If you’re referring to the other thread, it’s blind faction partisanship, and bluntly? Pain. They’re reacting to that pain by trying to inflict it on the other side, and it emotionally validates them to be mean to people with blue backgrounds.
That’s not perfectly connected with refusing to accept Blizzard’s attempts to re-anchor expectations.
They were doing it in this thread as well, until I guess the feeling of humility, and powerlessness just rocked them to steal your OP. Lashing out no matter how bad your feelings are hurt is childish and makes no sense
It is connected when people are saying characterization of another faction is somehow infringing on the one you’re playing, and needs to be changed by bringing the other one down. That’s not even a step in the direction of helping your own problems.
I agree with you, but it’s also a completely human reaction to something like this. I used to be the same way about Night Elf issues, and I know that it’s emotionally easy to look to the other side, see someone who you feel is benefiting from what you’re upset about, and then try to feel better by lashing out at them.
It just doesn’t get us anywhere. Unfortunately, pointing that out and saying that doesn’t cause the problem to magically vanish. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink - and a lot of these people aren’t emotionally ready to consider amicable discussion.
Literally, with Night Elf issues specifically, I’ve seen lashing out, and then I’ve seen reasonable, understandable conclusions. Both are treated equally inconsolable for reasons that don’t have anything to do with the Night Elves at the door.
Night Elf problems aren’t solved with demonizing any party that has wronged them in the story, and consolation isn’t the grandiose, metaphor for servitude people are crying about either, that’s ridiculous. Expecting what was made clear, is completely reasonable, and it’s not at the cost of characterization of the Elves.
This wet diaper attitude on display about redemption is pathetic. It doesn’t even go past the notion of lashing out. ‘I should get to last out, and diminish something you have, because I say it will help me’. How’s that? ‘Well, that’s more complicated’.
How ridiculous.
Blizzard has had an obsession with ‘metal’ moments for some time now, and their bias towards their idea of what the Horde should be has caused them to constantly push the envelope so they can have their cake and eat it too. There’s a marked disdain, it seems, for the more peaceful races, even if they’re only peaceful due to the writer’s own defanging of them, and thus no passion for writing them unless it’s to use them as a punching bag.
This has been an issue since Cataclysm, and it likely stems from the Game of Thrones infection that swept through fantasy in the 2010s, the “bad guys as good guys” aspect, in addition to relying on emotional blows to drive engagement as opposed to more complex writing.
The writers want their big metal moments, and they use Orcs and Forsaken to do it, to the detriment of those races’ themes, and then realize the Horde is supposed to be a heroic faction, and backtrack and try to use framing to make it seem more equitable. The result is that we now have factions defined only by the faction wars, and no culture beyond that.
The solution would be to step back and have a refocus on internal threats for all the races, but especially the Horde, especially the Forsaken, and make both factions defined by their cultures as opposed to their conflicts with each other.
What gets missed in this - and this is my usual critique towards people who want to dispense with the faction war, is that there’s still a faction rivalry to contend with, and this obsession that you talked about has led to a situation where one side is this badass metal conqueror in its themes and visual presentation - and the other is trotted out to lose or find a way to wind down the story.
There are two ways of looking at this problem.
A: My faction sucks, is completely spineless, and isn’t allowed to hit back. I’m tired of feeling like the Cleveland Browns.
H: I’m tired of being hit with the villain bat, and I’m sick of the Alliance being morally pure.
Two sides of the same coin in other words - our problems are linked.
Leaving the situation as is without faction conflict I don’t feel solves this issue. Have Horde players forgotten BFA just because we ended the faction war? No. Have Alliance players forgotten about the humiliation of this conflict and the last one? Certainly not. Will we in the future if we just continue to pretend that this isn’t an issue? No.
What’s needed, again, is a better faction war - one to right things so that both sides feel motivated to participate, and feel good about participating in it. And yes, I know that’s a tall order.
I disagree, because of the fact one side isn’t allowed any agency of their own, or anything remotely resembling an escalation of aggression, that fits the setting. If the faction was going to be something awesome then it already should have been. Enough had been warranted for fighting, nothing has been warranted for a genocide story. One side fully expects to do something, and won’t be allowed too. While the other side will be given justification for, personal bias? At the expense of the other party, because they’re already claiming to be to frail to actually participate in their own wet nursing.
I agree much more strongly with what Poised said. While I love the faction war story, and would have enjoyed seeing it progress. It began, and imploded, and I don’t need to see more be thrown on the alter for it, just for some paltry benefit. Even though, I’m sure there will be more faction conflict
The frailty claim largely trades on a deep analysis of the text rather than a look at visual presentation and theming - and as I’ve stated and cited many times: the latter beats the former every time. Frankly, who are you going to pick? The big strong Orc who is burning the elves’ tree down, or the frail, half-naked elf that’s crying about it? It doesn’t matter if books and NPC lines claim that the latter is more amazing than the former, people form impressions based on what they see.
Hence if you really want to fix the problem, you’re going to need more instances of the inverse being presented - and to the credit of upset Horde fans, that’s going to require a more stern and yes, a darker Alliance.
I’m not really advocating for getting rid of the faction war so much as defining the various cultures outside of it, if that makes any sense. Night Elves can and should have full run of Ashenvale and fill any Horde race that comes into those forests with so many arrows the porcupines think they have a new Wild God, but then they’re only truly defined by their antagonism to the Horde.
Animosity is all well and good, but bereft of other things and it becomes a detriment to those races and their themes, and this is very much true for the Horde races. The resource issues for the Horde were solved years ago, but because of all the faction war stuff we’ve quite literally not seen the fruits of those story beats.
Absolutely ridiculous. They claim fragility, because they’re literally nervous about the consequences of asking for something to be done to them, for no other reason then who’s going to be doing it to them.
You’re only worried about their interpretation of their own guilt, and dissatisfaction with the story. There are not instances of looking steadfast for a reason. They’re upsetting, and not in the cards. If it hasn’t been done before, there shouldn’t be a reason to expect it going forward. The problem is we’ve gotten to this point, not being allowed to do something. This is literally setting the stage for yet another lopsided conflict, and I highly doubt the Alliance would be doing anything worth the expense.
I mean, who you have conflicts with is something that becomes part of your identity, but I would agree with you in saying that shouldn’t be ALL there is, and there’s an opportunity in say, an old world questing revamp to incorporate more cultural information.
Getting back on topic somewhat, you know what I’d like to see? Orcs defined by clan affiliation, more troll tribes, and better definition for the Grimtotem.
It’s probably because I’m just way down in the gloom about the whole idea, but I genuinely can’t think of any way that another faction war, or continuing the rivalry is going to ever be positive. At best, it’s just going to be that uncomfortable moment I have to slog through while I go to the next bit of content that I hope will let me forget about it.
Edit: Although the funny part is that I’ve also lost a lot of interest in even exploring internal horde stories as a result of BFA. Shadowlands is a breath of fresh air to me specifically because most of it is divorced from the factions, so I can just forget about my character being a horde member for a lot of it. So not even any rebuilding stories is going to do much for me.
If it had been built up, and went according to what anyone clearly wants, and expected post Stormheim, I would be for the conflict. But, not anymore. Not after the primary need is expressed as justification, and ‘blow you out of the water’ moments. Leave the Alliance characters alone.
Back in Vanilla - you could reasonably not care about the rivalry. It was there, there was content, and there were quests, but you could also have fun with PVE. Conflicts used to be ignorable. We lost a lot of that through the ubernarrative model, whether we’re talking about a big bad or a faction rivalry story.
I would argue that we need to get that ignorability back - because there will always be some people who no-matter what do not want to PVP or engage in the rivalry, and that’s okay.
Why is there so much bizarre torture of mothers/children in the Horde’s story? Most of the eww stuff in the game seems to emerge from the Horde’s hands. The Theramore survivors, Brennadam civilians, and red dragons in Grim Batol are all events with portions that don’t even feel like they belong in Wow. Is that just a main appeal for a lot of Horde players? Is that supposed to be metal?
The Grim Batol dragons are basically the ugly aftereffects of a retcon making all of them sapient, aren’t they? Although that might be one of the more minor ones, since I think Deathwing was already intelligent even in the RTS games. Given that most of the development team was on board with Bad Garrosh sans Afrasiabi, and the Theramore survivors popping up out of nowhere for patch 5.4, I don’t think the intent was to make horde players fistpump over any of it at all. And if I remember right, horde players don’t hear about Brennadam at all in the course of questing, but the horde was so obviously in the wrong every step of the way in BFA that it seemed self-evident to me.
Personally I disliked the Dragonmaw stuff heavily, and not just because Garrosh acted like a loon in the intro. But that may have been the point in setting him up as the next expansion villain.
Idk the entire timeline, I think my issues with the area were from the second war era use of the fortress. But, that doesn’t mean Zaela, and Garrosh were being cool by it either.
You’ll have to fill me in on if it’s a retcon or not, I don’t know what you mean.
As for them popping up, and the Horde being blissfully unaware, I mean. It’s still really disgusting, in another story it wouldn’t have been so out of place, but all three of the events are just disgusting. To me. Only really because of the setting, and how I just never really expected something like that from Wow ever. The only other thing I have that is close is what apparently happened in the most recent book, with Turalyon? I have the most sickening feeling that was implemented with these other actions in mind… but, I can’t say for certain.
The representation of the acts in the game though, are like some of my most sour notes from Wow. Anytime I remember that those things happened I get the heebs. And, what with all the metal imagery, it doesn’t seem to far off the mark for me to assume the Horde were all about it
What I had in mind about it being a retcon was that, if I remember correctly, Alexstrasza originally wasn’t designed as an intelligent being. So capturing a big dragon to breed more would “just” be really aggressive and cruel animal husbandry. But that’s why I was questioning if I remembered correctly, because Deathwing was supposedly a thinking being even back then.
But if she was formerly just a big animal, and then later changed to be her own person, then the old RTS stuff suddenly becomes really, really ugly unless the developers give an alternate explanation for why the queen of peace and life is suddenly “siding” with the horde. But they just kept it as-is with her being a prisoner.
I don’t even understand how it could be more ugly? Best case scenario she was a dumb animal, I guess. The aspects aren’t my favorite, but a lot of people I know are apparently in love with the dragon’s portion of lore. I would think it’s a good thing they got to be expanded on, and are able to talk.
I’ve been trying not to be explicit about it and dancing around what I mean instead, but: