They make up for it in Faction war narrative and better racials.
If you want relevancy outside of faction war the Alliance is there waiting for you.
And ⊠there it is. That ugly element from some Alliance players (even on the STORY FORUMS) to act like the Horde Playerbase doesnât care about the story ⊠and somehow enjoy getting either shamed or ignored by the writers (and broken down over and over again).
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I mean⊠even for the Alliance playerbase generally if you are not human you are a sidekick.
From this side of the fence I can say watching the focus go to the Horde finding itself over and over does get a bit old. It is like as a faction they are in some sort of midlife crisis where they do extremely questionable things to figure out if it is âthemâ or not.
((As a note not agreeing with Pheandra, there. I think they are a bit excessive.))
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Your faction is boring. Their only narrative drive is the old âHorde slaughters innocent tropesâ
Anything of interest they can call back on is old Alliance content like High Elves or Night Elves/Nightborne even the Highmountain was connected to Night Elves.
Horde just isnât very interesting outside of its inner conflict and brings nothing to the table besides being a back ground NPC just to shout âHey I am here too.â
BFA is Horde centered and it is horrible.
WoD was Horde centered and it was horrible.
Cataclysm was Horde centered and it was horrible.
The last patch of MoP was Horde centered and it was horrible.
You see a pattern here?
Cata was a Horde expansion? What? I seem to recall there being a pretty even distribution of revamped zones in that expansion, and none of the NEW zones were focused on the Horde (outside of Green Jesus in the Meta Narrative).
WoD was a Horde expansion? Only so far as Garrosh was a footnote and Orcs were involved. Hell, Blizz went so far as to dodge rebuilding the Horde after MoP that they just invented another entire universe of evil orcs to focus on something (ANYTHING) else. Thrall was the ONLY MU Horde character of relevance in that entire expansion, and his entire story was fixating on his AU Family.
BfA is a mess for both sides ⊠and donât act like the Horde getting browbeaten with how horrible we are somehow makes it a Horde expansion (no matter what those expensive Saurfang cinematics would suggest). On all story structure levels this isnât the Hordeâs story, this is Sylvanasâ story and the Horde is merely a vehicle for her story to reach its conclusion.
As a side note ⊠a lot of tolerance for stories seems to stem from personal preferences. I enjoyed Legion, but I find the Alliance faction particularly boring ⊠and not because of no internal conflict; but because Iâve just never enjoyed the extreme power-fantasy they seem to have. If the focus was more on Gnomes, Dwarves and Gilneans I might take more interest ⊠but until then ⊠meh.
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Oh yeah.
You forgetting green jesus and garrosh being an edgy orc?
Thatâs what the entirety of the expansion was about.
God I loved the Duskwood revamp. Look just like classic⊠oh right⊠it was just duskwood from classic.
Horde. Orcs. Whatever. It was a Horde themed expansion about the OG Horde. Some had good elements. Some had evil elements but it was mainly their story and what they did.
Because we are focusing on how the Horde and its characters move the story forward. We all have to suffer through it.
Hopefully next expansion we can go back to ignoring the Horde again and have a wonderful experience.
You know like pre-8.3 or Legion or Wotlk.
It is about the Horde. Check every uinterview. 90% of the time all they can talk about is the Horde. Well whatever. I got Legion and you get BFA. Enjoy it.
Every theme you interacted with was laced with Alliance elements.
Knights of the Silverhand, Druids in Valshara, Hall of the Guardian, Rogue hall and so on.
The only thing Horde centric was the Earthen Ring. And that one was hilariously bad.
There is nothing interesting about the Horde after you get past their initial short summary. They add nothing constructive to the story, lead any organization outside of the Horde.
Just look at Mechagon. Its fun. It is interesting and its about Gnomes.
You got the whole Azshara aspect which is just Night Elf lore essentially.
I can go on but I think I made my point. Enjoy the faction war narrative, its the highlight of Horde lore involvement.
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I donât mind them getting that focus. I just wish they could find themselves somewhere over there amongst themselves, instead of having these voyages of self discovery come at the expense of Alliance towns, cities, zones, and civilian populations.
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Why would you deprive the Horde and its playerbase from the one thing that makes them special?
They talk more about the Horde in interviews because they are receiving a MASSIVE amount of hate and criticism from the Horde fanbase for being forced to do this stupid civil-war storyline (and getting hit with the Villain bat) again; especially after their staunch refusal to actually put in work to rebuild the Horde after they broke it last time (and just ignoring us for nearly two expansion). Theyâre essentially trying to put out fires ⊠and sorry, outside of the NE Players the Alliance has few genuine grievances to actually voice this expansion beyond (weâre forced to hold back our stupidly overtuned powerfantasy).
Also, lets assume that a Shadowlands based expansion IS inbound (maybe not in the form of that leak, but inbound). By all indications that should be THE Horde storyline; with the Alliance riding shotgun. We have the Forsaken; We have Shamanism; We have the Patron Loa of the Darkspear Bwon; just about the ONLY universal domain the Horde towers over the Alliance in relation to is âDeathâ. But ⊠10 to 1 Blizz find someway to make the Alliance SUPER relevant in it, while diluting the Hordeâs presence. I mean hell, with the Forsaken being a footnote in the battle against Arthas; and the MU Orcs having no presence at ALL against the Legion (the group that turned them into monsters and destroyed their planet) ⊠I wouldnât be shocked if the Alliance gets an ENTIRE death themed expansion devoted to them (by shoehorning Calia and Bolvar in as Death Gods).
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Trust me when I say this ⊠I think MOST Horde players wish for that too. But, Blizz needs a villain ⊠and to justify Sylvie being placed in enough of a position of authority that she can do whatever the hell she needs to do to setup the next expansionâŠ
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I am not going to speculate fake leaks but so far everytime we gave the spotlight to the Horde we suffered tremendously in the narrative.
We need to get away from them and shove them in some backseat. They can poke their heads out once in a while but we are really better off ignoring them.
Their stories are just so damn boring and hurt the game.
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The reason why we are here at this junction in time is because they have been shoved in the back seat.
The horde had no reason or capacity to follow the alliance through the dark after SoO.
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Yeah, nothing quite like the Alliance Power fantasy being portrayed as interesting. Its like trying to watch a lvl 20 dnd game run by a DM that coddles their players ⊠so compelling.
Though, you are probably right in whats going to happen. Blizz doesnât seem to like writing Horde stories since Metzen left, and rather just wants to tell us all how horrible we are for choosing the wrong Faction 15 years agoâŠ
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Theyâre not. Itâs just that their current screen time in game makes them appear so.
I just hope that with the rebirth of the Night Warrior, the writers will realize that they already have something in their hands that can flip the script and turn a faction within the Alliance into a conquering force.
After all, the ancient night warriors were instrumental in the ancient Kaldorei empireâs expansion and I very much doubt that pushing the Horde out of Darkshore and Ashenvale would be enough to sate the Night Warriorâs thirst for vengeance.
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No no, we also got to know how Horde Night Elves felt about the Horde killing them! Gosh can night elf fans be so mad when blizzard does so much to make sure they hate themselves.
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Theyâve spent much of that time telling some players they chose the wrong race too. Horde players are just more vocal en mass so blizzard at least tries to cater to them on some level. When NE fans try, like when they made the most traditional NE weapon locked to the least traditional, heretic themed Night Elf class, they were like âEh maybe somedayâ rofl. Not to mention the actual writing of said story.
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I would argue that blizzard did a lot to try and nullify the alliance involvement in those legion themes. Theyâve spent years trying to make Druidism not a nelf thing: taking away half their druidic themed units in Warcraft 3 was just the start. Paladins had good representation for both sides. Rogue was also fairly diverse. Most Alliance thing about it was the fact it was in a former Alliance city.
But also, on the topic of Valâsharah: lets not pretend like it was an actual good storyline that serviced Night Elf fans in any way. It was an insult to their characters by continuing the trend of throwing out the personality people attached to those characters to make some stupid âexpectation subverting heart ache!â like Ysera dying. As if they havent been trying to right NE stories as nothing but a cluster of âsad tragedy eventsâ for YEARS in quests. It tried to cram so much lore from Kalimdor into a single tiny zone without any thought put into what made those ideas work originally (I.E. Shaladrassil in itâs entirely was pointless and seeing it corrupted brought no genuine emotion because we knew nothing about it and never learned anything about it. It simply existed to exist and devalued the story of Nordrassil, Teldrassil, and Vordrassil by making another world tree with no back story this time.)
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Running through night elf questing is depressing, i donât know why blizzard thinks people want to escape reality to be let down in game.
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âWe have so many dying race tropes in our story!! You know what⊠LETS MAKE MORE!!â
That is why them giving us a vague âHow many night elves are left in the world? Not enoughâ line in the novellas is so hilarious. Theyâve literally been trying to write us as a dying race since Vanilla. We literally opened up the game being told not many night elves were left, when at most they would have suffered losses equal to the Horde and the Alliance races of Warcraft 3 in the Third War / Battle of Mount Hyjal. I cant wait to see the next night elf murder p#rn event they write end with an almost identical line giving way to even less pay off than any of the others.
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I am not saying the story is good but I am saying at least the story moves in a more positive and interesting way.
The Hordeâs story elements are toxic to the story.
They donât add any value and anything they try to do is poisoned by what they have done before.
Yeah I know, they have tried, but still Druid Hall is 100% Night Elven, the other races seem to be merely guests.
They are out of place and donât belong there.
Thatâs where the Horde belongs. Where they canât ruin the story with their presence. They are pretty much useless.
Look at the Legion opening.
Alliance has the epic clash on the front gates while the Horde is fighting on some random hill. Gets ambushed and runs away. Pretty sad display.
Alliance and its races and characters are just more interesting and have access to more tools that make them relevant to whomever they are fighting.
Alliance has the heroes and cities that are actually worth losing. What does the Horde have? Ogrimmar?
Blizzard loves writing for the Horde. They literally say as much.
The thing is the defining feature of the Horde is its moral ambiguity and we can only explore this moral ambiguity when the Horde goes full on cray cray to kill something defenceless.
The Horde has been going down the evil route for years now. At this point you consciously chose this faction for this reason. You have no right to complain.
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