Give some story parity

Yet other times he’s stated the Horde being villains is bad, actually.

He’s inconsistent. Doesn’t even know what he wants.

I fundamentally do agree with your statement about Baine, though I feel this is in part the fault of the stories that both we expect Blizzard to tell and that they want to tell.

Baine was not an important character in BfA, plain and simple. In the early days of the expansion the writing team had a lot of things they wanted to focus on. War of Thorns and the Siege of Undercity both had their focal point characters and they stuck pretty firmly on them. Zandalar and Kul Tiras had fairly competent narratives in their questing zones that, again, had their focal point characters. By the time Baine even has time to be introduced properly into this story it’s the Horde rebelling and it’s obviously taken that Baine joins the rebellion against Sylvanas.

The sweeping grand narratives Warcraft likes to tell do not lend themselves to deep or amazing character work. Baine in all of BfA had scant few things to say or do, and this wasn’t a bug or a mistake. It was simply that they decided he was not a focal character in these stories.

So often we want our favored characters, races, classes, etc. to be represented in the story. Because these are the things we’ve latched onto in the game, the things we’ve decided we like. But it can’t be done. Baine was never going to be a deep and rich character who is heavily explored, no character in World of Warcraft is. This game’s method of storytelling is simply not about that.

i stopped caring on that since it is obvious Blizzard doesn’t care about the Horde outside of faction war.

Thank god. Maybe soon they stop caring about the Alliance too and we can stop pretending like the factions mean anything.

My fight goes on until Blizzard is willing to listen.

That will never happen. Blizzard is high on the Alliance and has been since Legion.

2 Likes

I don’t even think that Blizzard cares about “the Alliance”, they care about a small number of characters who are affiliated with the Alliance and get all the development.

But there’s no real exploration of say, inner machinations of alliance politics or an examination of the relationship between the various nations of the alliance.

3 Likes

Blizzard has this unfortunate problem of making all their main characters be political leaders as well as heroes. It’d be fine if this was some of the characters, but pretty much everyone also now has to be the leader of some big group.

It’d be a lot easier if we could just have characters who are just adventurers and heroes but not big time racial leaders.

2 Likes

Exactly so. They do not care about the Alliance so much as they have a fixation on a few individuals like Anduin, who just happen to also be in the Alliance. As a consequence the Alliance tends to revolve around them instead of their responsibilities informing their actions.

In general, the number of heads of state that go wandering into obviously dangerous situations without even as a basic guard is absolutely insane.

1 Like

Tyrande, Malfurion, Maiev, Shandris, whomst am i forgetting?

1 Like

Don’t think I would, in any way, call these dev favorites. What you’re experiencing is something called recency bias. Even in SL and BfA Tyrande hardly played a pivotal role. The rest are, again, only relevant because the most recent raid was focused on the Nelves.

One third of the story revolved around saving Tyrande.
Three of the four zones were directly tied to saving Tyrande.
One zone was about Tyrande and saving strictly and only night elven souls.

2 Likes

If you actually play through these expansions this is not the impression you get. Again, recency bias.

hey where were the forsaken dealing with their former racial leader whomst betrayed them?

where was the horde dealing with their former warchief who betrayed, killed, and permanently enslaved their souls in death?

1 Like

In the raid. Thrall was among them. Who were the others, Jaina and Bolvar? Not that many notable npcs there.

Yes, I said a few individuals. Blizzard dug a pretty big hole in BFA with what they did in the WoT and were too busy trying to convince people they filled it to do much else it felt like. I also suspect there was a lot of personal angst on the dev team for being forced into making something they found so distasteful to begin with, which translated to motivation to try to fix it.

It was almost comical looking back. Like a cartoon gag of a guy repeatedly stepping on a rake he swears he put away in the shed each time before stepping on it again.

1 Like

I see we’re not going to have an honest conversation, and instead play at being intentionally obtuse.

2 Likes

Your complaint rings hollow, is why there won’t be a conversation. “Where was the Horde when we confronted Slyvanas?” Where was anyone? This is how the raids work, I’m afraid. We don’t often get highly satisfying conclusions in a lot of things because it comes down to “the heroes of Azeroth did it.”

But I don’t know, before Sylvanas was defeated and betrayed by the Jailer? She was confronted by Saurfang and Tyrande. Two fair choices to do so given Sylvanas’s actions against both the Horde and Alliance. This really isn’t the great point you think it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I02Imlp05MQ

2 Likes

I don’t think getting ‘parity’ by killing off Alliance leaders is a good idea (except Jaina), just becuase Horde got shafted pretty badly in this regard doesn’t mean that Alliance have to go through the same wreck as Horde is, to lose leaders left and right in the most egriegous manner.

I think that characters should be there as long as there is something you can squeeze out of them for the story. This is why I am really really not happy to see Thrall again, becuase there is nothing new he could’ve add, his story was done. I believe he is the one that should’ve died in Legion, not Vol’Jin.

But I am in support of offering Horde their own story, their own spotlight, their own heroes, and their own motivations.
And I’m sorry being carried by nose by the Alliance isn’t really compelling plot. Especially the likes of Alleria and Anduin whom I don’t even like and I have no reason to aid. For what? To witness their personal journey? To see “the war within them” as they struggle to overcome their issues?
That decision really missed the mark.
And in case of Anduin it’s literally the same story like it was in SL:
Guy gets captured by enemy forces > the enemy has a special plans to him> the enemy tries to conver him and use him for their own grand plan and edgy female elf is involved.

Did nobody read the script out loud to hear themselves what they wrote?
I really cannot comprehend how someone thought it was a good idea.

6 Likes