After everything the Forsaken have done I am extremely short on sympathy for them. Even more so than the rest of the Horde. To me it would be them getting their just deserts, a taste of all the suffering they have caused us.
Point is, it’s really hard for me to see Turalyon as a villain, as long as his actions only hurt the Horde. Not impossible, but really, really hard.
I am just going to say this again.
I expect that Alliance players are not going to forgive the Horde - I certainly can’t envision a scenario where I would regard them as being anything short of an existential threat to the Night Elves, regardless of whatever claims are being made about them moving to a council. That is not the goal here. The goal is to consider what can be done to redeem the faction in the eyes of ITS playerbase.
Which involves—I’ll say it again—a return to the old (read: Vanilla - Wrath of the Lich King)—moral scaling, where the factions were more evenly balanced in terms of what they did to one another.
Not this ridiculous, “Horde Warchief drops a nuke and kills a bunch of people, never forgive, Horde will always be evil, Alliance can now do whatever it wants” nonsense.
But again, that necessarily requires Blizzard’s writing team to:
A) Acknowledge that the Alliance is capable of committing moral atrocities—and more importantly, actually hold its leaders accountable when this occurs
B) Acknowledge that the Horde is capable of making amends/atoning, and more importantly, show/demonstrate that the measures being implemented can work:
Yes, I get that Morghel. That is not an uncommon thing from you. And I am not opposed to the Alliance getting the massive hits in that such a story concept would imply while were gone, so long as it works to shepherd in the Light Cosmology expac. And our characters get the development and appropriate plot armor expected in a defensive story like that.
I have to push back on the idea that the Alliance can do what it wants. I agree that they should be seen as doing things that are not always perfectly moral, but I don’t think we can honestly say, or that the audience would believe, that past pain is unassailable cover for literally anything the Alliance would do.
Second - I disagree with the “bad apples” assessment. The Horde is in this spot not because a few bad people did a few bad things - they’re here because the entire faction followed these people until it was no longer in their best interests to do so, and they did that on the basis of their governing ideology. That does mean that the problem isn’t “fixed now” just because we have a council or just because Sylvanas is gone. This will set up future conflict yes, but it also opens the question as to whether you should have Horde players apologizing for or atoning for their faction’s aggressive posture.
And we can thank Blizz’s loving “Plot Convenience” button for that. It would be inconvenient for the actually important character of that story (The Villain Leader setting up a future Expac) for their people to be allowed to turn against them too early. So they can’t. To the point in BfA where Blizz actually nearly wrote Teldrassil out of the Horde’s story entirely after the WoT was complete. Because they could not think of a way to keep their Plot Device and Vehicle Faction on path while actually including that horror story.
Lets not pretend its a cultural thing, beyond Blizz using “flaws” as a concept to do whatever they want with the Faction they actually allow flaws. This is Blizz just feeling more free to use the Horde as a Plot-Device to settup future Villains and Future Expansions, and they will twist the story as much as needed to make that work. Which is why they don’t bother writing actual motives for the Horde’s evil … let alone validate them. Plot Devices don’t need that.
I agree with that - and you’re right to be angry about that. I’m just laying out the magnitude of the issue.
I mean, you can push back on it all you want, but Blizzard has already given us that impression many times over.
So you still admit that the primary responsibility lies with a select few individuals, though—as seen in A Good War, the Horde at large didn’t even know Teldrassil was the target until Saurfang redirected them at the Crossroads.
Which they shouldn’t, and this is one of the primary problems with Battle for Azeroth: the fact that Horde players now have to bear responsibility—in-game responsibility, mind you—for actions taken by Saurfang, Sylvanas, and Nathanos, over which the Horde playerbase largely had little to no control to begin with.
It would be like forcing the Alliance player to go through a series of quests in which they’re constantly belittled and insulted by, but must repeatedly apologize to and grovel before, Lor’themar and the Blood Elves for having blindly followed Garithos back in the day, for example.
And as a note, in both the Garrosh Conflict and the 4th War nearly every aggressive and antagonistic act leading up to those conflicts came from the Alliance side of the fence. Its just NONE of those actions were allowed to actually matter or count, so the Horde “out of nowhere started the war, still psudo-reacting to the Alliance’s actions that aren’t allowed to count. So they aren’t valid”.
Blizzard is also suggesting things like “Uther was wrong to commit Arthas to the maw” and “Tyrande may be wrong for wanting to pursue justice” - I don’t think they’re that far off at all from that belief.
Regarding responsibility lying with a few individuals - I disagree. A Good War demonstrates that when those who invaded Ashenvale were told that they were going to do so, they were incredibly enthusiastic about the idea. Then after Teldrassil, absolutely none of the Horde’s leaders withdrew from or resisted Sylvanas’s leadership until much later, and instead contributed troops and in some cases their personal efforts to effecting her war aims. The player was also not given a meaningful way of pushing back against her.
@ Droite
Regarding your comment with regard to the Alliance’s actions preceding the last two conflicts.
The Alliance’s aggression in Cata can be limited to Varian’s shipment of troops out to the Barrens to deal with the emerging crisis going on between the Horde and the Night Elves. The Horde may not have appreciated the Night Elves’ decision to not trade with them, but the Horde also does not get veto power over how another country uses its resources. The Horde was failing to cooperate with investigations over attacks on the Sentinels - serious matters as those could be construed as acts of war - and matters that even Cairne was tricked into believing that Garrosh was responsible for. So I’m going to have to put that context back where it belongs on that matter. As for Garrosh’s invasion of Ashenvale, the Cataclysm manual states that such was induced by the Hyjal crisis. Garrosh saw that as what the manual describes as a “golden opportunity” to seize lands for the Horde. That was his intent - it was not done to get Stormwind to back off or to punish their interference.
Stormheim in no fashion justifies the Horde’s conquest of Night Elven territory, or the logical conclusion of their ideology as expressed at Teldrassil, and further validated by their continued support for the war.
Yes, nothing quite like severing a trade agreement that was installed to prevent further invasion into Ashenvale, causing a massive famine in Durotar to really prompt starving people to act rationally. Especially since it was a consequence (in part) of the Horde being unfairly blamed for the WrathGate; the event Varian literally declared war on the Horde for in WotLK. And one that cost the Horde 4000 lives too. Truly, thank god Blizz twisted things to write in that Peace Treaty in time for Garrosh to break it. Otherwise the Alliance literally declaring War and placing trade sanctions on the Horde might have actually counted as them starting the War. They can’t do that, they’re the good guys!
Or how the attempted assassination of the Horde’s new Warchief by two high ranking members of the Alliance with absolutely ZERO consequences wasn’t allowed to be taken as an act of War by the Horde. Or how Blizz realized that the Sapphy abduction wouldn’t have happened until AFTER the Alliance’s attack on Bilgewater civilians in Silithus, so they had to have the Goblins attack the Explorers League FIRST for NO REASON (other than they’re Goblins) … to make sure that wasn’t an act of War. Or Anduin shoving so many SI:7 agents into Orgrimmar in response to the Gathering that citizens were literally tripping over them, to send the deliberate message that “We are Always Watching”. That’s not massively aggressive at all.
Truth of the matter is. Its not that the Horde didn’t have reasons for both these conflicts. Its that they CAN’T be allowed reasons for these conflicts. Because to justify or validate their antagonism, the Alliance would have to do something antagonistic from the Horde’s perspective. And the Alliance can’t do that, that’s a FLAW! They aren’t ever allowed those. So the Horde is forced to pseudo react to Alliance acts of aggression without it ever being valid, and Blizz rushing into bury what little grey existed in those original Alliance acts as much as they can. The Blues are the paragons of every virtue ever conceived by man, flaws are akin to pure evil and are what the Horde needs to be oversaturated with.
I hope the horde dies soon.
The problems with both those examples are:
Uther wasn’t representing the Alliance when he became a Kyrian because, well…he’s dead now.
Making the claim—through Anduin, mind you, who first denied Tyrande aid in reclaiming Darkshore and then proceeded to arrogantly mansplain with “Vengeance has consumed her”—that Tyrande’s quest for justice/revenge on Sylvanas is supposedly “wrong” is a big slap in the face to the Night Elf playerbase, for reasons that should be extremely obvious.
All of whom were NPC soldiers.
NPC leaders.
Bingo:
And this is a productive contribution to this thread because …?
You exist. /s
Aww, you noticed! That’s so sweet! 
Since I’m not sure what Velskar is arguing at this point, I’ll stick with your commentary.
Your first paragraph describes the breaking of a tribute system. “Trade with me so that I won’t have to kill you” isn’t an amicable trade deal, it’s armed robbery. That doesn’t do favors to the assertion that the Horde wasn’t being the aggressive party - especially when we consider why that trade agreement came about. It came about because Varian forced it to come about during the Theramore Peace Conference pre-wrath, which was an attempt to stop the Horde’s war against the Night Elves for lumber.
I’m going to say this again for those in the back. The Horde does not have veto power over another country’s resources, and to the extent that it is asserting one, rather than negotiating on equal terms, it is committing aggression.
Regarding your second paragraph, my previous point on that stands.
Regarding the third - as much as I’ll push back on the Cata conflict, the Horde going to war to steal another nation’s resources has precedents in history. That is a reason for the conflict - if an aggressive one.
Because blizzard cant do the factions justice it would be better if they were nonexistant
And the reverse is true. If we don’t trade with you, and you don’t invade us, then you starve to death. And you should be happy and content with that, that is the reasonable expectation. Before he was turned into a Orc Hitler, Garrosh did have a point. Finding out your people’s very survival (let alone prosperity) is held in the hands of the Alliance, who could cut that lifeline off for something a unfair and cruel as an event that cost the Horde 4000 lives too … is brutal. It reinforces the idea that the races of the Horde shouldn’t have a path to prosperity, or even survive. Which, to be fair, is the theme that’s been written by Blizz regarding the Red Faction. A group of people and cultures who should not exist.
Truly, the Orcish people’s greatest crime will always be them not having the fortitude to do what the Draenei were never once expected to do. To prove they are not evil, and recognize their manipulator and oppose them. Stand against impossible odds. Then die with their world. A mere statistic in KJ’s intergalactic grudge match with Velen. The Darkspear should have died to the Naga. The Trolls in general should have vanished into obscurity ages ago. The Tauren should have gone extinct to the Centaur. The Goblins should have been buried, enslaved in those toxic mines. 5 ex slave races on the Horde and the theme is that it would have been better for them to not have survived at all.
I laugh how this is the most likely by a margin of 99%
Oh yeah and likely being print and sold in a lore book with that narrative only to retconned 1 year later(Chronicles that even made Azshara more sympathic than Orcs, Trolls and even Taurens)
Actually if the narrative began to call out people and face consequences, a lot of things would get fixed by proxy and it’s not like the first time. WC3 have the humans which were morally good in the previous two games as the main villains(Arthas and Daelin) and capable of doing horrible stuff as their enemies