Unfortunately at this point only flat-out genocidally targeting civilians would really be Villain-Batting’ the Alliance. And they DID try that with the Vulpera getting attacked by ‘Purge Squads’. I think that that was removed or modified due to outcry against it? At this point the Horde are (or at least are seen as) such an evil threat that pretty much ANYTHING that would end that threat quickly and with as little Alliance casualties as possible should be a valid option. And yes, even going Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Ogrimmar and Thunder Bluff might not count as ‘villain-batting’. Maybe even MORE justifiable than the real-life nukings were, given how close Japan was to defeat at that point.
So, anything less than Anduin saying '#### ALL THE HORDE CHILDREN TO DEATH WITH CHAINSAWS AND THEN EAT THIER SOULS!" would still reasonably be ‘the Horde had it coming’ rather than villain-batting.
Let’s entertain the notion that your cherry-picked focus on Sylvanas character consistency is the matter at hand. Even in that specific aspect, this is just a blatant piece of spin. Sylvanas’ cruelty and ruthlessness has always existed, but the themes of it being covert or cloaked in stalinesque denials were far from subtle. Quests like the Stillwater compound in Cata being an explicit rejection of murder camps, and her consistent use of what passes for subtlety in WoW to hide her blight usage, hint at a calculation and restraint that is absent from BfA. Sylvanas has always been two-faced, but now she is bare-faced. Saying Sylvanas is acting consistently because she is tyrannical and cruel now, as she was previously, is like saying I drive the same car as ten years ago because they both park in my garage and have wheels. The actual experience, destination and character of the two iterations are qualitatively different, even if they share features.
But let’s go deeper - head into Silverpine’s cata content and you will find quests designed purely to demonstrate Sylvanas’ sense of national identity and fellowship with the Forsaken populace. These range from gathering insignias from the fallen for Sylvanas, for no purpose but honoring the lost, to the consistent framing of the killing of Worgen as retribution for their own underhanded tactics, not as conquests. No matter what our meta-analysis of Sylvanas intentions or behaviors are, her characterization even in cataclysm was one of calculation. And yes, we can say ‘She only did all of that to use the Forsaken as a bulwark against death’, to which I would respond - does that kind of cold, dispassionate manipulation of her soldiers match the constant political blunders she is making in BfA? How is her current gleeful alienation of her allies consistent with either the charitable or uncharitable interpretation of her cataclysm representation? In the latter, whatever her purpose was she was a smooth operator. In BfA she’s a mess.
Moving outside of Cata, how does her single-minded pursuit of the Valkyr in Legion match with the seemingly aimless atrocity of her modern form? Even if the story does reveal that she had a purpose, from a writing perspective our view on her actions does not display any of those themes of singular will or determination. She is just vaguely passionate about her upcoming victory, but justifying her after the fact doesn’t dissuade the impression of aimlessness we are currently experiencing.
So yes, even if the characterization of ‘The Dark Waifu’ was the primary sore point, there would be more going on there than those people accusing Sylvanas fans of juvenile lust would like to admit.
Here’s the actual primary sore point of Teldrassil; Just like Sylvanas’ actions at Undercity robbed the satisfaction of the Alliance ‘Victory’, the story was written to depict Teldrassil as nothing to take joy in for the Horde. The Horde technically experiencing a victory does not change the fact that it was done in such a way as to rob all pleasure from the experience. And on paper, it should be a satisfying act - do you know how long I’ve wanted to smoke that damned tree? But everything about it, from Saurfang’s baffling ‘honor’ mercy, to the cinematic emphasis of shock and regret, was designed to punish the impulse towards grim satisfaction (Please note the ‘grim’ part of that, if you were inclined to wheel out the diatribe about how I am a terrible person).
The immediate counterpoint to this last paragraph of mine is ‘Yes well that’s very nice but the Horde got two events where they killed more Alliance and won technical victories, while the Alliance had none’ - and even if that is not a response you would make, I’d like to address that here; Firstly, and most importantly, my original comment was not about technical victories but the rejection of the idea that the Horde are being given satisfying narratives while the Alliance are not. Everyone’s experience sucks, and it seems juvenile to try and frame the experiences as fundamentally different because one side is killing more of the other side’s endless mooks. My secondary response, to get back to the purpose of the thread, is that - in a world where the Horde are already being punished emotionally for Teldrassil, by their own depictions of that event, is there even a satisfying payback the Alliance can achieve, that doesn’t just pass the buck of writing-induced-injustice to the other team? To get payback you’d have to take the Horde down a peg - but the Horde are already climbing down the pegs at an accelerated pace. The question always comes back to this - what would it take to satisfy you, and is that viable?
The weeks part was mostly due to Malfurion’s magical wisp wall that still ultimately failed, not Night Elves counting for 10 Horde soldiers. Maybe 3 at most.
Are we ever given a timeframe for how long it took to get to the Scenario? Cause unlike Teldrassil were we go all the way from the Barrens to Darkshore, Lordaeron already starts with the Alliance at the brink of victory
Do we really? Is it ever stated that Sylvanas intended to keep the Undercity?
To Zul, to the Blood Trolls, to Jakra’zet. Yes, I know you’re about to say “But that’s not the Alliance!”
It doesn’t make the Horde’s feeling of loss any less. That’s why there’s protest - the Horde leveling zones and war campaign make you feel like a giant loser (and the war campaign makes you a loser to the Alliance, too).
Alliance already got their payback (undercity). Are Already getting their payback (darkshore Warfront). Have payback in the near future that they are as yet to get but are guaranteed to have coming (Battle of Dazar’alor).
The Alliance is getting nothing but payback for the War of Thorns, they just aren’t getting it all at once. Instead you get the entire expansion as payback.
I’ll preface this by saying that I understand your point and I agree that some people on both factions will only ever be happy if they win all the time and yeah, that is bloody annoying. However, I respectfully disagree with elements of the above quote.
Firstly, its not so much that the “Undercity didn’t go the way we wanted so we need more” but that the Undercity was, at the absolute best, a pyrrhic victory. Teldrassil was obviously fresh in our minds (especially in the case of Night Elf players such as myself) and while I cannot speak for everyone, I imagine that the majority of us that actually care about the story were keen for some payback. What we got however, was a display of incompetence that was actually impressive and it in no way mollified the loss of Teldrassil.
Now I have no idea if you played through the Alliance scenario but to help ellucidate for you/those that only played horde, this was my experience with it and this seems to be a fairly common perception of the scenario as a whole. I’ve played through both sides of that scenario so I’m aware of the Night Elf feral druids and rogues assassinating horde within the Undercity but this was never actually referenced on the Alliance side.
We show up and start attacking after we get a speech from Genn which is going ok until we get blighted, apparently we just forgot that the forsaken use that. Our Deus Ex Jaina shows up and saves the day only to have us incompetently bumble our way through the ruins of Lorderon through obvious traps where we are conveniently saved by the other Alliance forces that were apparently just waiting for the most dramatic moment to appear. We finally bumble into the throne room to have Sylvanas smugly make a stupid line about pursuing peace to Mr peace-at-all-costs himself to activate another obvious trap and basically fly out of the room laughing while we almost lose some of our core leaders. Yeah this was a real fist bump moment all right, go blue team…
Now I’m saying that we shouldnt have suffered losses or have been blighted or anything like that, there’s nothing fun about getting steamrolled (I play a nelf, trust me on this one) and we were obviously not going to kill Sylvanas but this was an extremely weak victory, especially after Ion was saying that this was going to be our way of evening the scores (I don’t remember the actual wording used) and then coming out afterwards and calling it a Horde victory. I personally was hoping for a hard fought and even potentially costly but solid win were the Alliance finally embraced some more questionable tactics. This could have provided the Alliance their vengeance while also giving the Horde a reason to actually want to fight us beyond being beaten with the villain bat again.
This is basically no different from the “victory” in SoO where our fist bump moment after Theramore, Ashenvale, Stonetalon, Southshore, etc was a stern finger wagging and a particularity vicious “tsk tsk tsk, you were all very naughty Hordies. Stop being naughty or you get smacked”. It not as if this attitude has come out of nowhere, it just another hollow victory.
On the Battle for Dazarlor, I agree that this is a victory (at least from what I’ve read/heard, I’m trying to avoid big spoilers) and from what I’ve seen, some people are carrying a bit much. Logically, the Alliance achieves very little out of this other than the destruction of the Zandalari fleet which is pretty big win but we also remove one of the Horde’s friends with benefits and install a horde loyalist on the throne and though it was the naval power the Horde wanted, we still basically gave you an army of laser wielding dinosaurs. I do concede that I may be missing something important here though.
While I hope the story in general improves, I really do hope that they dont just end up doing Garrosh or Kerrigan 2.0 for you guys. I don’t generally have the time these days to play through both factions but after going through the horde war campaign recently, I can honestly say that it felt very weak in terms of its objectives. “You got a staff that does some things, trust us its powerful” (which I then went to steal back) doesn’t really compare to blowing up a fleet.
A chance to do some “morally grey” actions without getting finger wagged for not being a lawful stupid drone? For the Night elves to not be humiliated or massacred for cheap drama for the umpteenth millionth time?
There’s no question that getting your face rubbed in the dirt sucks when it comes to being forced to partake in Teldrassil, but its a different kind of suck. The problem you can’t discuss it honestly without people screeching over who has it worse, and that the other side should shut up and eat their cat dung salad and be happy about it.
Was I talking to you? I don’t think it was your post I replied to.
Fact of the matter is I care less about what you want than Blizzard does, and they don’t seem to care at all. The story is set up so that you auto win and are auto in the right. That is the ‘vengeance’ that you get as an Alliance player.
Well then the Horde is there waiting for you. Apparently if you don’t agree with Sylvanas you get to kill as many of her ‘fanatical’ followers as you want if you decide to aid Baine and Saurfang.
I know that this is just going to around in circles, but what part of the Night Warrior, Battle of Dazar’alor and ‘Winning on Every Front’, combined with the personal contributions of butchery in warfronts and incursions, does not sate the need for red bodies?
I am not exactly looking for blue corpses, but they pay me the big bucks to make mountains of them in the incursion events. I certainly don’t feel personally lacking in blue team blood, and that content is available to both sides.
I sense that you want more than just raw violence. I sense that you hunger for a darker pleasure. I caution you - the propensity of the writers to rob the joy out of those desires is strong. We burned Teldrassil and they made me less than ecstatic. I don’t even know how they did it.
They knew the Alliance was coming days before the siege began- to a point where Saurfang was just staring out at the siege towers in the distance, knowing they would strike when dawn came. Sylvanas and Saurfang immediately knew what target the Alliance would gun for, and all the time it’d take to move troops to Tirisfal was spent fortifying and evacuating. Likewise for Brill.
The player takes part in rounding up the last of the civilians to get them out of the Undercity. If any were killed, it was because they refused to leave, hid someplace, and got melted by Blight.
I generally don’t like to focus on the stuff I hate, why would anyone torture themselves like that? There are of course parts that I like, ie Sylvanas tossing Malfurion through the forest, and seeing three of the Hordes most military savy members, Sylvanas, Saurfang, and Blighcaller out maneuvering the Alliance.
What I don’t like includes stuff like include but not limited to “dishonorable blow”, how weak the Night Elves seemed, the Horde’s motivation, the Malfurion Vrs Saurfang fight was pretty disgraceful. Throwing the Horde’s warrior’s warrior around like a rag doll, I mean I totally expect Malfurion to win but dayum son, at least nick him, I’ll even settle for a scratch.
I don’t know how many people read your whole alternate scenario, but I did. It was interesting to think about how the same story beats would look if they were handed to the Alliance. Well done.
Well, I keep suggesting that people that feel this way start up the “Jaina for Raid Boss” campaign. But when it comes to actually saying to Blizzard they feel that way nobody ever takes up the sword.
And, for the record, Blizzard, if you are listening I will take Alliance style loosing over the Horde story anyday.