And this wouldn’t even make me blink. The whole “We need to raise more Undead” plot thread in Cata came completely out of left field, was only relevant for Tirisfal, Silverpine and one questline in Hillsbrad- then never ever came up again.
There was never even a hint at a population problem. Nor any suggestion the undead needed help reproducing. I figured they weren’t doing it the old fashion way. But as the Forsaken are basically vampire zombies I figured they’d just have to give someone a love bite, or some other trope.
Only to find out werewolves work that way. But they gotta outsource that stuff to some flying Swedish chicks. Unless it’s Dark Mirror then giving somebody the ole chomp works fine.
As far as I know yeah, I was told he has a special dialogue for Blood Elves and it happens to carry over to the Void Elves. I should really walk my Void Elf Rogue all through it and compare it to a different character sometime.
I think in some respects Kael’thas would have probably resented the Void Elves for choosing the Alliance but at the same time respect their willingness to tap into all forms of dangerous magic to protect themselves, sort of an inverse to how I imagine he would feel about the Blood Elves now.
It makes sense if you consider that the Forsaken’s numbers were always pretty low, which was the impression that I had gotten in TFT and Vanilla. The Forsaken were sufficiently few in number that they seemed to be outnumbered by the Scarlet Crusade in Tirisfal alone. In Vanilla they gave the impression of being more of a gang or tribe than a nation, let alone a civilization.
There’s definitely a discrepancy in setting importance, I won’t deny that. But it also didn’t help that some of the ties that WERE there seem dropped.
The Lich King being the primary example. That should have been just as much a forsaken thing than it was humans, but the forsaken just showed up to screw everything up in the Wrathgate, and thereafter I remember it just being Ebon Blade and Tirion.
Cata had Thrall (to everyone’s chagrin) but from what I remember, it didn’t feel like there was any tie-in to Deathwing’s part of the horde’s history and instead just opted for Thrall being there because he was the best at giving Azeroth a planet wound compress.
And then again with Legion. That should have been a planet-wide thing but the only “monster horde” rep was Sylvanas sneaking around to do horrible things while we got to see Velen, Illidan, Turalyon and Alleria spearhead everything in the end. It just felt like a number of missed opportunities that could have made the horde feel more connected in a positive way, but the writing just…didn’t.
They should have just had the Horde join the Alliance in Warcraft 3 and have a “factionless” WoW as a result. Boy that would have solved so many narrative problems.
edit: The Horde isn’t even all that ugly now. And I don’t just mean “elves” I mean the core races of the Horde have actually gotten cuddlier it seems with each model update (except undead, although even they have “pretty goth” options now)
I don’t think he has any love for the Horde, but I imagine he absolutely despises the Alliance and would simply be thankful the Blood Elves are not in any way part of them to the point he doesn’t care where they land as long as it’s not with the Alliance.
That said, I know I would cop flak for it but I would have liked him to have stayed an Alliance character because the WC3-era Blood Elves were a proper way to add some form of edge to the Alliance, I think on some level Blizzard is ashamed of other things like Worgen because their savage fury nature just isn’t as easy of a fitting sell compared to elves, because the Alliance was always founded from the ground up with elves as part of their thematic units. Even Metzen admitted Worgen didn’t fit the Alliance at all at one point in an interview.
This felt further cemented to me in BfA when Void Elves were everywhere in the faction war but Worgen weren’t anywhere except for Genn giving the occasional gruff sentiment about something in his human form.
Wasn’t this by design? I thought they said worgen were specifically meant to be their second try at giving the alliance a monster race (since they botched draenei so badly) as well as trying to encourage horde fans to give the alliance a try with a comfort race, the same way blood elves were meant to draw alliance fans to the horde.
It’s funny because I started in TBC so you’d think that should have been normalized for me from the start, but I distinctly remember complaining to the friend who introduced me to the game “what’s the point in people playing the monster faction if most people are just going to run around as elves anyway?”
At a first glance, I was disappointed that draenei went alliance too, but then I read up on them more and the race turned me off real quick.
That’s actually another thing that I don’t like about the Horde. The sheer number of elves. And the Blood Elves are such an aesthetic clash with the rest of the Horde yet also so numerous that said clash is going to be there pretty much permanently and it’s a constant distraction.
But yeah, the dominance of Blood Elves wasn’t just because they were a pretty Horde race. They weren’t just a pretty race, they were anime. And I suspect that remains the draw for the bulk of Blood Elf players. And also, at the time, considerably prettier than any Alliance race because they had higher poly models.
Blizzard knew that Blood Elves would be popular (which is why they were put on the Horde in the first place) but for some reason they didn’t anticipate the sheer magnitude of the Weeb Tide that can never be undone. Even relenting in Legion and finally giving the Alliance anime as well doesn’t look like it’s going to help.
Oh god I just had a flashback to my worst ever dungeon run and it was Blackrock Depths with 4 blood elves and it was a paladin and a rogue and a mage and some other guy and the paladin couldn’t hold threat on more than one mob at a time and the rogue was utterly incapable of attacking the same target as the warrior and the mage was exclusively using Blizzard on single targets and it took us over an hour to clear the first room of dwarves and then when we barely beat the arena boss a caster dagger dropped and the rogue won the need roll and the other 3 party members congratulated him on it being a melee DPS upgrade and IT ACTUALLY WAS make the pain go away
I like Worgen but as much as it pains me to say it, i think they probably would have been a better fit on the Horde. They feel very defanged. Honestly could say the same for Night Elves too. If Nelves would have went horde i think they would have kept their Wc3 characteristics.
It is interesting how the Void Elves seem to be more of the Alliance’s “dark” themed race than the Worgen. Especially considering they’re still Thalassian Elves at the end of the day. And with the new customizations they can look even less corrupted than their initial models allowed.
Of what he knew of the Horde, he would of absolutely despised them, as the Orcs who rampaged his home and the Undead who decimated his people, I think one bigoted Alliance Commander and a his makeshift army would of been forgettable in comparison.
And leaving the Alliance was his Father’s blunder, one that Kael disagreed with.
Combined with his THEN friendly relations with the Night Elves, I think he would of been far more forgiving for Garithos.
To say nothing of joining a random group filled with elves, looking around and thinking to myself “I could be playing Alliance right now and get the same aesthetic experience but less weird.”
Because Blizz keeps undermining it, with no attempt to repair things after they have their fun. Mechanically, we have a Faction that was sold as the “Good Monster” Faction. Even with the inclusion of the Elves factored in, the entire damned Faction was built on that WC3 Premise. With every single race (including the ARs) joining the Faction based on those sort of principles. With the exception of the Bilgewater (who have since been Gazlowe’d); and the Forsaken (who were allowed in under the pretense that they might one day embody those principles). Which is where we run into issues.
Since the Horde (as a political organization) only makes a semblance of sense due to that WC3/Thrall’s Vision of it, whenever Blizz gets board and wants that good ol “Old Horde” … it takes a few … leaps.
1st) They need to install a Despot, traditionally by forcing them into a leadership position through some gimmick (Thrall’s nepotism or Vol’jin’s "spirits). And since they’re forced, they can’t really do anything to earn that position. They need to be “given” it by a respected rep.
2nd) They need to silence (or make convenient) every single theme or character who’d normally be opposed to said despot; let alone their actions. Until its convenient for said despot that they be allowed an opinion. Because the Despot’s story needs to progress for future content.
3rd) They have to ignore the consequences of “The Old Horde” … or skirt them entirely by relying on the WC3 Vision of the Faction they got board of to justify the Horde’s continued existence. They use the very vision of the Faction that justifies the Faction’s existence (mechanically and ideologically) as a safety net for their WC1-WC2 Fun. Subsequently damaging that WC3 idea.
4th) Finally, they bail. After using the WC3 Vision to save their plaything after they made it do something naughty … they avoid any attempts to repair it. They’ll create entire dimensions to avoid it. Because, ironically, the very ideology, themes, and characters they used to save the Faction … they have no interest in actually developing. At least not since WotLK.
It was specifically in an interview addressing the challenge of telling stories about certain races while still focusing on the Pandaren since it was during MoP at the time. He had admittedly said part of the problem with Draenei and Worgen is that they are much too new to the setting and that poses its own writing challenges for them, though he also did make note that their concept makes it very challenging to see them fit in any stories, whereas with Blood Elves he did find it very offputting seeing them with Goblins and Tauren but weren’t quite as worse off since they had established lore beforehand. (Consequently Blood Elves were very prominent in MoP, but Worgen and Draenei weren’t.)
Though when you see Worgen always in their human forms or how they are always seemingly written as more of a vassal to Stormwind or Night Elves, coupled with their lack of any conflict they provide compared to Void Elves who do butt heads with Light users, it sort of does tell me that they just don’t have any idea how to make Worgen fit anywhere due to their monstrous nature in an overly aesthetically pleasing faction whereas Void Elves work because they are still elves and don’t aesthetically clash as hard.
I think it’s also that Worgen flaws tend to present more as something that relate more to the Horde, such as controlling their rage and bloodlust which is much more inline with Horde stories, but not so much Alliance. Blizzard isn’t going to make them flip out and kill people or praise warfare like they might be inclined to allow for Orcs, but I think Blizzard is much less iffy with letting Alliance have shadowcasters that use abyssal magic to melt their enemies because that’s something that was already established by the Blood Mages that were iconically part of the Alliance in WC3.
Point taken, I would not lie that is a very important factor too in all this.
I kind of agree, I think if the Alliance has any hope of some sort of darker elements it has to play to what is thematically fitting for the faction, like how they are arguably more scholarly and self-righteous than the Horde which manifests in stories like Kael’thas and Arthas where one is willing to study the most perverse magic to protect their people whereas the other’s zealotry to smite evil in vengeful retribution culminated in his downfall. Some of element of that exists with Worgen and their desire to avenge their fallen prince and kingdom, but look at how Blizzard has forgotten that in favor of shifting that narrative to the Night Elves. The Worgen don’t have anything else to really bring that’s intriguing or presents meaningful flaws to the Alliance when that important element of their story is taken away from them, it was pretty much the only interesting story hook they even had if I have to be honest.
Is that for US realms? Because for EU I can tell that Vulpera aren’t more popular than Zandalari, even recently when I was doing Trial of Style after doing it for hours I encountered only one Vulpera.
Not to mention stuff like bgs or dungeons or just meeting them in open world.
Like in capital.
Even my friend who plays on Italian server said that both he and his guild member noticed how little they see them.
I figure I’m weird enough about the subject of worgen so I don’t want to ride my own biases so much (yet again) but in my opinion, I think it really doesn’t help that the worgen are conceptually based off of a race that preys on and converts humans…and then you have them ally. To me, two main fantasy werewolf themes are “peekaboo I’m a monster” and “I make more of myself by infecting you,” and as they’ve been currently written, I don’t think either of them work when put against horde races. No orc’s going to see a disguised worgen and think “Ah, a human, I can implicitly trust him as one of my own” and (I think) the meta reason why the horde races aren’t infectable is to avoid dealing with people asking for a horde version.
And it’s not that worgen on the alliance couldn’t work anyway; you’d just have to play up on that fear of those psychosis / rabies metaphors. But since the alliance has been written to be too idealized for that, it ruined that potential storyhook in the bud.
Edit: Night elves and worgen might have “flourished” in some aspects had they gone horde, but to try to be fair, the faction in general has overfocused on flaws over virtues so hard that they might have gone the opposite direction and be portrayed as bad in different ways. I can already imagine a horde nelf story about how horrible and awful it is for such a barbaric society to continue to uphold gender segregation before teaching a lesson about how blind theocracy is bad by villain-batting Elune and making Tyrande go crazy.
Then again, they’re halfway there on trying to tell that latter plot point anyway.
