Sylvanas takes some massive personal losses. Her sisters disown her and nearly kill her. Nathanos, possibly her love interest, gets a final death. She is forced out of her place as Warchief and the Horde. She has even lost the trust of the Forsaken for her actions.
The Night Elves gain back all of their lost lands to Ashenvale’s borders. They put down most, if not all of their dead, and there is proof that most of those who did join did so unwillingly. (This makes the most sense for some of the rather poorly developed characters.)
Thrall or Baine take up the position of Warchief. These two are better choices, but I am okay with Saurfang taking up the spot as well.
I don’t think that Anduin should die, but he needs to lose his friend Genn. (This is actually hard for me personally.) This or he needs to take a less active role in overseeing the bulk of the Alliance.
The War ends in a draw, and there is a truce with small flareups/skirmishes like before.
People that should survive:
Jaina
Sylvanas
Anduin
Baine
People who should die:
Nathanos
Graymane
Things that should never happen again:
MoP style faction wars.
Destroying things to lift up their opposites. (Looking at what they did to the Light to make the Void, Mag’har, and Illidan look better.)
Major faction leaders or members going neutral to further the story.
Nothing. There is no way to end this story in a satisfactory way. The best I can hope for is whatever ending they throw at us will be slightly less agitating than the story so far.
What they have done is effectively made a story that can never have a satisfactory resolution, because the only way for the “wronged” party to get any kind of closure would be to enact an equitable punishment on the aggressor, which would undoubtedly upset the other half of the playerbase. And I wouldn’t blame them. It sucks being forced into a stupid story where you are literally complicit in genocide.
So frankly, I’ll take the incredibly stupid and cliche “It was all and old god induced nightmare” as we wake up before any of this stupidity ever happened. It’s a headache…but it’s better than whatever the hell Blizzard has planned for us, and that’s the real shame.
My first criterion would be an ending that lets players on both factions feel good. Everyone pays the same subscription and has the right to feel good while playing the game. So a total Horde or Alliance victory is off the table. It’ll have to be some sort of compromise.
Secondly, I’d like to see some kind of closure to the faction conflict. There can still be tensions, but they should be similar to Vanilla where conflicts take place in isolated battlegrounds.
Thirdly, the “identity of the Horde” storyline needs to be resolved and there needs to be some stability moving forwards. Neither faction needs to replay this “who is the Horde?” storyline for a third time, and musical warchiefs is just lame. Also, can the Darkspear at least get a racial leader, FFS?
Fourthly, the Night Elves and Forsaken need proper homes. They each served an important role in providing faction presence on their respective continents; I’d like to see that maintained. And Kalimdor is so tied to Night Elf identity, and Lordaeron to Forsaken identity, that losing those story elements would really hurt their identity if all they get in return is a wing of Stormwind/Orgrimmar.
There’s nothing that can happen to make both factions satisfied when the issue involves a genocide.
okay i understand your premise but sadly there is no way that this can end in a good way.
the fact that the horde will survive this is already a bad story.
But to answer your question with the things you say:
if we want to talk about balance,we could talk about the losses that we suffered along the way but we never got any payoff.
The balance is already in the horde’s favor in terms of zones and blows delivered to the other faction.
So if we really want to talk about balance the balance has to go back to a middle ground.
Every person,soldier,commander and general who participated in teldrassil executed by tyrande or some nelf.
-The horde has to beg for forgiveness to the nelfs.
-if not then more signs of good faith could help and not just baine paying a blood debt to jaina.
-a proper closure to the teldrassil fiasco to the nelfs as a race, a cgi cinematic, heritage questline, a new HD capital, i don’t care, something good for them.
i would also like that the alliance/jaina lied to thrall about defending thunder bluff and at the last moment they march to orgrimmar.
But most importantly, i don’t care how, but IT CAN’T END WITH THE ALLIANCE JUST WALKING AWAY AFTER HAVING THE HORDE AT THEIR MERCY “if your horde fails honor again we will end you”.
and lastly, this ending fails the premise of the thread about keeping horde as a viable faction:
n’zoth or something like that destroys both faction giving us a blow so devastating that would make us feel like idiots for having another stupid faction war in the first place.
and god, no more faction war ever again.
Nothing I can do within constraints of the game will be satisfying. The Horde will get away with genocide, we’ll be expected to be chummy with them again and Anduin will lecture everyone about how right he was. It’ll be a pathetic ending to a pathetic expansion.
I think you’re talking about “Story Balance” here. Game balance wise, Blizzard was very open that, when Vanilla was first released, they finished more content Alliance side than they did Horde side. Alliance simply had more stuff to do and they were trying to rectify it. That’s why there was a drastic swing in terms of “Horde gaining ground”. I agree with a lot of people here when they say that the rebalancing should have mostly been caused by Deathwing, and NOT by Faction Conflict as it leads to the problem we have now.
It comes across as “Horde favortism” and “Horde bias”. From the Alliance perspective, of course it looks like Blizzard just likes the Horde better, but that’s because the Alliance zones needed less “fixing” from it’s Vanilla roots. That’s all I mean when I say “Game balance”. The actual mechanical balance of the 1-60 questing zones needed to be rebalanced as the Horde had been at a disadvantage from Vanilla.
“Story balance” is a whole other subject, that I didn’t really want to bring up in here, as there’s very few good solutions to “Story balance”
but if the topic is “how alliance players finish the story” so the “story balance” becomes relevant because the balance needs to go back to a middle ground in order to even start having something satisfactory as a an ending.
in reality it’s a problem that has become stronger over the years.
teldrassil being on top of all that has created this ridiculously scenario where if the horde isn’t deleted it will be a bad story.
You have seen the first Avengers movie?
Sylvanas gets a humiliation conga on the lines of the one Loki suffered in that movie.
I am talking the whole thing: Black Widow playing Loki at his own game, Coulson suckering Loki into putting his face in front of that gun barrel, getting out-snarked by Tony, even with the shiny new scepter still losing one on one against Thor, catching Hawk-eye’s arrow just for it to explode in his face, Hulk smashing him through the floor, and it ending with Loki broken and in chains.
And it all comes at the hands of various Night Elf characters with an added Worgen or two. (No Dwarves, No Gnomes, No Draenei, No Humans)
Then Sylvanas gets confined to the Horde storyline. The Alliance never hears of her again. Whatever she does from this point forward either happens to a horde character or an enemy that is not affiliated with the Alliance.
The Alliance gets to wash their hands of that character permanently.
I apologize, that’s my fault for not being more specific. When I say “Balance” I meant it in a very strict “Tit for Tat” sort of balance. I don’t think the story has to be or even should be a straight “one for one” sort of balance like you’re talking about. “Losing” in Cata is unfortunate, but needed to be done for game balance reasons, and I don’t think it can get a “Story balance” for it in terms of getting those territories back.
Then it would be imposible to meet the standards of a “satisfactory story”. because like i said, i previously problems had become even greater now.
The fact that varian didn’t at least tried to dismantle the horde (even if he failed or not ,doesn’t matter) already makes us like idiots for not doing it, teldrassil proving it.
And if they do it AGAIN then the alliance story would be over forever because it would be too stupid for anyone to follow.
How so?
Both factions lost a zone. Both factions lost a capital. The Alliance successfully raided the Horde expansion capital and killed a leader.
In overall terms of zones, the Alliance controls one more than the Horde.
I mean, if that’s your standard then you should cancel your sub, because you can never be satisfied. This game is not for you.
In a story that includes magic and time travel, your statement seems like a failure of imagination.
Horde destroyed Teldrassil.
Conquered Darkshore and Ashenvale.
Alliance got Trisfal Glades.
There’s fighting in Darkshore and Ashenvale; the Alliance hasn’t lost them. And I doubt they will.
There’s also fighting in Silverpine and Hillsbrad, per follower missions, even if Blizzard opted to put the warfront in Arathi (probably to fulfill a longtime Alliance wish of getting Stromgarde back).
Table missions are canon? There is so much contrary information in them that it didn’t make a lick of sense.
But in the game events the Horde did conquer 2 zones and destroy 1 zone.
In UC we saw a half conquered Trisfal and a kamikaze Sylvanas blowing up UC.
Hardly a 1:1 trade even by counting zones lost.
Alliance lost 3 and horde lost 1.
No. Tirisfal Glades is still there. I can log in and fly there right now if I wanted. Even without talking to the local bronze dragon, I can go visit the Scarlet Monastery. Or Agamand Mills. Or the Bulwark. Or Deathknell. All those places and more are still exactly as they’ve always been. Here’s what’s no longer available:
-Brill
-Undercity
-Half of Garren’s Haunt
Teldrassil, otoh, is gone. Entirely and utterly. Without talking to a bronze dragon, I can’t fly over to it. I can’t visit Dolanaar. Or Starbreeze Village. Or the Oracle Glade. Or Shadowglen. Or Darnassus. It was all reduced to ash.
This meme that Teldrassil and Tirisfal Glades were equivalent losses needs to stop.
Sadly, I don’t think your first three conditions and this one can be met in the same story.
Thanks ever so much, Ethel. I love you too.
Is magic going to bring thousands of people back to life? Fix a burnt tree, magically nuked military base, plagued town, or the other areas affected by the cataclysm? What time travel plot do you think will take place to prevent these events from occurring?
My statement is an acceptance of reality regarding a company with no interest in restoring alliance losses. Your dismissal is a failure to accept that.