Give the Horde a break

Lore Story Forum
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What revenge did they get? I’m curious. Teldrassil is gone, the horde is still invading Ashenvale, Darkshore is in ruins, the night elves are still mostly wiped out as a race. What good came out of this for them?

No. The alliance actually lost at UC until Jaina came in to clear the plague, because the alliance was so incompetent they didn’t know the forsaken use the plague. You know the thing they use pretty much every time they fight something.

Ion also says the alliance lost there:

And Alliance really suffered a number of heavy losses throughout that process. Of course, the tree of Teldrassil was burned down, they thought they had the upper hand at the Battle of Lordaeron on the Undercity, but victory was snatched — sorry, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. As you know, the Horde left the city in ruins behind them.

https://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/world-of-warcraft-patch-8-1-livestream-transcript

It did not feel like a victory for sure. The alliance had to abandon lordaeron too, the horde stuck around in Darkshore and Ashenvale. The PC got to just wake up blacked out on the docks surrounded by coffins.

Whether or not you agree with how the developers view the battle is not important, this is how they see it and how it feels to alliance players.

No it wasn’t. There were obviously two side, and two short stories written from the different perspectives, but the WoT was used to create a Saurfang story, the race who went through the genocide was pretty much ignored through BfA and Tyrande only gets a cameo to doo nothing in SL because of the backlash to how bad the story was.

Horde also reacts to what the horde did, you could actually just remove the alliance completely from the main MoP story and it would just be about the horde going through a rebellion. As we saw in like 5.3 where horde gets a bunch of voice lines and cutscenes, while the alliance controls a robot cat, because it was just a phoned in questline where they had to remember the alliance existed.

Just like in BfA, we spend most of the time learning about Saurfang and hearing about how sad he is, meanwhile the night elves get basically nothing, Anduin just thinks Tyrande is “lost”.

It doesn’t mean this is good for the horde, but trying to present any of this as something the alliance player should feel good about is actually absurd.

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You mean the thing I address immediately after where you cut off the quote?

So they won.

You know what else felt absolutely nothing like a victory?

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363

Its compelling for everyone if everyone is invested in it.
Since its impossible to achieve that you got to do the parity thing for both groups of players.

Legion proved no matter how good the story they might produce and make it focused on the class rather than race or faction people will still be unhappy because at the end of the day races and factions is unavoidable.

Horde druids want a tauren style hub, not a night elf one.
They want Horde characters and Horde concerns in the narrative rather than one or two representatives that best fit the bill (Velen and Illidan).

There is no getting away from parity. I don’t think its possible.

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It’s okay, only nine more days until we get a bunch of new stuff to complain about

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Then you will never get a compelling experience, because the narrative is being held hostage by the “kids” crying over “cereal”. Every Varian’s Last Stand will come with a Vol’jin getting dumped in a ditch. Every Nazgrim’s Last Stand will come with an Admiral Taylor being a ghost follower in AU Draenor.

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Yeah when it gets down to things like the worgen NOT getting ignored after their starting zone in Cataclysm, it gets a little too absurd. They have to play horde to even see the conclusion of their starting zone story, then they are shipped off to Darnassus and do nothing.

This is a DEVELOPER problem, and it should be pointed out. We are all upset, for different reasons.

Not according to Ion, as I quoted. He says the alliance lost there, that’s just the developers interpretation of the events.

That? The night elves didn’t have to destroy the horde, the night elves weren’t even really present for the 8.2.5 thing. Why was Tyrande MIA? This is also another problem, people thinking “oh no the alliance can’t retaliate that means destroying the horde”, it doesn’t mean that. Why is it okay for the horde to wipe out the night elves, but “OH NO THE NIGHT ELVES CAN’T DO ANYTHING! THIS WOULD MEAN THE END OF THE HORDE!”, that’s 100% not it. Why couldn’t the night elves have a bunch of cutscenes and cinematics about what happened?

These are again developer problems. Making excuses for them is just defending how they handle things currently.

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It is rare that we are in complete agreement, Ainhin.

This is one of those occasions.

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Why are you singling me out? I just described what people have reported as sources of discontent. Legion was probably the best expansion they ever made in both content and story. But it still wasn’t enough. People still felt left out.

And every druid hub comes in only Night Elf flavor and every Paladin hub comes out in human flavor.
You need parity for both sides to be adequately represented.

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The only thing that really gives me a semblance of hope is Turalyon is remaining the leader. But it’s still not that much.

It’s nice at the very least the Alliance won in Stromgarde, but it would be even better to see that properly reflected ingame as well. Like OUTSIDE of the Warfront that rotates every week.

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Because she got a lot of screen time prior to that and they wanted to show some other characters in that patch. Plus putting her in there wouldn’t make sense with the plot they went with, because I’m sure everyone would have loved having Tyrande working with the horde to get out of there.

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Ah, thank you for this very helpful perspective. Consider me educated on the matter now.

I think this is actually important. So you think Tyrande got more screen time in the 8.1 warfront introduction quest, than Anduin or Saurfang? I think making excuses for the developers like this is a reason we are essentially on different planets when it comes to this discussion, and it likely no longer serves any purpose.

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I’m not, you responded to me. Legion came on the heels of what was perceived as a “Horde expansion” so Legion ended up leaning really hard into Alliance characters and themes, so Horde players ended up feeling like they were along for the ride.

A lot of parity along faction lines will be unavoidable due to the way this game works, but that’s not the same as demanding every storyline development follow along at 1:1 gains/losses, and that is exactly the hairs everyone wanted to split upthread. It is an ongoing problem where the blame lies squarely with who writes the story and how it has been and continues to be written. I chose the expression carefully: it is like watching people gripe because the other side has more diarrhea than them. Who cares? It’s diarrhea, dude.

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I mean they said that’s why she wasn’t there was they wanted others to get a spotlight in that patch.

And again, how would you put Tyrande in the Nazjatar storyline of the two factions banding together to fight their way out of a trap?

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I can’t say enough how good the Forsaken’s treatment in SL and Sylvanas were.

In that they were barely acknowledged and all we learned about them is that they run the gambit from literally cold human with spooky eyes and nails to this dude;

Which made me go YES because it meant all my Forsaken characters were canon. This toon and my DK were basically just attractive ethereal goths. My cowboy Hunter was pretty Frankensteined up from all from all the war fighting.

My Monk predated the Mechagnomes for being more machine than necrotic flesh because they spin so much I decided he was this guy;

And my two most desiccated corpses were my nicest undead. A mostly skeletal vargul warrior and a 117 year old grandma raised in Ambermill who looks objectively horrific but hangs out in Thunderbluff knitting Tauren sweaters. Magics herself more acceptable when visiting Dalaran again but she’s far too tired normally to give a ish if you’re bothered.

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375

8.2.5 was the like attack on Org by the horde and alliance. But if we are talking about Nazjatar and how they threw away Azshara, an age old antagonists specifically for the night elves and Tyrande for what? To develop more Jaina who got WAAAAAY more screentime than Tyrande did, Jaina’s mom got a lot more than Tyrande.

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376

SL undermined the Forsaken’s entire reason for existing because now we not only know there’s an afterlife, but we fixed it and now there’s no Maw.

The Forsaken can move on in peace now. Their rooms are all prepped and ready. There’s no longer any purpose for carving out a place safe for undeath in the world of the living.

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Hmmm, I guess now I can see the appeal of the “blank slate” narrative. If they don’t talk about your favorite race, anything goes!

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Baine doesn’t but the Dreadlord impersonating him might.

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It’s far from blank slate.

For example they don’t really elaborate on the Forsaken’s hunger for humanoid flesh in books but it’s all over the place in the game’s dialogue. As well as ya know, the racial.

So I write my Forsaken as becoming uncharacteristically squeamish when wounded. Not because they’re disturbed by the sight of viscera. Oh no. Quite the opposite.

One aspect I love about at least Gen 1 Forsaken is that as Nathanos proves - they might damn well slip back into that confused blood hungry primal haze.

I had this character get torn around under water and impaled on a dead log on the rocky coast of Highmountain after his boat was ambushed by the Skyfire. Signaled what he thought was a Forsaken bat but turned out to be a Felbat. Killed it and nearly lunged for the meat it had in it’s talons only to realize it was a Tauren baby.

He thought he was hallucinating the antlers. Maybe the Tauren baby as well but can’t gamble on that sort of thing. He eventually straps the baby to his back and levitates a murloc body in front of him before tying it to a stick dangling in front of his face. Before knocking out his sense of hearing and smell.

He can’t leave the infant anywhere because even if he snaps he’ll remember where he put him. He can’t eat the Murloc because it’s not enough to heal him and if anything might hasten the feral mindset. He’s using it as bait. As an obvious sign to kill him and just hoping the kid makes it if he loses it. He won’t know the kid’s tied to his back because he’ll essentially be a mindless scampering monster at that point.

He runs into the Feltotem. Kills and eats one. Gains enough wherewithal to hide the kid somewhere safe then basically tears apart a war party while just making these noises because he’s still not all there.

But after a feast has fully recovered and even patches up his outfit before healing the kid and making a makeshift horse outve Feltotem bones.

That’s what I love about the Forsaken. They are monsters who regained their humanity. But fundamentally at their core they’ll devolve not into monkies but ghouls if pushed to just instinct.

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Not really. The Alliance’s own OP female ethnic-cleanser showed up with a flying deus ex machina and magic ice plague antidote singlehandedly defeating the Horde forces, which turned out to be a ruse. Angry Jaina plowed through the horde forces, and the Alliance leaders followed her into a trap.

I mean… it was pretty awesome, and it was an exciting twist. But it wasnt handily kicking the Horde’s butt.