I can’t even level or role play certain characters horde side because it’s hard to see them as the hero in some areas. That’s what I felt in Cata. It’s impossible in BfA.
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I too believe this issue could have been corrected in MoP
But… I think the real problem is that Anduin was made an angel and not fiercely racist (prejudice if you prefer), pragmatic and untrusting. The real issue with the story is that alliance dont create a compelling enemy.
Sylvannas is seen as evil by our real life standards, but imagine the alliance had an Anduin who leads another troll wars for revenge for his fathers “betrayal”, an Anduin who sacrifices Night Elves in Kalimdor for a better shot at Orgrimmar, an Anduin who offers the Kultirans a choice between death or allegiance.
Now Sylvannas is not so much evil anymore as she is just the ruler of one of two ruthless factions, and the story is more an allegory into human beings (IRL) lust for conquest, control and depravity.
I think if u see my post history you can see im clearly against Sylv however if both sides had a Sylvannas, had a Garrosh, than the lines between what is allowed are also stretched the alliance need to stop being so aligned with IRL ethics
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Yeah, and Sylvanas is not a compelling hero. Neither of the Horde or even the Forsaken now.
So it’s Anduin’s fault for being too reasonable of a guy and not an extremist warmonger?
Why do both factions need to be ruthless for a compelling narrative? No, the problem is that both factions need to be morally balanced, like how they were before. Having two evil factions is not going to make the story better nor is having the good and evil dictonomy being so lopsided the way it is now. They need have the factions’ morality alignments balanced like they were before. The Horde see’s the Alliance as an obstacle that prevents them from being able to live in peace and the Alliance see’s the Horde as a party of warmongers who prevent peace from happening.
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Anduin isn’t reasonable hes Altruistic and forgiving, there is a difference. And a nation can be ruthless and still seen as just by its denizens, I dont think we really need to pull a IRL example to figure that out.
BUT for World of Warcraft there must be a faction conflict, enough of a faction conflict for battlegrounds to make sense and for the real hostilities between factions to exist. Anduin character seems to exist outside of the “real world” of Azeroth, how is Anduin there leader while “these” aspects of the game exist it creates a logical inconsistency.
And again logically the horde heroes are (and this should apply to both) are not the Iron Clad fighters on the field but what you make of there deeds “He is not my Hero because he killed Gul’Dan, he is my Hero because he/she provided security and freedom for my people” the Warchief does not need to be your Hero directly especially with the games age/audience i dont even think its nessecary anymore.
I think for the overall games health it is better to have a toned down sylvannas than it is a more practical Anduin because the Horde are not supposed to dislike the opposing faction the idea is that you hate them enough to be at a neverending knife’s edge.
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The Horde seriously can’t afford to lose any more characters when Blizzard doesn’t take the effort to make sure they have actual replacements waiting for them. Also the biggest elephant in the room is there is no guarantee Blizzard won’t just continue this format of replacing Horde Warchiefs. The Warchief has become such a joke with how often they die. Blizzard could’ve have done something great with Vol’jin hell they could’ve done something great with Sylvanas, but they continued to down this stupid path.
I strongly stand by if this is what they attended to do, they should’ve never let Sylvanas become Warchief to begin with and instead betray the Horde at the Broken Shore when she had the best chance with the best results of doing so. Giving us MoP 2.0 has to be one of the most laziest things Blizzard has ever done.
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Those are very reasonable traits for a leader who’s supposed to be in charge of the entire Alliance and all of its’ different peoples.
I didn’t say it couldn’t just that it really isn’t necesarry to improve the story.
The Warchief needs to appeal to the majority of the faction they are leading, lest they have no place as Warchief. Something Sylvanas is failing at horribly.
It’s a bit too late for that, I’m afraid. I mean Sylvanas has already been responsible for two unprovoked massacres of innocents, there’s no going back from that. Personally, she lost her chance in Legion when she chose to pursue self-interest rather than follow through on her declaration to avenge Vol’jin to defeat the Legion.
The Horde needs a new Warchief, one that isn’t going to back down from a good fight with the Alliance, but also has some decency and restraint as to not become the monsters they’re painted as. As for the Alliance, i honestly think Anduin is fine. Given more time to age and develop into adulthood and i think an older Anduin would be alot less lenient than the idealistic, pacifistic, young man we have today. Especialy when half of his closest friends and advisors are warhawks like Greymane.
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The Horde was literally founded to cause death and destruction. The name ‘Horde’ is one we are used to but is not a name with connotations of heroism or justice. But I know what you mean - Thrall’s Horde had ‘honor’ front and center, even if that was never well defined.
But hear me for a second; You are just buying into this dichotomy jank that Blizzard is pushing. The Horde is melting down into exactly the two camps they wanted people to fall into, which is between those that want Sylvanas ascendant and those that want her dead. Anyone who doesn’t want her dead is just assumed to be on board with her schemes.
Thing is, when one of my friends, mentors or family starts to go down a bad path, the idea that my only two options are to blindly support or murder them is ridiculous. The ‘kill the witch’ crowd are all talk about honor and tradition, but killing of your leader because you don’t like what they’re doing is not a path that is consistent with those values. If the Horde is a family, and it is supposed to move past its flaws, then how in hell can that be done by retreading the same path of ideological cleansing with no real reform? That isn’t moving forward, it’s just moving around in circles. Sylvanas has made mistakes, but the Horde has forgiven even genocide of its members in the past - instead of devoting storylines to deliberately erasing everything of value in her character, why not devote that writing time to a character arc of positive development… you know, like she was getting in Legion? And even Cata to some extent?
You can’t cut the dark half of the Horde off like a gangrenous limb. Warlocks, Death Knights, Shadow Priests, Demon Hunters, etc. (to say nothing of entire races like goblins and Forsaken) are a part of Red Team, now. You can’t just go back to vanilla, trying to cut off anything that doesn’t look like the vanilla Horde is just endless self-mutilation. We have to go forward. Another civil war is literally walking backwards.
So as much as people like to paint anyone supporting Sylvanas as a drooling sycophant, there are plenty of players like myself who will choose her over MoP 2 for valid in-character and out-of-character reasons. Including honor, as it happens - never thought I’d get to basically retread Nazgrim’s role, but I can’t say it’s super unwelcome.
My point is, to bring this back around to the purpose of the thread - as much as Alliance player sympathies are comforting (even if they are based in a lexicon of revisionist canon and contested values), the commonly held idea that there is no viable rationale for supporting She Who Smirks needs to be contested. The Horde’s current suffering need not be pointless if it results in growth, and not just another turn on the great wheel of character assassination.
PS: “It’s a bit too late for that, I’m afraid. I mean Sylvanas has already been responsible for two unprovoked massacres of innocents, there’s no going back from that”
The entire Orcish population over early middle age came back from that. All of them. Varok ‘Bone Road Infant Fun Time’ Saurfang came back from that.
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sometimes i wonder if we are talking about our real ethics and how we attribute them to the characters or are we talking about how we want the characters to act without regard for the nature of this game.
Me as a person can agree with you in that Anduin is a better leader for the alliance because he seeks peace at all costs.
That however is not entirely what the horde want by admission from its characters, and again that is not at all whats palpable for the games underlying concept.
As a fundamental precept the devs require Horde and alliance to be extremely hostile towards each other (no matter if Thrall/Baine runs the horde and Anduin/Velen run the alliance). Anduin and Velen for that matter cause logical inconsistencies for that fact.
Now Sylvannas causes turmoil because she has gone so far over the kookoo’s nest the storyline Horde (who in principle are ok with fighting the alliance forever) do not find Sylvannas or her tactics acceptable.
And then you have the playerbase which want some level of moral justification for what there side does in game, and would also like some level of logical consistency as well. Granted some of the Horde playerbase dont seem to care for moral justifications “rawr rawr kill all blues” etc etc
my only critic is that both ally and horde require representatives that can provide a never ending conflict, moral justification for continuous aggression’s and to act logically within each characters perceived storyline.
and my point is that prior to the BFA story it would have been easier to satiate all those requirements with Sylvannas based on her prior past and actions vs Anduin who unless they choose to make him vary dramatically from where he is and is likely to go (remember hes the leader of the army of light by prophecy) his character would be harder to make those changes and it resonate as realistic to anyone who cared.
I don’t want her dead, she just needs to get out of the Warchiefs seat, she doesn’t deserve it. Unlike characters like Thrall or Vol’jin or even Garrosh, she didn’t earn the throne through heroics or unanimous approval from component races and leadership, she was given it by bad writing and some voices in Vol’jin’s head, nothing about the appointment felt like she earned it or was a natural part of her progression as a character, more like fan service and a scheme to make more money.
I’m not suggesting we kill the witch, I’m suggesting we get to know this witch a bit further and why she’s for for the job.
Orgrim beheaded Blackhand and hunted Gul’dan. Maratha was banished from the Horde and exiled from Tauren society. Garrosh chucked his overlord off a cliff for murdering innocents. Garrosh then was overthrown in MoP and killed in WoD. We don’t forgive mass murderers, we exact proper Horde justice; a quick and clean death.
The story already did destroy everything of value in her characterization with how artificially she was made Warchief. It Destroyed any subtlety, likeableness, or relatability she’s ever had and turned her into an insufferable, unsympathetic, overconfident, pretentious, dictator who values self-preservation over the well being of the faction as a whole. She has nearly zero redeeming qualities whatsoever other than that she’s been a favorite since WC3.
We could have gotten that if they didn’t shaft Vol’jin and make her Warchief to set up thins assinine faction war arc.
You mean that time she’s chose self-interest over the greater good? She made a declaration to the Horde that would avenge Vol’jin’s death only to abandon them to go on a risky mission for her own self-preservation? That wasn’t positive, that just made her character that much more incapable of a role of united leadership like a Warchief.
She was good in Cata, because she was shown to be a leader capable of actually caring for her own people, let alone the Horde. It showed that she was capable of leading a united Horde front of Orcs and Forsaken. Even if she did go against Garrosh’s orders and blight Gilneas, if we could get more of THAT Sylvanas, I would have no issue.
Cut it off? No, we need to simply treat the wound before it gets infected. The only way we can move forward is by taking a few steps back and seeing stray root we tripped over so that we walk around it next time.
Believe me, I hate the idea of MoP 2.0 as much as everybody, but through incompetent writing, we’re not exactly left with many other options. It’s either continue to be malicious and vile monsters who seek to help extinguish all life on the planet or we take 2 on the reform and yank Sylvanas off the driver seat before she crashes the car.
Other than not wanting MoP 2.0, no, I cannot see any other logical reasoning for people to support She Who Smirks, unless they want to be irredeemable villain henchman who will eventually be put down by the forces of good.
Can’t blame the sons for the sins of their fathers. As for Saurfang, he at least acknowledges what he did was wrong and has regretted it his whole life, haunted by the screams of those he slew in cold blood. He feels remorse, but no amount of apologizing can bring back the thousands he butchered under the Legions influence. Sylvanas doesn’t even care, heck, she relishes in death and the suffering others.
Battlegrounds would work just as well as war games, with no faction conflict needed. The very fact that we’re playing capture the flag in so many of them would work better with “war games keep everyone sharp” than actual faction warfare. There could still be points of contention and old hostilities that flared up without the hard-line red vs blue we’re currently getting.
And with the faction conflict no longer central to the game, we could explore the divisions that would logically arise within factions. We wouldn’t be left with this “Alliance good, half the Horde evil, rest of Horde weak and/or absent” division we currently have.
There would still be plenty of war in Warcraft. We managed to spend 14 years primarily finding things to war with that weren’t each other.
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Didn’t Mario something or another eventually end the conflict with Bowser or something and now they just face off for fun or whatever?
I disagree that Sylvanas is not a compelling hero. I think she is very compelling. One of the most actionable leaders, shrewd and defensive of her people.
I liked her in Cata, she seemed to be a leader, a commander, and also an operative.
As opposed to Baine, who seems like he’d be better suited to sell pizza at a chain restaurant.
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Yeah, the people she went and murdered out of paranoia for trying to govern themselves while she was away. The people she forces to be miserable just to maintain their unquestioning loyalty. She’s no hero, she’s a self-serving tyrant.
Like i said before, Cata was the only time she ever seemed like a leader worth respect or veneration, even if she was still pulling questionable acts, at least her intentions were clear.
Very nice post, Etheldald. It is scary to think that Blizzard could take the wrecking ball to the Alliance characters too.
Why do we, I, still play this game? Time-sunk fallacy?
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This won’t happen.
Blizzard doesn’t realize it but making the Horde fully complicit in everything until now just shows that Vol’jin and his Horde weren’t any different than Garrosh, the only difference was that Garrosh included them in the “genocide everyone” plan.
If the Horde wants to pretend it’s honorable and good at heart and they’re not outwardly monsters, Blizzard cannot introduce the plot point without making it look hamfistedly forced. Everything they’ve done has only established the supreme racists of the Alliance as being correct.
The Alliance will forgive the Horde and Sylvanas will be scapegoated but there isn’t any salvaging the Horde. Not after this second stupid plot.
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Sylvanas will be the only one who can take us into the Shadowlands. But who whispered that into Vol’jin’s ear?
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