Agreed. Here’s the beauty of this argument though, and where I think you might check out. For this to work one side needs to be justified in attacking and the other side is justified in defending itself. Thanks to the story to date, the Alliance has far more justification to attack preemptively or because of distrust. That’s generally the argument I see from Horde posters.
But the last time that happened, Stormheim, rather than embrace that Genn attacked out of distrust and past history, and that the Horde was justified in feeling betrayed and defending themselves, the Alliance in this forum bent themselves over backwards to argue that Genn must have known what Sylvanas was up to the whole time.
So yeah, it’s possible to write a balanced conflict, you and I may even want that and agree to how it should happen. But I don’t think the Alliance playerbase is at all interested in that story.
I’ve always hated that side of legion. I wanted to throw both Rogers and Genn in jail for their crimes not only against the horde by breaking the peace we had (or cease fire I cant remember) but also against Storwind. Rogers comminted treason by going against her King’s order and Genn while being a King himself was in no position of calling those shots because he was just a homeless guest living out of good will of Night Elves and Humans.
Also I was starting to like Sylvanas because of the Legion intro cinematic but as we all know things went south when we found out she was evil all along.
Okay, so you represent the opposite side of this problem. You don’t want your faction to condone wanton acts of aggression. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, unfair thing, or even a wrong thing. Just a simple statement, you don’t want the Alliance to act unjustly, it’s not what you signed up for.
Now Stormheim was Sylvanas, an undoubtedly evil character, engaged in a secret plan to do something completely heinous. We have a single possibly evil character left in the Horde, and she leads an allied race. So imagine how you’d react to Genn or Tyrande attacking Baine because his Tauren were engaged in suspicious activity. Then the rest of the Alliance following their lead and attacking the Horde in a bid to swiftly end the 5th war before it gets out of hand.
No in fact I think players of both sides have been shortchanged by this fiasco they call faction war. There’s simply no way they can write a satisfying story for this. I mean, it might be satisfying for players on ONE side but the other would suffer.
What do we do then? Win trade? Horde gets to win a war and then alliance get to win a war? That would be just like what we have now: one side getting villain smashed and the other side becoming the doormat forced to forgive.
As much as I would love to see the roles reversed, they had their opportunity to do that with BfA.
They could have had Genn and a still angry Jaina convince Anduin that Sylvanas was a danger and they should strike first. The Battle of Lordaeron could have happened first with War of Thorns happening as a response. I’m not suggesting Genn or Jaina be killed. It would have been enough for either of them to take a look at things after a few patches of bloodshed and realize “What have I done?” Or they could have fallen down and gone full crazy just like Sylvanas fans had to watch their favorite character do.
This, IMO, would have made BfA a lot more interesting.
But they botched it.
With BfA more or less behind us, I think the best thing for everyone is to lock “Faction War Story” into a deep dark vault and never speak of it again.
Honestly, you’re not going to like the answer but here goes. What we’re doing now. While we’re all here to be heroes, we are here to be different kinds of heroes. Now you can’t be the crusader who invades because it’s right without also being the villain who ultimately loses while one of your significant characters it turned into raid fodder, feels like you should be able to but it invalidates the paladin. Yes the Paladin, who righteously defends his lands and the helpless, but he’s only allowed to be righteous because he’s also a doormat who happily pins all crimes on a scapegoat to end the war, again, feels like you shouldn’t need to, but trying to pin those evil motives on the crusader invalidates him when those motives only even exist to appease the paladin.
So while I don’t see an easy way to make things better there are still players who prefer to be the paladin, and others who prefer to be the crusader. So by consistently keeping one faction as the ‘paladins’ and the other faction as the ‘crusaders’ you at least give people a chance to end up on the side they personally prefer.
And for players like us who don’t particularly enjoy either story. There’s always expansions like Legion where the faction conflict is background noise and minor enough that the Alliance can feel justified that they stopped the bad woman from doing the evil thing, and the Horde can feel justified that they are slaughtering the Alliance because of a dirty sneak attack that put the world in danger.
I do really like this idea though. Establish the reasoning for it in Before the Storm, have a 2 week long campaign where the Alliance is trying to end the “threat of Sylvanas” and the Horde is trying to “defend itself.” Then conclude it with Undercity blowing up in an Azerite empowered mana bomb, killing countless Forsaken and Horde defenders. The Horde blames the Alliance, specifically Jaina Proudmoore, and attacks Teldrassil in retaliation and burns it to the ground.
The Alliance spends an expansion getting revenge for Teldrassil, the Horde spends an expansion trying to dismantle an Alliance that has become genocidal and mad.
End of the expansion Sylvanas still has her villain turn, but also claims responsibility for the mana bombing of Undercity. Sure the Horde were played for chumps but the Alliance has a reason to blame all this on one person, and the Horde had a more enjoyable story up to that point.
Ultimately what I want is a storyline more interesting than the one we got. Horde being aggressive against the alliance is boring, cliche’, uninteresting, and has been done half a dozen times already. Alliance being the aggressive ones would be a nice change of pace. Genocide does not have to be a factor into it.
I didn’t read his post, but I personally just want fair wars with no blight where I can beat up my enemies. In a game called Warcraft, I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Alliance can be the aggressor, if Blizzard allowed it. They just need more Blackmoore, more Garithos, and more Daelin Proudmoore types. They need more post-2nd war angry Genn Graymane rather that the Wrynn family house pet that he’s become.
If anything, faction stories should be kept isolated and specific to certain battles and areas. Maybe then they could allow some Alliance aggressive behavior maybe? As far as the world goes though, yes, they should keep faction war out of the overarching storyline.
Judging by what we learned about what Sylvanas was up to the one she betrayed at Broken Shore was Vol’jin since it’s looking like she worked with the Jailer to get him killed so she could be Warchief.
I guess you could say that she betrayed both sides, or even all of Azeroth.
Vol’jin was probably already under the Jailer’s influence at that point. Vol’jin didn’t really seem like the type to call for retreats, given his stand at Siege of Orgrimmar.