Oh, absolutely. I don’t think anyone would argue there aren’t people who just play Horde to kill Alliance.
But if anything, it’s a minority. Faction War-based expansions don’t seem to do very well (Cata and MoP bled subscribers at a horrific rate, and BfA’s general reviews), suggesting focusing on that aspect at the very least turns more players away than it brings back.
I feel like even of the first group, not many want that second vision from bfa. I feel like the people who want fantasy trope mindless game like that don’t want the deep exploration of the horrors of war. And especially not the clumsily handled ones we got. I feel like you lose the escapism when the game starts to guilt trip you for it.
I mean, after the bfa launch there were a ton of alliance posters demanding to smash the horde, and go all medieval on them, but none of them wanted the story shaming that went along with the horde’s one “victory” in that expansion.
No, see, you still cannot. You think the only places to source opinions are these forums and Twitter.
You are disqualified, Kyle.
Where did I argue that?
Now you’re backpedaling.
I mean, I can certainly point to empirical evidence that the three expansions which focused on the Horde and Alliance conflict also did not perform very well. Dropping from 12 million subscribers down to just under 6 million, effectively losing half the players, certainly states that this desire to kill Alliance players you think is “common” amongst the Horde playerbase wasn’t strong enough to keep people around.
Having a Horde alt is not the same as playing on the Horde, Kyle.
I always remember how many people cheered at blizzcon when they brought up the war of thorns. I thought it was kind of odd that people seemed delighted their PCs helped in a genocide, but then it occurred to me if they even thought of it that way.
For a lot of people I think they basically play to try to capture this vanilla orc vibe:
They do not consider their PC a in terms of a person, and therefore they cannot do ‘bad’ things. The RPG aspect of the game does not exist for them, outside of at a very abstract level.
And in game also.
But you can’t point to the faction war being the focus being the sole cause of those declines, can you?
What constitutes “playing on Horde?” Just so I know, so I can smash your delusion.
Heck, I was at home cheering during that Blizzcon. Because we were sold a false bill of goods.
Morally grey. Both sides. A deeper conflict. We’re not repeating Garrosh.
Except not a single bit of that was true at all.
Yeah, it was hype as heck watching that trailer, seeing Sylvie go full banshee mode, hearing her warcry, thinking that if we’re starting off with an assault on Lordaeron, then maybe this isn’t some Evil Horde scenario.
But sadly it just turned into another Garrosh, morally black and white, with no real deeper conflict.
I mean that Blizzcon happened after the WoT so I don’t really know how people kept up any internal pretense of moral greyness. But then I was pretty sure it was going to be bad when they kept dancing around who did it.
When they say wait and see, it usually is code for “If I tell you, then you likely won’t buy it for X reason.”
Twitter, GD forums, and in-game friends.
No, I can’t. But as the primary selling point of those expansions, if that is what people wanted, they would do better than an expansion focused around dragons. If it is “common” amongst Horde players to want to play as evil guys who kill Alliance, and these expansions use that very premise as a draw, you’d expect more of those players to want to engage with the content than with dragon lady.
Oh, just swap to your Horde main and that should sort everything quick and easy!! A quick look at what you’ve done on the character will certainly prove you main Horde.
Well, okay. I mean, you should know that I never said I mained Horde. But I play Horde also. I play both.
I have an entire catalogue of Horde characters, actually. So I had to pick just one out of those. I certainly hope you won’t be moving the goalposts and suggesting that I don’t meet an arbitrary criteria that constitutes playing Horde.
Listen. My post was essentially what Anuella posted. In my opinion, which is all anyone has in this discussion, I see things like “Garrosh did nothing wrong”, “Sylvanas did nothing wrong” far too often to believe this sentiment that there isn’t a not-insignificant amount of people playing Horde to play villains.
So first; it’s not gonna be easy to “smash” the allegation that playing a Horde alt isn’t the same as playing the Horde by… Admitting you only have a Horde alt?
Beyond that, I could go down the road of asking “well hey, I see your unguilded, minimal group content Horde alt!! When you say one of your sources for opinions from the general Horde playerbase is via in-game methods, do you mean trade chat? Because it don’t look like it can be anything other than trade chat.” I could go down that road, but I’d rather move on to the more important, more pressing second point.
So on to that more important, more pressing second point…
OMG your tauren is actually kind of adorable!!! Transmog game in very cool here; you managed to fit both “is tauren” in with “is frost mage” which just sounds impossible, yet here it is right there. Very well done!!
I have several. This is the one I picked. I actually have one of each race, but I chose to post on one that is more recent and that I have actually done content on. Not the only one, because I have other Horde characters I’ve done content on.
Minimal is relative. So what’s the bar for playing a faction? Having a guild? Doing +16s regularly? Raiding at least Heroic? Because pretty much none of my characters are in guilds. Not even my main is in a guild. This character has done more content than some Alliance characters I’ve had for longer, am I not playing Alliance if I’m just doing WQs on it?
This entire discussion has gone way off the rails and really did not require me to switch characters to post on. The focus has become entirely too much on me as a person and not on what I was posting.
If your going to attest that a primary source of information for the opinions of the general playerbase comes from in-game conversations, the bar is showing you have people in-game to converse with. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being an in-game introvert; I’m one too. But I don’t pretend that my small group of in-game friends is a good source of general information about what is commonly thought among the Horde player base. I also don’t add in the cesspools of GD and Twitter to the list, unless I want to be ironic or funny.
Welcome to the Story forums!!
I’m glad you did though, because I truly do mean it when I saw your tauren lady is adorable. Cloth mogs on tauren are… A unique challange, without going full “I’m just very tauren-y” and you pulled it off well.
Well, after they told me when I said I wanted Baine to actual do stuff with the Tauren instead of only hanging out with the Alliance, not just smash alliance, did in fact mean that I wanted him to smash alliance, I wonder about the conversations.
Don’t you see this becoming an argument in which the barrier for what constitutes a “real” argument is so incredibly high as to be nonsensical? As I was saying before. Just because you don’t like GD, or Trade, or whatever other source of sentiment doesn’t mean that the sentiment doesn’t exist. What does it matter if someone posts on GD “I play Horde and I think Sylvanas did nothing wrong and I’m glad we burned the tree” or posts it here? Or to wherever else you consider is a place in which opinions can be valid?
I never said, or meant to say, that all Horde players without exception want to play villains. There are plenty of Horde players that don’t. It’s probably more likely that the proportion of players who play the game probably play both to some casual degree and don’t care either way. I can’t claim that the majority of those proponents that do care either way are majority villainous. Perhaps it’s a vocal minority. Or perhaps its a vocal majority, and the posters on the Story Forums are the minority. I can’t say either way. But that sentiment does exist.
Going back to my original post on this topic, I didn’t even say “most” Horde players are like this. I said “a lot”. Enough to be significant.
He did stuff with the Tauren in that quest. It revolved around the Tauren and them founding a new settlement in the Ohn’aran plains.
I don’t know what you felt about that quest personally. That’s not germane to the point I was making. That people were mad that Baine was there, doing things that didn’t involve him killing Alliance. That was a real sentiment that I saw. Not from just one, two, a handful of posters. Nobody liked Baine’s appearance despite it being a good quest.
yes. In DF they finally did that.
What happened where Baine did something involving the Tauren between the cata Mulgore questing and then?
No, not really. Not at all.
It is very reasonable to state that if you’re making a statement on the general opinions of a group, you’re using a large sample size to source that opinion.
If I go down the street and ask a group of people what they think about tractors (just some random example) and they all say tractors suck, is that a valid way to source the common opinion of people regarding tractors?
Hell no. Nobody would ever think so.
Because you’re ignoring the very nature of the General Discussion forums. People frequently post things there for shock value edgelord reaction-garnering bait. Or they’ll say things just to be contrary. It’s going to guarantee that the opinions you’re sourcing from there are biased to the most shock-valued takes, because people will post the most shock-valued takes for the sake of posting it.
See, my issue was more with this, regarding the Baine Hate:
Because naw, you’re not saying “a lot”. You’re actively dismissing what numerous other people, all of whom are also posting on their own Horde characters, are saying about the Baine Hate. You’re telling them that no, they’re just wrong, the issue was Baine wasn’t killing enough Alliance. End of story, good day sir.
And that’s not gonna fly around here.
Some people felt that way, sure. But you’re just casually dismissing the idea that there could even be other groups who hated BfA Baine for, I dunno…
Standing by while Sylvanas does evil, all the while acknowledging it with a “Sylvanas, this is evil!” When she plague bombs Horde soldiers? “Oh, stop it Sylvanas!! But I’m’a go with you.” When she has civilians murdered? “This is so wrong, but I’m gonna sit on this log.”
But when the latest zombie she’s gonna raise happens to be a Proudmoore?
“I shall not stand idly by for this any longer!!! How dare you do that to my Alliance friends!!!”
Yeah, gee, thanks Baine. Glad you sat through all those other warcrimes all fine and dandy until a damn Proudmoore got brought into it.
… No, I’m sure nobody cared at all about that. Threads upon threads upon threads lambasting that entire storyarch haven’t been made, even in the most reliable source for WoW player opinions known as the General Discussion Forums.
It’s about his lack of Alliance HKs tho.
My opinion is that I don’t think Baine’s character can be rehabilitated at this point.
IN A VACUUM, the questline seems good. It seems in-line with what we knew of Baine coming off of WC3. It’s just that nothing actually occurs in a vacuum, and there’s been lots of Baine in between then and now, such that seeing him finally going Full Minotaur feels off.
You mean the quests in Cata where Baine gaslights his own people into thinking they were the reason why Camp Turajo got destroyed? How he always blamed the horde for the actions of the alliance?
That Baine we talking about?
The little flower on that cow’s head really makes that avatar quite adorable.
That is so negative. Like triple negative.
That’s not what happened. He just said it was a legitimate target for attack. According to the Horde’s code of honor, it’s not bad to attack, raid, and pillage settlements as long as you do it with honor. He exiled those that wanted vengeance because it poisoned them and others. Not those that fought to defend themselves.
And lo, here we are many years later, with the Night elves forgiving the Horde their transgressions and allowing them peaceful passage through their new home. If the Night elves can forgive their genocide, can’t the Tauren forgive the sixteen quintillion lost at Taurajo?
Yeah, it could’ve been handled better than it was. But it was also over a decade ago.