One thing I do LOVE about TWW though is the Warband system. I can grind the reps and mogs on one single character and not have to stress out if I wanna casually run a second toon through and not have to grind everything again
Even if the story isn’t great, that at least will make things easier. I’m interested in the Arathi stuff mostly and curious if it will go anywhere and if blizz will drop hints about us seeing the mainland empire down the road or not
Interesting bit… there is at least a couple of quests that require you to be part of an “Evil” race/class, as part of a prove yourself situation. At least there used to be… leveling is a pain in the behind, because I’m totally not still swearing…, right now, so I don’t know if they are still in the beta…
The Vulpera remain one of the more baffling additions to the Horde.
One thing I really love about the Red Team is it always feels like a true ensemble. It’s a band. Sure the Orcs may be the lead vocalist but everyone gets their guitar or drum solo now and again;
Then the Vulpera turned up and they’re doomed to be back-up dancers for all eternity.
I fell in love with the vulpera during Vol’dun questing with them. They had spunk and didn’t back down from a fight with the Sethrakk, despite being smaller and outnumbered
They also humbled the Horde Council. Yeah…we uhh, fixed all your problems in a day. What’s your excuse? 
One day the worgen will get some love though. One day 
I just find it kinda funny.
They outsourced some minor domestic problems to a wandering adventurer then got a seat at the monster mash security council.
Granted it wasn’t much of an ask. I picture them as basically a RV full of oddly industrious raccoons just sort of chilling in the middle of the city.
Seeing as the sitting population just absorbed their own AU cousins I can’t imagine it’d be that weird.
On a side note what do you figure that Orc dating scene is like? Because if Geya’rah is any evidence Rule 63 You is a distinct possibility.
I imagine a lot of wrestling, all of kinds, death duels and a few…very Orcish habits nobody wants to think about
saying factions don’t matter when the greatest alliance heroes lead the effort is irony.
I keep bringing up the Westfall Brigade from Wrath, because I think this is one of the easiest ways for Blizzard to accomplish this - make the faction bases in the new expac be manned by NPCs from old zones, which lets every quest there reveal what the common man’s motivation is and how they react to the modern events.
Between them and Nazgrim-and-Taylor-style recurring squads, there’s lots of tools to show minor characters serving their faction’s expac-specific goals.
I wish Blizz would use these types of tools more.
My hope is the Arathi are not watered down and turned into good guys by virtue of killing their leaders. We have had the rebellion storyline too many times already.
I imagine orcs advertise their desirability to others by wearing as many skulls and animal pelts at possible at big wild parties. This demonstrates that they are capable hunter/killers, and thus able to provide/protect a family.
I meant more the concern you could hook up with yourself.
More broadly with Orcs though I feel like things must have been broadened by now due to the complexity of their economy if nothing else. Sure Gorghaz the Destroyer will probably rock your world in bed but Ghazgor the humble daughter in line to take over her father’s lucrative pig farm has better prospects for long term stability.
Gey’rah is an alternate ‘sister I never had’ to Thrall far more than an alternate him. And even aside from gender, they’re lived quite different lives.
This is completely fair. And again, I want to make sure I preface how much I’m over the faction conflict; that I want none of it going forward. And while I have predominately been a Horde player since the beginning, I’ve spent expansions playing Alliance. (Wrath is an example as my main was a female human Death Knight).
I just feel like… I guess the Horde storyline is such a mess now that I find it hard to connect, personally, with the world around my characters after all the messed up stuff my faction has done. And then it was just sort of left, where it was. Enough so, that myself, who does love the world and a lot of the characters, would prefer to play Alliance over Horde just because of that disconnect.
We’ve, as a faction, done a lot of bad things. And also, a lot of very stupid things. And not a lot of those stories, at least to me, feel like they came to any form of reasonable conclusion where we can move forward in any meaningful way. It’s a rough limbo to feel yourself in whenever you log into a Horde character.
I also do want to say that the majority of your argument I do absolutely agree with. It’s just not a great feeling looking at all of my characters and realizing that they really don’t belong after all the stupid atrocities the faction has committed.
**Edited for grammar.
I certainly won’t fault you or anyone who enjoys playing a Horde character for that feeling. The Horde’s story was, in my opinion, miss handled to the point that I’m not entirely clear how to fix it without either a full retcon of events after Legion or a major time skip (as in decades or centuries) in game. The Horde needs, in my opinion, a moral victory without caveats. Something players can point to and say, “Yes, my faction stood up and did something worthwhile.” It won’t erase everything bad, but it will at least be something to build on.
Can’t fix the Horde unless you fix their biggest loss. Warcraft 2.
That is another discussion. One that I don’t feel like entertaining in this thread.
it is all related.
I feel like it’d have to be done in the way that would be close to what Grom did when he bodied Mannoroth with Gorehowl.
The unfortunate part is that when we switched from Warcraft 3 to WoW, Horde “heroes”(I say that loosely because Grom did a lot of bad things, too. And the fact that the Horde as we know it now hadn’t completely come into existance) have been on the chopping block constantly.
And back to your original point, I think, Danseis. There’s a lot of that I’m okay with. I was excited the first time I ran a raid with Alliance members as a Horde member. I’m really all about easing the faction divide. But as an Alliance character, would much, if any of this, make much sense? Horde’s given an inch, and every time, they’ve put a tyrant genocider in charge. And as always, that’s not on the shoulders of the players, it’s squarely on the writing team that has disserviced the Horde for a long time.
I’m not going to tell you that Thrall’s Horde was perfect or anything like that; it’s just so absolutely unfortunate that the storyline involving the Horde as a whole has bounced back and forth from being:
We’re Thrall’s noble and honorable Horde, or
We’re Sylvanas Sith Horde.
And there’s no inbetween. For the former there’s at least a bit of nuance, for the latter, it’s heavy handed, and in my opinion, not very well written. And I’m talking about an entire faction left out to just… I don’t know, chill and mellow in the sunlight?
I don’t even have a problem with switching factions. I absolutely adore the Draenei. But with this many players, with that faction divide… I 'unno, bit of a disservice considering at least half of the active player base is Horde.
**Grammar edit again, and also one of my sentences didn’t make a lot of sense.
alliance is written like Tolkien stories. Horde is Game of Thrones. All our Heroes are ddeplorable because Blizzards only way to raise the stakes for the main cast is to kill Horde personalities.
What I worry is that even writing a 100% biased, purely horde, complete and total campaign and moral victory still wouldn’t be enough at this point because the double relapse with associated genocide is just that bad that it’s self-undermining. I know the WW2 comparisons are trite at the best of times, but man did the game wallow in them itself, and that’s what the game is left trying to rehabilitate now.
From what little has come out about the other Arathi kingdom, it sounds like Blizzard’s building up the place as a strawman to do what they kept pulling punches for in the faction wars, but I don’t think it can work. Because the horde’s narrative opposite isn’t the Arathi, and there are much more valid reasons why people would want the horde as an identity to go extinct nowadays.