There’s a reason I didn’t take part in the War of Thorns event. I thought it was stupid and I felt bad for the Horde taking part in it.
However, I’m not going to just say “Yes” to all the extreme calls of nuking Horde cities because Blizzard made you guys tragic victims in a bad story.
I feel confused: some people are arguing that Horde players are bad people in real life because of the actions of their character, but then are also saying “don’t bring up my character race, I’m a person in real life, not my character.”
??
But, is anyone doing that here?
Actually a lot of friends of mine who played Horde left during BFA. For most of them one of the reasons they did was because they disliked the story directions Blizzard made, including Teldrasil.
Yes they do, and apparently yes we are. After two years of being told I am a horrible person IRL for choosing to play Horde (because it provides racial fantasies I much prefer over the Alliance) I’ve just grown increasingly apathetic about the issue of Teld. I went from hating it, to just nothing-ing it, simply because if I’m going to be told I’m an awful person regardless … why should I care?
You (and blizzard) are confusing chivalry and honor.
They are separate concepts although they both have martial applications.
Honor is about the Survival of the tribe or clan and your personal contribution to that end. Generally attacking noncombatants isn’t seen as honorable necessarily, however in a tribal culture the definition of noncombatant is normally fairly ambiguous and is not necessarily inclusive of women or children depending on the situation that tribe finds themselves in.
For example the Darkspear Trolls and the Orcs live in an arid environment, unable to grow much in the way of food. They could trade for these things, however everytime they hammer out an agreement with the Night Elves it get canceled by the Night Elven leadership for whatever reason. This leaves the Clans in a bind trying to feed and house their children…so the warriors of the clans are easy to work up for war with the Night Elves. This being a war for survival of the people of durotar as a whole, resources are actual goal so gaining those in the campaign will gain you honor, killing soldiers and other exploits in the gaining of those resources gain you honor in your clan…you are both provider and protector since you staved off death by starvation or exposure. What we would consider Noncombatant casualties have no meaning in this environment, since survival of your people is the price of failure why should you spare your enemies people. Petty? Maybe but no less true.
The ideas of Chivalry developed as we left our more obvious tribal customs behind and formed larger societies that in someways made survival a less immediate concern. Money, Transportation for goods, improved storage of supplies, public safety measures in urban areas in particular, Organized Religion, and the beginning of wars being fought for permanent conquest all led to the ideas that eventually became know collectively as the code of Chivalry. This code acknowledged Noncombatants, mostly for religious proscriptions against murder, and has in a large part formed the basis many of our laws and international standards governing warfare from a very general perspective.
The two Idea’s are not necessarily incompatible although without the tribal ideas of honor…chivalry probably would never have existed. Chivalry grew out of Honor, but historically it took a long time to get there and changed the meaning of honor and what was and was not honorable.
Hear, hear. I don’t give a crap anymore.
I still think Teldrassel was horrific. I’m just really tired of hearing about how people who play Horde are evil in real life because of a video game. Personally I got so jaded with the Horde experience in BFA I’m maining Alliance this expansion. Let’s be real, Space Goats are Tieflings and they are one of my favorite D&D races.
Yes, actually. Most of them just got their complaining done with early on.
The thing that’s been kinda happening to the Trolls since Vanilla?
My favorite character on Star Trek TNG was Worf, I didn’t get upset every time he got bodied. I certainly didn’t insult or berate anyone over it.
I still like the theory someone came up with as to why “honor” is so undefined. Because all of the different clans had their own definition of it… and when the Horde got together, it all started to mix and get jumbled up.
They’re probably my favorite out of the core races in 5e.
No… Saurfang told ROGUES they would receive a reward for killing Malfurion. There is no way that Saurfang imagined that Lorash Sunbeam was going to go up to Malfurion and challenge him to a freaking honor duel. He knew what those rogues would do.
But Saurfang himself, who DIDN’T use Stealth, poison, seduction, magic, demons, a space ship, potions, world buffs, overtuned legendary gear, multiboxing, or even a ranged weapon… got depressed because he managed to flank and get a lucky crit on somebody that outleveled him anyway.
THEN, he got captured, and collaborated with the Alliance. His supposed plan to save the Horde hinged on Sylvanas getting so pissed at his rambling nonsense during their Mok’gora that she would just say “F*** THIS PLACE”… and fly away.
There are so many things wrong with the Saurfang plot, I can barely begin to touch on it.
Honor cultures are just a social framework where shame is used as a method of community control, which is usually tied to material penalties - be that from exile to being shunned from new business opportunities. It doesn’t imply any specific set of morals and it doesn’t necessarily prescribe any particular set of actions - it just means that there is some accepted framework for behavior. For being dishonored to mean something you have to be in a position to be shamed/punished for that. Honor doesn’t directly protect anyone not in the framework that enforces honor, because who cares about the opinion/disapproval of someone in the outgroup?
What “honor” means in genre convention, though, is very different. It means that when someone does something the narrative frame condemns, they regret it (if they are meant to be good) or revel in it (if it is meant to be bad) - and strictly speaking this is not grounded in any moral framework other than the fictional ethics of the character and the writer’s own biases.
This is why Orcish honor is so schizophrenic, because it’s a genre convention used lazily to signal authorial approval and WoW has no consistent authorial voice or concept of how Orcs function as a society.
For example: Eitrigg is honorable. This means, in the fiction’s logic, that he is good. His noted honorability is part of his framing as a ‘good’ guy we are meant to sympathize with. This is decided before he actually takes any action. This is why Eitrigg, honorable Orc, has the player “help” the Blackrock summon a pit lord only to then unleash it on his former clan to burn them all to death in hellfire. He also has the player stab a bunch of people in the back, literally, to kill off those who are in the way of this plan.
But remember, Eitrigg is honorable. That is pre-supposed, it’s one of his defining traits. So that cannot bend - therefore, the meaning of honor changes instead because it is nebulous by its nature. So we end up making excuses like ‘well the Blackrock clan has its own kind of honor…’, etc.
Because ‘Honor’ is such a nuanced, context-specific concept IRL and because it relies on a consistent authorial moral vision in fiction, it becomes utterly untenable in the context of WoW. It ends up having to constantly be in a state of revision and re-adjudication, which is how we end up with MoP2, why we will likely get MoP3, etc.
Regardless of how Horde Players felt or what they wanted, the Horde burned Teldrassil. Our opinions really didn’t matter. Some people didn’t like the burning for various reasons. Some enjoyed it. But as silly as it is for me to type this … Horde Players didn’t make the call to burn Teldrassil.
I have sometimes felt badly for some of my choices and actions - feelings like regret or remorse or shame. But if a meteor landed on me during WoD, or if I fell into a volcano during Cata, Blizzard would most likely have had the Horde burn Teldrassil. I am fairly certain my existence or desires have nothing to do with the choices Blizzard makes. It isn’t something I am going to feel bad about.
0/10 OP, it´s not even Sunday yet.
I know this err… “callout” posts have become like a trend right now on the forums, but do try to resist the “naughty” impulse of portraying the meme…
god I wish I was a blood elf IRL
Even if they´re my fav race in the game, I´m actually scared to hear the answer about why would you want something like this…
Uber hot and can use magic!
Night elf players really have to stop making threads of this vein. Horde players didn’t get a say on where the story went anymore than Alliance players did.
You want to blame someone blame the writers who keep making the Horde the Antagonist.
Well no cause you built your capital on an isolated, flammable island.
You earned your destruction and the failure lies with your so called generals or leaders that place their faith in weeds over their peoples safety.
Um, that’s not true either. Orcish ‘honor’ is probably the most inconstant concept in the game outside Sylvanas’ character.
