Ok so heres the issue with Internal conflict for the factions.
Blizzard is a firm believer of Black and White morality, and as such any internal conflict will clearly have a right person and a wrong person. They can not write nuanced conflicts, and as such any attempt to have an internal conflict will either end with Person A proving to Person B why they were right, or Person B turning out to be evil and must be stopped.
This will turn any internal conflict into a civil war story, and after having 2 of those, Horde players can say, you don’t want it.
call me a clown i don’t care, i am too expecting that they get something out of this.
What is wrong with asking status quo? i don’t want to get kicked so hard that i would start desiring that the other playable faction gets deleted
is a two faction game so better leave it alone since we can’t have any real winners, ever.
if you think that is okay that blizzard treats like garbage one of the allies of the alliance and you don’t even care because you simply wanted lordaeron then i think that you are worse than the horde.
i really haven’t thinked about that… i am already seeing a little patience 2.0 while anduin teachs her the way of forgivness… oh god.
Well i think u should read the books then. They did it but with the help of the humans. Let me see if i understood you properly, you want the kaldorei kicking the asses of the Horde by they self? Rofl dude grow up, this isn’t some korean MMO were elfs can stomp everyone by themselves.
But if u put some realistic insight in this game, makes no sense defend the kaldorei lands. In fact every war envolving the factions in WOW started because kaldorei and forsaken, they are the problem of faction wars. If the factions had any realistic sense of pursuit their goals they should had traded those races for peace long ago. It would be the same as the cold war or the old human empires, when you cant hold a place because its too hard you just give it up and move for you own zone of influence.
The Kaldorei will never be able to have a satisfactory revenge. The Simple fact blizzard can’t destroy the horde makes it so. There were at one point possibilites for a potential retalliation, such as undercity, but blizzard wanted to make sure Anduin would remain squeaky clean so they similtanously had a mass evacuation that occurs offscreen, and then had sylvanas destroy it for good measure. While technicly being an alliance victory by anyone with an amount of common sense (You removed the hordes biggest EK City) blizzard then claimed it was a loss to build hype for the next raid.
Blizzard is incapable of telling a good faction war story for the exact same reason as they can’t tell a good internal conflict story. The faction war needs to be grey, not just so the horde does not look pure stupid evil, but also so the alliance could do morally ambiguous things in return, as their inability to really mount a proper retaliation makes them feel weak to my understanding.
Im just being realistic, i realized that every 5 posts made by you one of them is you asking for retake Gilneas. So did u really believe u gonna retake Gilneas with the forsaken in Undercity? Are you so delusional to believe the Forsaken would have a pact of non agression with the worgen after everything that happened?
U have to be prepared for the consequences of what u asking for, in no way kaldorei can have their lands and worgen got restablished in Gilneas with forsaken losing their land. You see now how thing can’t change fundamentally without someone starting crying in the forum?
I have read quite a few of WoW’s books. I would argue that A Good War and Elegy had the best portrayal of the night elves in years, because a Good War showed just how much work the Horde actually had to put in to get through Ashenvale after their initial ambush, with their advance stopping dead wherever Malfurion showed up, to Elegy showing that despite knowing they weren’t going to hold the line forever, the Horde will pay for every foot of ground they take.
Up until the very wend where Blizzard went full MoP 2: Undead Gigolo and had the tree torched, the night elves I would say where shown to be pretty good.
But the problem isn’t that the night elves can’t take on the the Horde alone. The problem is they are always the one having to fight a losing battle and is in desperate need of rescue. They are always the one who is caught off guard, taking heavy losses and losing most of their territory until someone comes in to rescue them.
Meanwhile we have races like the Forsaken running train all over northern Eastern Kingdoms since Cataclysm with minimal help from the bulk of the Horde’s forces. The rest of the Alliance are able to go out and and attack the Horde in the Barrens and are able to defend their homelands without much issue.
But the night elves are apparently taking on 90% of the Horde all the time, with little to no help from the East, and their plot significance to their own faction is usually summed up as “Horde is attacking us again, send help.”
On the contrary. Blizzard seems to believe very strongly in Gray and Gray morality within the WoW universe. They’ve stated it outright. The fact that the Horde side of BfA is pretty much all about taking down Sylvanas supports it.
They do try to do nuanced… they just write them badly. They also do Black and White stories too, and those are also written badly. It’s always full of overwrought melodrama, cheesy prose, retcons, plot holes, contrivances, etc.
But people are far less forgiving when you muck up attempts at nuance and experimentation compared to mucking up the status quo.
Which is why so many games/shows/movies are so dang derivative and formulaic. People don’t bug on you for making a mediocre by the numbers fantasy story. They really get on your case if you tried to put a twist on the formula or push the boundaries- and don’t do an exceptional job at it.
Yes they lost in a honorable way. They make the Horde doubt about the victory, but in the end they got conquered. And Elegy have alot of controverse points, the kaldorei got ambushed in their on lands. Every kaldorei outpost got dismantled by Horde rogues in the first 5 minutes of war. So they aren’t that baddass race that people like to portrays.
Im not saying that i have enjoyed in the debuncle of kaldorei, im just saying this is an old problem of faction war. Its always the same bull… the Horde do something bizarre to kaldorei, the Alliance come to aid them and in the end everything stay as usual.
Haha these forsaken quests are the best demonstration of lazy writting i have seen in WOW in a while. They have no military power, they have no contingent, and yet they can manage to stomp everyone in north of thandol spam bridge. Yes Blizzard screwed with the Alliance in Cata and made people believe that the forsaken was a military superpower. But, they did it only to make we believe that Sylvie was a demigod strategist, we have seen what really happens when the forsaken have to face the full wrath of the Alliance, they hadn’t a chance agaisnt it.
My problem with this lore is kite simple. I dont hate the kaldorei or forsaken, what make me mad is the fact that peace in warcraft will never be possible as long as the faction have to divide continents. If they had continents to properly grow as a force they would never seek for war simple because the consequences would be mutual destruction. I blame Blizzard for not portrays the Horde and Alliance as true military superpowers. Waste our time mending the problems of forsaken and kaldorei was always the problem that make the factions looks weak.
Yeah. As opposed to wanting to be JRR Tolkien imitator and becoming… well another mediocre Tolkien imitator in an endless see of other JRR Tolkien imitators. Sol ‘LegolasFan2000’ if we’re making up nicknames?
This expansion proves they can’t do nuance or grey and grey. Sylvanas is evil, and if you oppose her you are good, This isn’t grey and grey, as there is no true conflict between the rebels and the alliance. They are both very white, and basically on the same side. It’s not Grey morality, because the villains are basically pure evil. The conflict between the heroes amounts to a couple insults passed each others ways.
Let me put it like this, Having a Token Heroic Orc isn’t Grey, it’s Black and White. In order to have Grey and Grey morality you need to have the sides fighting one another to all have a point. Having Good Rebels in the Evil empire isn’t Grey Morality, it’s Black and White.
I might poach LegolasFan2000 because it sounds so FanFiction.
(I rag on it constantly but I want to go on record and say I do quite enjoy a few fanfictions. Some of the writers have better stories than the real deal. I’m looking at you JK Rowling vs literally every single Albus Potter story on fanfiction)
Except that’s pretty much how it does work in genre fiction. Like, what are examples of Gray on Gray in genre fiction that don’t try do the “Okay well maybe not all the good guys are so squeaky clean and not all the bad guys are monsters?” while the two sides are at war?
One could make the argument that’s the reason why, before the show went off the rails, why GoT’s various conflicts that didn’t involve the Starks because come on, were so well.
Everybody involved were bastards. Some may have been more bastards than others but everyone was a bastard. They all had good motivations that worked for them as to why they are doing these things and in any situation there was never really a clear good guy or evil guy.
Unless again you bring in the Starks or Dany before happy burning fun times.
So Blizzard could have designed a story where both the Alliance and the Horde were fighting each other but you couldn’t say either was good or evil and both sides had a very good and justified reason to be fighting each other and the game didn’t go out of it’s way to say “No this guy is wrong!”.
I mean hell they did it before back in Classic; you were told the enemy faction was bad yes as they should it’s a two faction game, but the game didn’t go out of its way to say “IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS, THIS SIDE IS EVIL PERIOD!”
Everyone who isnt a zealot knows that. Kaldorei fans are upset at the years of abuse that culminated into a half-assed “revenge” that is darkshore. We are understandably and justifiably angry at paying the blood price for a few characters to feel “sad.” Its frustrating to see your racial story is basically a battered spouse at the national level.
Losing is losing, no matter how blizzard tries to soften the blow with contracted writing. The Night Elves (and to an extent the rest of the alliance) will never get a true victory to feel proud about.
Likewise, I don’t want to give the impression that I hate standard fantasy stuff or anything inspired by Tolkien. I don’t.
But I have noticed that Fantasy is a very self-referential genre. More so than many others, and that it does have a tendency to recycle a lot of the world building, plots, tone, races, and other elements from LOTR with only a couple of tweeks.
I’m totally up for asking for better writing in general. I prefer to demand more variety in my fantasy, though. If people feel freer to break the mold, we’ll get a bunch new stuff. Some good, most of it bad, but at least 95% it won’t be “generic fantasy setting”.
Tammy, the issue here is the fact the Good Guys are not at war with the alliance. The Conflict is between Sylvanas’ Horde and the alliance, and Saurfang feeling guilty is one person who eventually quits. The other rebels have had nothing to do with the war, and the alliance hasn’t been portrayed as grey, they’ve been portrayed as morally righteous. A Person who is helping you fight against the enemy isn’t grey.
Let’s look at some actually grey settings, 40k, Tau, Eldar, Necrons, and Imperium all have their pros and Cons to them, though they all lean closer to black, none are full on evil, with many goals that don’t necessarily constitute as evil (Tau seek to create a Utopian Society, Eldar seek the Fall of Chaos, The Imperium is trying to defend their massive population from perceived threats that exist on all sides, and the Necrons are trying to rebuild there lost civilizations and regain their souls). None are more moral then the other by a signifigant extent. Out of the remaining factions, Orks are a living Bio-weapon that only know war, Chaos is the amalgamation of cruelty and corruption seeking the destruction of all, and the Tyranids are very hangry. Those 3 are all black as they have no real sympathetic desires (except the Tyranids, but i don’t think “I was Hungry” is a good excuse).
Now let us look Sylvanas and Anduin and Saurfang. Both Saurfang and Anduin share the goal Beat Sylvanas and end the war as fast as possible so no one get’s hurt while doing as little damage to the hordes people as possible, an almost pure white morality, while Sylvanas is “Wipe out the alliance because i am paranoid” a pure black morality.
Well not everybody. We had Tyrion in the Lannisters to show “Not all Lannisters are villains!” He doesn’t judge based on appearances, he respects the downtrodden, he acts as the conscience to others, etc. Meanwhile, the other Lannisters mostly do/order/abide stuff that he’s somehow absolved of.
And Dany is a person who loves despises slavery and rape so much that simply having her marry into and associate with the unrepentant slaver/rapists of the Dothraki seems to make them seem more tolerable to the audience.
Likewise, 99% of Wildlings would kill people south of the wall and vice versa, but we’re introduced to the handful of characters that don’t fit those stereotypes and can actually work together. When they aren’t trying to keep the vast majority of their allies from trying to kill each other.
And that’s without getting into the Starks, who make up half the PoV characters and are arguably the protagonists of the series and altogether way more noble, honest, and goodly than any others in the series.
Game of Thrones is filled with factions that are evil but features individual point of view characters or the occasional side characters who are good to that help humanize the rest of the factions.