Can you elaborate on what you mean by “struck down”?
It’s a pretty silly take to say any race can’t be evil. Everyone has the capacity for evil, and it is rare that evil people are evil in their own mind.
The problem with the Warcraft story has nothing to do with who is evil and who isn’t. The problem is repetition of story and false promises.
The Orcs for example, fell to Demonic corruption, genocided the Draenei, invaded Azeroth, freed themselves of Demonic corruption, yet continued on their rampage, doing everything the Burning Legion wanted them to do regardless, nearly ending humanity. Then, Thrall freed them from interment camps before setting out to start a new life in isolation, where they can have a fresh start with a peaceful life.
Blizzard has not shown this new leaf being turned over. Thrall utterly failing to control the Horde and more negative aspects of Orcish culture. Warsong raiding Ashenvalse despite Thrall condemning it. The practice of Slavery continuing underground despite Thrall banning it. Then of course we get Garrosh. And that is just orcs, the Undead is a whole other story.
It is clear that Blizzard decided to make Thrall an outlier when it comes to Orc culture. We see in Warcraft 3 what the Horde could look like through Thrall’s rose tinted glasses. Whereas Grom’s Blood Thirsty, spontaneous and short sightedness was a much truer avatar for the typical orc mindset. Which is how you get someone like Garrosh.
The Horde is always going to fall short in the morality race with the Alliance. They are constantly in-fighting, they enslave each other, they mostly solve their problems with violence. And I think a lot of Horde players are confused by this, because since WoW, Blizzard has merged two factions that have very different motivations.
The Horde was all about redemption and new beginnings. The Forsaken were about vengeance and victimhood. And I think that muddles a lot of the identity development that took place in WC3. The Kalimdor Orcs are not begrudged over the internment camps, they know what they did, why they did it, and that they were wrong to do so. They would be more concerned that the humans had followed them accross the sea, bringing Old Hatreds to a place where that was supposed to be left behind.
The Night Elves have the same problem. They don’t aligned with the Alliance thematically, and I think that confuses the player base as to what the Night Elves actually are, instead often perceived as “Purple humans”
Which is why I think WoW has been the worst thing for Warcraft lore. Despite that I have given many years of my life to the game. The main story of Warcraft post WC3 is just a hot mess of anime fan fiction.
It’s Dragon Ball Z. Season after season, the same story unfolds in subtlety different ways.
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Cry or call out the alliance pretending it was a righteous attack and not in any way an agressive attack on a civilian target?
Cata Taurajo is what we need more of. Both sides have a reason for what they did, Alliance did something bad because of a mistake, no one was villainized in their own questing. Then some stupid book comes out and we have the Tauren leader basically apologizing that civilians got in the way of alliance firebombs and inconvenienced their totally ok action.
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I don’t see any horde players complain about taurajo lol. I just see them use it as evidence that the alliance aren’t perfect angels (nor should they be in order for there to be an interesting story.)
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If the Alliance is getting the Villain Bat Treatment, then that would mean the Horde would be getting the Victim Bat Treatment.
I personally don’t think Blizz wants either of them options.
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Well that’s the problem. You’re phrasing the concept of the Alliance not being perfect and occasionally making aggressive moves and not just being Stupid Good paragons of all that is right as villain batting. Just let it be two world powers butting heads in a normal way, there might be some skirmishes that one side instigates, but that don’t need to be villified. Resource squabbles, getting strategic territory, stuff like that that’s just two sides who are both in it for their own interests competing against each other. Not villains and victims.
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It took me one minute to come up with a scenario to disprove that.
Alliance, tired of Horde aggression, decide to set up more base camps in preparation of inevitable Horde escalation. They mercilessly wipe out a centaur encampment, children included, to set themselves up in Northern Barrens along the big valley cutting up the Barrens. Centaur bodies strew the ground, broken on the rocks far below.
Bad guy Alliance does not need to be “burns down Crossroads”.
And that’s assuming we have to stick with AvH stuff.
You don’t fool me Doness.
I was more meaning flipping the Script between Garrosh/Theramore or Sylvanas/Teldrassil. Closest we come is Jaina and Oggrimar after Theramore, but Thrall arrives to save the day.
I don’t think Blizz could follow through with something like Jaina destroying Oggrimar.
There is some dirty Alliance stuff during BFA but after Teldrassil it doesn’t feel that dirty in comparison.
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Well, no, not the city equivalent to Stormwind. But Thunderbluff or SMC? Sure. But, again, it’d require an opposite “pyrrhic victory” of the sacrifice of the Exodar. I could see it happening, regardless of Ion’s “we’re done with faction stuff” because that’s what was said after SoO. And unlike BfA, this would actually be different by the simple fact an aggressive Alliance is different.
But you can tarnish the Alliance without going full Big Evil. You could go smaller, bigger, whatever you want. This tit-for-tat thing is old and tired.
Why not an aggressive, dark faction within the Alliance doing things off-books?
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Making the alliance darker is simpler than that actually. We simply need more Stormheim scenarios and blizz needs to stop whitewashing such events 
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Umbric tainted T-rex eggs with Void Magic to make a full grown Void T-Rex that wrecked a lot of Zandalari and then kills a Son of Gonk/Rezen.
Anvil Thane Thurgeddon summons a Magma Elemental that rampages through hundreds of Gallywix’s flunkies.
The 2nd half of the Alliance War Campaign has us raid Gallywix’s pleasure palace and tear up his golf course, trash his hotel, and burn his grills. It is finish able without killing the guests, but they are hostile and you have to work at avoiding aggro.
The first half of the War Campaign has the Alliance taking out Reliquary agents. Later we consign Horde Ambassadors to the Void.
The Alliance does some dirty stuff but with Teldrassil kicking things off it all looks like small potatoes. And none of it even really reaches Brennadam levels where parents are impaled to walls in front of their children.
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Stormheim wasn’t even dark… They stopped the Horde from Enslaving a race of angelic-like beings. That’s just… An averagely decent thing to do.
Have the Night Elves go back to the Long Vigil mentality. Anyone who enters the Forest of Northern Kalimdor is killed on sight, Alliance or Horde. Showcase Kaldorei savagery. The corpses of trespassers are staged at the entrances to Kaldorei territory as a warning.
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But even the things you mentioned? How dirty are they?
Void elves used void to MC a dinosaur to fight their enemies. A magma elemental killed some enemies. Property damage was done.
That’s not dark. It’s not evil. It’s quest events not unlike what quests have been since Vanilla.
Yeah, under a microscope they’re evil. But in Elwynn you are straight up sent to do population control on murlocs in a lake and murder kobolds for a candle-maker so he can sell their candles.
Under that same microscope, we casually attempt genocide on the regular. But WoW doesn’t exist or even work under that microscope.
The reality is, what your calling Dark is treated as at best slightly off-white, because contextually to the world? It’s only slightly off-white.
Yup, that’s the kind of problem I have with the storytelling. Anytime the Alliance does something bad like the betrayal of the Horde in the beginning of the zone, there’s an excuse that makes it a good thing.
Also, this one leaves Odyn in a good light when they could have done something with just how free are Odyn’s Valkyr considering his history. Screw that guy, when do we take him down?
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Even if we ignore the fact Genn was retroactively right to suspect Sylvanas betrayed the Alliance, even if we ignore the fact Genn was retroactively proven right to attack because Sylvanas was up to things in Stormheim, his attack isn’t even dark or evil. I mean… She did manslaughter his son after invading his kingdom. Seeking justice or revenge for horrible deeds is, again, just off-white.
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I mean, if you’re going to bring that up, I think it’s only fair to point out that she killed his son when he and Genn had ambushed her and were trying to kill her first. Not like she went out to find him to hurt Genn.
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And if we’re bringing that up, I’ll again point to the whole “army of Forsaken invading Gineas” thing and remind you that Sylvanas was the enemy commander.
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I’m not gonna deny Genn his desire for revenge, just that “In a war she didn’t let us kill her without killing one of us” doesn’t hold up on a political stage for breaking a truce and ambushing people you’re supposed to be working with during a massive cosmic invasion.
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To be fair, Sylvanas never wanted to invade gilneas, even if they weren’t facing angry wolf men, she knew gilneas would’ve been a meat grinder for the forsaken. The whole invasion could be blamed on Garrosh for forcing her into it to begin with.
And I only used Stormheim as a example of where both sides could’ve argued they were in the right/ But like you said and what I said, blizzard has this problem of ultimately whitewashing alliance aggression into being the correct choice.
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True.
BUT!!!
According to Legion questing, we know the Alliance between the Horde and Alliance died on the Broken Shore, because that is why the Class Orders took over. The truce was done when Genn went on his own after an enemy of Gilneas. And the NPCs used for that battle? Gilneans. His people, seeking justice for their fallen kingdom and prince in the aftermath of a broken war treaty.
Not dark. Not grey. Off-white.
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