I’d call him (Illidan) Alliance-adjacent or Alliance-themed. Going into BfA, all his story ties and roots were with Alliance races and characters, although the addition of playable BE demon hunters helped a bit.
Why didn’t he stop being Horde, in your opinion? What did he do while he was head of the Earthen Ring that made him non-neutral?
Yes, thank you. You said it better than I did.
You remember in the trailer for Firelands, when Ragnaros showed Thrall Orgrimmar burning to the ground? It was showing what he truly cared about being lost. Orgrimmar, the heart of the Horde. He may have gone neutral, but his heart was still Horde, it was still the embodiment of what he cared about.
I feel the same for Bolvar. To me, if he was going to see a vision of what he loved being destroyed, it’d be Stormwind. That’s still where his heart lies, it’s still Blue.
Illidan, to me, would be either more worldly, in that the world being destroyed it what taunts him, or personal, in that it’d be Tyrande and Malf. Sure, you could say them being Alliance is like how Orgrimmar is Horde, but the ties that bind Illidan to those two have nothing to do with race or faction, they are entirely personal.
Illidan has burned down a Nelf town and slaughtered its inhabitants, as well as fought the Alliance and held one of their paladin leaders captive. He’s expressed that he doesn’t care for the night elf people, and only helped them in WCIII cause Tyrande asked him to.
That’s why he’s neutral. He doesn’t care for the Alliance. But I believe Bolvar still cares more for the Alliance and Stormwind than anything else, I believe his heart still beats for them, just like how Thrall was still Horde at heart when he was neutral.
I don’t think a currrent racial leader should be a “neutral” world character.
i see that diferently–it’s less about Orgrimmar being Horde than about Orgrimmar being his city, the one he founded.
I also just don’t like the implication that Thrall is unable to care about the whole of Azeroth. Because I didn’t have any trouble believing that he did.
I agree. It allows for more individual stories, as it also allows the characters within a faction to develop without having to share as much screen time as you’re also juggling fewer characters. It can help reinforce the themes, messages, and overall fantasy of the experience.
…But the downside is that it does eat up a lot of time and resources. And writing/world building for the Horde, which defies a lot of standard fantasy conventions, is likely more of a challenge for the staff.
While it sounds great, what this approach usually does is have the Horde and Horde character end up as afterthoughts for content that’s more geared for Alliance (or rather, Humans/Elves).
Oh come on everytime we follow a Horde character’s story we get a horrific expansion.
So lets just stop it.
I mean even if we did who would lead?
Thrall? Baine? Gallywix?
He is still an alliance character, his daughter is alliance. It would of been like Surfang being a main character in shadowlands if he wasn’t used in BFA. because to your logic he hasn’t done anything since LK.
At the end of the day, all these alliance netural heros is just anoyying.
Warlords - Kadhgar
Legion we had Kadhgar, Vellen, Malfurion, and like most alliance leaders minus Andiun and Gen
BFA - Magni
Shadowlands - another alliance character
would it be too much to have Vojin or Bowsambi or even Nazul for the horde? if not neutral. Remember how everyone cried when they had to work with Thrall…
That was an implication you came upon yourself.
All heroes care about the safety of Azeroth, it’s where most of our civilisations and people live. It literally goes without saying. Tirion cared for Azeroth. Malfurion cares for Azeroth. All heroes do.
But people still have parts of the world they care about more than others. I doubt Thrall would’ve been as upset to have seen, like, Utgarde Keep or Maraudon or Booty Bay burning in Ragnaros fire as he would be seeing a Horde city burn. Sure that’s not to say he’d feel nothing, but he definitely cares more about Orgrimmar, because that’s a completely natural thing.
I don’t even know how you came to the idea that there’s an implication that I was saying “Thrall is unable to care about the whole of Azeroth” and that’s why I think Orgrimmar was chosen. It’s just a complete reach on your end.
His heart lies with the Horde, and when Ragnaros was mocking him, he used Orgrimmar to do so because he has such a deep and personal connection to it. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about the rest of Azeroth, obviously.
I have loved ones who’s safety I care about more, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t care if a complete stranger got hurt or died when I could’ve helped. Does having a loved one I care more about imply I don’t care about anyone I don’t love? Of course not.
It sounded to me like you were saying “He’s biased, so he can’t really be neutral.” If that isn’t what you meant, then we’re good.
It could very well be a money issue, but I won’t rule out it be a designer or design team that isn’t bothered personally by the World characters being Alliance or Alliance-themed or what not and them just taking a route with less workload on themselves.
That said I honestly have no idea what the actual issue is causing this is, but it is an issue and one that shouldn’t be too difficult to work around. Cinematics and cutscenes aside in WOD they had both Exarch Maladar and Lady Liandrin there to represent each side in Talador.
Horde Pride is dead. Why would there be any Horde quest givers? If we the Horde player don’t feel pride then that means the NPC’s also feel no Horde Pride and so they have no desire to hand out quests to us. Horde is real. But that Horde is dead…
quick interjection, thought of this when i saw this thread, idk if its been said, but i hope kael and miss vashj have an interaction at some point in this expansion
Blizzard really need do something to give the Horde a purpose to exist outside the Alliance. As it stands they have become Alliance light at this point, they need something that makes them stand apart from the Alliance and do something the Alliance can’t or wont.
Having Thrall come back as the earth warder and have his own connection to Azeroth would be a good start so Horde don’t need Magni but that ship kinda sailed. Vol’jin becoming a Loa could be a good start, maybe the Loa have a more important role to play in Azeroths Development into becoming a titan.
They really need some character development and overall building up to make them seem more relevant to the stories going forwards. best option would be for them to get a few Novels or comics building them up so they can keep development in game more balanced.
At the same time they gotta take the Alliance off its pedstal of being the only ones who truly stand for Azeroth. Really the Allaince needs to go off and actually do something wrong for once that could hurt the world.
Seriously Blizzard? You could had let Tyrande and Vol’jin take the spotlight to give back some sense of proud to their factions and giving a good close to 2 characters that had been heavily affected by the recent writing.
Why do we have to follow another generic human with no stake on this situation other than “easy to write”?
Dude, why do you keep pushing this “we the Horde player” angle?
We all know that your main is Alliance. You got outed ages ago and were quite upset about it. But then you keep pushing this persona really hard.
You don’t have to pretend to be a hardcore Horde player for your ideas to be valid. It just makes you seem disingenuous.
I too am a proud Horde player.
Well horde players seem to link there pride too fighting the alliance
I’m curious- where are you getting word that we follow Bolvar “around” the Shadowlands? Do we have enough details? It could be that he just gives us a few initial quests and shows up in the end.
On that note, did we really do a lot with Magni before 8.3? I think people just notice it more because on alts, all the HoA quests come together at once. I feel that Khadgar was more involved in Legion than Magni was in BfA.
Part of the reason I switched to Alliance. Horde lore doesn’t matter when it comes to neutral content, its all about the Alliance backstory.
bolvar is not an alliance character anymore the moment he put the crown he became something else, something like when arthas picked froustmourne for the first time.
khadgar as well is not anymore alliance when he decided to abandon us before the faction war. the true definition of neutrality.
however it would be dishonest for me to say that him and taelia interacting isn’t an alliance story because that will be crucial to taelia’s character.
it seems like she will become an important ally character in the future.
i can see the problem of forcing horde players into that.
i just wish that blizzard stop forcing players into things like that, they should either dissolve factions or create 2 separate stories.
They need to stay on creating separate stories, because whenever they do neutral/cross faction stuff, we end up with the aforementioned situation where it ends up being a story about former Alliance stars exploring a lot of backstory while the Horde kind of just tags along or gets a dungeon/section/character added seemingly after the fact.