Having Two Alliance Cities is a Huge Win

Yeah, if it did have any sense of realism, than a lot of race/class combos wouldn’t work for obvious reasons. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah I mean, WoW has always worked off superhero comic book logic.

There is no ‘hitting a peak,’ you can just keep getting continually stronger.

Isn’t even something new to WoW specifically. This is how D&D characters roughly work too. Along with classical fantasy like Beowulf, you can just… continually train up and get stronger and stronger.

Also a common RPG trope.

At least with D&D you have the gods who ocassionally bless their favored worshippers with magical artifacts or more power and like to interfere with mortal affairs.

WoW has something akin to that with the Wild Gods and the Troll Loa and how druids draw their power from them via worship or asking them for a blessing

I have gripes about that with D&D too, warriors should be learning to fight smarter, not smack people harder. But that is not a soap box I will hop on.

And if you examine the math, you actually do not do more damage no matter what level you are in D&D. The level proper enemies scale with you.

Personally I don’t have any real issue with it.
It’s a classical RPG trope that seems fine enough, it can also be pretty comedic and compelling when placed in the right narrative story.
Think most people opt for a lower-ish sort of power level in that regard since that usually makes for more compelling storytelling anyway.
Like I said, realism in WoW has always been thoroughly out the window anyway and this is just another aspect of that.

I was going to go into a big detailed post about the state of Silvermoon in BC, addressing each of the examples point by point. But I think I can more effectively sum up my opinion of this by saying that when I played through that content as a newbie back in BC, I saw the society as realistically flawed, not unabashedly or borderline evil. There were troubling elements for sure, but those sat alongside the faded glory and the recent suffering—a Blood Elf player encounters the Wretched very early on and goes through the Dead Scar to get to Silvermoon City, and that puts the events there into a different context. I didn’t feel that they defined Blood Elf society as a whole because they were clearly reactions to a specific set of circumstances and not a reflection of the foundations on which the society was built.

Furthermore, the whole world of Azeroth was like that. No society in the game was perfect. When I dabbled in playing Alliance around the same time, I saw it on that side as well. And I liked this! It was exciting and realistic, and I looked forward to seeing how these flawed societies would rub against each other. I miss that feeling.

7 Likes

Why? Its not like the Horde every truly expunged itself of its failing. Sure Grom went and killed Manaroth but that was as much for self preservations rather then true atonement.

I’d also point out it makes the whole thing that much more of a tragedy because while Thrall might have wanted peace/wanted to try and have his people atone, he was simply too slow.

For all the claims the Horde was new, Thrall never did anything about all the lingering problems of his Horde and actually turned a blind eye to it(warsong outriders).

1 Like

If that was the angle they went with sure.
I don’t even think it makes sense why they still call themselves ‘the Horde’ after wanting to distance themselves from the old ideas of the original Horde.

What sucks is, they didn’t play with that notion nor did they ever really reconcile it. If they did, sure, I would’ve liked that. But they never did, instead it was all kinda just forgotten about and shoved away.

Which gives the perception that Daelin is ultimately right, and they never really toy with ever trying to justify why he was ultimately right or how the Horde’s initial vision has been corrupted. They simply move on from it, and the Horde keeps doing evil stuff anyway. Kill one big bad leader, never address any of the systemic issues of the Horde.

I doubt Blizzard ever wanted to tell a story with that kind of complex element to it. I don’t think Blizzard ever cared about writing the Horde with anything close to that kind of complexity.

It’s always just been about aesthetics, always has, always will.

When Blizz got tired of that ‘noble savage’ aesthetic (their words not mine, check the original WoW art books, they use this term to describe them), so they moved on to the more traditional ‘evil villainous monster race’ aesthetics of old.

That’s all I really meant when I said that. It’s a shame that they never cared to give the Horde any kind of narrative direction or any kind of complexity at all. When looking back at pieces like Daelin or the Theramore renegades, they were ultimately proven right and we’re never given any indication as to the specific ‘why’ of that, they were simply just right.
And worst of all, it gives some form of justification for what Daelin and the Theramore Renegades did.

They look like Giants basically. It was no wonder why the Humans were easy pray.

2 Likes

This is a gotcha trap because Zerde doesn’t even believe such a thing is possible.

3 Likes

How is it a trap when its a statement of fact? And again I specifically added it was a tragedy because had Thrall done things differently, things might have turned out differently.

It is not like the Alliance supported what Daelin did. And had Thrall gotten word to the Alliance/acted quicker maybe peace could have been had, but the last thing the Horde did was steal ships from the Alliance(you know Daelin’s domain considering he was Lord Admiral) so that again, is not helping his cause that he and his people were reformed.

And there is the whole Ashenvale. Thrall could have forced his people to leave it. He did not and still has not. Honestly, if I was Tyrande it would have been my first demand rather then Sylvanas head. Have his people leave Ashenvale once and for all.

1 Like

If you even believe in the concept of racial guilt. (I don’t.) And, since if it excusing Daelin, you have to believe that genocide can be justified (I don’t). But if course it has to be about “the Horde”, since it is part of the “evil Horde” trope, so it includes guilt by association for all there aces that weren’t even involved.

But the biggest issue is the pretense that this hasn’t been discussed over and over. The assumption that we have to have another round of the same arguments we have had before. I mean this gets to be no different than a troll.

It’s all so tiresome.

2 Likes

It was winning format for the RTS which made for a fan base that was a decade old when the MMORG first betaed up.

1 Like

You’re not. Tyrande’s anger tends to focus on an individual target and it had been laser-focused on Sylvannas. Her time as the Night Warrior only reinforced it.

1 Like

I remember, at the time I even enjoyed it. These days I have different interests. Nostalgia isn’t really a driving force for me.

We can finally move these insufferable RPers away from their Game of Thrones-like shenanigans in Darkwood with this. At least on AD-EU.

What are they doing on your server?

Fantasy RP and traveling is generally dead on Argent Dawn-EU. Almost everyone and their mother plays Quel’dorei (High Elves) on Alliance and it became extremely human- and house-focused with a little sprinkle of female Night Elves and Draenei’s to “round things up”. Duskwood Forest is basically GoT. From the more fantasy-focused races, there are only two big groups (Dwarf+Pandaren) active, which keep the boat afloat. If you see those people on events, you know, that these are the real champions of the server due the insufferable amount of human-RP on Alliance.

At the same time Horde-RP is extremely guild-based. Walk-on RP in Orgrimmar are sometimes plagued by eRPers. There was also an attempt in moving the Origrimmar-RP to the Crossroad in the Barrens, but it wasn’t this successful.

3 Likes