Oh, I’m not trying to say that Sylvanas is good, let alone gray. Not at all. She’s gone full on evil. She’s using the Horde to do evil things. I in no way condone her actions.
But when you play through the rest of the game, even those Horde who aren’t in open rebellion against her- are they all actually being cast as villains? Or are they just people doing their thing who happen to have a lot of blood on their hands?
Even the game presents those who support Sylvanas as being pawns or sheep being manipulated by her.
And yeah, that’s before you get into the actual story with Saurfang, Zakhan, Baine, Thrall, and Lor’themar. Pretty much any Horde leader they’ve bothered to give screen time to is either actively participating in her downfall or, in the case of Talanji or Gallywix, made it clear that they’re not really all that loyal to her as being pragmatic in their dealings with the Horde.
They absolutely 100% could have done it better. Had even more nuance. Made things even more complicated- especially on the Alliance side. It is indeed badly written.
But I can still see them trying. This is waaaaay more depth, nuance, and characterization than your typical fantasy antagonists (Horde) get. Only about the same amount of nuance and depth your typical fantasy protagonists (Alliance) get.
…
I don’t know if I’d point to 40k as a good example. Pretty much every faction would count is a Saturday morning cartoon villain in that setting, as they all often resort to genocide to resolve issues. What makes them more than a bunch of equally murderous villains are the few characters whose point of view we see that reveals that not all members are so callous and cavalier when it comes to annihilating entire planets… who often end up dying themselves.
I use 40k because i think greyness is relative. In it’s setting, the Tau and Imperium are grey, but in say, star trek, they’d be seen as almost pure black. Similarly, Transformers has gone through numerous iterations, with some (Such as Animated) being more grey, despite the fact the decepticons rarely ever become better people, they’re just given better motives and the autobots are made worse. 40k is also a setting were being overly pragmatic and aggressive is needed to survive. In a less violent setting, there methods would be seen as overly extreme. This Example could also apply to WoW, were before the whole legion fiasco the Orcs were more Grey, despite being just as violent and aggressive, because literally everything else on the planet wanted them dead or enslaved.
This is were blizzard fails, you don’t do a grey story by having one morally pure side then another super-duper evil side with a lot of not super duper evil characters. That only works in making a sympathetic faction if everyone is overly violent/it is literally the only way. Both sides need to be at fault. Characterization is another issue, as simply having good characters doesn’t undue the horrible things that the majority of the faction does if they aren’t the ones in control.
I don’t know about that one. The idea that Sylvanas has sacrificed herself by making herself the enemy of life as part of a plot to fight the greater enemy of the Old Gods isn’t exactly being received positively either. With few exceptions, the whole, “I committed genocide for the greater good” pretty much always gets you cast as the villain.
I don’t follow Transformers closely enough to speak on that. Only that the general impression of Optimus Prime and the Autobots is very much heroic good guys and Megatron/Starscream as mustache twirling evil villains. I understand things get more nuanced in the comics, but they’re really largely known from their portrayals in the movies and literal Saturday morning cartoons.
Also, i wouldn’t call Warcraft a less violent setting. It’s a setting where the major powers have been involved in conflict for the better part of a couple decades- to say nothing of all the other local conflicts and the potentially world ending invasion/catastrophe of some ancient evil that shows up every couple of years to wipe out 90% of a given population.
I very much agree. All too often end up with White on Gray.
Although again, that’s still more than the Black and White you get whenever Orcs/Zombies/Minotaurs/Trolls are involved.
I do think introducing some more shades of gray and even outright darkness into the Alliance experience would help in that regard.
Sometimes it does. Like, it doesn’t usually absolve the faction as a whole- and definitely not whoever is ultimately calling the shots, but it can show that the faction is perhaps made up of more people like this good person. Or you can have the people be seen as more apathetic.
Generally yes, but 40k is the most extreme case were most of the really morally dubious things can be justified to some extent or another. But it wouldn’t apply to most settings, at all. The Imperium isn’t good, just necessary, and i agree with the whole Genocide always makes you evil thing, (I think the 40k factions are evil it’s just their evil is often born from their desperation, fear and necessity, making it more sympathetic and making them grey compared to everyone else)
Tranformerwise they often wind up showing many Corrupt Autobots who also are in higher positions, Sentinel Prime is traditionally the one of the most vile ones, often being Optimus’ Equal or Superior.
Finally, by the whole Draenor thing, i was just pointing out that it makes sense for Draenor races to be extremely aggresive and paranoid, but less so on azeroth towards the alliance races. Azeroth still has many evil things on it that need to be dealt with, but being overly paranoid is probably very bad.
I think a big issue is your looking at the factions while i’m looking at the conflict. Despite what several posters here think, the horde isn’t pure evil, it’s just that were having the more evil elements thrust forward and be the ones in charge. Alliance vs Horde on Principle should be more grey, but is Black and White because Blizzard forces the horde worst aspects to the forefront while having the sympathetic horde characters fight for the alliance or take a backseat. That’s why i view it as black and white. Even if theyre are good elements in the plot, they are forced to be irrelevant or rebel against the guys their from, instead of having Saurfang’s horde fighting the alliance but being actually considerate and stuff, they have him fight alongside the alliance against sylvanas.
I don’t know if we’re talking the comics or the films, but the only Sentinel Prime I know is the one that betrayed Optimus and the Autobots and sided with Megatron.
Even in terms of the conflict and BfA in particular…
Baine, Sarufang, and the Horde Champion, and others do eventually turn on Sylvanas, but that’s after she’s gone too far and they’ve all gotten some blood on their hands. Similarly, they’re fighting for a Horde by fighting against their own allies. They aren’t out and out villains in the Alliance’s eyes, but neither are they exactly the heroes with no regrets about the things they’ve done to the Horde.
And while the Horde army aren’t a bunch of innocents and their actions generally condoned by the citizenry, neither are they written off as being a bunch of hate filled monsters living in a crapsack society.
Sylvanas is the blacker end of the spectrum, and Anduin far on the opposite, but other characters very much are some shade of gray. And if they finally let Tyrandae and Genn loose (among other things), there’s a chance we can see more of this Alliance side as well.
Because thrall has hair again and flexed his muscles at her. That made Jaina mind addled and her forgive him gor everything like he did when she helped him kill her father.
This happened to other races too, take orcs for example. let me say;
Orc story is one of continual loss and humiliation. The orcs are the favored villain batted whenever blizzard needs a filler faction conflict expansion. Outside of this they do not exist. They event retconned events of the past and gave of WOD, completely trashing on previous orcish lore.
I get NE players are mad, but look around. Horde doesn’t have official racial leaders for 3 races now. Orcs, trolls and taurens Orcs haven’t since MOP, Trolls since Legion. As a faction we have a third of the characters compared to the alliance, we get little to no neutral content.
In this expansion? I’d be saying the same thing if a human who wasn’t even there(Jaina) was getting all the cutscenes showing her view of things too so it’s a moot point either way. The Night Elves were the ones attacked here and we hear and see almost nothing of how they feel or what they’re doing about it all because we need multiple cutscenes of how Saurfang feels bad and wants to regain the Horde’s honour.
It is true that night elfs aren’t the focus, but that is because that attention is given to Jaina not surfang. Horde as a faction has it just as bad as night elfs, it is just one defeat after another. Players do not like playing villains, specifically when blizzard promises something else.
I was admittedly excited for the Faction war expac at first. I thought it would be non stop wc RTS-style back and forth slugs/ jabs at each others military targets, with faction at the core of it… instead we got genocide, conniving, old god sprinkled, back door cold wars…
Talking about everything but the films, films are pretty clean cut black and white. In particular, the Comics, and the TV Series Animated
The Issue is this is the first good thing they did, as in literally, they go along with the atrocities until Sylvanas offends them, then just betray her instead of actually trying to fix the system from the inside. The Conflict itself is Black and White with a very clear good guy and bad guy, and the bad guy does nothing to be sympathetic. Saurfang committed atrocities then quit the horde, baine did nothing then left, as did lorthemar. It ain’t being made grey by their actions because their conflict is against the same person.
Just claiming the Horde is not being made super black because our moral members are betraying us isn’t a real strong argument, as you shouldn’t need to use traitors to make your villains sympathetic. I agree this is blizzard trying to be grey, but it shows they can’t ever truly be grey. Trying to be grey but making the story black and white isn’t actual greyness, it didn’t work with Fire Emblem:Fates, and it ain’t working here.
Don’t build yourself up for disappointment. Internal conflict doesn’t exist on the Alliance because they can’t write it in game. It’ll happen in a book and never be mentioned in Game.
As far as I’m aware she didn’t. But she made Harry Potter and the Cursed Child theater play as the official continuation that followed Albus Potter and it was…not…good.
The movies have their place and I’d argue they are pretty good adaptations all things considered. That said, the Cursed Child play was just not good because it wasn’t good lol.
Sadly, Wow team can’t think out of their little box it seems. All past expansions follows the same silly format of starting with lots of conflicts between A/H and then we hug hands to finish random evil.
This time the initial conflict was so… So… exagerated (Im taking about how it happened, not what) that the asinine idea of factions holding hands cause big bad no longer fits.
I’d rather see a well thought conflict where maybe the internal divisions break the Horde/Alliance concept entirely (and therefore we get more players to queue with) or we simply do not forgive making the fight with true evil guy more complicated.
But Im doubting they’ll move away from their cheap and easy preestablished lore. Passion for developing this game seems to have been drowned by business numbers.