They did mention that it’s healing, yeah, I think one of the spirits you speak with in the chain says so. I think a lot of it is just straight up they don’t have the time/resources to update it that thoroughly, even via quest phasing. But some of the zones from DF and even TWT do feel akin to trial runs for how they’ll update old zones.
This is literally all I want when it comes to faction conflict. No more full on Alliance-Horde wars. Just flesh out the cold war skirmishes and make them more nuanced.
But Blizz has no interest in any of this. It’s so jarring.
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The Horde struggles with an identity crisis… they are so bipolar it’s amusing: 1 minute they’re honorable and misunderstood noble savages, the next they’re on another attempt at global domination and skewering innocent populations to the wall or welcoming the next round of slavers they swore they’d never initiate into the Horde.
The Alliance is a simpler problem but just as bad narratively: they’re lawfully stupid… they are white knight Paladins the entire lot of them (barring the Void Elves, Worgen, and Dark irons) who will let literally anything slide… even though morally speaking they do MORE harm by allowing as much as they do.
Both are locked into plot induced stupidity, just in polar opposite ways.
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Agreed. And its because Blizzard doesnt know what they’re doing.
It was fine when we had the Western Horde (honorable former savages) and the Eastern Horde (pragmatic anti-villains) working together inna fragile balance. That can actually lead to fascinating and nuanced conflict.
Instead they put Sylvanas in charge and threw the balance out the window. Meanwhile, they made the blood elves goody two shoes to the point where they dont even fit in with their “closest” allies the Forsaken.
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This part cracks me up, because their solution to a problem—The Horde is more interesting to write—was to make it completely uninteresting.
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And now the Horde players are stuck with the consequences.
I just…I still can hardly believe that this is where we are.
They ruined a faction that they can’t get rid of. A faction that comprises half the playerbase. A faction they INTENTIONALLY TRAINED US TO GET ATTACHED TO. Think about that for a moment.
They made it entirely untenable, unlikable, and unbelievably boring.
What did they think they were doing? Why did they think demonizing one of their playable factions, without removing it, was a good idea?
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Looking at undermined, I’d say they’re still more interesting to play with
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I doubt it was deliberate. I just don’t think that, broadly speaking, they grasp why The Horde was attractive. Thus: two camps, one pushing Chaotic Evil Kill All Alliance Horde, and Hand-Wringing Therapy Circletug Horde.
There are still glimpses. I would say a big part of the issue is the god awful format they’ve been pushing for about a decade—coming up with a Cosmic baddie then deciding which characters “make sense” plus Anduin, Jaina, Thrall—does not allow for any faction representation at all. Instead we have to hang everything on these characters, many of whom are often practically unrecognizable compared to previous depictions.
They need to approach things with fresh eyes and cut their shackles to The Formula.
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I just had a conversation in another thread saying something similar. Though, a bit more specific to Night Elves.
About Night Elf Matriarchy and the gender restrictions of certain nelf organizations. And it is like, Blizzard is progressing the various civilizations that exist in WoW towards the modern, egalitarian and democratic civilizations that define the IRL modern era.
And that is… Super weird to me. First, I just don’t really like Moralizing like that because it always leads to a justification of Force. But also… To moralize like that in a game? “These fake people living in this fake world need to conform to my own subjective moral standard” is… Cringe, actually. Almost as cringe as using the word cringe.
And worse, it’s boring. It is the deconstruction of identity. It’s virtual ethnocide. And it is a writing direction that isn’t based in making a fun and immersive experience, or a captivating story… It is the kind of writing direction someone takes when they are trying to moral grandstand to their base.
“Please clap for me for making my action figures do the morally correct thing.”
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The same direction as the Alliance: rebuilding and addressing internal strain and contradictions, from a narrative perspective, and in a way that addresses their base’s wants and expectations, from a meta perspective. One step further, the Horde needs to be shown more as a confederation of nations all equally pulling in the same direction rather than a single bodied faction who falls in line behind a single leader/high king.
Part of what made Classic so interesting, what keeps the OG starting areas more popular than their intro scenario (based on vibes, not data), and us always going back to discussing the story and topics of the EK and Kalimdor instead of, like, Northrend, is the environment and peoples players were introduced to.
As a lowly deader, I was dug up and forced into this new world to figure out who I was, who were my people, what were our goals, what brought us here, and what to do next. It created investment into my character and the Forsaken. Same can be said for my zug zugs, moo cows, elf menagerie, and dingos.
The world has been so completely ravaged time and again, there should be no shortage of things to fix, issues to address, and connections to be made.
Durotar, as mentioned, is a prime example. What was once a, fairly, well resourced area is now barren. Even bigger question, since the last update was because of the Catacylsm, has the over flooded Southfury River receded? Has the Barrens’ scar cooled? Do we finally have a bridge or two over it? How has Thousand Island Dressing changed?
Simultaneously, each nation needs to be shown that they cannot go it alone. That is what brought each people into the Horde. The Darkspear could not survive on their island and went with the orcs, the tauren were on the verge of collapse and needed the orcs and the trolls, the orcs in turn needed the tauren and, to a lesser extent, trolls to figure out how to live in their new home. The Forsaken needed the Horde not to be wiped out by the Scarlets and Alliance, the Blood Elves needed the Forsaken and Horde not to be wiped out by the Scourge, and later probably Amani or even Alliance for that matter (given what Kael was up to).
So show the Blood Elves cannot fix the Dead Scar and Deatholme alone. That the orcs still require the tauren to learn to better thrive off of their environment. That the Forsaken are amazing pharmacists helping the various living races (just dont ask them how they figured it out). The Darkspear and Zandalari are the only ones who can stop Gurubashi, Amani, Farakki, or other raids and incursions on Horde outposts and trade routes. All this tempered with hard negotiations that, say, the Darkspear only have so many Shadow Hunters to spare this far flung outpost, that the Forsaken can only dedicate to many vats to medicine production while simultaneously still de-blighting the Undercity and/or making more (totally not…) blight. Then, of course, the squabbles between each other. How much mining is too much mining between a tauren and a goblin? Cleansing the polluted or blighted ground with the light as opposed to the elements or nature magics. A blood knight fighting with a farseer fighting with an arch druid, all while a goblin on a cell phone calling a Forsaken realtor that he has a new investment opportunity.
Creating these stories that deal with these internal issues, while still retaining some sort of continuity, to showcase the culture and identity of the various peoples we can play, can breath life, intrigue, and love back into the characters we’ve made. That is what can save the Horde - our own love and intrigue in the characters and peoples we play.
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god, I miss when there could be some nuance, like when the Tauren could be peaceful chill guys who would turn you into a fine smear on the ground if you abused that trust and threatened them
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Speak softly, but carry a big stick was certainly preferable to speak softly and apologize for being in the way of murderous foes.
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I’m actually going to come for the Horde’s defense on this one. You do understand the origins of the Void Elves don’t you? The studies they were following were forbidden for good reason. They were the work of Dar’Khan, the singular traitor in the history of Quel’thelas whose studies let him to covet far more than his allocation of the Sunwell’s energy. Who made a deal with Arthas to open the Gateway to Quel’thelas and lay open the Sunwell’s defenses.
His actions are directly responsible for the deaths of 90 percent of the nation’s population.
Given this, I think that Lorthemmar’s actions were pretty light-handed. I’d have executed the lot of them as potential threats and made extreme efforts to track down and burn all of the work they created or consulted. I’d have not risked them festering in exile.
If my character had say, they would ncertainly would not have welcomed them into the Alliance.
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I mostly didn’t like the Baine DF quest line for being really contrived and being yet another Adventurer-as-therapist quest, but Baine turning fools into hamburger helper at the end when his patience finally breaks was a fun look at what could have been.
I was so sure that Shadowlands was going to give him a moment where he realized it’s perfectly fine to just let loose and crash out against legitimately evil forces, but nope, Baine’s inclusion and making the Tauren heritage quests be an advertisement for SF amounted to nothing.
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This may sound controversial, but at this point only the third faction can save the Horde. How? Red players are divided into 2 camps. Some want the honorable Horde from Wc3, others want to play as villains. Therefore, writers often do not know which group to please, so if they choose one, the other will be dissatisfied. And don’t say it’s not true, a huge part of the players supported and support Garrosh and Sylvanas even after everything they did. Let blizzard create a third evil faction that will transfer players who want to play as bad guys, leaving the Thrall Horde alone.
It isn’t controvertial, but it wouldn’t fix the Horde’s underlying problems whatsoever.
Good Horde and Evil Horde will still both have had all the problems that made the Horde unfixable. It’s just that the Evil Horde views them as favorable, while the Good Horde still has to feel bad. While also fighting the Evil Horde, repeating once again the idea that the Horde’s only story since Cata has been fighting the Horde.
You just simply gave one version a facelift and namechange.
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I’m thinking about avoiding future damage. If Blizzard wants faction wars again, let the third one be the reason. Hey, we can even go further, let the loyalists Putress from the Horde and the unreformed Man’ari from the Alliance join the third one. Writers can create a story in which this evil faction manipulated some of the deeds and crimes of Horde and Alliance behind the shadows over the years.
Even then, you’re not avoiding future damage, because the same pattern repeats with just one step missing. Instead of the Horde itself being the evil that the Horde has to join the Alliance to defeat, now it’s just their former brothers and sisters. So instead of feeling guilty over directly being the bad, it’s feeling guilty over allowing their old friends to be the bad and waiting too long to step in.
All while creating a new dilemma; how did half the Horde who went and joined up to be evil somehow become a threat so large that it not only takes the other half of the Horde to beat, but also the entire Alliance? Did they go recruit all the other evil, while the good Horde just sat by and decided they were fine as-is?
We literally already have that in BfA’s case. It doesn’t change the fact the Horde went off to have a genocide again.
I’m going to be perfectly, completely blunt.
This solves absolutely nothing. It’s the same lazy style quick fix that has constantly been applied to Horde stories that never works because it fixes nothing and causes more problems.
Like: When the Alliance found out the Evil Horde went off and seperated from the Less Evil Horde, why didn’t they take the opportunity for a simple and easy and morally-sound win to throw their entire military might at the Evil Hode and end the problem for everyone? Why didn’t the Less Evil Horde jump at the chance for some good PR by joining them?
Why would either Horde or Alliance just… Let an openly evil society exist, let alone how would future expansion ever work with Evil Horde involved? Why would the next Khadgar-like “we must work together to gather these powerful artifacts” guy ever invite the side that said “we left the Horde so we can do evil”?
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See, I don’t like this argument because I’ve seen far more alliance players wanting their faction to become unrepentantly murderous than vice versa.
From where I sit the horde playerbase seems way less divided on that, with the “evil horde” side being Erivien and a lot of posters that tend to suspiciously go into WOT rants like they’re not actually fans of the horde or something.
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You’re looking at a curry and arguing that the spices and coconut milk need to be separated because they can’t coexist.
It is a false binary.
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