That’s a good change of pace, and good to hear from him. This should especially be a potent (and actually very interesting) potential dichotomy between the Light Forged (which he leads) and the Lightbound story arc (should it ever resurface).
I would love to see them get rid of High king and go back to a ruling council who appoints a supreme commander(someone who isn’t a ruler of a kingdom). It could atleast be a position that could change hands depending on the threats the alliance is facing at the time.
Blizzard has completely failed to explain the “High King” position as being anything but a blue warchief and it cheapens the Alliance lore and history.
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It would be nice but then the writters woukdnt get yo shoe off thier ultra super cool humans that are better than everyone else at everything because they have human potential.
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Its less human potential and more that the writer Alliance side loves to have the pacifist Anduin lecturing us on why war is bad. Also making Jaina do her 13th flip to going back to loving the Horde.
If you take those 2 characters out of the story the Alliance story is all about Genn, Tyrande and Shandris. Maybe Taelia but even she doesn’t show up much outside the original questing.
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If we could remove those two the story might improve some
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I agree. At this point, every single Alliance character is suffering because Blizzard is trying to put Jaina and Anduin on this imaginary pedestal. Jaina had enough character development but now they’re doing a complete 180 with her character. It’s like she can’t make up her mind whether or not she wants to dismantle the Horde. Maybe they’re making her into some bipolar character?
As for Anduin, he represents everything that is good and holy. He can do no wrong and he is supposed to be this saviour even though he’s just some kid who has no experience leading his own people let alone an entire faction. Though he’s somehow the High King, commander of the Alliance army LOL.
Anyway, the Horde is suffering the similarly with Orcs being the highlight once again. Saurgang was an amazing character BEFORE Battle for Azeroth. The writers messed that up and made him into a mopey suicidal mess. Baine is basically an Alliance character at this point and Thrall is back trying to do Thrall things yet again. It’s getting really old.
This expansion was a great way to focus on the other races like the Forsaken (not just Sylvanas), Blood Elves, Nightborne, Trolls and Goblins. The Alliance is more than just humans but we’re only getting the human story so far.
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You’re actually joking, right? Orcs have been anything but the highlight this expansion.
That’s literally what they’re doing. What do you think Zandalar is, an Orc continent? Or Nazjatar, is that also an ancient Orcish civilization buried beneath the waves?
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Jaina is fine. She has just overstayed her welcome and the latest flip flop is the only issue.
Finally, there was a wise Alliance leader and it was all sacrificed for Honor horde. Pretty sad if you think about it.
It’s like you forgot the massive amount of work that went into the two Saurfang cinematics which once again focus on the Orcs (Thrall and Saurfang) and what it means to be the Horde. I mean you also forgot that MoP and WoD were also Orc focused and had a very similar story. Here’s a fact that will blow your mind: the Horde is an amalgamation of outcasts with different goals, beliefs and morality. The Horde was never just about “honour.” Instead, we’re told the Horde = Orc ideologies. So yes, I will argue that Orcs are once again one of the highlights of this expansion with Saurfang being established as the next Warchief.
As for the Forsaken, they’re only focusing on Sylvanas and not the race itself. They’ve failed to establish any factors that would make players sympathize with the Forsaken although it’s all over BtS. In game, the Forsaken are literally just blind followers of Sylvanas. They even get put on a ship so Baine could label them as loyalists before slaughtering them.
Zandalar is a new zone and so is Nazjatar. We get zones with themes every expansion so not sure what your point is? Just because they give you a small underwater zone for Azshara doesn’t mean the story is somehow about the Highborne now. It clearly is not. It’s actually underwhelming and disheartening to see Azshara made a filler villain. In fact, I believe we should’ve had an entire expansion about Aszhara because she’s one of the only few characters left with an interesting story. Instead, we get this terrible forced Horde vs. Alliance war about Sylvanas vs. Humans with Azshara introduced in a single patch only to be defeated easily in a filler raid.
If you’ve played this expansion at all, you would have realized Blizzard stopped caring about the Night Elves after Sylvanas burned down the tree. That’s a fact.
We have three primary stories at the moment and they’re about 1). Horde vs Alliance war with Alliance being the good guys and Sylvanas being the baddie; 2). An Orc telling everyone what it means to be the Horde, and once again, working with the Alliance to overthrow the Warchief; and 3). N’Zoth.
Imagine thinking the focus of the story is now about the Highborne and the Naga just because we got Nazjatar as a zone LOL. Zandalar is a zone. The Zandalari Trolls have been nothing but meat shields to establish just how powerful Jaina (Human) is. So I will stand by my statement. The Horde story is Sylvanas + Orc (the real Horde apparently) while the Alliance is basically Humans being the awesome pure hearted individuals they are helping the Orcs solve their Warchief problem yet again.
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Having one Orc heavily featured in multiple cinematics is not that same as having the Orcish race and associated ideas being central to the plot.
We’re not talking about MoP or WoD, here. We’re talking about BfA.
If you want me to explain to you why I consider MoP a masterpiece in storytelling, I can indulge you.
As for WoD, I fail to see how. WoD was already as incredibly unfocused and de-centralized as a WoW story could possibly be, and is in no way similar to what we’re dealing with now.
When did I say that it did? All I said is that the Horde needs something resembling a common moral fiber or guidelines that all races can abide to by the end of this expansion. Cuz I know Horde is going to take another heavy blow with the loss of Sylvanas.(whether through death or exile)
Ok, and here’s why your argument is wrong:
Is Baine an Orc?
Is Lor’themar an Orc?
Is Talanji an Orc?
Is Rokhan an Orc?
Is Thalyssra an Orc?
Is Nathanos an Orc?
If the answer is “no” to all of these, that is because this expansion is clearly not centralized on Orcs and Orcish idealism. Heck, Saurfang hasn’t interacted with more than half of these characters, not everyone is inflicted with the plague of “orcish honor”.
At least not yet, anyways…
What is this?! A point I couldn’t agree more with?!
An illusion, what are you hiding?
They haven’t cared about Night elves for over a decade and have only used them as victims to show how evil the Horde is.
Two Horde founders, a Tauren, a Blood elf, and even a goblin to an extent(Gazlowe). Heck, even some of the allied races are giving us a piece of their minds, none of which support genocidal maniacs like the one Sylvanas was transformed into for the plot of this expansion.(aside from the assistant of a reformed mass murderer and a greedy, incompetent, slug who’d sell his entire people to slavery for two extra coppers in his coin purse)
I did not say what the focus of the expansion was, only what it isn’t. I honestly don’t know wtf BfA is, but it’s certainly not an Orc-centric expansion.
And to provide Sylvanas with additional resources to add to her “bulwark against the infinite”.
Y’know, to reinforce their meatshield status, of course.
And I will stand by my statement about the inaccuracy of your statement.
Doing the right thing is not a sentiment that exclusive to Orcish ideals. Most non-Orc characters seem obligated to do the same thing regardless of whether or not Saurfang had preached to them his “honor” prior to them deciding to stand against Sylvanas. Literally the only race who has zero qualms of whether something is right or wrong, is of no surprise the Forsaken, who either simply don’t care that they’re evil or that their dichotomy has been so heavily altered in their undeath that they actually think murdering the every living being on Azeroth wearing the slightest tint of blue and gold, and inflicting them with the same curse that they have suffered with for years is the right thing to do.
Either way, this expansion has been-once again- anything BUT and Orc expansion. BfA is such a conjumbled mess, you could literally say it’s centers around any Horde race for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s a goblin expansion, there seems to be quite alot of them around and the main plot centers around something they pioneered(azerite), which started this whole mess. Maybe it’s a troll expansion due to the Troll continent that we’ve spent most of our expansion on, along with Troll Anduin trying to convince Troll Varian to change up his ways, which unfortunately results in Troll Varian making the ultimate sacrifice to save his kingdom and leaving the ill-prepared Troll Anduin to rule.
BfA is a much of an expansion for those races and themes as it is for Orcs, so please don’t tell me this trash heap is supposed to be founded upon Orc themes, cuz I see none that are exclusive to the race other than pittying Sadfangs constant PTSD and vague sense of honor.
Except last time, it wasn’t the Orcs who primarily had Warchief problems last time, now was it? In fact, Orcs are the only race that supported Garrosh. It was pretty much every other race who had issues with Garrosh until eventually Thrall rallied whatever Orcs he could against him.
You could’ve saved yourself the typing if you just understood that none of those characters are important to the story we are being told. Everything comes down to Saurfang and the honourable orcs. The real Horde.
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I honestly believe that the Horde would welcome us blowing the top half of Orgrimmar into smithereens.
I found it amusing, glancing back over Tides of War. Where they talk about how Durotar is already hot. And having new metal buildings in Orgrimmar really didn’t help it being unenjoyable.
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In all fairness it absolutely is to Blizzard. These characters are the avatars for the whole race personified.
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For characters who are not important, they sure are getting quite a bit more screen time than saurfang.
And Honorable Tauren
And logical Trolls
And well-meaning Blood elves
And good-guy Goblins
And clever Nightborne
And open-minded Zandalari
Yes, the real Horde.
This so much! Honestly, the horde fanbase’s (some of it) refusal to straight up lose this xpac at the cost of regaining its moral integrity has been such a disappointing thing to watch for me. Like… you can’t be nearly pure evil one patch, not suffer any consequences for it then expect to be treated like the hero again later.
I mained horde from late wrath, which was when i started the game to the end of MoP because I couldn’t handle the horde being as dark as it was under Garrosh, and with Sylvanas still being alive was quite certain they weren’t going to be able to be morally upright any time soon (I remember hoping they’d kill sylvanas off in this xpac too). But the the thing is… all throughout cata and MoP I wanted the horde to lose. Because I could see they were the bad guys, and that they needed to lose in order to be better. They took a sort of half-step by keeping Sylvanas alive but at least they tried, and when I did level some of my horde alts a bit in legion I was able to feel ‘ok’ about it without feeling like being treated like the good guys wasn’t totally out of place. (though the alt-draenor orcs doing what they did without demon blood put a hard damper on it for me).
If I was still a primarily horde player i’d be hoping to lose to gain redemption later. Let me feel good about being horde. But at this stage it can only come after a stage of feeling bad.
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the REAL horde
is that the true horde or the dark horde or some other horde
you could make a song for all the hordes and warchiefs like the days of christmas
my true love gave to me a dark horde an iron horde and a warchief hellscream
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My first impression is that orcs dont really see humans as enemys, seems like orcs respect humans a lot. also that orc champ that fought for the night elves, horde doesnt really care if people fight with the alliance to save the world. plot twist, orcs and humans start the faction “defenders of new azeroth” and all the messed up extremist races lose it. i feel like one of the reasons saurfang was like wtf was because humans and orcs have a form of respect for each other and fighting without honor would ruin 10 years of diplomatic relations with humans haha.
I’d always wished that the Horde had adopted Wrathion’s ideology.
The idea being that Azeroth can only be protected by a single force of the entire world united together. And since the Alliance and the Horde will never unite peacefully, the Horde will conquer the Alliance, for the good of Azeroth.
This ideology gives the Horde motivation to constantly be the aggressors, while also still allowing them to convince themselves that they’re doing what’s right.
The issue with this is that the Horde has never been portrayed as powerful enough to actually adopt this philosophy. We’re just FAR too weak.
The Alliance has always sort of portrayed as the juggernaut of this world, its only gotten worse as the Franchise continued. The Blue Team isn’t even operating on the same genre of Fantasy as the Red Team at this point … which renders any such aggressor stance rather mute when it would require the Alliance to be handicapped to work…
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