Is it really hard for blizzard to not write the horde as a evil faction?
How is this story not different from MOP? We had a evil warchief lead to civil war and horde looses to the alliance.
This happened during the second war, MOP now BFA. To make it worse the writers seem to be going out of their way to retcon old lore to pin this narrative.
Why not just change the discription of the horde to.
Evil warchiefs and civil wars during faction war. Fight for alliance npcs during world ending threats.
Blizzard seems to only be able to write the Horde in civil wars. Say what you want about post WoTK, but before for that xpac, there was no real over arching story for WoW. WoTK had very little Horde involvement sadly and the Horde got it’s biggest new story since WC3 in Cata which started the mess.
This will be the 3rd time the Horde has had a civil war while fighting the Alliance. Important Horde characters reduced with little or no replacement to be seen.
Blizz needs to stop grouping all the races into one faction identity. The reason vanilla worked so well is because the Dwarves were busy killing Tauren for rocks and Orcs were struggling to survive in a desert.
The factions can have glue that binds them together but the nations need their own identities.
It’s happened in every expansion dude, just in most on a smaller scale.
In burning crusade, the alliance got thier wc2 heroes back, while the hordes went evil. While Kargath i’m fine with, Zul’jin and Kael’thas were done a great disservice because of it.
Wrathgate paved the way for the modern forsaken narrative, and earlier horde troops attacked alliance troops from behind.
Cata and Mist are obvious
Warlords retconned the entire orc race into being a rbunch of bloodthirsty jackasses, instead of making it the result of demon blood.
Legion had Sylvie try to enslave a valkyr, and blizzard has decided it was the hordes fault broken shore failed (Despite the fact it wasn’t in the slightest, the narrative is making the failure of broken shore a crime)
Bfa is Bfa
Worst things is, outside of these evil horde moments we get almost no focus in the plot as a whole, it’s always a faction made and run by humans, night elves, or draenei that leads everyone during the expansion.
We get a good Warchief like Vol’jin who’s a known pragmatist with plenty of “muh honur” and as a faction are set up on the road to redemption? Nope! Here’s Sylvanas cuz she’s a fan favorite and is easily marketable. You don’t like her? Well too bad, here’s MORE of her instead being openly cruel and malicious.
Do you not feel the faction pride yet? Here, how about we allow you to destroy an Alliance capital…an Alliance capital in which we mass murder innocent people. Wow! For the Horde! Burning civilians! Faction pride, yeah!
The answer is. No. Blizzard can’t write the Horde anymore unless they are either evil or going trough another identity crysis.
And the fact Blizz is retconing Wrathgate to make it look like Sylvanas ordered the incident that killed Saurfang’s son is as subtle as an axe in the face.
It’s obvious Blizzard wants to have a civil war, it wants Saurfang to be pissed and be portrayed as the “good side” as Sylvanas is the “evil one”. This build up is as obvious and childish as it can get.
And seriously the first Civil War on MoP was a thing, it made sense, the Horde never had a big inner conflict after Warcraft 3, but now again?
It makes the Horde look like a bunch of idiots! They just came out of a Civil war and had a normal Warchief for like…1 year or so! And now there’s another crazy tyrant sitting on the role as Warchief and people are complacent?
Baine, Lorthemar, Thalysra, Mayla, Geya’ra and Talanji are just “weirded out”? ONLY Saurfang said “You’re nuts, this is not the Horde”?
Or even you know, the people. You would think that after ONE crazy Warchief who nearly destroyed the Horde, people have 0 tolerance to evil, mad Warchief, but no…cause Blizzard wants a nonsensical faction war and can’t be bothered to give it motivation
Blizzard: The Horde are a band misunderstood peoples who, while not traditionally heroic, nevertheless fight to prove that they should be counted among Azeroth’s stalwart defenders.
Also Blizzard: By the way, are the storyboards for the main narrative arc where the Horde squeezes the blood out of every adorable puppy on Azeroth to make the Warchief’s wine back yet? Someone get Jamieson Kent Price on the horn, we may need to re-record Baine impotently clucking his tongue and dithering.
Blizzard is making things that are amateurs mistake levels of bad. Like:
They have no idea what they want. Where are they going with this? It feels like their goal is to just have another civil war and then have the next big cosmic treat walk in without adding anything new to the story.
When you get to the point where you have to change the past in order for your narrative to have a future, it’s a huge red flag. It means lack of ideas to move the plot forward.
By god it looks like a 12 year old is writting this! There’s no subtetly, no nuances, no gray, only childish evil vs goody two shoes. No, I take it back. It looks like a story written by an angsty, overly edgy teenager who’s just adding dark stuff to make it LOOK like a mature story but at the end of it just makes it look more childish. You can’t just ad children being burned to death, child labor on Kul Tiras on the Ashvane Foundry and then have SAILORS CUSSING LIKE KIDS! It makes no bloody sense
This story i feel was created in a board meeting, not out of the writers desire to make a compelling story. Blizzard Killed Vol’jin not because they thought it was good, but because they want a sylvanas raid and they felt like they needed a reason for it.
Blizzard writers are the type of bad writers that plague many industries, they first create a cool set piece then instead of trying to organically forge a story and including it were it makes sense, they force a story to happen around the set piece. Rule of Cool can work, as long as write the coolness around the story, not write a story around the coolness.
Like when you are building a narrative it’s like a a puzzle. Every piece needs to connect to all the other naturally, you can’t force it to go where it isn’t supposed to or else the final product will have this flaw that’s gonna stick out and people will notice.
BfA’s story is like a puzzle where the person is trying to hammer the pieces together rather than trying to make it fit.
And it is as you say, they build the story around the coolness and not the other way around, for example:
The Battle for Lordaeron’s cinematics. You had at first Jaina just appearing on her magical ship and wooshing the plague away with her magic, there’s no reason why she can’t do it again but she won’t do it cause…reasons.
And the worst offender of all. When Anduin, Alleria, Jaina and Greymane storm Sylvanas’s throne room only to find her alone, unarmed, sitting on her throne and talking like she was victorious and they saw her going to that place with lots of people with her bow on her hand.
It was the most obvious trap ever, and they KNEW Sylvanas’s modus operandi, specially Greymane and Alleria. And still they not only start talking to her but they allowed her to stand up, walk towards their king and say her catchphrase before she flyes away.
It looked cool? Yeah. But when you stop to think for like…half a second, then all the coolness gets completely drained by how idiotic these characters that are supposed to be brilliant strategists acted.
That’s why this is so boggling to me, even with Sylv as warchief, they could’ve written the Horde have friction with the Alliance but… NOT do another civil war plot? And NOT have us be the villains in our own story!
They could’ve written Sylv coming to terms with the sins of her past somehow after the Eyir thing failed, but they have just doubled down on her being selfish.
I hate to say it but the hordes been evil since cata. That’s when every major horde leader, the popular ones, were turned evil or useless.
Lorthemar, we all know hes a meme that’s never useful and is willing to jump ship when the going gets tough.
Baine. Who I personally like, is “too weak” for most horde players. He would make peace rather than war, which is bad for some reason?
Thrall got the green jesus issue and was the only decent warcheif, stern but not dishonorable. Hes now just a prop.
Garrosh got villain batted far too quickly, he was orc centric but not a complete madman till mop. Could have salvaged that story but hes now thralls issue that was dispatched in dishonorable mak gora.
Voljin, sadly was the best option for another thrall. He died so quickly to do nothing it was a joke and set up the final nail to coffin.
Sylvanas was changed so much after wrath into cata. She was always around to murder arthad and after that’s done needed to die. She did for a time but for brought back, not from reprieve but hell. That changed her from understandable pragmatist to selfish blight waving villain. From there she murdered a neutral kingdom, could have left it but decided since the bad orc ordered it dead may as well blight it. The rest, well, it’s a complete 90 degree turn. Raising new undead. A curse she didnt want yo put on others previously and now just does not care. She has the most evil to go into so going to stop there.
I want the vanilla horde back, it had honor and wasn’t going to get pushed around. Peace was an option. We are now two warcheifs past thrall and the horde may as well be melting kittens with how comicly evil they’re written. How do we fix this?
The worst part I think. Is that Blizzard doesn’t seem to understand why people are mad.
It’s literally recycling the plot from MoP and breaking every single promise of “faction pride” it made.
Alliance players feel left aside and Horde players feel horrible cause they have to be villains, like you said, on their own story.
And whoever plays on both sides like me suffer twice for it. It’s either be the mindless henchmen of a crazy tyrant or being part of a faction who looks ridiculously incompetent cause Alliance has all the advantages and still they don’t use half of what they have because…the plot says so.
Why is it apparently fine when Baine works against his own people and the Horde for peace, yet when Lor’themar works against the Horde for his people, he’s somehow flighty? These seem like inconsistent criticisms.
Rexxar: Puts down flag in new spot the horde hasn’t been: “We shall purge these Kul Tiran scum from OUR lands”
Thrall sold people a false set of goods in WC3 and WoW. The Horde seems to be an invading force more often than it isn’t regardless of the reasons behind it.
So in my mind, you have 2 options. Either embrace the whole invading force bit, or continue to fight against it in some sort of false utopia dream.
I don’t know if you can even say he ever truly worked against the horde. Talks of going back to the alliance are just that. In the end he rallied his forces and went to war with garrosh for the sake of the horde. He could have just pulled out and went neutral.
Point of view.
Warcraft 1: Demonic corrupted orcs tricked into war.
Warcraft 2: Demonic corrupted orcs trying to regain their honor from the first war.
WoW Garrosh: Military leader who took defending his people too far and lost sight of the greater picture.
WoW Sylvanas: Military leader who wants to end a constant cycle of hate by wiping out all the enemies once and for all.
Perhaps I’m not being clear. Lorthemar would likely leave the horde entirly for his people. Baine advocates within the horde for peace. Also, the meme that most dont ecen know who lorthemar even is
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