Nothing was taken. The forsaken, Lordaeronian citizens, were already living there. Those citizens allied with the Horde. That is the opposite of taking.
Having a better position in the event an enemy attacks is not an attack; it’s positioning in preparation for an attack. If you are backed into a corner and a man approaches you with a knife, and you reach into your pocket for a weapon to defend yourself with, you’re not attacking first.
Any reasoning person can see the very clear difference between this situation and an attack.
That’s typically what people say after they’re wrong about something. Because they’d rather attack my character.
I’m not forcing anyone to argue. I enjoy a lot of the discussion I have here. There’s no point in responding if you find it unenjoyable or tediously obvious as to the conclusion.
I’m not denying the Horde has aggressed other times. Why would I? The Horde has done a lot of wrong.
God did it ever. HOLY CRAP! Like, Blizz was really scraping the bottom off the barrel to try to justify the Horde’s participation in the 4th War. Whoda though that when you force an entire faction to be the aggressors in a war with no motives, but can’t let them have an opinion on the Genocidal Act you made them complicit in (because it risks having like 90 percent of them rebelling in response) … you have to really BS the motives of individual Horde characters to participate? So … utterly … forced. Just like everything Derek.
My god, I forgot he was even a commander option for the Horde in the Arathi Warfront lol! Though, I will admit it was funny with Liadrin vs Turalyon where he freaks out that the Horde has Paladins. It really hammers home how utterly optional and inconsequential the Horde was in Legion when Turalyon doesn’t know we have Paladins until that Warfront. When Liadrin was one of only two characters we got on Argus. Humbling that.
EDIT: And no, I didn’t mind Rokhan in the Warfrant. He’s not an “aggressive” character. He has been very consistent on the trait that he’s more the type to never start a fight, but get REALLY involved and invested in ending it on the Horde’s terms once its started. Regardless of who started the fight in the first place. His presence their mostly tracks, even if some of his dialogue was a bit weird.
First, I will be a happy player if I never see the word “waifu” on the forums ever again.
Second, my problem with this line of argument is that I simply cannot wrap my head around how any writer with control of Sylvanas’s storyline would create this for a character they supposedly love above all others. Unless maybe they love her because they view her as the ultimate evilness and they think that’s super-cool, but that doesn’t make her the kind of writer’s pet that people are accusing them of having. This especially applies to Golden, because she’s made it abundantly clear what sort of characters she likes, and Sylvanas is not and has never been that sort of character.
But why are they poor indicators? Since none of us were in the office during development talks, we don’t know that in the case of BfA, it wasn’t for the reason Alynsa proposes:
Liadrin and Eitrigg’s presence might have been due to time constraints. Rokhan and Danath both have unique movesets, but Liadrin/Turalyon and Eitrigg/Muradin both mirror the other’s so they needed a Paladin and a Warrior as Horde commanders. Liadrin is the only notable Horde Paladin but I dunno why they went with Eitrigg when the Horde is filled with warriors.
Honestly, I can’t quite figure out what the intent was with Warfronts. The idea felt sort of Half Baked.
That being said, at least it was cool to see Stromgarde rebuilt. Was hoping for less pearly white stonework, but actually questing and helping rebuild Arathi would be kind of neat experience since the Cradle Capital of Humanity has been rebuilt. I’m of a similar mind with Grim Batol for the Wildhammer.
Vol’jin really deserved an epic cinematic appearance, I could have imagined him pulling off those insanely cool shadow hunter skills and saving Varian from that infernal as well. (Probably could have taken a little heat off of how OP humans always seem to look as well if their characters are actually saved by less represented races.)
That seems to be why people meme up Zappyboi as well, was the first time to really see a troll character doing anything cool within an epic cinematic framework, if only the devs had picked up that people loved to see that sooner for Vol’jin.
I mean, Blizz has a weird relationship with Shadow Hunters (frankly, like they do with all Horde subclasses).
By the time of his death, Vol’jin was a hybrid Rogue, Warrior, Priest, and Monk. His Troll regeneration was so potent that he was able to survive having his throat slit by a blade coated in poison meant to mitigate Troll regeneration. And while Varian was blessed by Goldrinn, Vol’jin was equally blessed by Bwonsamdi. Frankly, of the two, Vol’jin on paper far outstripped Varian in terms of strength. But he gets gutted by trash mob while Varian gets an epic last stand. Sigh … in a scenario treating Sylvie like Warchief long b4 Jin fell.
Rokhan gets a similar treatment in BfA. Where he (with help) gets bodied by “Lightforged with Sword” Talaamon. The guy isn’t quite Jin calibur, but he is a peak Shadow Hunter (Warrior, Rogue, Priest hybrid), a WC3 Legacy, and our new Darkspear lead … and he got absolutely wrecked by a barely named Draenei (which is a tad insulting no matter how many fictional years Talaamon has lived). With a major factor into both their preformances being Blizz constantly forgetting they can do magic, and defaulting them to either subpar warriors or rogues.
EDIT: Its sort of like how conceptually, in terms of POWER, Voss isn’t the worst choice for a Forsaken Lead. She’s a Warrior, Rogue, Mage hybrid and just about the only character in the setting that could be considered an Anti-Light user specialist. She is very dangerous, and very potent, in theory. But only if Blizz doesn’t conveniently forget her full capabilities, and shoehorns her into “just a rogue” archetype like always.
That being said, I’m not overtly opposed to his sentiment there given the context. It is very true that when Thrall designed the Horde, he based a lot of it off of a very romanticized (and false) image of the Orcish Horde. And even if the execution is botched, theoretically Saufang himself could make for a better Faction Foundation than either Doomhammer or Grom did. As Saurfang admitted that death would not redeem him, and rather he essentially sacrificed himself to give the next generation a chance at the Honor he came to feel his own generation was never worthy of. Which is why “The Negotiation” was fairly good content for him, despite Anduin’s BS.
Simple, paternal, sentiment. It is a easy foundation for the Horde to build into something new on. As is the theme of “We can’t make up for the past. All we can do is accept it, learn from it, and try to do better”. Which is a bit of a shift from Thrall’s prior ideas about outright redemption (or Grom and Doomhammer’s clear attempts at redemption through death). It also subtly mirror’s Velonara’s “we will no longer be slaves to this torment” for the Forsaken. But, Blizz has to be willing to invest in all of this heavily to make it work. And, even if he is flawed and contentious, it would help if the one died for those messages didn’t just get soul-dusted in the Maw…
EDIT: This would require Blizz to not only give up their convenient Plot Device in the Horde, but also not just try to default the Faction into a sidekick or tagalong in the story of Alliance characters. Which are two things I don’t think they care to do. Three if you consider their general apparent disdain in building up the Horde Faction.
lol if you think that lore reasons are even a factor as to why this is (especially given that the faction disparity is exclusively in high level content)
They don’t seem to enjoy writing the Horde as a Faction honestly. Not on a overarching meta level, I would say that those who handle smaller and more local stories do have passion left.
Over the last 10+ years, they just seem to avoid it when their not using it as a Plot Device to settup future stories, future expacs, and future villains. They only really use the WC3 idea of the Horde to save it from their WC1/WC2 fun, but every opportunity they have to actually build up that safety net … they undermine or avoid it. So when you factor in that the Horde Faction has no clear “writers pets” left (we have an ex-writers pet and a pet of a writers pet) … it kind of comes off like Blizz sees the Horde as a financial burden to write around.
They already have their rather virtue oversaturated hero faction in the Alliance, why write the Horde?
Their vision of the Horde seems to be shoehorn despots into the drivers seat to use the faction as a motiveless plot-device to settup future content and expansions. While spending years silencing the WC3 vision of the Faction that even makes sense of its existence, only to use it to save it from the consequences of their WC1/WC2 fun? That’s not exactly a vision, so much as a functional use. But the neglect is pretty apparent when you take a look at the remaining Horde Faction Identity, Racial Fantasies, and Character Roster.
Frankly, I would not be shocked if Blizz puts more effort into “redeeming” Sylvanas than any attempt to do the same (or even rebuild) the Horde. I would be very surprised if Baine gets a story of his own in SLs, or Thrall doesn’t just get a rehash of his WoD story. Nothing like mopey, creepy dead parent stalker Thrall again…
I don’t think it’s an issue of lore but one of themes, much as I love the classic fantasy theme of the Alliance it’s currently really edgy grimdark fantasy that’s the popular cup of tea right now.
One day it will get stale as classic fantasy perhaps did, but for right now it’s the rage.
Although I don’t quite see the Horde as edgy or grimdark, but to the average normie eye the Horde would be much closer to the theme than Alliance.
Because all the racials are superior to the Alliance and have been for years; majority of players that wants to follow the DPS competitive meta chooses Horde. That’s the reality.
One of my favorite Warlock PVE content creators Kalamazi literally could not recall the term “naaru” when we saw there was one in Sanguine Depths. “Those wind chimes from the Burning Crusade”. Majority of the playerbase engages with the lore superficially.
