I just find them the most appealing all around on the Horde. Followed by Zandalari.
But Zandalari have everything I wish Kaldorei had. So…
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Orc peons try to make it up to the night elves by building a giant golden Aztec pyramid on top of Teldrassil’s stump, full of screeching, pooping dinosaurs.
“This what you want, right?”
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Points for making me chuckle.
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And if you want peoples enjoyment, whatever it’s based in, to be handi-capped as badly as yours has been then Be. Honest. About. That. And stop pretending like treating a symptom is the same as attacking the cause.
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Disclaimer that I’ve always been a bit of a hardliner about this sort of thing.
But I feel like a time skip can’t work as long as the player character is preserved in the process. BFA made sure that the horde player was part of it this time around (whereas in Cata, you could at least wishy-washy ignore some of it with selective leveling or having had a pre-leveled character) but unless you involve a character wipe, then you just carry your storyline sins with you.
Before BFA, Saurfang was a neat character concept. I didn’t want to actually play as him, though.
Edit: In addition, I feel like this still doesn’t really recapture the WC3 moment because there was no real corruption or compulsion for the horde to go along with it these last two times. I feel that the demon blood stuff, whether hokey or not, was critical in giving the faction a fig leaf of sympathy.
oh, several people have suggested firing the current developers and hiring new ones, I’m sure…
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I’ve grown sick of being made the bad guys for no other reason than Blizz seems too afraid to tarnish the Alliance. Which is exactly what their non-commital nonsense with Varian (WotLK) and Genn (Legion) suggests. I’m sick of not being given motives, let alone validity to actions I am forced to commit as a consequence. I am sick of the Alliance having no tangible flaws, and the fact the Horde is allowed flaws being used as an excuse for “Evil”. You enjoy moral absolutism. Good for you. Don’t pretend its good writing or good for the overall narrative. Its been nothing but destructive since Cata.
The reason the Horde always has to be so flawed and so “grey”? Because the faction is the only one allowed to be. So that burden is all the more pronounced. Your maintenance of such a pristine shine tangibly effects my faction, because Blizz clearly does not feel as constrained with using the Horde as they see fit as they do the Alliance. It also effects yours, because you can’t have interesting internal turmoil and conflict without room for nuance and complexity. Even the vestiges of it will be consumed by the need for the Alliance to always be “right”, and “just”, and “virtuous”. For example, as things currently sit Tyrande’s tiff with Anduin will vanish like smoke soon enough. No matter how valid it is from her perspective.
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My hero. Literally nothing else had to be added.
This is an AMAZINGLY GOOD analysis. Put this same skills in use regarding Calia please.
Call me crazy but if the “moral barometer” of the Alliance is irrelevant for the Horde, then why are you using it as a measure scale to actually qualify the “moral barometer” of the Horde in the first place?
Either the moral of both factions are narrative constructs indeed independent from each other (indeed supporting Gantrithor´s very smart point about Horde not needing any type or form of “Alliance approval” to become better in the first place) OR they´re actually intimately connected by the narrative in the current story, ergo the scales on one DIRECTLY AFFECT the scales of the other so yes, balance IS required (cause guess what?? Morally and Absolutely Good Alliance DOES negatively impact Horde narrative simply because it´s the catch-22 that will ALWAYS guarantee the Horde being subjected to villain bat / beggar for a redemption they will never achieve and basically a subservient actor in Alliance narrative oriented cycles for the game).
If the Alliance HAS TO be perfect and Absolutely Morally Good and the Horde CAN´T become it and HAS to keep flaws (and before you ask "why the Horde CAN´T become Perfect and Absolutely Morally Good just like the current Alliance is depicted? let me explain: because the moment the Horde becomes perfect too IS the moment the Horde as a “product” sold by the company basically becomes a clone of the Alliance brand and loses it´s purpose and definition as a product, ergo becoming redundant, period.- then it and the racers associated to it by logical consequence have to “pay” for the flaws ad nauseaum to the Alliance and stay hostages to this toxic narrative.
Tl;dr: pick your poison… either the morally stance of each individual faction is IRRELEVANT to the other and we shopuldn´t even bother with redemption Bs oriented to satisfy the “moral standards” of the other faction OR the moral stance of the game as a whole involves BOTH factions, and by proxy a more balanced and nuanced depiction IS required -yes, including adding flaws to the insuferable White Knight Mary Sue / Gary Stus Alliance characters and races-.
Wrathgate Cinematic literally depicted this… and pray tell, how did it ended up looking for the Horde narrative, hmm?
Unfortunate, but I don´t think devs actually care over the narrative integrity of the Horde when they can ridicule and villain bat the faction (even some times simultaneously like they did in this example) to advance the development of Alliance Human Hero FOTM (back then it was Bolvar).
Actually it does when we get narratives literally written based upon THIS -the moral stances and “goodness / badness” of the factions and their comparison- like in Cata and MoP and WoD and BfA. If the moral depiction and behaviour of the factions are irrelevant to each other, then getting offended / worked over Teldrassil and any “war crime depiction” in the game IS pointless simply because those events aren´t relevant to the opposing faction by narrative principle -the stance I suspect Blizz writers are using right now-.
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To clarify, at least in my head, this wouldn’t be a time jump within WoW itself. Blizzard could do that but remaking even just EK and Kalimdor again is a risky prospect under the best circumstances. This would almost need to be a soft relaunch of a brand with a new game. RTS, RPG, MMO, whichever Blizzard wanted to pursue, but the goal would be to re-introduce and re-invigorate the setting.
As others have said I don’t think there’s much to be salvaged out of this “moment” in the franchise. It’s like Blizzard just dropped a couch sized chunk of glowing uranium into everyones living room. No rearranging the furniture is going to fix it; you either need to bury it or you need a new house.
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So, WC4 or WoW2?
Knowing modern naming conventions it’d probably be called Warcraft: The New Age or something like that. But yes in spirit. Something that can go in and be flexible enough to push the series into a new direction. Something that I don’t think WoW is well equipped to do. With its static factions and player characters that must be maintained no matter what.
Gantrithor, I’m seriously disappointed that you’re the only person who replied to post 249, and that you did so in this manner.
I wrote out a series of scenarios because I’m trying to introduce some granularity to this question and to work out some general frameworks for how we might approach it. I wasn’t presenting that point to disagree with it, I was presenting that point in a failed attempt to focus the conversation.
GRAND MARSHALL BUDD would instantly endear massive amounts of new investiture in the the Alliance story regardless of what actions he took while in the role.
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If it means anything, I read it and only didn’t respond because I didn’t think I could contribute to it in a constructive manner so I figured it wasn’t really meant for me to reply to.
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Expectation management. 
https://giphy.com/gifs/pancakes-z2hfj4oiX5H4k
Edit:
I have granularity in one of my lungs, it’s not pleasant.
This is the general gist I’ve gotten as well. Frankly, I get the feeling that they consider the Horde a bit of a burden to write around and a waste of resources when they aren’t using the faction as a villain bat to settup a future villain and expansion. Which would explain why so little effort is so often put into things like “motive”, “justifications”, and “validation”. Or the fallout of such villain bat rounds. Which is why we run off to another dimension after the Horde is brought low and broken. WoD for MoP. SLs for BfA.
Then you have the obnoxious nature of our reps. Baine I do think is still salvageable with the right TLC, but its hard not to notice that he’s still locked within that Good Horde plot device prison he’s been trapped in for so many years. Thrall is being subjected to this to a certain degree too, but his prison is more “guilt”. Then we have Calia … and boy is she ever an unliving example of who much Blizz hates writing Horde characters. By all indications they’d seriously rather write up a new Alliance character and shoe-horn her into a Horde leadership position than actually just build up a new Forsaken leader. Even Voss, as forced as she is, could be made to work thanks to her truly representing a lot of the Forsaken themes. But she’s being "steward of Gondor"d hard right now. Seriously, what are we supposed to make of that?
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I didn´t answer to it by pure respect and personal principles -and what do I mean by this? simple: I´m a Horde-only player; I could never “connect” in an intelectual or emotional level with the Alliance and it´s races (too plain for me, sorry); so I think I´m NOT well equipped to make such a choice as the ones you proposed -because ALL of those choices deeply affect the Alliance narrative and by proxy deeply impact the Alliance players that would have to experience them-.
To put it simple, I hate when “well meaning” Alliance players come here proposing BS that we Hordies would actually have to play and experience, ergo, by pure courtesy and respect, I will never propose nor qualify any narrative that impacts so deeply the Alliance players (Tl;dr I won´t do to others what I´d hate getting done to myself, period).
“The only Good Horde is a Horde with believes and values identical to the Alliance.”
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More accurately. The only good Horde are the ones that make the Horde convenient for the Alliance, their Reps, and their stories. Blizz created the perfect excuse here with BfA to essentially slam out Legion style expac after Legion style expac. The Horde being an optional side-kick and observer to the grandness of the Alliance heroes’ stories. They beat the Legion themselves after all, we just sort of watched.
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“Baine is the best part of the Horde.”
…
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