds on the internet. There are so many people who simply cannot handle a story or cope with one where humans aren’t the favored top-dogs with blatant author favoritism.