It’s so-so. I don’t mind fighting primalists. But I find the Dragonscale Expedition is a drag (pun intended) and I don’t enjoy the appearance of the Kirin Tor and Cenarion Circle.
I was in a mood for unrelated-reasons-I-can’t-remember but the questline with Malfurion and Tyrande just got me to the point where I didn’t even read any of the quest dialogue for the first time ever when playing this game because I just wanted it over with.
I assume it’s because my brain is just broken but when I first got into WoW, the whole now-failed premise of “playing monster races as heroes in their own right, even if the normal races reject them” was something that clicked with me super well. I don’t vibe with the alliance races. I have no interest in them or their characters. Worgen were even one of a few races I had REALLY REALLY hoped could be playable hordeside back when I started in TBC (Shadowfang Keep used to be my favorite dungeon) but seeing them added to the alliance legitimately killed off all interest I had in them.
I know it’s stupid. I’m just Like That.
But as far as I know, there’s no other game that even hypothetically scratches that itch for me so I just try to take what little I get at this point.
Having said all that, I did make an earnest effort to reroll alliance during the SL prepatch just because I wanted the game to stop guilt-tripping me for being such a Bad Hordie but even after forcing myself to the level cap and doing the Kul’tiras zones, I still found myself not enjoying it.
Gotcha. As long as you own your bias and that your opinions towards the Alliance cannot exactly be taken without heavy salt, it’s good.
Like if you can’t even do a side quest with Alliance characters or, for example, like if I outright skipped Baine’s upcoming quest (which I am certainly not going to!) I wouldn’t have much to say valid on Tauren.
I get your itch and desires, we all have them, just when it comes to things between ‘how things are’ and ‘head canon I like’, sadly the reality doesn’t mesh well with the fantasy.
That’s kind of my big thing: A bunch of Horde players who pretty much loathe the Alliance’s existence, have no involvement or attachment, or outright resent them for basically their own non-game related reasons making blanket statement or arguing opinions for the Alliance.
But that’s why I loathe the faction war and broad effecting sweeping changes, it just marginalizes and ruins the MICRO feeling of the game.
It ruins YOUR enjoyment to be the underdog monster race.
It ruins the noble knight’s enjoyment.
Everyone and every thing suffers, and forgetting it or trying to rationalize the victim to be actually the bad guy doesn’t get it back.
I do try to admit my PoV being biased often, as well as a ton of self-deprecation because I’m aware I sound silly and I guess it helps take the sting out of someone judging me for my preferences if I do it myself first.
But in my defense, it’s not that I can’t do side quests with alliance NPCs. It’s just something I put up with because I know that’s the nature of the game, and horde characters aren’t especially important for anything when they aren’t being villains. Malfurion and Tyrande just rub me especially raw because I feel like I’ve quested with alliance leaders, those two especially, more than my own faction leaders at this point, and it comes with a side helping of shame that frustrates me. It feels like a lot of narrative investment that’s gone to waste to make me spend so much questing time on them, just for the game to pull a “how dare you do this to them” when I would’ve preferred quests with actual horde characters instead.
The kicker is that I didn’t used to be so averse to cross-faction cooperation. I had hoped it would continue after Legion, but it’s felt like such a continuous conga line between “deal with bad horde” and “follow the alliance” that I’ve burned out on the concept and I’ve gotten hyper-critical over when it happens, like how the two horde reps for the Dragonscale world quests both happen to be elves or watching other horde-shaped characters still associate with the Kirin Tor as “the mage group” because they won’t make any appearance otherwise, and aaaaa.
My issue with the Forsaken is they want to be treated as equals with the other races, and I get that and on some level support it. But there’s just so many things wrong with their existence. From a moral or ethical standing of simply being undead and continuing to abuse the laws of the universe to cheat death, from the standpoint of how they treat their land and how it’s useless to anyone, to how their condition seems to effect their personalities and views on life, to the point where they think their “race” needs to grow at all and what they need to do for that to happen.
I’m not saying they need to be genocided, but at the very least I think they need to contain themselves to as few zones as possible so the land can heal and can actually have value for whichever factions controls it. The Western Horde is already short on lumber, food, and water. Aside from being cannon fodder for the Horde and being a second front to turn the heat off of the Kalimdor Horde, I’m not sure what the Forsaken actually contribute to the Horde.
Speaking of Undeath, I quit Shadowlands before Korthia. Did they ever explain what happens to souls who get turned into undead? The victims of the plague in Stratholme or Andorhal were probably fast enough, but for anyone who isn’t immediately raised, do their souls just get ripped out of whatever realm they went to like Bastion or Revendreth?
They definitely need to balance the character spotlight better for both sides and include more Horde stories for Horde players, Alliance stories for Alliance players, and mixes of both for neutral stories. I’d like to go on some adventures with Lorth’emer and Baine, seems like a fun duo.
What actually happens is Garrosh asks her what she thinks the difference between her and the Lich King, and she admits it’s her allegiance. That’s when Garrosh ripped Danuser’s heart out.
What Theresa and the Hillsbrad Farmers got were not goth makeovers. What the Scarlet Zealot in Gallow’s End’s cellar got was not a goth makeover. What Derek Proudmoore got was a goth makeover, and it was donkey buns.
At least the scourge have the excuse of being mindless and having no control over their actions. But the forsaken? They actively choose to do the evil and horrific things they often do.
It’s why I will never get the obession with trying to paint them as less obscene than the scourge. The forsaken are a thousand times worse because they CHOOSE to still do evil acts on innocent people
The key is that’s the regime, and people who choose to carry it out. Some break away from the regime, some even serve the regime to fight Arthas or Dathrohan without being kitten-eaters like the RAS.
The ones who choose evil are worse than Scourge, but the Forsaken never had to be that way, and frankly there was never a time “all” of them were. We always met examples of civilians and people who put their hatred where it belonged.
I also always found it weird that the Forsaken got more evil after getting rid of the dreadlord, even though the Cata intro blamed him for the whole Wrathgate thing and a lot of the more evil/imperialist Vanilla Forsaken cited his orders.
The same guy who wrote the Garrosh/Sylvanas exchange wrote Sylvanas wanting to raise the fallen Sin’dorei at the gates of Orgrimmar, and Lor’themar threatening to kill her right there for it. Gendered insults aren’t where anyone’s priorities were. And it would be a laughable injustice if they were, considering what was allowed to happen to Theresa within Sylvanas’ regime.
Even in terms of the language, people in this setting would routinely call each other dogs, pups, whelps, and so forth, and Sylvanas had called Arthas a Su’nova b’ych. Garrosh’s line fits right in between, stylistically.
But it’s okay. Danuser altered both Theresa’s fate and Garrosh’s remarks over fifteen years after the fact, so now everyone’s forgotten. It’s as if it never even happened.
My reasoning isn’t about “how dare the writers use the word”, but players that came away from it thinking it was meant to make Garrosh look good because they hated Sylvanas too and enjoyed hearing him insult her.
And I think people who took issue with what Sylvanas was doing (and would continue to do) were supposed to enjoy seeing her called out, just as people who sympathized with Sylvanas were supposed to be both affronted and smugly satisfied to see Garrosh lose his composure.
Besides, the writers “mean” a lot of things. I’m sure they mean for Sylvanas to look good in Shadowlands cinematics, and I’m sure they meant for Vol’Jin to look good in the Cata Echo Isles quests. I didn’t think they looked good.
They like it spooky and pustule laden. That’s a verdant green field from their perspective and just as useful agriculturally to them.
We also know that this sort of necrocology predates Azeroth herself as Maldraxxus shows. So perhaps you don’t care for the aesthetic. But it’s hardly unnatural.
Regular breathing humans are more unnatural than any undead. What with being Order constructs who grew skin thanks to Cthulu.
Theresa and the Hillsbrad farmers did no such thing. The former was <Gerard’s Mindslave>, the latter were gassed in the upstairs bedroom of the Tarren Mill inn.
The Scarlet Zealot was made into a ghoul before he was killed.
“My mind… my flesh… I’m… rotting!”
Only after saying this in ghoul form was he granted merciful death.
Green dragons using their natural acid breath is not comparable to the Forsaken devising chemical weapons that they then use on rag-clad, barefoot, unarmed captive farmers who are herded into an old decrepit house and penned in by soldiers citing orders from a dreadlord.
My point is WoW’s sense of morality is as inconsistent as anything else, and I reject the idea the Forsaken are meaningfully worse than anyone else. They aren’t they just aren’t dishonest about their goals.
Dun Morogh has you butchering Frostmane preteens. Non hostile ones at that. And Westfall starts with you being given carte blanche to murder homeless people by the police.
Have the Forsaken done anything worse than that, really?
I don’t know where the idea the Frostmane in Coldridge were preteens comes from, but I remember Magni’s authorization of lethal force being given in the context that “many matters press on my time and I hope this won’t be one of them.” It was dark, it was ugly, but he showed no trace of the malice or bloodthirst you see in Lydon or in Deathguard Samsa.
They’re called whelps. Another word for an immature specimen. And a shaman in the cave telling them the story of their people refers to them as children.
The fact that this is a dispassionate nursery massacre hardly seems to make it better. What the Forsaken are worse for enjoying it? Like I said they ain’t worse. Just honest.