How can we redeem/rebuild the Horde?

[Badmaa-nagrand]

I find the issue is threefold.

• Firstly the writers need to stop repeating the same story over and over using different actors in the Horde. First it was Grom in war 3 then Garrosh then Sylvanas and every time they have the Alliance forgive and ally up with them to save the world.

• Second The alliance is only ever reactive to these events and only ever reacts to Hordes aggression and is never pro active. Even things like Stormheim are a reaction to things like the Broken Shore and the story bend over backwards to Justify them. Not to mention the lengths the writers go to to make sure that Anduin is always perceived as on the right side of the conflict. As long as he is associated as leader of the Alliance they will never allow the Alliance to be in the wrong.

• Thirdly is the massive power imbalance, Between the super hero roster the Alliance has and the complete lack of characters on the Horde side the war has never been a believable conflict. Blizzard either need to kill off some of the Alliance roster or build up the Horde one.

The only way I can see them rectifying this is getting some writers with a passion for the Horde writing some new novels for them and develop new characters without butchering by making them lackeys of alliance characters.

Two get an expansion where the Alliance is the aggressor however without villain batting them. Simply allow old wounds reopen and spark conflict.
Let Genn go after the Forsaken for invading his kingdom.
Let Alleria go after the Blood elves for exiling the High/Void elves.
Let Kultiras go after Rexxar for the death of Daelin.
Let Night elves go after the orcs for Teldrassil.
Let the humans go after the Horde for Stormwind/lordearon.
Let the lightforged/Draenei go after the orcs for war on Draenor.

Simply stop making Alliance characters simply forget or forgive all the terrible things the Horde has done Or remove the ones who will from the Alliance. However let Horde defend it self and fight back honorably for a change. Let it lose some ground but show they are different from when they committed these acts. Show New Characters among the horde that will not go down the same path of their predecessors and condemn the acts of these crimes once committed by the Horde, but will stand for the new horde.

[Ikaar-dreadmaul]

@Badmaa-nagrand

Simply stop making Alliance characters simply forget or forgive all the terrible things the Horde has done. However let Horde defend it self and fight back honorably for a change.

So in BFA the Horde gets to kill Alliance innocents in a way the Alliance can’t fight back, then at the end of it the Horde get to basically scapegoat Sylvanas and suffer no consequences but you suggest the Alliance aren’t allowed the same?

No.

Sorry folks but all this talk of reperations, justice etc is moot. The fact of the matter is there’s only 4 ways the burning of Teldrassil can ever have a resolution, 2 that put the Alliance and Horde on ‘equal’ footing and 2 that just slap one in the face.

1. Nothing ever comes out of Teldrassil and the Alliance will always be known as the faction that let an enemy faction genocide one of their races and do nothing to seek proper justice and the Horde will always be known as a monstrous faction of psychopaths and cowards who don’t have empathy for innocents.(neutral)

2. The Alliance gets to commit a War of the Thorns of their own and like the Horde suffer no consequences, the factions are now at peace not because they both respect each other, but because they are so apathetic about all the needless killing they can’t muster up the effort to fight any more.(Neutral and honestly the only satisfactory resolution I can think of)

3. The Alliance gets to commit a War of the Thorns, except they are shown in a narrative light to be justified and the Horde agree with peace with the Alliance because the Alliance is so superior both morally and power wise that they basically surrender to them(Alliance favoured)

4. The Alliance ‘get even’ by giving the Horde a proper fight that they always wanted with their innocents untouched, giving the Horde no reason not to want peace afterwards because the Alliance and the Horde are now on the same moral footing but they didn’t have to have their children burned to death, Aka the garbage you suggested(completely horde favoured like come the f on)

[Zarrín-zuljin]

@Kyalin-cenarion-circle

That’s what the decade of humiliating content says to me - it’s why I want that to be reversed and balanced.

Yep. The last 10 years of utterly annihilating the Horde and having them act as the faction of antagonistic villain plot devices should be reversed and balanced. Without doing that, there will never be anything else but the ridiculous need to have one side commit awful acts and have the other side maintain a moral high ground against that antagonism.

@Kyalin-cenarion-circle

I mean, Pellex, that’s what I feel has been done to my playable race.

Unfortunately, your racial pride makes you feel that way since your city got burned to the ground and folks died.[1] I don’t begrudge you that feeling. The problem is that while your race lost their home, the Horde as a whole lost, and the Forsaken basically got deleted. So when Horde players see this line of thought, all that’s visible is, “Great, we lost, our faction was decimated, another A-List hero was removed, and the answer is to make us lose more.” We’re constantly the villain in our own story and then in a hero-driven narrative, our hero roster is depleted.

I can see you’re upset about the Night Elf treatment, but in BfA the Horde overall (and the player) was once again forced into being portrayed as the antagonist, initiating multiple conflicts, spending an entire expansion being told we’re (at least supporting) the villain. This is from start to finish - starting off with (what we would consider in our world) two war crimes and ending with another faction leader (who is a significant character and original racial leader) removed from the faction and destined to become a purple-dispenser.

On top of being the villain - again - the Horde then loses both battlegrounds (Darkshore and Arathi Highlands). The Night Elves lose Teldrassil, after managing to slow the Horde attack with city guards, but the Forsaken lose the Undercity (to our own machinations) and then lose the only character that truly defines the race. To add insult to injury, the Forsaken get to add the “Human Potential” aspect via Calia Menethil (who basically has nothing in common with the Forsaken). In essence, we’re told “You’re bad and we’re going to replace your defining elements with an Alliance-based leader so that you can be better.”

It’s pretty crippling, both in terms of faction strength and faction pride. I know you mentioned you want it to be satisfying for Horde players as well, so I hope this doesn’t come across as me stating you’re suggesting crushing the Horde. Honestly though, while you feel demoralized in PVP as a Night Elf, BfA made the Horde player feel pretty demoralized in general.

It’s why, while I don’t want time travel, I’m willing to go along with pretty much anything to help un-write BfA. Let the entire thing be the result of N’Zoth messing with our minds to drive a wedge between the factions that is insurmountable so that we can’t unify against him. When we come back from Shadowlands, N’Zoth is still alive and well. 8.3 didn’t end his threat, in fact he grew stronger from it, and now the Lightforged have come to wage full scale war against his evil (as an added bonus, a long-time “big bad” doesn’t get wiped out in one patch in an expansion).

[1] The phrasing “folks died” isn’t intended to be glib but I didn’t know how else to put it. I’m not trying to deny the severity of it, but like most Azerothian-based population events the number of people involved is somewhere between 1 and 1 billion (?) - a figure that’ll never really be quantified in any meaningful way and that never really relates to anything anyway. We don’t even get population percentages to go by (i.e. 90% of Night Elves died? 10%?). As it’s been said previously, with the way folks are murdered in Azeroth, I’m fairly certain every race should’ve died out long ago - or else every race has a serious collection of baby-making facilities somewhere.

[Gantrithor-myzrael]

@Ikaar-dreadmaul

and suffer no consequences

No consequences?

Explain how Horde suffered “no consequences”.

[Finninbas-moon-guard]

This bickering is pointless

[Kyalin-cenarion-circle (Kyalin)]

Zarrin, I have at no point argued that I’m the only one with problems, but what I have argued is that the Horde’s problems are of a different character from mine, and they are. I don’t think we disagree that we need a resolution for those problems, and hence I don’t see the point in reminding me what I already know about your situation. You don’t need to convince me, I’m already with you on it.

I will however state that in the same conversation that we talk about fixing your problems, we also give fair provision for mine and vice versa. There’s a tendency on these boards to propose things that leave entire swaths of the playerbase out in the cold - and while I appreciate that’s hard, often impossible to avoid, I do want us to at least be trying.

My difficulty with the solution as presented is two-fold. First
a) The revelation discussed will not undo audience feelings about PVP, and
b) It still doesn’t resolve the perceived-competence-in-the-rivalry issues that I’ve been laying out.

To actually attack b - I think that’s something that has to be resolved through faction conflict. It doesn’t have to be the all-encompassing BFA-like conflict, and it probably shouldn’t be, but it happened “in the arena”, and has to be resolved there as well. For a conversation of one piece of how we might do that - I offer the following: A proposal for Warsong Gulch

Re:[1] Elegy provides a lot of wiggle room in terms of numbers - so I’m not concerned about that. The evacuation was largely successful, the problem was that the War of the Thorns’ visual presentation was concerned with presenting the matter as a tragedy, and presenting the Night Elves as something to be pitied rather than respected and feared. Translate that to me, a PVPer. Do you think I want to be pitied, or feared?

Well, it doesn’t matter what I want if Blizzard is dictating, does it?

[Gantrithor-myzrael]

@Kyalin-cenarion-circle

Translate that to me, a PVPer. Do you think I want to be pitied, or feared?

How the heck does the PvE aspect of the game affect your ability to do anything in PvP?

How does the WoT prevent you from killing Horde and winning in, for example, the Alterac Valley battleground?

[Velskàr-stormrage]

@Badmaa-nagrand

Simply stop making Alliance characters simply forget or forgive all the terrible things the Horde has done Or remove the ones who will from the Alliance. However let Horde defend it self and fight back honorably for a change. Let it lose some ground but show they are different from when they committed these acts. Show New Characters among the horde that will not go down the same path of their predecessors and condemn the acts of these crimes once committed by the Horde, but will stand for the new horde.

The only real problem with this solution is that it has also been done before, via Daelin equating Thrall’s Horde with the Old Horde of the First and Second Wars, during “Old Hatreds” in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.

Like, that’s literally where we are at right now. The Burning of Teldrassil was, quite literally, the destruction of a major capital city coupled with a countless (I will agree with Zarrin that we’re never given exact numbers in these scenarios) number of civilian casualties.

Ergo, it’s comparable to what the Horde did to Stormwind and King Llane to win the First War, or what they did to Grim Batol during the Second War.

And as a result, we’re literally right back where we were prior to Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos:

• The morally-virtuous Alliance is trying to decide whether or not they should kill off the Horde in revenge/justice
• The Horde is forced to question its own leadership and grovel for forgiveness
• We’re left wondering whether the Horde is inherently evil because of its (non-human) races, or if it was simply being corrupted by a handful of bad actors (Blackhand, Gul’dan, Doomhammer, Grom Hellscream vs. Garrosh and Sylvanas)
• Meanwhile, the Horde’s most moderate leaders (which includes Thrall in both cases) try, with little visible success, to convince the other faction that, “we’re not all like this!”

I’m personally fine with undoing Battle for Azeroth one way or another, by time travel or Old God machinations. But if we’re being truly honest about telling the same story over and over again, well…

Let’s be honest. We’re telling the same story over and over again.

[Kyalin-cenarion-circle (Kyalin)]

It demotivates me to enter that battleground, or play the game at all, in the first place because of the things that it tells me about the team I want to represent.

And if you want to take issue with that - then you’re going to have to explain first why Horde players being demotivated by the story IS valid, but when it happens to other people it is not.

[Velskàr-stormrage]

Both the Night Elves and the Horde at large—though most specifically the Forsaken—had their faction/racial identities invalidated by Battle for Azeroth, and their respective playerbases (likely) demotivated. That being said, there are a few key differences that I’d like you to consider:

1. As has been pointed out many times, the Horde as an entire faction was not only ridiculed and humiliated throughout Battle for Azeroth, but has consistently been villainized in this very same manner going all the way back to Mists of Pandaria.
2. As a night elf, I was personally horrified by Teldrassil. But I’m also able to recognize that—in stark contrast to Point 1—the Kaldorei haven’t received nearly the same amount of villain-batting that the Horde has, largely due to them being on Team Blue.

• If anything, the night elves have been portrayed as nothing short of heroic in the post-Wrath expansions, from their novel-centric emphasis in Stormrage and Wolfheart to their valiant defense of Mt. Hyjal in Cataclysm to the defense of Val’sharah in Legion and all the way up to them retaking Darkshore in BfA.

3. In addition to Point 1, the Forsaken as a people have quite literally had their cultural identity obliterated, if only because so much of that identity has traditionally relied upon a single leader, who has just been villain-batted into an Arthas 2.0.

• The salt in this wound is the additional implication that their “savior” and successor to Sylvanas isn’t even someone who has first-hand experience being a Forsaken—and dealing with the rejection that comes with it—like Lillian Voss. No; only an Alliance-sympathetic undead can apparently save them from themselves with the Holy Light, despite the fact that said character has literally not lived among her own people for decades.

If you honestly consider all these points, with all the narrative consequences that are implied, the Kaldorei got off easy. Teldrassil may have been made to look like a disastrous act of genocide, but in terms of repercussions, it was largely smoke and mirrors for dramatic effect.

[Pellex-hyjal (Pellex)]

@Kyalin-cenarion-circle

you’re going to have to explain first why Horde players being demotivated by the story IS valid, but when it happens to other people it is not.

The problem is that it seems to be a zero-sum game. I honestly don’t see any solution here that doesn’t lead to one side or the other being demotivated.

If you get your “big, juicy W” it’s going to demotivate us.

If you don’t get it, it’s going to demotivate you.

That’s the irreconcilable difference.

[Kyalin-cenarion-circle (Kyalin)]

The issue I take with this analysis is once again its attempt to weigh in on who has it worse - which remains a pointless discussion that can almost never take into account the differences in investment and objectives that the different sides have as it tries to state, without basis, that one of the three psychological needs that people play video games for (relatedness) subsumes or overwhelms the other (competence).

For - what objective exactly? Are you saying that Night Elf fans should shut up and go home? That our issues aren’t worth being addressed? If you’re not, then I’m going to have to ask what the point is to this laser focus on the “who has it worse” discussion when we should be talking about solutions to meet everyone’s objectives.

@ Pellex

I have shared means of thinking about the problem in a way that would allow us to address Horde concerns, but you seem to be saying that the Horde can suffer no loss whatsoever, which in this case involves the Night Elves retaking Ashenvale from them onscreen.

If something that minor to the Horde is a bridge too far, but it’s fine for you to show up and take all of the Night Elves’ holdings in a prepatch, mitigated by the Night Elves and their allies taking one of three zones back in a warfront whose conclusion we’re only aware of from a dev interview and a lackluster cinematic, then it’s hard for me not to read a declaration like that as an expression of incredible selfishness.

Like - it’s fine if you beat down and brutalize what I care about, but I can’t have this explicitly limited win under any circumstance? Really?

[Cemeron-nesingwary]

@Amadis-draka

However, this was still nonetheless both espionage and territorial occupation the Night Elves enacted on the Blood Elves, which did indeed push them towards the Horde.

That cant be denied, but the Kaldorei should have come forward and simply spoken with the Sindorei regarding their concerns and not have simply occupied the Ghostlands which optically was a bad decision. We see as of Legion from the Void Elf recruitment quest line that these Night Elf forces are still in Quel’thelas all these years later and their base of operations is where the player and Alleria Windrunner begin their search for the lost Blood Elves who eventually become Void Elves.

[Pellex-hyjal (Pellex)]

Where do you get the idea that I think the War of Thorns was in any way fine? I hated it. I hated it so much that I didn’t log into the game for two weeks and very seriously thought about quitting. The only reason I didn’t was because I have a raiding group.

Your appeal basically boils down to “Just give me this! You owe it to me after how you hurt me!” Which is yet more guilt and shame, which is the thing that demotivates me.

I’m not saying you can’t have it. I’m saying that you getting it would make me (and many other Horde players, to judge by other responses in this thread) feel worse about the story than we already do, and disincentivize us to log in.

[Kyalin-cenarion-circle (Kyalin)]

I mean, if we want to mischaracterize appeals, to me, your position looks like you standing there, folding your arms, and telling me. “I mean, sure, I didn’t WANT to completely brutalize you and demolish your investment, but I also want to lock in the gains forever” - and I don’t think that’s fair.

Now again, I linked a proposal that I think can resolve the matter with the due being given to both sides - at least in this area of the world. I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to look at it, but it contains some of the general ideas that I have to make something like this fair.

[Shernish-nazjatar]

Forgive us! You owe us! You oppressed us!

[Pellex-hyjal (Pellex)]

First: What “gains” do you think I want to “lock in”? I received no gains from BfA. I consider that expansion to be nothing but loss for me, and I’m sure you feel the same.

Second: How is me saying that one or the other side is going to be unhappy the same as me saying your side is the one that has to be unhappy? I’m not offering a solution to this problem. Quite the opposite: I’m saying it doesn’t have a happy solution. Not even the Night Elves taking Ashenvale (on or offscreen) is a happy solution that satisfies everyone, as this thread has shown.

[Kyalin-cenarion-circle (Kyalin)]

I think if we lay the groundwork for a more balanced conflict where I don’t feel like a pushover and you don’t feel like a monster, that’s as happy of a solution as we can try for - and yes, I think Ashenvale is sizeable part of that.

[Pellex-hyjal (Pellex)]

People have been saying that since August 2018, and nobody has yet come up with a storyline that actually accomplishes it. I’ve given up on thinking it can be done.

[Kyalin-cenarion-circle (Kyalin)]

I again offer the proposal I linked to Zarrin, as well as the framework it works off of.