It doesn’t have to be war exactly.
Remember the intro to the broken shore? 2 teams, horde vs. alliance, racing to get to Guldan. There was rivalry and competition without warring against each other.
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Technically speaking cannibalism isn’t evil.
Yes it’s taboo and not accepted in many cultures.
Yes there are pretty good reasons to be against the practice xd
But if your god said that it was fine and you met him?
Trolls have a particular and hands on view of religion and a very particular culture.
The “War” in “Warcraft” has always been about Azeroth vs. BBEG #267
That starts with having a separate writing team for each faction.
Which is absolutely needed.
The horde sucks
The end
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Interesting idea. Please elaborate. I would think separate writing teams would make things feel less cohesive.
I’d argue it never ended. The countries participating, ideologies, and cultures shifted, though.
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The way I see it is it is one of those things that can easily fall into “what is evil for one culture is good or at least neutral for another”. I also just said that Darkspear might have done away with that aspect, maybe when they joined the Horde.
I also chalk it up the Troll regeneration. When you can regrow limbs the idea of cannibalism seem like less of a issue and more of a easy source of food.
I’m fully done with the faction conflict. Even when it’s not the main focus of an expansion or patch, it’s just kind of… sitting there, getting in the way of the actual story being told. At least that’s how it pans out like 80% of the time.
Like, oh, okay, world ending threat, massive campaign to stop it, but these 2 minor camps from the 2 factions are fighting each other on the way because ???
I’m sorry but with the stakes WoW stories often reach to, it no longer makes sense for the factions to actively fight, even small-scale.
It hasn’t made sense for a long time. The timeline is too packed with bigger threats for it to work.
Even Legion’s nonsense with the Alliance thinking the Horde bailed to screw them over was dumb as hell. I appreciate that they tried to provide a setting that allowed for there to be some different perspectives based on faction, but it came at the cost of literally not a single faction leader thinking to even attempt to communicate with the other side to find out what happened. That’s freaking dumb. It’s more shoehorning of the conflict.
Gets old. Got old. Done with it.
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When i look at competition like PlayStation vs Xbox , or alliance vs horde i think of little kids saying things like my toy is better than yours
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See, I don’t get how faction rivalry gets old, but conveniently added bad guy right after previous bad guy doesn’t?
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On the one hand, you have countless factions with different world views, backgrounds, goals and characters that are at odds with each other… and on the other hand the super-villain who is evil because he is evil.
But the faction conflict is getting old, yes?
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I mean, I’m not going to pretend WoW has good writing. It doesn’t, even when not shoehorning in the faction conflict.
But at least the different bad guys contribute to a growing story. The faction conflict just exists. It can’t lead to anything meaningful because the factions have to remain more or less balanced or it affects gameplay and players riot.
just feels like this ‘war’ is there just to keep pvp alive, nothing more.
Stale, boring, tedious, vomit.
Just it out of its misery and find something else to justify pvp with.
Like I said earlier, when we got to Hellfire Peninsula, Horde went to Thrallmar and did Horde quests and Horde stories for Horde NPC’s. Alliance went to Honor Hold. They did the same thing in Wrath. Even Cata and Mists had separate storylines and experiences.
But at some point, staff turnover happened, and we ended up with the current “Horde bad. BAD!” writing team.
The apex of this was in Legion, when the Horde was essentially written out of the game for 2 years while we watched a bunch of Alliance and originally-Alliance characters hog the spotlight. (Velen, Khadgar, Maiev, etc.) Horde was M.I.A.
Then it continued in BfA where we were helping Magni the whole expansion. (And yes, BfA was all about helping heal Azeroth’s woons. It was there for 2 years. The faction smokescreen was a short-lived marketing sideshow.)
And then in Shadowlands, Thrall & Baine literally sat in the corner in Oribos while the Important Human Characters (Bolvar, Jaina, Calia, whomever that other lady was) stood at the main table talking to the Attendants.
Put this all together… and it sure looks like the current writing team only cares about the Alliance characters.
Time for somebody who actually gives a crap about the Horde to take over the Horde storytelling.
(The last good Horde storyline was in Wrath. That was the whole Hand of Vengeance thing.)
((Wrath was a LONG time ago…))
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I don’t even PvP. (WoW pvp sucks, always has.)
I want Horde stories again.
We aren’t getting Horde stories from this writing team.
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Or want more proof that Horde is evil? What about the mentallity of your entire playebase. It has only ever been Horde on two separate occasions that have slaughtered every single person at the gates and refused to let any members of the Alliance ring this gong. They knew that was a once in a lifetime opportunity and they took it away. The Alliance even when they greatly outnumbered the Horde, still allowed Horde players to become Scarab Lords.
I have Ally and Horde toons on this severs. Horde players will go out of their way to hunt you down, follow you across the entire zone, gang up on you in a group and then spawn camp you. Alliance… they do PvP but only when it prevents itself. You dont see Ally members going out in raid groups to spawn camp low level players.
And speaking of Horde spawncamping Alliance, it has only EVER been Horde players who mass multibox in battlegrounds. Alliance dont need to play that way. Horde can only win while in a massive group or by multiboxing a massive group.
No matter how you look at it, Horde is the evil faction.
As I mentioned in another thread, I think we really need to move away from this factional way of looking at the writing quality. Both factions have massive, glaring issues in how they’re being written and developed, and we wont get anywhere arguing which side is Blizzard’s favorite.
That said, I do agree with the essence of what you’re saying. One of the Horde’s unique problems is that Blizzard’s writers can’t seem to empathize or relate to their races at all. They seem deeply unable to create empathetic characters that aren’t human or humans with pointy ears.
If you’re a writer for a high fantasy world, you either need to develop that skill or quit your job.
The end result is exactly what you describe: the Horde is only ever proactive when they’re being treated as mindless villains for the “main characters” (Alliance) to fight. When the story shifts away from faction war and toward cosmic threats, the Horde has no agency or role in the story because Blizzard has no idea what to do with them.
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