I mean, it is kinda that bad for the Horde

Lore Story Forum
565

I think it has to do with Blizzard’s writing style. The narrative is very character-driven, which leads to them picking and choosing which characters get the spotlight. Since they only focus on 2 or 3 characters at a time, that doesn’t leave much room for a Council to really do much outside of its interaction with the chosen headliners.

Like with the upcoming narrative with the Earthen, is there anything from the Council of Three Hammers in the story? From what I’ve seen, no. It’s just Moira and Dagran.

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566

Yes, but that’s not what I see complaints about. I’m not talking about what makes her appealing as a Forsaken character, I mean I see complaints about what makes her feel like a Horde character. And the complaint is usually that she feels too “Alliance-y” as a character.

I think being too Alliance-y as a criteria is simply interacting with Alliance players. I dunno, would be glad to be wrong, but I still think there will be plenty of consternation over the Blood elves merely interacting with Alliance in any way during Midnight.

567

For Calia? No way.

She feels Alliance-y because …

  • She’s the last living member of the royal family of a human kingdom (Lordaeron) that the Alliance feels very strongly about.
  • She’s good friends with the leader of the Alliance, who also participated in raising her into undeath.
  • She’s infused with the Light, a cosmic force that, while not completely absent on the Horde side, is much more prevalent on the Alliance side. This one by itself might have been forgiveable, except that (1) it’s completely at odds with the group she is supposed to be representing and (2) she also has all the other issues on the list.
  • One of her first actions on being given a position of power is to do something nice for an Alliance race (returning Gilneas), without asking or getting anything in return.
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568

I am not just thinking of the appearance. Don’t get me wrong, that will be part of it. And I tend to think she is probably the closest to what they ultimately want they to look like, given she is the most developed. I definitely think they are going for a between troll and night elf.

But it is also dress, movement, etc. that feel very troll-ish comparatively. Look at her dance and tell me you don’t get a distinct troll vibe.

I obviously cannot speak with 100% certainty. But what little I have seen on them in the beta, cinematics and datamining definitely feels much closer to troll aesthetics than elf. But also not fully troll. Kind of the same way Earthen are not fully dwarf aesthetics. So, it feels to me like that is what they are aiming for. That is my bet anyway. I guess we will see how it plays out.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but: The Forsaken are the people of Lordaeron. If being tied to Lordaeron makes someone ‘Alliance-y’ I have some bad news for the Forsaken fans.

Wouldn’t that mean the Blood Elves, who literally draw their life from the Sunwell were to Alliance-y for the Horde? There are some pretty heavy Light themes in Silvermoon.

The Light is not a defining trait of the Alliance.

While I don’t agree that is fundamentally a problem, I can understand it as a valid complaint about her. However, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Alliance.

One could also see it as trying to redeem her people by correcting past wrongs. Not all that far from what Thrall did during the formation of the Horde.

Besides, it wasn’t exactly nothing in return. The Alliance players also helped the Horde cleanse and recover The Undercity. So, it kind of feels like each side helping the other has some balance going on there.

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569

Midnight I am suspecting only Aleria to make it from the core cast of TWW. And I am not entirely sure if Aleria will be Aleria or if Xal’atath has some sort of body snatcher scheme brewing as the culmination of TWW.

I expect void elves for sure. The major blood elves—Lor’themar, Rommath, Halduron, Liadrin… Aethas if we have to. I suspect Vereesa and Sylvanas will finally come rolling in, particularly if their sister does end up possessed by Xal’atath. I do not expect to see much of Tyrande or Malf as they are retired now–Shandris is another story, as this might be the first time they really show her off as the new leader of the Kaldorei.

570

If you really want to know why Horde and specifically Forsaken players don’t like Calia Menethil, I can summarize it like this:

First, we take Geblin Mekkatorque and take him out of his Mech-suit. Then we take all his armor off. All of it. Throw it in the trash.

Once he’s down to his skivvies, we get some red warpaint and we just mark him all over. Give him that real tribal Blood Troll look. Yeah.

Then we just glue and strap on some Totems. He should be carrying a big one on his back, and maybe two on his arms. Put him a grass skirt and some beads on the ankles.

Now for the final flourish. He needs to step up onto the stage and tell the rest of Warcraft what it means to be a Gnome:

Geblin Mekkatorque: “The true quality of the gnomish people, that which we all strive to be—is ignorable—I mean adorable!”

Confetti falls from the ceiling to the sound of unenthusiastic party noisemakers.

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571

C’mon now, you’re not even trying at this point. I don’t want to retread what’s already been said in this very thread, but Kael has never been Horde.

More Horde adjacent than Alliance? Sure. But it sure doesn’t do a whole lot for your argument when you tossed out three names the Alliance has to quest with, and one of them isn’t, and hasn’t ever been Horde.

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572

It is really funny how so many people act like anyone vaguely related to the Alliance is all Alliance, but there is always an excuse to not apply the same standard.

But, it is kind of irrelevant. We could nitpick who counts, how much questing counts, or just get to the main point. So, for the sake of argument let’s just say he wasn’t Horde.

That still leaves two big names in just that expac. Which is more than sufficient to prove my point. Clearly Cata was NOT the only time Alliance players had to quest with Horde characters.

573

I mean, people’s opinion’s vary. I am going to say I do get what you mean.

For me, though… Take Legion as an example: I definitely did not feel like doing quests for Illidan felt like doing Alliance stuff. The parts with Velen did feel a lot more Alliance-y.

But again, personally, I didn’t really mind. I like Illidan (have since WC3), and I like Velen, too. It certainly doesn’t hurt that neither of them felt like throwing insults to my face because I picked the red side, though. Really wish they’d stop that nonsense; but I’ve gone into diatribes earlier about how much that irks me.
(And I’d absolutely feel the same in the opposite as well.)

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574

As long as you apply the same standard I can respect that.

I fully understand. And don’t disagree it is not needed.

My biggest complaint with people is when they try to pretend it only happens to their side. (Which is the kind of thing I was originally replying to when a poster claimed the only time the Alliance had to quest with a Horde character was Cata.)

575

‘looks at the council of the 3 hammers’. Moira gets all the attention while her uncle and Falstad just stare into the abyss.

At least this council will eventually dissolve. But knowing Blizzard they will do a “Dagran II does not want to be a ruler” so they can keep the status quo.

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576

Calia sucks in almost every dimension, she represents lordaeron which by now is only a small facet of who the forsaken are, she is the old royal family who no longer matter to a people who’s blood does not run, she is the light where her people are shadow, she makes no move to understand the new culture of the forsaken instead she just wants to help her friends on the alliance, her powers are pain to her people, she knows nothing about her people, all she has is vague good intentions and the refusal to act when her people are in danger. She would more likely side with the alliance over the forsaken.

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577

Meringue can now officially be ignored.
Honesty is completely beyond the pall for them.

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578

I’m one of maybe three red avatars on this board who like Calia, up to and including her installation as a Forsaken leader, but there are valid complaints as to how she got there.

There’s nothing wrong with PC-NPC tension when appropriate; it preserves verisimilitude. Certainly, I enjoyed questing with Tyrande more as her unlikely ally in Val’sharah than as the plot-mandated agent of her race’s genocide in the Shadowlands, but the oddity of the pairing warranted notice in both instances.

Honing in on Midnight, Rommath and Vereesa are two characters with nothing but negative history with the opposite faction. There were three different versions of the Thas’dorah intro quest to cover Vereesa’s bad blood with the Horde, the orcs, and the blood elves for allying with them. Horde-side interactions with that character should be rife with tension, as should those between Rommath and the Void club he banished, or really anyone wearing a Kirin Tor tabard. Probably too specific a flag to enforce, but still, it’d be funny.

Players might prefer to roleplay their void elf as a dirt generic high elf but that hasn’t yet altered the trajectory of the race’s lore. We caught up with them only a patch ago and learned they’d shored up their numbers with Void enthusiasts sapped from haters of Silvermoon and the Horde. If the ren’dorei’s endgame is total interchangeability with the sin’dorei – at least to the point where void elf lore is “Horde lore,” as you argued before – they certainly aren’t there yet.

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579

You are mixing fair complaints it with just plain wrong ones.

Most Forsaken are former Lordaeron citizens. There are some additional groups that have started being added. But the vast majority are still Lordaeron.

That would actually be a fair complaint. A lot of Forsaken should see her as someone that should be left behind. Not all of them. Some would want some level of return to what they had before. The internal conflict could actually make for an interesting dynamic. Sadly, I doubt we will ever see it.

That is also fair. Her being unique makes it hard to justify a leadership position. If the Forsaken got a large influx of light based undead it would make more sense, but her alone. I agree, that is a knock against her position of leadership.

That is actually not true. She very much tried. If it fair to argue she has not fully gotten there, but she absolutely tried. Go back and read the book.

That is just not true. Again, go read the book. Her primary goal has always been helping the Forsaken, not the Alliance. However you rate her level of success, it has been made very clear that is her first goal.

Same as previous. Just not true. In fact she refused to side with the Alliance in the book.

Look, I agree she isn’t a good pick for a Forsaken leader. She shouldn’t be part of the leadership. Honestly, I think she should have always served a more ambassadorial position. Her experience isn’t fully the same as Forsaken, even those who were raised from the dead later and were never part of the scourge. She is closer to an in between the Forsaken and the rest of the world. She should have served that in between role, not leadership.

But, calling her Alliance or saying she would side with the Alliance just isn’t supported by evidence. In fact it is countered by it.

I love the projecting.

Let’s review:
Waygs claimed: Cata was the one time Alliance had to quest with Horde.
I said that was objectively false and provided recent examples showing it to be false.
You come in quoting that interaction and claim I am not being honest.

Objectively we can say the Alliance has had to quest with Horde NPCs numerous times outside Cata. And examples were clearly presented, so you knew that. Therefore you claiming I was not honest is you lying.

It is possible Waygs was just misinformed, or had missed a lot. Meaning Waygs might be just ignorant. Which is not a slight, if he didn’t play Alliance maybe he just didn’t know. Since examples were clearly provided (even in the response you quoted) showing that was wrong before you made the claim, the same cannot be said for you.

Apparently “honesty is completely beyond the pale for” for you.

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580

I mean given that when the scarlets were there to exterminate the forsaken all she did was pout about how mean we were being to them

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581

Oh.
I apologize then.
I didn’t know people were complaining about questing with Thrall now.
But they still complained that Thrall was Horde content in Cataclysm to be absolutely and objectively clear.

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582

I will accept it.

To be clear, during Cata there were complaints from Alliance about having to quest with Thrall. IMO, it was mostly a symptom of the massive disparity in content, Alliance literally being given Horde cut and paste questing, etc. The quests around Thrall had a lot of the same issues that the rest of the expac had. Cut and paste Horde quest text, stories clearly written for the Horde /cough Thrall’s wedding /cough that didn’t fit for the Alliance to be part of. Lack of Alliance development because all the time was spent on the Horde. Etc, etc. Questing with Thrall itself was less of an issue, as we have seen that done since without that level of backlash. But it stacked on top of a lot of and exacerbated existing issues. So, yes it had complaints at the time.

I honestly believe that had Cata not been built on a vastly imbalanced faction war and content disparity that there would have been very few complaints about questing with Thrall. Sure, attending his wedding as Alliance would always have felt a little odd, but not a big deal. The context of the larger situation it was part of is what I believe made it an issue.

The problem is that quite often people fixate on the complaints about Thrall’s questing and ignore the backdrop. So it becomes the focal point. And now days there are some either from ignorance or intentional misdirect claim that Thrall’s questing was the only time Alliance had anything to complain about and are just holding on to it.

The truth is both sides have had a lot to complain about. Sure, the complaints are different. But, pretending ‘the other side had it good’ is both false and not constructive. Both faction wars were blemishes on the game that Blizzard should never have done.

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583

I’ve been saying this for ages, but it was like screaming into the wind. The forums were just enchanted with the idea of councils ruling every race and faction. Now we’ve got them and the problems are becoming obvious.

I think the problem is that the game doesn’t provide the Horde PC with an easy comeback in most cases. If (hypothetically) we have to take quests from a Night Elf who blames us for burning the Sacred Grove of Blagh’dara, we should be able to say “That grove was infested with Old Gods and if we hadn’t burned it, Azeroth would now be overrun.”

And then they could come back and say “You didn’t have to jump straight to burning! We could have cleansed the place, but you didn’t even give us a chance to try!”

And we could come back with “You didn’t see all those tentacles! There simply wasn’t time to go fetch Cenarius, and there’s no guarantee he could have fixed it anyway!”

And so on. See the difference? Two robust opinions, both with good points to make, instead of just having to stand there and take it.

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584

YEP.
The very day they announced the Horde council, I called that Baine would be Warchief in everything but name. When they re-announced the horde council, I called that it’d be true for Calia, too.

Two for two.

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