Hello Droite,
I appreciate apathy as a feeling because I often feel apathetic myself about the prospects of improvement, albeit from a different perspective. I’ve discussed those feelings before, so I need not elaborate. What I will elaborate on is that I understand that it’s easy to react with that kind of apathy. It’s easy, its comfortable, and its somewhat validating when someone says “wow, it really is that bad. There really is no way out of this.”
Let’s just say that I agree with the first part but not the second, not because it’s not really freaking awful, but because I think the second part is unhelpful and probably untrue. We do have to pitch solutions that require that the writers do things that they don’t like to do, and/or are fired. But I wouldn’t use their past proclivities as an invisible wall to declare that things can’t be fixed.
Some of the other objections include the standard workhorse that if the Alliance strikes back in a manner that it can justify, then that means the inherent evil of the action would be missed. To that, I want to point at what Maffu said in post 318.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/how-can-we-redeemrebuild-the-horde/837820/318
Once again, we’re back to showing and not telling. We’re back to shoving things in transmedia narrative. We’re back to Blizzard thinking that if they tell us something, or make it live in a lonely snippet of quest text, or worse - tweet about it - then it means that they have presented it to the audience in a believable way. Clearly that’s not the case.
So let’s take that “justified” Alliance retribution. Let’s presume that a group of sentinels lead a bunch of reprisal raids in the Barrens, killing lots of civilians. On paper, I can see some people saying “that’s justified”, but I would also humbly submit what questing can look like on the other side of that - something to personalize and make-relatable the characters who we would ask to put a stop to that. So, I would appreciate your thoughts on this post, and whether the proposal therein does that.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/wanting-to-be-hated/838095/716
There is one last point that I want to consider.
There has been some lamentation that nothing will ever fix the problem in one stroke. This has been mixed with lamentations that there is nothing that will get the Alliance to not feel justified - and to this I do agree, at least in the short term. I also think that’s not a problem we should try to fix. Assuming that you’re going to fix a problem that took ten years to manifest in less than one is setting yourself up for failure, and as several have already pointed out - and this is a point that I agree with them on - it is not required that the Horde is “redeemed” in the eyes of Alliance players.
What matters is whether we can get towards a point where it is redeemed in the eyes of Horde players.
(Also, I’m trying to summarize and pull points as I see them - do let me know if when I do that, you think I’m missing something critical. This is still mostly a listening session for me.)