I understand how disheartened you are, it also doesn’t help the story forums are a cesspit of negativity, I’ve been around a long time, it’s always been like this trust me.
But to answer your question yes, it is worth salvaging and It really won’t be that difficult to do narratively it would just be resource intensive gameplay wise. I’ll start outlining the historical challenges then go into what I view as solutions.
Challenges
- Tolkien Influence:
Starting with War 3, Metzen really strove to subvert the standard Tolkien style fantasy races into something more pulpy and metal inspired. Elves became addicts, Orcs and Trolls became noble warriors with a savage edge, Freedom obsessed Zombies ect. Still tough many players and writers at blizz wanted to go back to classic Lord of Rings style fantasy, You see it with the obsession with playable high elves, How many Alliance players hate when they have to do anything Horde related ( you saw this A LOT in Cata, MoP and im seeing this pop back up again with Undermine) as well as Horde writing in BFA and how Alliance quest designers write the Horde such as in Brennadam. You really need a strong vision at the top to reign it in or this classic fantasy influence will creep back in
- Cdev infighting and lack of vision
I’ve touched on this before but the Horde suffered the most from Metzen’s departure and the leadership changes since. The Bfa and SL campaigns were the result of a cadre of people shoving through bad story decisions to spite prior leadership then promptly cut short because of fan reception and firings. Importantly in the wake of this the Horde has very much been left on the back burner, its hero roster is looking like the Washington Wizards, basically a bunch of nobody’s and its leadership structure is largely undefined and without a clear vision for the future .
- Storytelling space
The Horde suffers disproportionately more from the lack of a world revamp comparatively. Especially since the world state has been stuck in the cataclysm; I say this because the core of the Horde’s races reside in Kalimdor which has a few things working against it. (I’ve touched on this before in this thread (The Kalimdor Problem) But to summarize, Kalimdor is claustrophobic in the sense that Horde and Night Elf zones run right up against each other and the leveling experience quickly puts you in the same zone. This shrinks the amount of space they have to tell a race specific story on top of all the Horde races only having a handful of zones between them all. Even then, another problem is that in each zone you already have alliance presence in those zones. It feels bad when you see Alliance soldiers in Durotar or Night Elves attacking the back gate of Orgrimmar in Azshara. This puts to much of the narrative weight on faction conflict. Who are the Horde when they aren’t at war, how do they live, what’s the culture like ect.
- Societal Infrastructure
This is more of a continuation of point 3 but because the Horde at the time of cataclysm hadn’t been there long most of the Kalimdor Horde towns look temporary and the horde zones are undeveloped. This leads to a feeling like no one lives there, there’s no industry or towns to explore or a society. Kalimdor has been explored by this point it’s not some wild mysterious land anymore its the center of 2 great empires. Lets see what the Horde can do to build up the land.
Solutions
Leadership and a clear vision
The Horde need defined as an organization: what is it really, what is the limit of the council, how does the council get selected or make decisions. Most importantly what is the goal of the Horde post war. These are core things that need answered.
Then its on to the races, the Orcs racial leader, I would personally love to see some sort of quest chain where the clans come together and establish a High Chieftain but in reality anything will do as long as it’s positive. The Forsaken have taken the first steps post Sylvanas but we need more. While the Darkspear need a lot of love since so much of their development went to Vol’jin who was killed off unceremoniously. The Heritage quest was a step in the right direction but we need their society built from the ground up.
- A World Revamp
To do what I said above we need the storytelling space to do it and that can only be done over multiple zones in Kalimdor and N EK. To that end when they do, do it. It can’t be in a Cata style war but more vanilla style zone by zone storylines that ideally don’t involve the other faction unless absolutely necessary. The landscape would also need to be expanded, the Echo isles are begging to be their own zone as well as enlarging others to tell more in depth stories. I would also like to see cross faction questing to an extent so zones don’t need to be shared in that you need faction outposts in areas it doesn’t make sense. This would free up Southern barrens and Stonetalon to go Horde while the Night Elves could have all of ashenvale without punishing the player. You could then use this new space to actually build settlements and societies reflective of major nations. I would love to see the Crossroads turn into a chicago style rail hub that runs throughout Horde lands for example. Also Ports, the Horde is in desperate need of M@@@@F@@@@ ports.
- A positive storyline highlighting the Horde’s strength and purpose.
I think takes like this come from a place of naivety and more importantly meta wise feeling beaten down. In universe im sure characters do see the horde that way but its not worth starting another war over especially at great cost. Meta wise the Horde isn’t a super power but should be rebuilt to be one and should make players feel good about their faction.
A super power isn’t accepted as one by others, it asserts itself and protects its interests. I’m not going to write a fanfiction here but if blizzard runs a Horde side quest chain in which the Horde comes up against a 3rd party over a key Horde interest. in which the writers take notes from the Alliance side Jade forest intro and run a competent campaign that ends in victory. Where the Horde uses troops, shattered hand spies as well as a dose of diplomacy and realpolitik to keep the Alliance from intervening; that ultimately results in a positive, very visual and important victory for the Horde. I think this sentiment would start to dissipate.