To quote garrosh “You made me what I am!” And that’s directed to blizzard writers lol.
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I never got into the WH40K universe much as I’m a tabletop gamer and that stuff is just too pricey for my wallet. However, I’m very much into the BattleTech universe and it’s very similar.
Every faction has it’s heroes and villains and nobody’s hands are clean. There are so many skeletons in their closets it would make the Scourge blush.
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Good thread topic, OP.
Personally, I’d have the next big threat to the Horde be something other than the Alliance. Let the Horde military (and showcase everyone being involved, not just one or two racial factions) show off its might to defend the Horde population, but moreover show the Horde taking steps to uphold honor as they do so. Show the leadership being vocal about prioritizing keeping people alive rather than using them as “arrows in a quiver” like Sylvanas did. Show the Horde spending their resources to save their own people (healers, defensive shields, etc.), not only to kill enemies. Build up existing Horde characters or make new ones where needed to show the wide variety of Horde personalities and perspectives that, on paper, already exist. Don’t let any one race seem like it only has a few character archetypes. Show lots of interaction between -all- the different Horde racial factions. Show the Horde working hard as a whole, together, to overcome the damage Sylvanas wrought within the Horde. The Horde must better than it was for its own sake, never mind what the Alliance thinks or accepts, and that should be the motivation going forward. We’ve been told before that the Horde is supposed to be like a family. Let us see that dynamic in action.
Meanwhile, I’d give the Alliance something to deal with that didn’t directly involve the Horde. The Alliance is ripe with potential for political intrigue and power plays, so that’s a potential direction to take the story. There are many different avenues that could be pursued for internal conflict, even without villain-batting racial leaders. For example, Anduin’s rule in Stormwind or his leadership of the Alliance can’t possibly be popular with every single citizen, and we have that delicious Scarlet propaganda that was added recently that could be played with as well. Perhaps, in order to avoid being solely focused on Stormwind humans, we could see someone actually voice the question of why the rest of the Alliance beyond Stormwind is willing to follow someone as young and inexperienced as Anduin. The tension with the Horde could feed some of this drama, but let it stay in the background and focus the Alliance story on what the Alliance is doing.
Edited to add: I should specify that when talking about Horde honor, I mean specifically taking care of their own people, which Sylvanas didn’t do. I’m fine with the Horde being ruthless to enemies while defending itself.
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Eh, they’ve shelved/retconned stuff before. Remember how the Orcs were only bad because of demon blood once, and that foundational concept got trashed? Huge fundamental events can be changed. They just need to walk back the G word and say ‘actually most of them got out’ (they are already doing this), say the people in the Horde who knew it was going to happen all died, and just never have anyone bring it up again after Tyrande learns the power of forgiveness or whatever.
And that’s just in character. As a player I am super ready to never hear about this stupid tree ever again. This fixation on Teldrassil being this permanent, irredeemable stain is mostly just Alliance players who want to hold it over the Horde forever. In actual storytelling terms it can be as mutable as any event they’ve changed/erased/reframed in the past.
Teldrassil… Teldrawhat? New players don’t even see it and honestly in another year it’ll probably be another ‘Muh Taurajo’ or ‘Muh Purge’ meme.
As for the OP: The Horde doesn’t need some deep process of introspection and redemption. That doesn’t work and making the players go through that when they’ve had a positive vision from the start is just sadism. What the Horde NEEDS is to see fun, positive, rewarding stories about Horde characters - the same kinds of stories that anyone wants to see. Growth, discovery, triumph, love, and maybe even some loss. Just cut the losses of the terrible Horde story and launch into new, better ones - why entertain the notion that the Horde should let BFA be baggage when the writers can simply choose not to?
The correct reply is and will always be:
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I always felt that the Horde should willingly act as a bulwark against the threats to the world, be always looking for the a worth opponent to fight. The first into the fray, first to act and protect the weaker races of Azeroth. Show that they have a willingness to defend the world they now inhabit including its residents by putting themselves in harms way.
They can keep their edge and aggressiveness but atleast have them pointed at opponents they should be fighting instead of just the Alliance. Allow the Alliance to focus on restoring the world while the horde protects it from new threats.
There can still be conflicts between the two but don’t always make the horde the aggressor. Allow the Alliance to cross that line and take the fight to the Horde. it doesn’t need to be always one faction in the wrong and one in the right, instead have it be about a conflict of ideals or ways to handle situations that cause friction.
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There’s absolutely no reason to “forget” about Teldrassil. It was one of the coolest starting areas in the game, right alongside, you guessed it, The Undercity, one of the coolest faction capitals in the game.
We have every right to be utterly enraged that the dumb writing team took both of our best capitals away from us without any kind of recompense just so they could drive a dopey faction narrative that nobody asked for.
What you don’t need to be is salty towards either of the player bases because we both got equally screwed, and most of us have alts and have played the alt faction, and, damn it, Ashenvale and Teldrassil was one of my favorite Alliance zones. I have every right to be agitated about that just as anyone starting the game has the right to be agitated that they are robbed of one of the greatest experiences in the game.
Walking through the same path that Arthas walked when he marched into the throne room to…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr7A19TPN_k
And absolutely everything that represented, with the warped, upside down world of the Undercity. One of the greatest gems in the entirety of World of Warcraft, died in the abortion that was the BfA story.
(What happened to the Blizzard that brought us the above cinematic and everything that led up to it?)
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This question puts us into a tricky spot.
First of all, I think it’s pretty clear - just looking at everyone’s answers, but Horde players’ answers in particular - that BfA did enormous damage to the Horde narrative. The fact that Blizzard seems to be telegraphing a massive disinterest in rebuilding the narrative that they’ve sundered leads to jaded, meta-centric approaches to the story. This is certainly where I am. It’s very easy to fall into the pit of “Why bother answering this question if Blizz will never do it/will monkey paw it two expansions down the road?”
But I think the second point is the crux of the problem, and it’s hard to answer because it requires making an already unhappy playerbase even more unhappy. My opinion is this: for the Horde to credibly climb back up, the Alliance needs to be pulled down a little. Not in terms of “destroy or kill more blue stuff” but something more along the lines of the racism angle people have been posting about. The in-game Horde and Horde players both need something they can firmly grasp onto as a reason to say that “THIS is why we need the Horde, to give a chance to the races that the Alliance looks down upon.”
But let’s be realistic - this is probably not an idea that a lot of Alliance fans are going to like, and I don’t even blame them. Nobody wants their team to get pulled down, even if just a little. Hell, we still argue about Cataclysm’s zone control rebalancing, a decade after the fact. I just think that the gap in standing between the two factions has grown so wide that it’s almost beyond the capability of the Horde to close it through their own actions.
The best I could say is that this at least takes on the form of some kind of intrigue? Let’s say this, super random asspulled scenario. (Even as I go into this I don’t think Alliance players will like it, so I apologize - this is just the sort of thing I think might be able to bring the Horde back up a little.) Someone on the Alliance comes back from the Shadowlands with a macguffin of great power, but unclear functioning or purpose. An argument starts over this macguffin, should the Alliance try to unlock its secrets, or seal it away? Hubris leads them to believe they can control it, and it unleashes a disaster - say, I dunno, it opens a precise point on Azeroth, maybe in the Swamp of Sorrows for that full WC1 circle, that Void/Light armies come through. (We know this kind of expansion is coming.)
Battle ensues. The Alliance fights to a bloody draw, but the question of enemy reinforcements is worrying. Around this time, representatives of the Horde show up, and offer to coordinate - but figure they should ask first, and are outright rebuffed, told to get lost, the Alliance doesn’t need their help. Yet it’s clear this is at best a meat grinder for the Alliance forces and they aren’t making much headway. Divisions break out between those who want the Horde’s offer to be taken and those who refuse to associate with them whatsoever. Play up the Alliance being haughty jerks here (“We don’t need your help, greenskins. We have power enough ourselves.”) but make it also clear that this hubris is costing them lives, which causes tensions to rise.
After being refused, the Horde reps return, but they aren’t stupid - the military has been keeping an eye on the situation and they know it’s bad, so in the end they decide to go anyway. In a bogged-down Alliance attack, the Horde throws in a crushing flank and together they manage to gain ground. The Horde both gets to glory in battle and be a little smug about coming to the aid of someone who would have lost without their help. It’s also clear that neither side alone is going to win (game mechanics here, we both have to play the same game) but, notably, this Horde victory doesn’t just sweep away all the bad blood.
The anti-Horde faction (think Tyrande, Genn, Rogers, even Turalyon maybe) are furious that the Horde ignored their refusal to operate in Alliance territory and argue that this just shows their base untrustworthiness, that as soon as the enemy is beaten back the Horde will attack them again (again again). The pro-Horde faction bring up the large number of lost lives this pride has cost them and point out that there wouldn’t have been a victory without their (somewhat undiplomatic) decision to help in spite of the refusal. In the meantime, the Horde is facing its own rumblings - they did something selfless, helping out people who were clearly ungrateful about it, and saved a lot of Alliance lives by sacrificing some of their own in battle, and the fact that there’s a faction of the Alliance which is still refusing to see them as anything but bloodthirsty monsters is grating. (“Would it kill ya ta’ show a bit of gratitude, mon?”) The top brass on both sides decide they’re going to work together (maybe Anduin throws his weight around to make this decision and you get a bit of tension between him and Turalyon or Tyrande) but there’s rumbling in the rank and file. Bloodthirsty monsters versus ungrateful racists and the like.
Does this fix everything? Of course not. But to have members of the Alliance be unwilling to forgive so quickly (very understandable!) while the Horde clearly does something selfless and is still spurned for it can give both sides something to grasp onto. Even if in this example I did beat up the Alliance a bit, I think at this point you kind of have to. Human hubris has led to far stupider decisions in human history, so I don’t even think it’s very unbelievable, even as I acknowledge it’s probably not really a fun story for Alliance players. But, I honestly don’t see how the Horde can be brought back up even a little without this.
Also, this went on waaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer than I intended…
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Not at all. It merely sealed the damage already done with a big pointy bird facing towards the sky.
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I said something a while back to this effect:
The Horde should still have it’s bloodlust, Orcs cracking skulls, Trolls spearing bodies, Tauren goring through crowds, Forsaken immolating murlocs…
But instead of being directed at the Alliance it should be directed at Azerothian threats. The Horde and Alliance can co-exist as two separate powers in the world with an understanding among one another that they won’t always see eye to eye but also not be perpetually down each others throats. The can choose to co-operate in certain situations or choose to go their own way in others (maybe the Alliance wants to do recon on a certain enemy but the Horde wants an assault force). Skirmishes may break out (pvp) but both sides won’t engage in total war over it like in BFA.
The Horde and Alliance can both have their cake and eat it too. They can both be what they were in Vanilla, just direct that Alliance heroism and Horde bloodlust to enemies shared or not that aren’t each other, it’s really that simple.
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This seems like an incredibly cynical response, imo.
Yes, I remember how the once-murderous orcs of the First War were given an expanded story about the Burning Legion (which also gave us one of the most badass and morally-complex characters in Warcraft, our Lord and Savior, Illidan Stormrage), in order to differentiate Warcraft orcs from, say, the “polar-black/evil” orcs of Middle Earth.
I also remember how well-written that story was, to the point where I have little to no faith the current writing team could replicate it half as well.
Like, at all.
Or…it’s the very understandable response to what was a very real act of genocide, which was actually referred to as an act of genocide in the supplemental novels, and which was very graphically-portrayed, in both cinematic and an impossible-to-accomplish quest, as a hopeless act of coldblooded murder.
Fun fact: did you know that the only other time the word “genocide” has been used in Warcraft lore was by Illidan in reference to the Burning Legion, all the way back during The War of the Ancients trilogy?
Please don’t take “that dreaded G word” lightly.
Because Battle for Azeroth is baggage. For both sides. The night elf playerbase was forced into the role of helpless victims, and the Forsaken playerbase was forced into the role of sadistic murderers.
I can only speak for myself, but I’m fairly certain most players will recognize what you’re suggesting, and call it what it is: an easy out for a writing team that thought something as monumentally-murderous as the Burning of Teldrassil—which was an act of genocide—was ever a good idea.
Correct for whom? Toxic players who actively enjoy victimizing other players Because that’s the vibe I’m getting here.
So much for “fun.”
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For the love of God, spare us all this narrative trope.
No, having a bunch of self important Mary Sues running around hollering about how my toon needs to be put to the sword for looking like a green awful demon is not in any way going to help us rebuild our “faction pride” or “faction identity” least of all.
It is going to be a gigantic trainwreck every bit as awful as Garrosh.
Please, no. Don’t encourage this. They would actually do something this hamfisted.
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The problem isn’t so much that this couldn’t work, but rather it’s what’s been done before, and with infinitely more nuance than what the current writing team is capable of.
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Long story short, you can’t it would take another complete overhaul of everything and even then I don’t think it would work.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again the reason WC3 worked is due to the fact that more or less a new generation was taking over and desperately trying to not repeat the sins of their fathers and wanting to be greater
(Orcs not being super warmongering and trying to conquer everything)
(Humans not blinded by their hatred of the orcs to come to a deal/agreement)
(Forsaken breaking apart and being their own thing all for revenge against a world that didn’t understand them)
(Elves learning to not be so xenophobic, and actually work with the younger races)
Etc.
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The reason it can’t work now is because the “new generation” from before is still alive and they’re living proof that it’s more or less kind of pointless in the long term only takes one bad egg on either side to essentially mess things up and plunge the world into War.
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You’d have to kill off the long lived races or make them forget about everything that’s happened
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The player base unlike in WC3 was personally involved and helped build up Insert race/ faction here we aren’t just going to forget things because convenient time skip is put into place.
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This is very important and I believe the huge step would be make non alliance sympathizes on the spotlight because all they do is think and act in the mindset “what would the alliance do?”
Also we need again mirror quest with our own cast of npc instead of making the Horde Players works alonside the Alliance leadership that pretends to be neutral while saying “Horde is really ugly, good thing you aren’t like them champion”
Unless you can make the players play on a new faction while leaving the Horde, harming said faction is also affecting the players by proxy, let me give you an example.
“Alliance do a horrible deed, writers punish them with a mirror event but a small group of Horde wants more punishment on them. In an ironic twist, the writers actually listen and blows up another hub of X race alongside killing many important characters”
Now you understand why searching to punish the faction narrative wise will affect the playerbase?
Now for me the best solution is make Zandalari Empire the new faction and absorving the remmains of the Horde, Golden city and free of criminals, a win win
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The only time this has ever been done well in the context of Warcraft was “Lord of the Clans” by Christie Golden. Which I read pretty much at 13 IIRC, so I may have a lot of nostalgia and the haze of youth behind that, but I remember being enraptured as a child. It’s what got me absolutely thrilled beyond reason to play Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos as a kid.
It had the right elements in the right portions with the right emotional hooks and the correct timing.
I can’t stand Golden’s writing today, which perplexes me still more so.
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I’m actually glad you brought up the generation angle, because what’s interesting is that we have seen a sort of “passing the torch” narrative with Varian and Anduin.
From Wrath all the way through Cataclysm and Mists up to Legion we’ve seen the pacifist Anduin clashing with his warrior father, and Varian evolving from “I dream of a world without you greenskins, without the Horde” to someone who will actually acknowledge the Banshee Queen herself as a wartime ally.
The sad thing is that, likely for the same reasons they thought Teldrassil and BfA were good ideas, Blizzard never really capitalized on this beyond Anduin—the only other characters that even come close are Moira with Magni and Tess with Genn, neither of which receive nearly the same amount of screentime.
On the Horde side, we at least got Talanji and Rastakhan and even Zekhan having a father figure in Saurfang, though it’s obvious Blizzard’s writing team is completely blind to the potential narrative goldmine they have there.
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Sadly the issue with the passing of the torch analogy is that Anduin learnt nothing from his father. The writers refuse to address this and have Anduin pacifist ideals always pay off and him never having to suffer any consequences for his decisions.
He is a character that seem to ignore the history of the conflict between the Alliance and the horde and instead has the fantasy version he made up in his head.
I remember watching the Legion cinematic and Varian penning the letter for Anduin telling him to remember that there are things worth fighting for and getting a bit hopeful. Yet Anduin seems to have ignored that letter(also the warning to the Horde at the end MOP) from his father which shows how little grown as a character.
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Especially considering his response to Tyrande’s plea for help reclaiming Darkshore:
I wish things were different, High Priestess. But with the war raging in both Arathi and Zandalar, an assault on Darkshore would stretch us too thin.
So, just so we’re clear, “Your Majesty,” this is you openly admitting that the Horde has more forces than you do, since they literally had a foothold in all three territories at the time.
And rather than recapture one of your (the Alliance’s) key footholds—as well as an invaluable source of…well, resources—you’d rather play around in an open field in the middle of nowhere with a formerly-abandoned castle from your father’s generation and launch pointless assaults on the enemy’s capital island.
Anduin didn’t just “not learn” from his father; he’s also an absolutely incompetent
strategist and military leader, a child playing at war, as demonstrated by the following delusion:
But our mission was to drive a wedge between the Zandalari and the Horde. Instead, we may have strengthened their bond.
Um, what did he think would happen? Zandalari trolls see Alliance attacking their home and city, Horde defending them, their king is slain…and they won’t want to sign up with the Horde after that?
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Jaina definitely learned the price of peace, and the betrayal that comes with advocating for peace. I mean she sacrificed her father for peace, and got screwed over multiple times. I like how she has grown closer to her old self, but still with the inherent mistrust that someone who’s been burned to many times would have.
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How to redeem the Horde?
Well, you’ve already proclaimed yourself “disgusted” by Blizzard’s solution, i.e. letting the Horde PC help fix the damage of Teldrassil…
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