I dunno, we recently had Shadowlands where the forsakens’ whole “being wholly dominated by death magic” shtick was being explored by Anduin of all people and they spent time carving out a corner for druidism instead of remembering there was a spiritual side to shamanism. Then Dragonflight had an entire parallel plot about elemental unrest and instead of tapping the Earthen Ring, they were skipped over again (though that didn’t stop them from using the Kirin Tor and Cenarion Circle).
Tauren are allegedly the horde race most in-tune with the earth and TWW’s opting to go with stone dwarves instead.
It’s definitely a head trip when Blizzard deliberately created the Maldraxxi to resemble Scourge themes and emphasize them. Meaning they were a direct connection to the Forsaken.
And then the only connection the Forsaken make with the maldraxxi is Calia and Voss visiting them just to be told that Calia is a real-bonified undead, totally legit you guys, and to get a method to clean up the Forsaken Blight by turning it into sentient monsters that can be defeated instead of a chemical hazard.
Sarm’s point about the Tauren being ignored in favor of the Earthen Dwarves just about sums up my feelings on the Horde’s presence during this next trilogy of expansions.
I really feel like Blizzard has chosen the representatives for this saga, and it consists of Anduin, Blue Sylvanas (Alleria) and Jaina, with Thrall as a token rep for the Horde. I’m willing to be wrong and change my feelings if I see a change, but at the moment I haven’t.
i totally agree with your point, and part of me wonders if they didn’t opt for the earthen ring in dragonflight because then it’d be too obvious how much they’re recycling plot points from cataclysm
Dath’remar, aka Dath’remar Sunstrider was the Highborne that betrayed Azshara, freed Tyrande from her prison and later led his faction of Highborne east to find Quel’thalas and make the sunwell.
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Dar%27Khan_Drathir is the guy who betrayed the High Elves to the scourge and the one who’s works with the void the would be Void Elves studied from.
I am not sure how auto correct could turn Dar’khan into Dath’remar. Also nice edit on the other post to make it look like I was wrong the whole time. Thankfully quoted posts do not change when someone edits the quoted material.
I get that your whole shtick is to be contrarian or a troll. And that’s fine.
But there’s not a whole lot of Horde posters here stating they hate questing with Alliance neutral NPCs because it “takes away from Horde lore” or whatever it is you’re trying to say. I said before, and I’ll again state outright that isn’t the problem.
The problem is that the Horde is broken and left in limbo - so much so, that a lot of whatever it meant to be Horde in the first place, doesn’t really make any form of sense going forward. Because said brokenness hasn’t been addressed at all. So much so, that the writers just simply ignore all of it and push forward, making the new expansions all about neutrality and big bad.
Rarely are we upset that we’re back into an expansion where we’re following a neutral individual.
It’s just writing on the wall at this point that they have to keep using Alliance neutral NPCs to further the story, because there are almost zero Horde NPCs left. And it does not feel good to play Horde when you realize you’re playing a decimated faction that has no way forward, and the writers clearly aren’t interested in fleshing out how that direction would go forward.
Cool, though. We got Token Thrall giving Anduin a pep-talk, and well… Nothing else, it would seem, if beta is any indication. He’s just there, because it would be even more awkward if there were zero Horde members.
It’s extremely hard to debate with you because there’s almost zero faith in your arguments - which again, makes me think you’re just a troll.
Oh noes! Alliance players had to do a single quest line to help Thrall put himself back together! The audacity of Blizzard to do such a thing!
I remember those days and it’s still funny to me.
Yeah, I’m fully expecting Blizzard to write the poor, widdle B.Elves being completely incapable of defending themselves and will be cheering as Alleria comes riding in to save them all and declare she should be the new Queen of Quel’thalas.
Of all the expansions in this World Soul Saga trilogy, Midnight is the one I’m looking forward to the least.
And really I’m not against any quests where we work together, but we should have enough of our own. And when I’m getting quests to do these neutral things, they should come from my faction leaders.
One of my biggest problems is they did away with the Warchief title but then don’t have the council do anything. And in TWW it looks like our previous Warchief Thrall is pretty much there for things (not a lot yet, but there). So why not just make him Warchief again?
They just crapped all over faction fantasy for the Horde in BFA and never did anything clean up the mess they left on the floor.
I think it’s because councils only sound more interesting than they really are, and Blizzard historically has shown very little interest in wanting to write them, especially when you have 10 more quests you need to knock out and troubleshoot by Monday. The original purpose behind a High King was because nobody in the fanbase was really rallying behind the idea of communal leadership in the same way the horde had Thrall as warchief.
At the same time, BFA was such a colossal screw-up that Blizzard needed to come up with a scapegoat as to why they could put a stopper in the faction war in a way to explain why both sides might be relatively okay with giving up, so the warchief position made a convenient target. It never meant that would make the game more motivated to actually write a council, though.
This is always the case whenever Horde players of the forums have to interact with Alliance characters. We saw plenty of complaints that Horde were helping the Night elves at all, ignoring the greater existential threat that was interwoven into that context.
If anyone else but Thrall breaks bread with the Alliance, certain Horde players will riot. We already see this with Baine and Calia. A lot of equivocation is made about Baine supposedly having a lot of baggage, Calia does not have that same problem. Her problem is that she used to be part of the Alliance over 30 years ago. I’m not sure if Horde players are aware that the majority of Forsaken used to be Alliance, but that’s where we’re at in the discourse.
I am prepared to see the “Why is Lor’themar and Rommath even TALKING to the Alliance, doesn’t Blizzard understand that the ten quintillion dead in Dalaran by the hand of Jaina should never be forgiven!” comments once Midnight rolls around.
The void theme was something the majority of people did not want. Look at any void elf and easily 90% of them use the Helf customizations that people wanted since the beginning. It seems the majority do not care for the forced dichotomy, so that distinction does not mean anything to the players themselves.
Horde Dwarves will likely have cultural differences to the Alliance ones. At Blizzcon they went on about how there’s 3 groups of Earthen. To me it seems obvious that the Horde group will be “Titans bad” and the Alliance one will be “Titans good”, but we’re not sure yet.
Is this ignorance? Or just intentionally pushing a false narrative? Because that is a completely, and objectively, false statement.
Alliance players have to quest with Horde characters plenty. In fact, as recently as in DragonFlight on my Alliance toon I was running around with Baine helping him out. And it doesn’t stop there. Alliance players spent a bunch of time with characters like Bwomsamdi, Kael’thas, Sylvanas, etc in Shadowlands. Back and back we can go. It is NOT something that only happened in Cata.
The problem is you are trying to present a narrative that only the Horde has to quest with other faction NPCs. And that just isn’t true. Maybe it is ignorance because you don’t spend much/any time on the Alliance side. I hope it is that. Because the alternative is that you have either blinded yourself or are just lying.
Both groups of players (Alliance & Horde) do have questing with the other faction’s characters.
So, I also have to ask:
If, as seems likely, the first content patch after TWW release is mostly or all Horde NPCs leading the show will you also argue Alliance players should not be subjected to questing with the Horde characters? How about if it is ALL of the patches after release?
What happens when during the World Soul Saga the pendulum swings the other way and there has been more time spent with Horde characters than Alliance? And I am calling it now, there will absolutely be a point were it does. Will you then be just as vocal saying it is not fair to Alliance? Or will that be okay? Or will you just say the Horde time ‘doesn’t count’ for ‘reasons?’
Well, it wasn’t a “single quest line.” It was a number of quests lines. Also including a dungeon and raid. And that was while the Horde was actively trying to destroy the Alliance.
Also, do we need to address Vol’jin in MoP?
People that pretend it is only a one side thing are either ignorant (and should spend more time on the other side) or are just disingenuous.
Look, I get that some of you are REALLY against any interaction with Alliance characters. And, fine, you can feel that way. But do not pretend it is only the Horde that has to interact with other faction NPCs.
I think that kind of hits it. It boils down to time and medium. It is harder and requires more time to develop a council story then just have a single leader. And it is harder to show properly in game.
Based on what I have seen in the beta I don’t think they are going to break the Horde Earthen and Alliance Earthen along ideological lines like they did Pandaren. I think they will just be an individual choice kind of thing.
And I think the Earthen are likely to be kind of the opposite of the Harronir. Earthen are separate but thematically fit closer to Alliance via Dwarves. Harronir are separate but will likely be thematically closer to Trolls, so Horde. I will be really surprised if Harronir are not the playable ‘opposite’ to the Earthen.
Calia’s an awful character but it’s not because “she used to be alliance over 30 years ago”. The forsaken are different from most other races in what’s most important is their condition and how it affects them, not so much where they came from. They may be based out of Lordaeron but that’s more of a backdrop thing; it’s the suffering from being a cursed zombie that defines them and their perspective.
Calia was practically airdropped in as a “better” alternative (while simultaneously screwing up forsaken lore just to make room for her) based on an appeal of what Lordaeron used to be, quickly making her a type of undead without touching on what undeath meant for the people Blizzard wanted her to start representing.
This is closer to what I’ve heard; any ideological differences are solved before any join the factions, and IIRC in-universe, the playable earthen don’t even choose which side they go to. They’re assigned by a superior, so the game’s trying its best to play them like a true neutral race.
This part I can’t help but doubt, though. I think too much emphasis is being put on Orweyna’s features which admittedly look half-trollish (even though apparently they’re part-bat or something?) but from what I’ve heard and seen, she’s visually as trollish as they can possibly look. The rest of the race can only lean in the other direction as cosmetic variety pushes them further from it. Especially since the males are more blatantly based off the nelf model as well, as the race is kinda the inverse of typical fantasy dimorphism tropes.
And it’s really hard to overlook those Elune-named world roots and them being described as isolationist nature protectors. If that’s at all more horde-adjacent, to me it only feels such in the same vein as people thinking night elves should’ve originally gone horde instead because they don’t fit with the alliance.
