How can we redeem/rebuild the Horde?

Lore Story Forum
584

I don’t think I can give anything more constructive than what other posters have already done, but my 2 cents is that I largely agree with those saying it is probably impossible to do so at this point (Garrosh and Sylvanas’ actions are going to sully the Horde’s reputation forever), and that’s not even taking into account the quality of the writing team itself.

However, if we were to try, I think we’d have to give the Horde some more developed racial leaders, not kill them off as much, have them do some good outside of any Alliance association, and give the Alliance a little bit of drama in their own ranks so they aren’t the moral absolutists of the game; with the way WoW was, I think two factions with various shades of grey makes for a more compelling world than perfect-ish Alliance and twice-villanous Horde. Again, other posters have gone more in-depth.

At this point, I have hardly any faction pride left in the retail incarnation of the Horde. I’ve seen people make fun of the fact that some had any faction pride in a fictional game to begin with, but I hate that line of thinking; I mean, isn’t that the point of a faction-based game? And sure, I’m not losing sleep over the fact that the Horde has been written into the ground, but when your people in a universe you grew up with sink like that, it stings a little bit.

Just my opinion.

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585

Martin: carefully foreshadows and lays hints as to how things are building in the background up a shocking event happening

Blizzard: does shocking event no one sees coming, goes back and retcons previous writing to ‘justify’ it happening

Anduin stood next to the rest of his soldiers as the small army of felguards advanced upon them menacingly, remnants of the Legion that knew nothing but the need to destroy, and the urge to avenge their lost masters. The Alliance squad had been cut off from it’s main force, and it didn’t look like they could either retreat or receive reinforcements before the felguards reached them.

Gnomish lieutenant Justin Bieberspringcogbomb glanced up at the young human king, courage and fear co-mingling in his large pink eyes. “Do you think we really have a chance, Your Majesty?”

Anduin frowned slightly, his sapphire eyes shadowed by the rings of golden hair falling across his furrowed, sweat-stained brow. “No, I don’t.” he said tersely. His gaze shifted from the approaching demons to his own gloved hand. Energy sparked and began to coalesce there. It flared purple-black.

The gnome gaped in dismay at Anduin’s words. “Really!?”

“Yes…” Anduin nodded and smiled an odd smile. “In fact… I guarantee it.” The dark energy gathered in his hand abruptly exploded outward, washing over the entire Alliance expedition force.

Even the strongest men in the group grunted in surprise and pain; the weakest ones outright screamed. The energy was cold; so cold it burned- and not merely their flesh, but somehow their very spirits! Veteran members had felt this pain before, in battle against- against what?

Bieberspringcogbomb was on his knees, supporting himself with his hands on the ground, weapon forgotten beside them. “King Anduin, why?..” he wheezed in horror.

“Because… THERE IS NO ‘ANDUIN’!” The young man bellowed in a surprisingly deep voice. Cackling, he reached up to his own face and grabbed, skin stretching and pulling like rubber. With a great rip, his face came away-along with his entire body!

Standing revealed in his place was- Ner’Zhul! The old orc shaman-turned-warlock gave a wild cry of evil triumph. “It was ME all along! I have waited years to prepare this trap! Now, you will all die! COME MY MINIONS, SLAY THEM ALL! REVENGE FOR THE LEGION! REVENGE FOR SARGERAS!”

BLIZZARD REP: See, back in Rise of the Horde page 138, Ner’zhul looks at Kil’Jaedan and thinks about how magnificent he is, and specifically notices his legs; and in The Shattering page 126 Anduin looks at a draenei woman, is taken aback by how beautiful she is, and specifically notices her legs. This was our clue they were actually the same person the entire time! We certainly didn’t pull this out of our butts at the last minute for shock value, and to look smarter than wee actually are! Clearly, we deserve praise from our customers and raises from our bosses!

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586

PLEASE NOTE I’M NOT QUOTING BAALSAMAEL HIMSELF, BUT RATHER THE BLIZZARD QUOTES HE HMSELF IS QUOTING.

…QUOTECEPTION! (horns blare)

No, she doesn’t.

…attempting suicide out of despair at his complete failure.

Yes, it will.

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587

Yeah that particular interview I scrounged out of the abyss is particularly egregious lol

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588

The sadly thing here is: Anduins dialogs in the beta framed his speach different.

It seems more like the humans and dwarfs have needed a reason to retake the lands of lordaeron

589

I for one use to partially agree with a lot of people stating the Sin’dorei didn’t quite fit into the Horde’s identity complex and so forth … That is until - The Purge of Dalaran and the numerous events that followed from that day. The Horde united and helped the Blood Elves and it created that ‘Unity for strength --> Strength for Survival -> Survival for Thriving & Living!’ aspect the Horde had between Orcs & Tauren / why the Undead needed the Horde’s support.

Later on, I admired the Blood Elves tenacity; I craved the storyline in the Isle of Thunder and how the people would get a +1 on those that could pose harm.

Orcs are consistently hit with the villain bat and I think I agree with majority of the playerbase when it’s just become a simple eyeroll now.

Tauren I use to like, but they’re just used as a consistent victim-bat and Baine is constantly dropped like trash (I mean the Jailor ‘dropping’ him seemed to sum up the symbolism rather well). When we rescue him from the Maw he literally goes and sits in the corner lol.

Undead have had their identity pretty hammered so I’m not really sure where they stand.

The races I feel that strongly embody the aspects I admire about the Horde are Blood Elves, Highmountain Tauren, Nightborne, Trolls and Zandalari Trolls. They have rich cultural lore and a desire to strive & thrive for their people and find strength in unity with the rest of the Horde that makes them let go of prejudices and judgements for the greater good. I feast on that.

Aside from that I feel Gantrithor sums it up nicely -

But I will say -

I agree they end story quickly without regard for fleshing out the emotions, feelings & character developments. Heck even if there was just X-race specific ONLY quests, to see that particular races thoughts, compared feelings or reasons for proceeding. That’s one of the few things I actually liked about Mists of Pandaria - The various races / faction leaders shared their thoughts, concerns, emotions and so forth with you.

I’d like to personally see things aren’t so simple. And beings in each havea strong sense of freewill. An admiration or acknowledgement of ‘the other side’ within them. If Blizzard does do an Expansion with Light invading and Void invading, I’d like to see A’dal and Xal’Atath shockingly working together and being our allies against each faction. But I suppose that’s a discussion for another thread.

By the titans wrath, I look forward to the day that Blizzard slips on a banana peel when making their swing and instead - Hits Alliance with the villain bat and Horde get whooped with destruction / mass death, and we can give THEM the guilt trip. “HAH! HOW DOES IT FEEL!?”

(Though I’d imagine the response from the Alliance would be “IT FEELS FANTASTIC, I’VE BEEN WAITING YEARS FOR THIS - THANKYOU.”)

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590

I would feel literally nothing, after what the Horde has done to the Alliance.

Not too far off.

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591

Short answer is there’s nothing “we” can do. It’s Blizzard’s story, and it’s obvious they don’t see the lore the way that we do.

Longer answer is more uncomfortable. The modern horde committed a genocide. Compare it to whatever real life government that’s done the same, as there’s a lot of them. They still exist. We work with them to face challenges, even if it makes us uncomfortable. But a nation has people that weren’t involved with those deeds, wished that it didn’t happen, or regret being involved. That’s what needs to be shown with the horde.

592

Aight so no winning you over regardless, guess you guys deserve 0 vengeance or ‘justice’ (Whatever that is) then since y’all feel nothing.

{Shouts over to the rest of the Horde} :smiley: “Y-Yeah! We don’t need to worry anymore! Guys, the party is on! Happy Slay Day! Bring out the Teldrassil Piñata! It’s gonna be lit! … Not like the actual Teldrassil but woo!”

So wait, would you feel joy or would you feel nothing? The mere merit I simply wanted was a piece of respite towards a morsel of change or balance.

The Horde player base loathes and is honestly sick as #&%* of being villain batted as much as the Alliance hates being victim whacked and rolling over. We’re both on the same page there, I assure you.

But ultimately as Gantrithor said: The Horde don’t need to redeem themselves in the eyes of the Alliance, either its characters or players. The Horde owes the Alliance nothing. The Horde needs to decide for itself what it is and if the Alliance (characters or players) doesn’t like it they can pound sand.

From your response to the one I made earlier, it seems that’s the right mindset to have. There’s no pleasing you lot. Time to pull out our rock bands, stick up the ‘Keep calm & carry on’ signs and ride with joy ~ Shorel’aran!

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593

I would feel no remorse for the Horde. Joy? Not really. But no remorse, and no sympathy. Lore wise that is. Players are a different thing altogether.

Then you both misinterpreted me, and you haven’t seen the myriad of posts I have made about what the Horde could do to satisfy me. Not what the Alliance could to to the Horde, but what the Horde could do for the Alliance.

594

That is - why I asked. :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, then I stand corrected. Perhaps there is hope among you lot after all …

595

I assume you talked about how I would feel if the Alliance were to do something terrible against the Horde, and to that I answered, and still answer, that I would feel no sympathy for the Horde as a faction, players not included. I think it’s pretty obvious why that is.

596

Yeah I suppose that’s fair. I mean, particular races I’d imagine the Alliance may or may not seem empathetic for, so I’d considered the question to be answered with a question perhaps than a straight “I’d feel unmoved”, but I imagine for some of you, merely being in the Horde merits that of feeling 0 empathy for whatever horror would be committed.

597

Thanks for sharing.

IMO it might be useful to note that as a “tradition” WoW grows more from the j-rpg style of storytelling rather than c-rpg.

Honestly what you described might not even be all that bad.

What do you mean “for once”? The original vision of the Light was something like:

Arthas: Rise of the Lich King
Uther
Lad, no one feels ready. No one feels he deserves it. And you know why? Because no one does. It’s grace, pure and simple. We are inherently unworthy, simply because we’re human, and all human beings–aye, and elves, and dwarves, and all the other races–are flawed. But the Light loves us anyway. It loves us for what we sometimes can rise to in rare moments. It loves us for what we can do to help others. And it loves us because we can help it share its message by striving daily to be worthy, even though we understand that we can’t ever truly become so. So stand there today, as I did, feeling that you can’t possibly deserve it or ever be worthy, and know that you’re in the same place every single paladin has ever stood.

But since the Legion this old approach is phased out. Just think about it, when you now encounter a naaru, do you expect it to be a creature that would be willing to do whatever it can, to endure any pain or dangers just for a mere chance that you can survive and bring the hope of at least slightly better (or any) future?

The current image of the Light, for the sake of “cool moments” I guess, instead of the TBC approach where it was rather clearly stated that it’s a personal choice of being zealous or being true to oneself and open minded, seemingly phased out the older one. Now people expect naaru and Light to be blind, overly self confident, zealous, forcing others to follow the Light’s vision of what is a right thing to do.

Instead of adding extra nuance, this new vision just cannibalized the original one. So, is it really “bad guys for once”, when something like that is expected?

Argus, the Unmaker
No hope. Just pain… Only pain!

gl hf

598

Not to point out the obvious, but this element was always there.

Light was never portrayed as Good. It was more “good by association” to those Good individuals we normally interacted with. Agents like the Scarlets always showed that “devotion” to the light through a cause (no matter the cause) was sufficient enough to wield it expertly. While “insanity” was always the risk for those who played with the Void (Infinite Branching Paths), “fanaticism” was always the risk for those who played with the Light (Single Linear Path). Its just that second concept has never really been explored that much, and it would be good to frankly. We’ve explored the negatives of the Void quite a bit.

The issue with the Light’s “Single Linear Path” is that since Light Worship (and even Naaru) aren’t of a homogenous mind, the “right” Single Linear Path is always up for debate for those who fall prey to fanaticism. Which, Yrel, her Light Mother, and her Lightbound certainly have. Xe’ra absolutely did.

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599

Well, I kind of mentioned that, maybe with not enough details. When you do draenei staring quests you encounter many different characters ranging in their approach from compassion and care, to “we serve without question, we die without question”. And both sides had some presence.

What I mention is that currently when the being associated with the Light appears on the screen there is usually no question about “is this a character who would go with us on this journey, or will try to use us for something”. Currently a certain way of acting is expected.

And Yrel you mentioned is a good example. Because, what would be a good (IMO) story? If we would have a question, was it necessary, who is right, what happened so that Yrel could not fulfill her promice to help us, etc. Instead what was shown makes people not even consider whatever was “good” done by the Light (and out of all cosmological forces the only one that went out of it’s way to do something helpful for mortals is the Light), but go straight to see Yrel as agressor, successor for dreadlord-leaded Scarlets, blind in doing whatever that “light mother” said.

So, instead of having stories, showing different aspects / approaches, we have one that dominates the thing. It to me seems just like what the whole “void naaru” thing. For the sake of showing cool moments we were shown it almost at every corner of the naaru story to the point where some players assumed that the naaru have this cycle in them.

But according to Ask CDev, that was never the case, those are extremely rare events. So, it turns out, that in line with the dev intention, if you would just take a group of naaru and let them just do their things in a distant corner of the cosmos, they would never turn into “void state”. But this is not “hype” enough story, so we have a different depiction in the events we witness.

Same with this thing. We do not have equal presence of likes of A’dal and likes of Xe’ra. We have just those who create a very specific image, which might be cool, but to me, I compare it to the origin and think “really? So instead of complexity and variety we have to now colour all of them like that?”

gl hf

600

TBF, I’d be more likely to hit the Horde posters who cheered Teldrassil’s destruction with the “How does it feel now” bat.

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601

One part of this narrative that I’ve personally struggled with accepting is that it has constantly felt like Blizzard simply doesn’t want the Horde to exist. Earlier in the thread, Aussielight posted some comments that were a bit tongue-in-cheek (though I don’t like speaking for someone, it did come across that way) but in reality they weren’t too far from the truth.

I don’t want to be part of the faction that is constantly vilified by the narrative, talked down to, have the other faction berate me and try to guide me into becoming “good” again, when I had no agency over the actions that were “bad” in the first place.

Every part of that is just not fun, but it’s the combination of all aspects that really makes it deflating:

  • I don’t particularly enjoy being associated with committing a war crime.
  • I don’t particularly enjoy being told how I am constantly in the wrong.
  • I don’t particularly enjoy being held to the standard of some group that is always in the right.

I would argue that the Horde could survive as a faction of genocidal maniacs (some people might even embrace that spirit) but they can’t survive constantly being hit with, “You are forced to act this way, then forced to be told you’re wrong, forced to work with your opponents to try to become more like them, and then try to atone for your misdeeds.”

If you want the Horde to be villains, let whomever wants to be villains be villains and stop with the narrative of them constantly being told how wrong they are for being part of that faction and how they need to be part of the other faction. If you want the Horde to simply be the villain in the story - which I don’t particularly think is a good path - then at least let them embrace their villainy.

I don’t want to see the Horde forced into perpetual villainy, but I also don’t want to be forced into being a villain and constantly told how wrong I am for being the villain.

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602

An extreme black pill possibility is that given 60ish% of the player base plays Horde due to better racials, instead of balancing the races again (maybe removing all on click racials) they’re doing all this to make people stop playing Horde as much.

It’s the same as how in WoD, Demonology Warlocks got a HUGE nerf across all our abilities when we already were at the bottom of the charts, to make people flee the class for when they introduced Demon Hunters at Legion, gutting our class and giving us a low effort rework :upside_down_face:

603

Woof, that blows past me on pessimism and I thought I was rock-bottom already. I’d imagine that most people who make stuff for a living don’t actually want people to hate the things they make, and I feel that it’s way more likely that the personal, ground-level perspective of the story was lost in planning out and reiterating over a big picture view of everything. Missing the trees for the forest, to twist a phrase.

As for the “we’d rather you not play demonology” thing, I wasn’t paying attention too closely to that, but didn’t the spec originally have some maddening level of optimization required to play it well and it was a “euthanize the spec for the players’ sake” motion? I thought that was the rationale given, although I don’t know how it was doing in practice. Admittedly, a move like that was never going to be taken well anyway.

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