In hindsight I did. But, I don’t think even that will fix the issue. The Horde is left on such a miserable back foot now, that frankly it doesn’t matter what the Alliance (or their throwaway new characters) do … it will seem justified. The only possible way I can see the Horde ever getting rebuilt, is if we don’t see even a whiff of the Faction Conflict for a LONG time. Unless Turalyon does something crazy while we’re gone in SLs. And even then, that should happen while we’re all trapped there and come back once its mostly over; AND assumes Blizz doesn’t rush into validate or whitewash these unseemly “grey” acts like always. For example, I truly am not convinced Blizz wont try to justify or invalidate Yrels ACTUAL prolonged, intentional, systematic cultural genocide on AU Draenor. She is an Alliance race, their instinct is to insulate her.
And if the Horde wants to be rebuilt into anything more than an accessory for the Alliance (or a passenger in own story), what we need is space from the Alliance. And I’d wager the Alliance fans could say the same about the Horde. As long as we’re so entwined with them, we’ll either be rendered submissive out of guilt or walking in their overwhelming shadows.
At this point I’d think this is the better route. Sure, it is a complete and utter copout, but come on, do any of us really expect the current team of writers to fix things?
Hell, I’d be willing to bet every piece of gold I have that any true attempt from them would just make things that much worse.
But the point I was getting to was a Horde VS Alliance fight should feel like Godzilla VS King Kong. Or one of those superhero fight crossovers. The good guys punch for a bit because of a misunderstanding, but then team up to punch a big bad that only their combined powers can surmount.
Yeah that’s a cop out but it’s a good guy fight. You’re just here to see the asymmetrical power sets bounce off eachother for fun. Which Blizz kinda got right with Darkshore. But they just made the Forsaken bad guys, which is not how you do the Iron Man fighting Thor in the woods scene. Because it’s not fun anymore if an errant lighting bolt melts somebody’s mom at a campfire that was just off camera.
Doesn’t even matter who you were rooting for at that point. You just want to leave the theater because maniacs decided to turn a throwaway wrestling match into a platform to talk about the horrors of war.
And the Alliance VS Horde should feel like a silly wrestling match. Because nobody’s going to win or lose. The status quo isn’t going to change. Just have it be a cool fight where we get to wave our flags.
Yeah if I wanted to hear about the horrors of real war I’d go to my podcast lol, but no you make a good comparison on how the factions should feel when we get into conflict.
I say we chalk BfA up to too much violence on TV and move on.
Better yet - when Sargeras skewered Azeroth, it freed N’Zoth who mind controlled us all and we’ve been living in the matrix right up until we found away to kill N’Zoth which didn’t kill him but made us think we did when really he’s back to doing his whole hiding thing so we will forget about him while he corrupts more stuff.
I keep feeling that this is spot on. I’ve heard the complaint before that the faction war is useless because it will necessarily end in status quo, but that’s not automatically a bad thing. BfA could have been both sides trading equally absurd and overpowered punches and letting everyone show off and root for their team for a bit before it turned to the inevitable “team up” moment.
I think people kind of underestimate how much fun a good power fight can be, even if it doesn’t decide anything or even show which one is “stronger”. It’s just supposed to be, like you said, a wrestling match where both sides get to flex, pose, show off a bit, and bounce off of each other.
We’ve been pretty clear in our criticism that Blizz sucks at writing Game of Thrones. So, don’t demand that they write Game of Thrones. Let them write WWE, which they’re much better at.
I’m going to push back a bit here. If the overpowered punches bit means that you or I lose important locations that meant something to us - or we retain BFA’s decision to have one part of the faction take the hit while another hits back - we haven’t resolved the problem.
That’s pretty much not at all what Benedikt or I have said in the slightest.
I feel like it’s pretty abundantly clear that at least what I am advocating is showy battles that have no impact outside of the immediate battle area, being lost materiel and personnel.
