Hey cool you keep typing irrelevant things to what I said. Nice!
I have to wonder if the narrative would still have us complaining or happy if things had been reversed, with the alliance always in doing evil things and the horde surprisingly the good one.
Ideally, both sides would be the hero of their own stories with the other side being a legitimate threat. Similar to how Vanilla was laid out.
I think the new writers have lost sight of the fact that the factions players have a smaller POV when they play through the game, than the over all story that they seem to be focused on. Outside of Saturday morning cartoons, every actual story will have each side as seeing themselves as the heroes.
As the Defenders quote went âThe thing about war is, it only works if both sides believe theyâre the good guys.â
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Thatâs seems like a suspiciously convenient window.
How about a generation for the occupying force. If a generation of orcs can be born and grow up within Ashenvale thinking of it as their home, itâs theirs now.
Iâve been thinking about this for a while, and I think we really need to acknowledge how catastrophically bad Blizzard is at conveying narratively crucial points that they consider tangential to the impact they want.
Consider the âmost orcs opposed Garroshâ retcon. Itâs canon, it wasnât even meant to be a retcon, but the story beats they wanted were âGarrosh bad orc supremacist, Volâjin hate Garrosh and vice versa, Volâjin gather coalition of ALL the Horde races to stop GarroshâŚâ and his coalition included Thrall and Saurfang, arguably the two most famous living orcs, so they figured that was sufficient for representation.
In this case, their story beats are âSylvanas burn tree, Saurfang mad, Saurfang leaves.â Thatâs the story they care about and want to make sure we know; grumbling and outrage within the Horde at that point would have been tangential to those beats, but narratively essential to establish the moral character of the Horde.
Given Blizzardâs history with this kind of thing, I donât think we can construe absence of evidence as evidence of absence. We havenât seen anyone but Nathanos celebrate the burning, and even he questioned her when she gave the order.
Think on that. Nathanos âSylvanas is always rightâ Blightcaller balked at this. They probably figured that if they showed Saurfang and Nathanos both objecting, in their ways, weâd get the idea that YEAH, this was by no means a 100% approval rating move, but missed the fundamental point that neither Nathanos nor Saurfang is truly representative of the âaverageâ Horde member, occupying as they do two extremes of ideology on a, letâs face it, nonlinear spectrum.
Blizz SHOULD have showed us the discontent. Should have made it clear that even then, the Horde was fractured by discontent and disgust, but holding together (as Sylvanas planned) in the face of a war that sheâd committed them to so hard that there was no backing down.
They just thought theyâd already done so.
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I played the wc3 orc campaign and they were just trees. No moving trees, and campaign does show orcs being attacked unprovoked. That being said this is what morally gray means.
NE attack a invading species who were chopping their forest.
Orcs were just gathering resources for their people and were attacked unproved and without warning.
At this point I want to point out that they are both right in their own perspective. I would ideally like wow to have this kind of story. Where a race is morally correct according to their own needs and culture.
Why NE joined the allaince over the shamanistic horde is beyond me. At least culturally they were a lot more similar to the tribal horde then the human allaince. Did I mention arcane magic was forbidden at the time by NE. Oh well guess this ship has sailed already.
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Certainly seems to be Azerothâs âmight makes rightâ approach. I personally feel a single (standard real world human) generation is a bit short, given it leaves survivors of the removal still far too close to the source, still (again, this is with real world aging and death in mind. I am aware long lived races muck this notion up a great deal and Iâm far more interested in brevity than dissecting it.) But sure. Iâm not going to stop you from setting whatever lines you want to arbitrate. Go hog wild pal.
Agreed. Good post Mr Materia.
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Hey, itâs the standard your standard for judging territorial claims. If you donât want to put much thought into it, itâs no skin off my teeth.
Me, Iâm not sure âWeâve held this territory for X number of yearsâ even approaches the question the right way, but if thatâs how weâre going to do it, we need something more objective than picking the number of years that benefits your race the most.
But since my brain is broken so I keep thinking about this.
Your system could work democratically. The territory belongs to the group that has the largest number of adults who grew up there. This way the size of the displaced adult population is still accounted for and it has the additional benefit of incentivizing and legitimizing groups that go out of their way to slaughter the former natives.
I picked those two extremes because they were the two extremes relevant to our conversation. I wasnât interested in arbitrating the specifics of it beyond that because it wasnât the topic I had entered. It was to answer Granfaloon asking âWhat about the Trolls?â. It was a tangent I wasnât particularly interested in to begin with, given the conversation was about whether or not orcs were doing wrong by invading Night Elf territory that was currently held, and continuing to cut down trees. Longevity of claim after being ousted was so far removed from anything the initial three of us were discussing.
But Iâm not really seeing what it is youâd like to drive here. You say, as you assume my cut off was ten thousand years and not just the number pertinent to Granfaloonâs question (Parenthetical reiteration of point: I didnât bring up the ten thousand year mark. He asked if Trolls still had claim to land that they last held ten thousand years ago. Well, there I go with broad strokes again I guess. Kaldorei empire was a good deal older than that), that its convenient for me. Do you want it to be longer? Shorter?
Because I certainly agree with you, I think, and think ten thousand years, as a line, is far too long. I donât rightly know how long it should take to get to the âpoint where you just accept that injustice happened and move on, since lots of other stuff has also happened and you can never truly go back.â though, either. To use someoneâs own wording which I will say again, I agree with fully. I mean, I know from first hand experience that two hundred+ years hasnât completely erased the bitterness felt by people who have been displaced. So I donât know if I can even say four generations is enough to assuage the desire to counter conquest with reconquest. Or who the hell would be right in a scenario where a group two hundred years out tried to âreclaimâ when conquest was wrong to begin with.
For reiteration: I sympathize with both the trolls and the Kaldorei in their respective scenarios. I feel the Kaldorei empire being built on the conquest of trolls was wrong, I do feel there are limits to how long you can claim land after an exodus from it (Informed by the exact things Ronstin said.), and no, sorry, I donât know how long that takes. Iâm not a god or arbitrator.
If that was all off the mark and you would like to assert that all claims stand forever, thatâs great too. We should give Azeroth back to the Elemental Lords. Or maybe wait for Azeroth herself to wake up since her claim is ultimate. See who she picks. Until then, space isnât claimed, right? We can go there.
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So would you classify the Night Elvesâ genocide of the Shatterspear as pure black or pure white?
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You know, I canât help but think even the War of Thorns would have been less contentious if one of our explicit goals had been to give some of the land back to the Shatterspear.
On that subject⌠I guess weâre using Bauerâs definition of Genocide? The cultural damage of forced migration, along with killing a sizeable portion of the population, technically falls within his definition of the term, but few others.
As black as night and awful. I hate Garroshâs Horde for strong arming them from peacefully living alongside Night Elves, and I hate that their tribe was scoured.
Bad people doing bad things is bad.
Fair enough. Iâm sorry for responding hastily and assuming 10k was the rule and not just the example. Having read your post, I think we agree. There is a point when a conquered or defeated population should accept their loss and move on. Or failing that, there is a point where continuing to press your claim based on a prior loss makes you the aggressor and not the liberator.
I just find the idea of having a rule about it really useful since a rule can be objectively applied. But an expiration date is too blunt a rule.
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Isnât leaving the Horde punishable? I thought thatâs the whole oath deal. And the alternative would very much risk their familyâs lives (with I think was Razzatâs point) beyond repercussions, but seeking safety from the numerous dangers of the world.
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Punishable by having your tribes poisoned by dwarven archaeologists, your villages burned by human road construction, your people rounded up and put in camps to fight and kill one another, and other supposed consequences that do not receive nearly enough emphasis in the Horde story. Losing to the Alliance should be portrayed with more horror than it has been.
Otherwise why not just nope out of the Horde and live peaceful prosperous lives content in knowing the Alliance poses no threat.
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I meant punishable by the Horde itself.
The numerous threats that are not the Alliance was more on my mind.
Hey- to be fair, both factions seem to be okay with this one. Which I really really thought Thrallâs Horde would have been against right up until Varianâs awful comic came out.
Anyway. Only snipped that for a go at being light hearted. I fully agree with the rest of the post. I hate that the Allianceâs bads are so easily forgotten due to either being understated or too rare to stick in the collectiveâs memory for very long.
Half the narrative issues with this expansion would be fixed if it didnât feel like the story was about Jason Voorhees starting a war out of fear Alice might some day hurt him.
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Maybe they would be more trusting if every member of the Alliance who wants to genocide the Forsaken leaves the Alliance first. Anduin should push them to lead by example!
Name 'em? I know Varian started the last war because he was appalled by what he saw in the Undercity but his policy is a bit historic now and not exactly reflective of the current Stormwind regime. But who else? Genn seemed actually pretty okay with their existence, all things considered, at that little shindig they held a while back. And I actually canât think of other raceâs opinions on them being overtly stated (Though its a fair bet Kaldorei and Draenei would have the most negative things to say, I honestly just canât think of a time Blizz has had them say anything on the issue). Just in-game stuff like Dalaran has always been fairly chill about them, even letting plague wagons into their city. Though I know Dal isnât Alliance, its the only real other human perspective I can think of.
Actually, back on that shindig for a moment. Who was it that was an actual danger to the lives of Forsaken there again? I forget who ordered the massacre.
This is not accurate. Per chronicle 3 War did not start until cataclysm when the Twilightâs hammer killed some NEfls while the hammer agents were disguised as Horde attackers, causing the NEs to cut trade, which led Garrosh to War. This is detailed in the Shattering book.