Horde PCs and Moral Responsibility

This was probably the worst part about the event for the Horde. We were given no ability right after the fact to object even though we were standing right next to Sylvanas when it happened. Hell, we weren’t shown Saurfang’s horror until Old Soldier came out a few days later. Outside of the game.

If there were an option to attack Sylvanas at that moment I would have done it. Have her bind me and say I have to work for her for the sake of the Horde now, whatever, but I really wanted that option.

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That’s harder to swallow when the past few expansions have been promoting the player as a hero and champion of their faction. The horde player’s nearly on par with Saurfang with importance in the faction and because of the linear nature of plot quests, is the push behind the entire invasion. They should share nearly equal blame as Saurfang.

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I would find it easier to imagine redemption if the PC had passion, if they were driven by real fears or desires. Even if the driving force were selfishness and pragmatism, there’d be some humanity there. But it’s not even that. They’re just badly programmed machines getting snarled in obvious contradictions.

So, I’d go so far as to say that Teldrassil doesn’t even make the Horde player irredeemable. That implies that they can have moral responsibility, that they’re persons. But what Teldrassil really makes me feel is that the Horde PC is less person and more game mechanic.

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You put it better than I did.

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It’s really difficult in hindsight to determine what Blizzard’s intentions were with the WoT scenario. For one thing, it was relatively poorly done seeing as Blizzard considered it temporary content. For another thing, half of the supporting facts and logic behind the WoT is hidden in novellas that 95% of the playerbase will never read, and several sections of it were not reflected in the game at all (or were oddly mishandled in the game such as Sylvanas saying “I could not have foreseen this outcome” which is a weird thing to say in the context of the Warbringer, or Saurfang saying nothing in-game or in the Warbringer but being very vocal in the Old Soldier).

The Warbringer was done by a smaller team, the WoT overall was very sloppily done, and the entire event has been referenced a handful of times since.

All of that said, there are plenty of reasons why the Horde player character would have enthusiastically supported going to war against the Night Elves and still not been guilty of burning Teldrassil.

Also everyone forgets the context of all of this happening is the discovery of Azerite which is portrayed as basically being WMD which Sylvanas believes the Alliance will inevitably use to control the Horde. Better to strike your enemy while they are still roughly on par with you and not much more powerful.

Blizzard has been all over the map with this, who even knows what they want or where they are going with it.

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I think it is only possible to understand Blizzard’s intentions when you realize that they are no longer writing this game from the perspective of the players. They are writing it as a saga of the faction leaders. That’s why our storylines are incomprehensible: we are irrelevant to the plot. We exist in whatever mode is needed to tell the story of the NPCs.

At least on the Alliance side this still allows for a comprehensible moral arc, since the Alliance characters are all consistently “good.” But the Horde narrative is split between “good”(ish) and (very) “bad” guys, so our moral journey wildly oscillates.

In my case, this prevents me engaging with my character as an agent in the narrative. I used to love the fantasy of this game and felt invested in my character’s journey. But my character doesn’t have a journey anymore. The NPCs do, and I’m just along for the ride.

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As far as Blizzard is concerned, the Horde player is Zappyboi.

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Every time the Horde Player Character saves the world from near certain destruction he gets a “savior token.” Turn in one of those and everyone will conveniently forget about your essential part in the destruction of a major city.

By my count we’re still up 2 tokens.

The Alliance of course doesn’t need “savior tokens.” They just have to wait for narrative absolution whenever they participate in the destruction of an entire city.

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Maybe not on this thread, but (a few) people in this forum have said so.

Can you blame people for forgetting this, when the game barely mentions this idea and the novel strongly hints that this isn’t Sylvanas’s real reason for starting the war anyway?

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That’d have more merit if the Boi even showed up beyond that one quest.

Are we sure Teldrassil didn’t take 2+ tokens due to the genocide aspect, or is this already accounted for in your numbers

No, the rules don’t give extra credit for feelings or additional weight for a “genocide” that leaves a race completely intact and fielding a vengeance army a patch later.

Save the world once. Get instant forgiveness for destroying a city after your dramatic face turn in the third act. Those are the rules.

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I don’t mean literally. I mean that Zekhan’s reaction to this situation and Saurfang is meant as an example to how Blizzard wants to the Horde player to be reacting.

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Its not just this.
It is the entire narrative.

Sometimes it feels like the story is on a treadmill. Lots of running but it goes nowhere.

@OP as much as I like to tease people sometimes the Horde player can’t be redeemed because they don’t exactly have a choice.
Narratively they are guilty to certain degree but it is out of their control gameplay wise.

Mind you, this is my two coppers on the matter, but I think a big issue is how dismissive of Horde Culture we can be when we discuss moral responsibility and other similar topics, particularly in relationship to the actions of the Horde and the PC.

The Horde isn’t the Alliance.
The Horde isn’t Modern-Day Earth.

It’s been discussed in the past, but morality is more within the realm of the Alliance, whereas the Horde is more concerned with the realm of Pragmatism.

In the Alliance, if you steal, you’re wrong. Doesn’t matter that you’re feeding your family, or giving to the poor. Stealing is wrong and you are a criminal for doing it.

In the Horde, if you steal, you might not be wrong. The greater crime would be letting your family starve, or letting other parts of the Horde suffer. So long as the theft serves a pragmatic purpose, it can even be considered, ‘honorable.’ The Cooking Dailies in Orgrimmar come to mind where the Orc Chef has you steal Darkspear Rice to feed the soldiers.

Looking at things through the lens of the Horde’s culture of Pragmatism, the destruction of Teldrassil is not an inherently bad thing worth sparking a rebellion over. Same way the Destruction of Theramore was not worth sparking a rebellion. Horde interests were being pursued. What happened was objectively terrible, but because it served the Horde, no one within the Horde can really speak out against it. That’s just not how the Horde works.

When Derek Proudmoore was raised into Undeath, he became one of the Forsaken. The Forsaken are part of the Horde. Therefor, by actively violating his Free Will in order to create a weapon, Sylvanas was acting against the Horde. This is not unlike Garrosh’s assassination attempt on Vol’jin.

In terms of morality, the Horde is a selfish, self-serving, hypocritical force of pure destruction.

In terms of pragmatism, the Horde is a tight-knit group united by their need to survive.

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Just being undead does not make you one of the Forsaken. That pact only applied to the formerly alive citizens of Lordaeron. Proudmoore was a Kul-Tiran, not a Lordaeronite, nor was he former Scourge.

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I would disagree. Zelling became one of the Forsaken, after all, and there were more than just Lordaeron citizens in the Forsaken. Some are former Kirin Tor.

You say this, and yet the Forsaken who see and respond to what is happening to him are, in the majority, horrified and outraged.

Raising someone and enslaving them is not what the Forsaken are about, it’s just something horrible that Sylvanas did which will come back on her when the Forsaken join the rebellion.

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“When will they learn? When will they see that the Horde exist because of the Alliance?!” Lor’themar Theron

The problem with this view is that the Horde hasn’t been particularly pragmatic. I would be fine if it was but the thing about pragmatism is it is about realistically weighing the good against the bad and doing what is necessary.

Teldrassil wasn’t just villainous and immoral. It was pointless and counterproductive. There was nothing pragmatic about it. The fact that it lead to a war that the Horde was losing only proved that point. In fact if we look at the greater narrative the whole conflict has been pretty damn pointless.

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See, I don’t quite agree because the War had already started before Teldrassil was even burned. Destroying Teldrassil was a massive blow to the Alliance’s power on Kalimdor, and ensured the greater safety of the majority of the Horde races which live on Kalimdor. The Night Elves may never recover from the Burning of Teldrassil. They can never pose anywhere near the same threat to the Horde ever again.