Just out of curiosity.
If you changed your main faction, what role did the story have in your decision to do so?
And if you did change faction, lemme know which direction you went. I suspect, and kinda wanna confirm, if the story drove more people to the Alliance than to the Horde.
I think you mean BfA’s story in particular. But the Story of WoW has made me change which Faction I would main.
When I started in Vanilla, I was a Troll Rogue. And I grew to love the Darkspear. I loathed Garrosh as soon as I met him. The moment I heard he would be Warchief, and racially segregate Org, I rerolled a Night Elf Druid, in late Wrath.
I would not serve in Garrosh’s Horde. Racial segregation and racial suppression within my own team is a bridge too far. I didn’t even play Horde Alts until it was confirmed we would be removing Garrosh.
I still mained a Night Elf Druid through most of Legion. But at the end of Nighthold, with a content lull, I checked out the Horde side of the story.
Stormheim made me swap my Druid to the Horde. Once I saw that the Horde and Sylvanas were simply attacked out of revenge, after the cooperation and unity at the Broken Shore, I was disgusted with the Alliance. Especially since no one in the story batted an eye. I felt outrage.
“Is this the game, then? The Horde Warchief can be attacked at any whim? The Alliance suffers no consequences? Well - if the story won’t get any justice for the Horde, I will fight for it in game. Alone if I must!”
Mid Legion, as an Alliance Night Elf Druid Main, Stormheim made me return to the Horde.
I did not expect the story to actually turn to outright war. But I am glad for it. Stormheim really ground my gears.
TLDR:
Garrosh repelled me from the Horde.
Stormheim repelled me from the Alliance. So much so, that Teldrassil and everything after is a march for justice in my eyes.
I play more with my alliance toons but only because they actually got a new storyline and it’s very different from the horde one, only WoD did something like that with Yrel and the draenei.
Besides I want to unlock the dark irons and the kultirans more later, also there isn’t a lot to do outside of raids and mythic plus.
Nope. Through the best of times and through the worst of times, Hordie4Life.
Nope, Alliance4life and before that EbonBlade4life
You know, i have a bit of a hard time believing that story. Which is odd, since i have found your posts to be usually reasonable and well thought out.
I could maybe buy it, since racial suppression is a thing that still happens in some places so maybe it hit closer to home while genocide is more rare- but, dude, i have a bit of trouble believing you felt moral outrage at virtual suppression but not virtual genocide.
I apologize if im coming off as rude, for the record. Just pointing out i dont agree with you on this one.
Dont agree or dont believe me?
Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. I do not see a purpose about arguing whether I hold an opinion or not.
I said that is my view. You don’t believe me.
If you simply do not believe me, that is fine. Hard time away.
This thread was about our reasons. I do not want to derail it over justifying said reasons. I am not trying to convince anyone about anything - just relating my experience to the OPs topic.
I will say: I have argued about whether genocide even qualifies at Teldrassil, and whether the Story uses that word only as an Alliance opinion. It was a War the Alliance provoked. The Night Elves are part of the Alliance. “This is War.” So we are not even working in the same premise.
Garrosh was mistreating his own people.
I don’t feel any moral outrage about destroying aggressive enemies in war. I do feel outrage about a leader mistreating the people he is supposed to lead, based purely on race.
I mean, I will take a compliment where I can get it.
No, but I HAVE gotten around to playing Alliance a lot more just to see what kind of story they got on their side. And safe to say, when they got Robert Baratheon and Ellaria Sand to voice Daelin and Katherine proudmoore respectively, and additionally have Samwell Tarley and Meera Reed to voice other characters, it’s pretty difficult to complain about their story in BfA other than the usual “Human potential” problem. Overall, Jaina has been awesome this expansion, Mathias Shaw has become a fairly cool character(dat cinematic mustache), and mekkatorque has finally been getting some much needed attention after years of lore irrelevance. In fact, a lot of their characters are receiving a good amount of attention. Tyrande, Malf, Maiev, Shandris, the 2/3 Major night elf characters get an entire storyline dedicated to them. Heck, they even finally decided to give us a bit of Dwarf action with the DI, Brann, and Falstad actively participating in both the war and Azeroth arcs.
And finally, naievity, lack of experience, and overall disdain for the title aside, Anduin has been doing a dam solid job as High King. Neither being too restrictive and authoritarian, but at the same time, keeping everyone on the same page without alienating or doing something to anger his allies or test their faith in him. Angry Night elf fans can complain all they want, but Anduin is actually being much more fair to them than Varian was. Varian probably would have told Tyrande to sit down and “be patient” when she angerily stormed into the keep demanding to dispatch troops to Darkshore.
rembers A little patiemce scenario and shudders
But Anduin just simply told her that he was simply incapable of doing so, due to his troops already being stretched thin from both campaigns in Arathi and Zandalar. He didn’t say anything that would infer some form of tactical or intellectual superiority over her, he simply just told her the way it was. He didn’t stop her from leaving or force her to submit to his authority or try telling her what was best for her own people, he just simply let her go do her thing and that was it. All he could do is trust in Tyrande’s ability to suceed in her mission and hope for the best. If anything, Night elf fans should be thanking Anduin just for being such a chill dude.
Alliance has it pretty dam good, actually. If too much humanity is the biggest issue then you really don’t know how good you have it right now. At least your heroes are acting in-character and aren’t running around screaming “for the alliance” while impaling civilians onto walls with spears and fighting a war of death that conflicts with many of their interests. Rexxar, for example, a character who left the old Horde for it’s unending lust for death and destruction is now fighting in war that is pretty much all about death and destruction without inquiring about the circumstances leading up to the war and the reasons for fighting it.
Fair enough. Since I will never be able to convince you that Teld was a genocide while you will never be able to convince me that it wasnt, further discussion on that topic will be pointless.
But while i will concede that genn screwed up and inderectly started this mess, it was Sylvanas that escalated this to a total destruction war while it could have remained as a “normal” war, as if it were.
But you were right about not derailing the thread. Lets table this for now and resume another day
Yeah. That G word can bring an escalation of its own into threads. It can be an all encompassing discussion that many threads eventually end up at - but 7 posts is too early, lol.
I am interested to see if others had similar experiences to me. Before it degenerates and scares people off.
I wonder if more Horde players went Alliance than Alliance players went Horde?
Yes, and it was from Horde to Alliance. The thing is, I’ve always considered myself a Horde main, and I’ve played Horde the most despite having played on both sides from time to time to see both sides of the story and what not. This time, the transition seems permanent.
Honestly, to keep it short and simple, it feels like everything from Mists going forward has been a gradual but conscious effort to chip away at everything I liked about the Horde for the sake of pandering and subversion. After the first civil war, I thought they’d never be stupid enough to do this again, but the writing was on the wall the minute orcs were retconned to be naturally evil in Warlords of Draenor and Sylvanas was made Warchief and the whole Stormheim fiasco was effectively her first action as leader of the Horde during Legion. I knew the villain bat was coming, but I didn’t think it would be this grotesque.
The Horde and Sylvanas are actually worse now than they were under Garrosh. Their war crimes surpass the True Horde’s, the rationale for the war in itself is paper thin, and (seeing as this is only two in-universe years after Siege) where there should be unanimous revolts and violent attempts to force Sylvanas to step down without it escalating into a full civil war, even Mak’gora be damned, we have ignorance and callousness among the characters and the occasional “Are we the baddies?” moments.
It only makes things worse for the characters driving the story to be caricatures of themselves to the point where they might as well not even be the same characters anymore. Team honor is a spineless, passive-aggressive disgrace, and team loyalist is full of cartoon villains, and that’s not even touching the people in the middle like Rexxar who have clearly gone more senile than Drek’thar. There is nobody worth rooting for, and it’s really hard to sympathize with the Horde (story-wise, I pity the players like no one else) at this point when all this really translates to in-universe is that Thrall was wrong and his faith was entirely misplaced.
After a while, I just sort of lost interest in the Horde since there was no way I could immerse myself in it from there on out. Forum arguments over the story didn’t help much either. I can’t think of a better wakeup call that I didn’t belong anymore than realizing that when the time for debate rolls around, I agree with blue side more than red side.
Not exactly. I started maining Alliance during Legion, mostly because I was invited to raid with friends who play Alliance. But there was nothing much during Legion to make playing my max-level Horde characters worth it. I eventually got them all up to 110 last spring. BfA has actively driven me away from wanting to play my Horde characters.
Yes. I faction changed to Final Fantasy 14.
I would just like to point out that, perhaps more important than Anduin labeling it Genocide is the fact that Sylvanas muses that her actions would end the Kaldorei as a society if not a people.
Teldrassil was Genocide whether you want to bend over backwards to claim otherwise or not.
Also this
Also also this this.
I never much cared for Elves in WoW. Now I’m an Elezen killing things with a book.
Though I wouldn’t say BFA solely got me to quit WoW. It’s more of a collection of things that have been building up for quite some time. BFA was just the thing that broke my back.
Wait until you get to Ishgard, who boy do the Elezen there have…opinions
I’m an alt-aholic though skew and main heavily towards Horde, regardless of story. Three 100+ dreanei and a lowbie void elf to 10(?) 100+ Horde and hands full of lowbie alts.
I’ve always checked out the blue side for the story shortly after Horde, maybe even having a geared Alliance to hunt some RP griefers. I’ve always enjoyed the aesthetic of all of the races, mannerisms, cultures, story, etc. If this expansion hasn’t gotten me to fully jump ship yet, I dont think anything will
Seeing how much more mature FF14 is compared to WoW in regards to what they’ll include in the game, this news is actually pretty exciting.
I cannot wait for those opinions.
See, the thing stopping me from playing FFXIV is that:
1- dont like anime graphics
2- still have friends here while dont know anyone there.
3- dont feel like paying all that cash
Ive been wanting to try lotro though. Anyone know if its good?
Certainly not.
I don’t, and have never, cared about the Horde or the Alliance. I play this game because I make characters that I like, who are rooted in cultures that I like and wear aesthetics that I like. Some of these characters happen to be of Alliance races, but the majority are of Horde races.
Nothing about the Horde/Alliance debacle that’s going on right now has significantly changed these calculations.