Whether agents of Doomhammer’s Horde are physically present in Thralls/the Current Horde is irrelevant; the point is the psychology and purpose of the Horde changed. They went from a killsquad bent on the destruction and subjugation of Azeroth (in that order, based on Warchief) to a group predicated on self-defense and mutual aid. Just like the Alliance went from a group established to destroy the invading aliens to a peacekeeping force. Thrall brought a new paradigm to the Horde that has allowed it to grow and endure in Azeroth, and every time this paradigm was rolled back (Garrosh, Sylvanas), the Horde fell into disunion and chaos and paid for the trespass in blood, sometimes the blood of heroes.
Another huge reason the faction conflicts run poorly is the fact that both factions are player factions. Players like to opt into PvP, they generally don’t enjoy it forced upon them, and a faction conflict is a massive, if indirect, bout of PvP. Players also typically enjoy playing the hero, and dislike it when dissonance rises from a mismatch of character and action. This was most exemplified in the War of Thorns, with Horde players being made into total aggressors and Alliance players being made helpless and hopeless.
The final piece is the overall lesson of WoW is an extension of the lesson taught in WC3; we win when we work together, and we lose when we do battle with one another.
True, but you are seemingly forgetting one factor: the first warchief was NOT DOOMHAMMER
The progression went a little like this:
Blackhand: Killsquad bent on the destruction and subjugation of Azeroth, but Blackhand was more or less a puppet of the Shadow Council
Doomhammer, WCII Era: Kill squad bent on the destruction and Subjugation of Azeroth, but the shadow council was on a very tight leash
Doomhammer, intermission between WCII /BtDP and WCIII: the focus here was more freeing the orcs from the internment camps and reminding the orcs of what they were before Gul’dan and his shadow council
Thrall: the Horde as we know it today
I am not disagreeing with you on any point besides who was warchief and what each did.
I never said Doomhammer was the first Warchief, Blackhand was always the crazy one. Doomhammer had a longer-term picture and a willingness to reach out to other races, Blackhand was strictly raze-it-all.
Doomhammer, again, laid the foundation for the next iteration of the Horde, which Thrall brought into the modern Azeroth day.
Bury the faction war deep deep deep into the earth. Focus more on a consistent overall narrative that everyone can enjoy regardless of their factions.
Don’t waste everyone’s time with a half arsed conflict that we all know can never go anywhere and is always put on the back burner anyway when an actual threat appears.
If you need to justify pvp then just say smaller splinter groups are fighting because old habits die hard, but those should be as far away from the actual narrative of importance as possible.
Since Legion, I’ve noted the lack of opposing bases.
I mean look at Wrathgate bases or just about any zone pre Legion. I saw this doing Midsummer flame quests. The locations are faction neutral or just randomly placed faction specific as to not cause a bottleneck conflict region.
I miss little stuff like escorting the human back to Borean Tundra Alliance base.
In other words less of an RTS influence. My base vs. your base and the objective in the middle
Sorry, it was just you kept calling it Doomhammer’s Horde when in all honesty, it was Blackhand’s Horde even after Doomhammer took the reigns late WCI, Doomhammer’s Horde, to me and possibly some others, was the transitionary horde.
The problem is, the “consistent overall narrative that everyone can enjoy” means an Alliance narrative, about Alliance characters, written by Alliance fans at Blizzard.
Happened in Mists.
Happened in Legion.
Happened in BfA.
Happened in Shadowlands.
Or are you going to be one of “those” Alliance players who claim that Legion was a “neutral” expansion?
That’s what you guys don’t get: WE GAVE IT A SHOT. A non-faction-conflict narrative means something written by, for, and about the Alliance.
So no more of that. Let’s go back to the iron curtain between the factions, it’s the only time Horde ever got good stories.
So, what, Horde has to be the aggressor to get a decent story? I strongly doubt that.
The problem is that Blizzard is unwilling to commit time to unpopular races. Which typically happen to be the prettiest, and guess what races those are.
No, Horde has to get away from the Alliance in order to get a decent story.
Given the slightest chance, Blizzard’s writers will ALWAYS write a story about Human characters.
Always.
Or, if they have to, an elf. (See Dragonscale Expedition for the latest example. It’s all Alliance characters, although an occasional Blood Elf or Nightborne is acceptable to the writers when they must.)
Blizzard needs to create a Horde story team made of staff who actually like playing Horde. Let them have exclusive domain over the Horde story.
Alliance story team can do whatever they want. We want nothing to do with the Alliance.
I don’t want to FIGHT the Alliance. I want to GET AWAY from the Alliance so they don’t hog the spotlight.
Again, the problem is Blizzard is unwilling to commit spotlight time to unpopular races. If it’s not Humans, suddenly we’ve got another Blood Elf campaign with Lady Liadrin and a suddenly-active Lor’themar.
The other problem is the Horde and Alliance are always going to meet at some point, they’re impossible to keep separate at this point. I think Dragonflight is the best-case; dumping the factions altogether from the storyline. We can expect to see more of this later.
IMHO, Races should not be tied to factions.
That’s really not how an RPG should work.
They already have the reputation system in place, all they needed to do was… use… it…
And the horde/alliance rivalry, while fun, made no sense plotwise after Vanilla. None at all.
Looks like there is a current story buildup for Yrel and then Turalyon leading the forces on a zealot campaign, and some underlining political corruption in Stormwind.
Should be interesting to see it pan out. Maybe next expansion
Most I can see them do is “conflicted” Turalyon that at first follows Yrel and/or the Nobles, and then realises he is “tricked” and the “error of his ways” before becoming the uncontested shinning paragon of virtue and righteousness by the will of humanity, again.
