Just to be clear, I’m not saying this is the correct course of action or that this will even remotely have a chance of occurring (I fully expect Sylvanas to become a purple dispenser).
I’m just saying that outside of time travel and the wonderful world of alternate universes (it’s always a mess) - I honestly don’t know if there’s a realistic move beyond Teldrassil that doesn’t take extremely good writing across multiple expansions and leave the Horde vilified for years (and probably requires making the Alliance undertake some awful actions as well to the point where they no longer seem justified in doing so).
If there is some justification provided that somehow Teldrassil is for a greater good - even with a somewhat weak premise - that Alliance leaders may even be conflicted about, then there’s a bit more wiggle room for the Horde. That doesn’t mean the Horde won’t have to undergo changes and it doesn’t mean the Horde shouldn’t be shown helping repair the damages done the Night Elves as a whole, but it helps move this story from a needless and senseless tragedy, to one that isn’t a good thing, but may offer some conflicting views.
//I also really didn’t like the premise of WoD and didn’t like the fact that, in essence, we have an entire world no one cares about that has no relevance to our game. Time traveling to before BfA makes BfA content detached from “reality” and even worse time traveling to Wrath. It also makes it seem like we could use the infinite dragonflight to jump backwards and undo basically everything evil, undoing every expansion.
Literally no amount of greater good can ever undo the simple fact of:
Blizzard: “Hey, guys! Let’s commit genocide on the night elf population! We’ll burn down their tree, kill a bunch of their men, women, and children, and it’ll be epic!”
This is literally like saying, “The Old Horde was awesome for what they did with the Path of Glory!”, an example that they at least did justice to by showing Saurfang’s guilt and shame over it.
The scary thing is, I think Blizzard actually thought that. IIRC, they claimed to be surprised that the Horde playerbase reacted the way that they did.
Also, the difference here that I think a lot of people miss with the, “Escaping our Faction Troubles by Fleeing to Another World” argument is that, at the very least, with Warlords of Draenor we were actively pursuing the main problem (Garrosh), with little to no issues left behind on Azeroth after the Siege of Orgrimmar.
With Shadowlands, sure—we’re pursuing Sylvanas into the Shadowlands to “get our people back.”
But we’re still leaving behind a slowly-dying Azeroth that is literally bleeding liquid Arcane magic due to the giant Demon-Titan sword stuck in it.
They tried to recreate the Red Wedding from GoT with none of the nuance that set it up to begin with, or with the understanding that the people involved all bought it upon themselves by continuing to make one dumb decision after another.
And I think that’s part of the reason I’m willing to accept drastic steps to resolve it. While I dislike time travel as a solution, I’m open to the idea of it as an option. The narrative has just been painted into such a corner, only the most extreme of options seem viable.
Exactly! Also Anduin Wrynn in lore was willing to put aside the war crimes of the Horde and make peace even though Jaina and Tyrande as well as Genn Greymane were not. So the peace even within the factions was being forced upon them narratively speaking by Baine, Thrall and Anduin. The rest of the leaders can be seen as ambivalent to completely against this decision. We see this reflected in both player bases. Horde and Alliance players feel shafted and forced into narratives they weren’t in agreement for.
And that’s the thing: while I obviously can’t speak for Horde players—or even the entire night elf playerbase—I feel like the majority of the opposition on both sides isn’t necessarily that the players don’t want faction conflict.
It’s that they never wanted a return to the faction conflict to begin with, and then when we did get a return to the faction conflict with War of the Thorns and the Siege of Lordaeron, not only was Blizzard miraculously taken aback by the outraged response, they then tried to shoehorn a peace agreement that felt hollow and forced (because it was).
Players on both sides want peace between the factions. But they also it to feel believable, and like it actually matters or will last.
And given that BfA was more or less Mists of Pandaria 2.0, narratively-speaking, we really haven’t seen much from Blizzard to indicate that it will.
We’ve quite literally seen this movie (game?) before.
I felt like narratively it was worse than Mists 2.0, because not only did it rehash the same story of the Horde committing genocide and getting away with it, but this is what the 4th or 5th genocide of an Alliance race by the Horde forces. Now I know they keep saying they aren’t the same Horde as the one of Blackhand, but you keep committing the same atrocities and then blaming a handful of bad faith actors, but who put Garrosh into power? Sylvanas? Doomhammer if you wanted to stretch it out?
After awhile it’s the same narrative with the same forced storyline. The Alliance forgives the Horde, because well they have to. Who in real life forgives genocide and war crimes without actual justice being met on the forces who caused the war?
Now I understand that Blizzard doesn’t want a Nuremburg situation in World of Warcraft or formalized treaties which limit what each faction can do or allow be done by their allied forces, and there will be no United Nations forged as a international coalition of nations to prevent the next world war, but how at this point is this story believable? Sure magic is real, but player experience and NPC storylines seem to be ignored for a forced hegemony which most disagree on.
Honestly, this part went down the toilet the moment they decided to peddle a, “See? Orcs are naturally vicious brutes! They don’t need demon blood to murder people en masse!” plotline.
Which, if we’re being honest, is actually an incredibly-racist narrative to push, especially considering the whole point of Warcraft III, particularly the “Old Hatreds” campaign.
You accidentally excluded the horde from being absolved by any of this. The fact that Sylvanas kept all of this so close to her chest that nobody else knew also means that the horde couldn’t possibly have had this as a reason for any contrived “greater good” narrative. As far as they knew, the horde went back to war just because.
But they were following the actions of a leader who was justif…
Yeah, I know it’s garbage, brings about more questions than it answers, and doesn’t really solve a ton of things, but dangit I’m trying to come up with something.
I’ve stated that the Horde, or at least the Horde when Orcs are “driving the bus” is a fascist regime. When we look at fascist regimes throughout history, including their commission of atrocities - like when we REALLY look into it, we find disturbing things like “this official treated the extermination of an entire group of people as just another part of his job”, and “there is no psychological difference most of the time between ‘normal’ people and these people”, as well as “yes, an entire nation was swept up by this ideology, and this mania”. Most people did not speak up, and it wasn’t out of fear.
There is often no racial, genetic, or mental difference between most of us and history’s greatest monsters. We have a fantasy that if we were in that society, we would rebel. Most of us in reality would not. That is WHY we must never forget.
Taking that to WoW then? We are not left with the inevitable conclusion that Orcs are genetically predisposed to this. Now we just need the story to help us get there.
But see, the only way this works if you’re talking about the original Horde—which included orcs like Durotan and Orgrim Doomhammer, for example—is if you appropriately lay the blame on individual orcs such as Gul’dan and Blackhand, who yes, could be accurately referred to as “fascists.”
Well, no, we weren’t from the beginning; it was always, “Well, Blackhand and Gul’dan were bloodthirsty and sadistic, but then they sold out their own people to the Legion.”
Like I said, that narrative got flushed when Blizzard tried to the push the “Oh, all orcs are actually like this” theme circa Mists - Warlords.
