But that’s just what the Horde does, you can’t blame them for that.
The Alliance will back down once a new leader is installed, and it’ll all be water under the bridge.
A la MoP.
7 Likes
Well from the Broadcast text the remnants of the horde fleet were Sylvanas’s sacrifice to take out the Alliance fleet. Whatever her plan, she doesn’t seem to be attempting a conventional military victory. In her mind she loses horde forces but destroys the Alliance’s naval advantage.
This seems to be the case because the Alliance side talks about persuing to crush the remnants of the Horde fleet and securing Naval dominance. It was intended to be a checkmate move from the Alliance. With this move the idea was the horde would be completely crippled on the seas and the Alliance would have control of the movement of supplies and armies between the continents, ensuring the military advantage in all but the most secure horde territories.
It is just no one except Sylvanas and possibly Nathanos expected a giant hole to appear in the middle of the ocean underneath both fleets.
3 Likes
People have been predicting the Naga will destroy the Alliance fleet and render that whole victory as hollow and sad that it was meaningless ever since patch 8.1.
Its the clear problem with how indecisiveness of Blizzard when it comes to telling a war story in an online format.
Everyone is running on the bland boring treadmill while characters shout exposition at us regardless of their own characteristics or previous behavior.
Your suggesting the destruction (dismantling) of the Horde. That is a bit more significant than the destruction of a city or two. What I am taking about is balance. I don’t want it but if you want the Horde to effectively be broken then the ‘fair’ and ‘balanced’ approach would mean the Alliance gets broken too.
What I want is to never have been forced into this position narratively in the first place. What I want is to not have gotten villain batted. Frankly I don’t personally give a damn about what happens with the Alliance except to how it will impact Alliance player’s enjoyment of their faction. I DO give a damn what happens to the Horde. Horde players and their faction shouldn’t get screwed just so Alliance players can get some satisfaction.
I have a basic rule. Regardless of what has been done to my faction, would I be ok with what I suggest happen to the other faction if it happened to mine? If the answer is no then I generally think it is not a good idea.
So, if the Alliance was forced through the same treatment the Horde had gotten, even if it meant you got to destroy a few Horde cities, would you be ok with the outcome your suggesting happening to the Alliance?
So? What are you suggesting? Now we are here screw the other side of the playerbase? Sorry Etheldald but I don’t feel I should fund a game being written for you and no other horde player should either. I am not saying I have a great outcome but if the only outcome you can come up with is ‘Screw the Horde player cause this is where we are now’ then I have very little sympathy for your dissatisfaction.
Fortunately for Horde players, Blizzard remembers we are paying customers too and so realises there is only so much getting screwed we are likely to put up with before it is too much. We already see people bringing up Horde player concerns with the narrative in media interviews. We might not get a good outcome but I am sure the desire for money means they won’t drive the horde completely off a cliff, even if it means coming up with a lame and stupid conclusion that leaves everyone feeling unsatisfied.
11 Likes
Why is it alright for Alliance players feeling screwed just so Horde players can get some satisfaction?
Its not even the narrative.
And real content stuff like Alliance getting last minute gameplay content like recycled Horse or Gryphon models.
I can go back to pretty much every expansion and how phoned in the Alliance content is.
The only thing Horde players generally complain about getting annoyed about is there story preferences like being the villain. Not being the central figure in a patch and etc. That is pretty much it.
The entire Stormsong and Boralus lveling content is an absolute and utter mess.
I enjoyed leveling in the Horde leveling zone INFINITELY more than I did Alliance.
Alliance content besides Drustvar was half main story and the other half filler crap like “Quillboar are here I guess?” or “Ashavane is going something but in the meantime go north and west and help some nobles hunting, logging and stuff. Kthxbye now.”
2 Likes
Playing on Horde I’ve noticed Horde players throw temper tantrums whenever the game is not solely 100% focused and designed for them. They want to be the big bad conquerors defeating Alliance at each and every turn but they just don’t want the story giving them consequences for it or telling them that it’s bad. They want the best racials for PVP and PVE and the Alliance to perpetually have worse racials. On top of it they won’t be satisfied until they have everything the Alliance has and there is no unique thing available on the Alliance anymore. They are led by an Elf, they got second rate Night Elves in “Nightborne”, the next step is to add red eyed humans onto the Horde. There is a reason this game has a higher Horde population and Horde dominate the leaderboards because this game is designed for Horde and thus it’s generally easier playing Horde.
3 Likes
You forgot to point out that the Horde are stupid-heads and mean.
20 Likes
I won’t stand for you calling the Nightborne second rate Night Elves, they are clearly alcoholic Night Elves and they are key to the horde having a booming night life industry.
4 Likes
this all started on the wrong foot when they formally made the leader of the alliance Paladins and the leaders of the Horde Warriors in Wrath.
by the precepts of what made each class (theme wise) different created the first rift in the story, If the alliance are lead by Paladins aka The Light than there actions must be perceivable just.
while the horde lead by warriors were now allowed to be openly amoral in deeds and direction. There was an over course correction in Cata with thrall and the Go’el story arc which many alliance hated (why are the horde my good guys) and Green Jesus which was than course corrected again with Garrosh the next expansion and we have pretty much had horde follow that Garrosh tone still now in BFA, were the story demands we do morally “bad stuff” by the audience standards and the justification for the most part is “just because”.
It doesnt help that all nuance for Horde conflict can only be found on paperback while the horde mis deeds are accurately displayed in game with the tone of being abhorrent. meanwhile alliance conflict and assault towards the horde is presented as comical when not outright ethically justified. Killing Night Elves is wrong, Killing Goblins is commical as presented by the story.
this does not help in a expansion were we have the Lich Queen as the leader on one end and the embodiment of a Na’ru in human flesh alliance side with Anduin.
Blizzard tends to write the factions in the vein of its main leaders (see Garrosh and Vol’jin in MoP, or Thrall in Cata,Anduin BFA) and this is wear the story largely suffered after Wrath, Anduin and like minded leaders like him that came before do not make compelling anatagonists to the horde similar to how Thrall in Cata did not make a compelling anatagonist for the alliance.
except the Alliance got Garrosh to Vol’Jin to Sylvannas meanwhile the horde has been against one general theme from the alliance since wrath
3 Likes
Yes.
because that is exactly what should happen in the current narrative.
lets say that the horde give the alliance a million chances, and yet they keep doing the same s** then yeah, there is only one answer.
That is what we would deserve.
but i guess that because i pay the game i give the alliance and their characters immense plot armor? that’s great, then if we aren’t going to be punished, then why not just let us do whatever the hell we want?
nothing bad will happen anyway!
so why not just unleash yrel, make her join the alliance after she wipes out 7 horde cities? well,nothing wrong with that and she will never face justice for it or the alliance.
i am sure that you guys will love that.
That is totally fair. i can say the same.
hey, i never wanted a faction war in the first place exactly because of this.
the funny thing is that the current narrative is leaving both sides frustrated.
when it could have been so great for both, or at least, better than what we have now.
i am sorry that blizzard is forcing horde players into this
but that doesn’t mean that i am supposed to accept whatever thrash blizzard sells me, that is why i treat the horde as a NPC faction.
so yeah, is kinda hard to find common ground when we are fanbases literally at war.
like i said many times, i am just looking forward that this nightmare ends already and never hear from it ever again.
I call them second rate because they have like literally 3 customization options. They’re off brand Night Elves for people who want to play Night Elves but want to play on the trendy faction. There is nothing unique about the enemy Alliance anymore. I feel like I’m fighting side by side with the Alliance when I join a battleground and the other 9 people are Blood Elves and “Nightborne” with half of them being Paladins. Blizzard has turned Horde into the faction with the most Elves and Paladins on it, two things that traditionally fit the lore of the Alliance more.
“FOR THE HORDE!!!” I yell as I charge into battle as the only Orc with my team of skinny blonde human looking Elves yielding the holy light.
1 Like
Yeah I do not disagree, the one way depiction hurts both sides and I blame Blizzards lack of will to get off the fence with the Always good vs the Always bad.
Whether I am playing on the blue side screaming at Andiun.
WILL:clap:YOU:clap:FUGGING:clap:DO:clap:ANYTHING?!
Versus the Horde narrative of:
“Oh boohoo we are so victimized!” As the peaceful orc has a rotisserie of human corpses in the background.
Which just makes you roll your eyes out of your skull.
It really isn’t satisfying story telling.
And this is not even about the Horde player lamenting being the bad guy or the Alliance begging to do something.
Joffrey was the most despicable character on screen in Game of Thrones and I loved seeing him every minute until he choked and died as I cheered.
Meanwhile the WoW story is currently being like Cersei. Irrationality personified just so the story could have something to talk about.
It isn’t ok and at no time have I advocated that the Alliance should get screwed for the sake of Horde players.
And yeah, the recycled and unoriginal models are crappy too and I fully agree with Alliance players complaining about that.
Not dismantling the horde isn’t pandering to Horde players or giving them satisfaction. You might not have noticed but there are a lot of unsatisfied Horde players and the conclusion isn’t going to suddenly make everything leading up to it better.
Did you miss all my whining in Legion about the lack of Horde representation in the expansion? And that the representation it had was bloody awful? Or how it would have been at least nice if the token Horde members on an Alliance space vessel actually did something proactive in the story on Argus?
Hell, part of my frustration is that since Cata the Horde is rarely featured in the narrative unless it is either as a sidekick or a villain.
That said, I fully supported the complains Alliance players had back in 5.2 with the notorious robo cat quest.
That seems subject to debate since I have seen people say they prefer the Alliance zones but as I haven’t personally levelled in either area I don’t feel it would be right for me to compare. Regardless, I don’t think the levelling questing was intended to be less enjoyable for the Alliance than the Horde or really got less time spent on it and in general the Alliance launch narrative seems a lot more upbeat and constructive than the Horde’s constant falling short of stopping Zul’s lot right up to the point where they have to go into Uldir to fight Ghuun directly cause they have failed on every other front.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want the Alliance to suffer for the sake of the Horde but the same is true the other way round. I am not even saying that everything is great on the Alliance’s side. I am saying that the Horde narrative is rubbish and frankly I don’t think it is fair to punish Horde players, who in many cases are very unhappy with the narrative they have been forced into, for choosing a horde character at character creation.
I don’t know how Blizzard can leave both sides satisfied. I don’t think it is possible personally. However I think the best we can hope for is the whole thing ending with both sides just disappointed but with something functional left to call a faction. Any ‘dismantle the Horde’ scenario makes that impossible.
11 Likes
One patch.
Just one patch.
That is all and it turns out Suramar and Highmountain are for Horde Allied races wheras the Alliance farms reputation on some Argus Broken and that somehow translates to Blood Elves experimenting with Void Magic.
The Horde narrative, especially the Orcs, got an entire featured expansion in WoD. You may not like it but WoD exist and it was incredibly Horde focused.
You are getting content. It is not something you prefer but at least you are getting something.
Again you seem to confuse the two issues.
Horde complaints of the Zandalar storyline is that they were not winning.
They were not victorious. They did not have an epic upbeat moment.
Which is fine! All stories have their ups and downs.
What are the Alliance complaints?
“Well I was questing in this zone for one minute following ashvane and then it suddenly stopped and I was told to go to these other undiscovered spots in the zone to do some hunting and help some loggers and miners. No connection to the story.”
Or
“Well half of stormsong is about this whole old god stuff which is pretty cool but then 2/3 of the zone is divided about a Horde invasion, a quillboar invasion and then a naga invasion. It just doesn’t make much sense! Its like they took all the ideas on the board did them all half way in each corner of the map!”
Meanwhile the entire storyline of Zandalar completely connected, you learn about Zandalar, its history, its enemies and get a final conclusion at the end with cohesive narrative throughout the whole zone for each of the three zones.
Everything interconnected and making sense.
Alliance had the Worgen treatment from Cata.
The only thing I can say nice about Kul Tiras is that the level design looks nice.
The story is an absolute mess.
Nah, i would that everything that wasn’t faction war was great in the alliance side.
because faction war is indeed a mess.
1 Like
They have the same number of playable elves, with almost the same amount of Paladins.
The problem with Blizzard is that they gentrified both Horde Paladins and especially Blood Elves into colour-pallet swaps of Alliance tropes over-time, they should have stayed vengeful mana vampires.
5 Likes
They were hardly mana vampires in the loaded sense of the term in any of their content where you aren’t killing them. We don’t need them to be more villainous to fit the Horde.
1 Like
I think as we add more and more Allied races the faction identity of both the Horde and Alliance will just get muddled more and more.
I can’t say I feel a very “Horde” atmosphere with so many elves running around.
New Orgrimmar feels very odd too. Its like a military base than an actual city.
Alliance used to feel like a collection of kingdoms independent from each other forming an Alliance to combat whatever threat they encounter.
Now I don’t know what it is. The mystic and individuality of the different kingdoms/races seems to be lost.
1 Like
The same amount of playable Elves, yes. But not played. There are more Blood Elves and Nightborne combined than Night Elves and Void Elves according to WoW Realm Pop. At 120 the Horde consists of 33% Blood Elves with the next highest being Orcs at 14%. It just doesn’t feel like I’m playing the Horde anymore compared to Vanilla WoW. It feels like I’m just part of some rebranded Alliance.
All they need to do next in the next batch of Allied races is give the Horde red eyed humans that look like Nathanos so you can play as edgy bad guy humans on the Horde while they give Alliance Mechagnomes or something. Finally ending whatever made the Alliance unique and giving it all to the Horde.
When I’m doing the warfront and I have Lady Liadrin yelling about the holy light to me I have to remind myself I’m actually playing the Horde and not the faction that has Human Paladins on it.
1 Like
Here’s some meta commentary: the horde will never be dismantled because that’s half of the player base and every time a war is written for that dramatic conceit it feels hollow because we know it will never happen unless factions themselves are abolished in the game.