Although this does expose an issue with numbers, the Horde just hasn’t had that much of a backlog to fill neutral factions (especially since most of its pre-W3 namelist were old villains).
EDIT: Thinking about it, from Vanilla’s launch to Dragonflight’s launch the character situation for the factions basically flipped. Most of the Alliance leaders in 2004 were new characters/characters with very little lore presence prior, while the Horde leaders were all warcraft 3 characters riding on that game’s characterization and lore.
While now the Alliance has most of the oldest characters in their roster.
? Yes, especially when they leave the faction as villains and end up as raid/dungeon bosses, honestly.
Anyway, I’ll go over your list of Alliance losses :
Died a hero death as a conclusion to a proper character arc
Now compare that to Vol’jin who died like a loser to Joe the Felguard’s random poisoned spear after having accomplished absolutely nothing as a Warchief ; hell he even brought about the Fourth War (and, subsequently, the events of Shadowlands) by appointing Sylvanas the new Warchief with his freaking dying breath
Still alive, still friendly, and actually still very much Alliance-aligned (Exploring Northrend makes that pretty clear)
Still alive, still frendly
Fair I guess (not like you guys ever interacted with him much though, but it’s not up to me to say whether he was a big loss)
Fair
Absolutely doesn’t compare to Rastakhan since he was always just a villain, while we spent the entirety of the Zandalar storyline helping out Rastakhan, who died as an ally and friend of the Horde and would have 100% pledged the Zandalari to the Horde immediately after the Battle of Dazar’alor had he survived it.
Maybe it’s because Rastakhan had been hyped up for years prior and was such a great and sympathetic character in BFA, idk, but please believe me, and I think I can speak for many Horde players (especially Troll fans) here, when I tell you that he felt like a loss
Rastakhan died a stupid death for the needs of a good old “passing the torch” scenario (when Katherine Proudmoore, who was literally his narrative equivalent Alliance-side, didn’t have to die)
Was introduced during the War of the Thorns just to be killed off, so it’s really a bit of a stretch to call her a loss imho
Fair (it’s very possible she returns to the Alliance at some point though, given that Undead Kaldorei are being accepted back into the Darnassian society and that last we heard of Sira she was imprisoned in Stormwind ; though I’m personally rooting for her to come back to the Horde and lead the Horde Undead Kaldorei, with Daelyn Summermoon returning to the Alliance instead)
Yeah, I mean… if you count Marcus Jonathan among major losses… then I certainly I have many more Horde characters to add to the list lol
Anyway. I sympathize with Alliance character losses as well, I think many characters were wasted overall. But on one side you have semi-relevant characters like Benedictus, Staghelm and Marcus Jonathan who’ve all been dead for 13 years, and characters like Bolvar and Magni, who didn’t die and weren’t villain-batted, even remaining close to the Alliance when it comes to Magni. And on the other side you have full-on racial leaders/secondary leaders like Sylvanas, Nathanos, Gallywix, Saurfang and Rastakhan, who all died/were villain-batted and left in the span of a single expansion (!) and all we could do was watch as OG racial Horde lore crumbled beneath our eyes for the needs of the absolute worst narrative arc ever (meaning the arc that starts with the Fourth War and ends with SL’s conclusion).
Horde characters are… disposable. I think that’s the right word.
I dunno. Warlord Zaela was on the Horde list for some reason. I wouldn’t have counted her as a major character either.
All characters are disposable.
No offense, but if you’re going to dismiss Magni and Bolvar as, “but they came back and are friendly,” then why even mention Vol’jin at all? He’s coming back as a Loa, and I’d be shocked if he was suddenly hostile to the Horde.
I’m not disagreeing with how it felt. Even as an Alliance fan I sincerely feel like Rastakan was massive wasted potential. Still do, honestly.
But you cannot in good conscience say he was a part of the Horde. Heading in that direction? Sure. But he never quite made it.
But again, that boils down to the undefined parameters of these lists. What constitutes a character being, ‘Lost?’ Is it death? Separation from their faction? Hostility towards their faction? The list can be tweaked over and over to try to exclude as many Alliance characters as possible while maximizing Horde characters, sure, but at that point I think we hit the point above, where I compared King Mechagon to Rastakan. Neither were a part of their faction, even if their people/nations/successors now are. Alliance players didn’t feel a sense of loss when King Mechagon died. But he was as much a part of the Alliance as Rastakan ever was.
Even knowing he was going to be on the chopping block going into the expansion, I did feel a loss to see Rastakhan die, though. I think it was the first time the horde finally had some kind of family dynamic shown between two major characters (that I can recall) and then he was gone the next patch. It soured me on an already awful expansion. He was one less thing to look forward to.
Oh I’m def counting Vol’jin out if he effectively returns. I was merely comparing Varian’s death and his. Honestly I think Vol’jin’s death being so bad and underwhelming was the reason why they eventually decided to make him eligible for resurrection lol
He wasn’t part of the Horde technically since he hadn’t pledged his Empire to the Horde yet but he was an active part of the Horde-side questing & narrative experience and died fighting the Alliance alongside the Horde ; every Horde player I discussed this with considered him one of our own. You cannot decently compare him to King Mechagon in that regard
Also I wasn’t trying to “exclude as many Alliance characters as possible while maximizing Horde characters”, and frankly, I don’t need to. Even dismissing Rastakhan, we lost 3 racial leaders + one subleader in the span of one single expansion : Saurfang, Sylvanas, Nathanos and Gallywix. I’ll try to find somewhat suitable Alliance equivalents for these characters : can you imagine losing Genn, Tyrande, Maiev and Mekkatorque for the needs of a stupid “purging the angry elements who are hostile to Holy Renewal” scenario ? When I see how Alliance fans kicked up a fuss about Malfurion (rightfully so : the whole thing was unbelievably dumb) and the writers backpedalled by turning what was clearly supposed to be a permanent loss into a 2-months long summer break to Ardenweald…
So yeah →
Funny how horde characters get sad and pathetic deaths, while alliance ones like Varian get to die as heroes protecting their faction. Wonder which ones blizz considers more disposable compared to the others.
(Shouldn’t be too hard for you guys to figure that out)
Little update If we included former Horde allies who turned into dungeon bosses.
Kael’thas
The blood elf council
Zul’jin
Rend Blackhand
Zuluhed
Kargath
The AU Warlords
Grom
Gul’dan
Ner’zhul
Tagar
Fenris
Mogor
Kilrogg
Teron Gorefiend
Bovan
Cho’gall
Doomhammer
Saurfang is dead, Nathanos is dead, Sylvanas and Gallywix are both alive, and to be honest, we have no indication we won’t have friendly interactions with them in the future. I mean, it’d make all kinds of sense for Gallywix to be part of a raid somewhere, but it’s honestly not a guarantee. We could as easily see him heading up a neutral cartel of his own somewhere.
So, that leaves us with Saurfang, and Nathanos. Of those two, Saurfang is the one who’s more of a racial leader, while Nathanos was just Sylvanas’ Majordomo.
So, I’ll counter Saurfang with Fandral (who was a racial leader), and Nathanos with… let’s say Benedictus. Benedictus wasn’t a character the Alliance interacted with as much as Horde players did with Nathanos, but the criteria of this list seems to be focusing on position this time.
Some characters have stories left to tell. Others have reached their natural conclusions. For as much as Vol’jin’s death was awful, Saurfang had an amazing one, and while Nazgrim went out as a sympathetic villain with a raid send off, his Alliance counterpart, Taylor, died off screen and floated around Alliance player’s garrisons for an expansion as a sad ghost. The man was nowhere to be seen when Nazgrim came back as a Death Knight and become one of the new Four Horsemen to boot.
Honestly I thought Saurfang’s was more of a euthanization than a sendoff or a natural conclusion. Taking a character whose sole personality trait was PTSD over his actions and making him not realize he was getting his jollies off of it all over again felt revolting to me, and about as bad a character assassination as Sylvanas was. Worse still was the game trying to treat him like the “honorable” option in that stupid war campaign choice.
It’d be like if Varian rediscovered how stress relieving it felt by going back to beating Anduin and the moral being that he could still be a good father despite loving how much he relapsed.
Saurfang’s death really did not seem ‘awesome’ to me, it’s just minutes of him getting his butt kicked until the plot needs to happen and he gets insta-killed.
If anything it just makes the Horde’s greatest warrior character seem like a weakling.
A one-on-one duel in which he manages to get Sylvanas to give up the ghost in front of the entire Horde, and earns an honorable death. Honestly, seemed like the kind of death every Orc dreams of.
I mean, that might be worth something if Sylvanas didn’t seem to be on a hair trigger in every BfA cinematic anyway. Add on the fact that it literally didn’t mean anything in the long run (Sylvanas wasn’t slowed down or impeded by leaving the Horde at all) and it really is a pretty false hype moment.
BFA’s story was also explicitly about how him dying for a cause is the easy way out and that he should live for the future and atone, only to get instantly death gassed. It invalidated the arc he was supposed to be on.
I think he was offed because he became too toxic of a character to use.
