It’s a pretty mellow country - there’s not much you have to do to be accepted, as long as you are a “live and let live” kind of person.
But it’s big. And mostly empty. I lived in Ontario for graduate school, but other than that have lived in British Columbia. Specifically, in Victoria since I finished uni. I recommend, if you can afford it (it’s almost Vancouver prices). Although climate-wise it’s not very Canadian - this year we had snow on the ground for like a week, and that was the most we’ve seen in years.
Also, great nerd town. Downtown is super walkable and has a games stores, vintage toy store, Games Workshop, three comic shops, board game cafe, EB games, a vintage arcade, and tons more in just a few block radius.
Setting aside some pretty strong hyperbole (and conflating Sylvanas with Vol’jin? In your first sentence? Really?), you are describing a totalitarian regime, not a fascist state.
This is war, it is never pretty. Ultimately you do have to do less then honorable thing if it means you keep the people you care about safe.
A few thing, the Alliance didnt attack Taurajo with the intent of wiping out the civilians. If anything keeping them prisoners would have been a more strategic move. In fact Hawthorne wanted the civs to escape. Unfortunately he did not know the quillboar would end up killing them.
Second, considering all we now know about Sylvanas, the world would be better if we killed her then and their. Even if we didnt know what we do now, Sylvanas was an enemy of the Alliance, who only had a temporary truce with the Alliance to deal with the Legion.
Lastly, the blood elf purge was certain grim business, but if you want to blame someone there, blame the Horde for their actions. If they didnt try to steal the bell the entire thing would not have happened!
But again, she ghosted them. Nothing suggests she offered them a choice to rejoin (that I know of), while the blood elves maintained relations. Tyrande is only proven right in BfA, which is after the Nightborne joined.
A Topic that addressed both Factions and these twisted comparisons to IRL ideologies would seem a more fair discussion.
The thread might have Azeroth and Warcraft as context if all the governments were analyzed and scrutinized in relation to these out of context IRL qualifications.
Instead, this thread seems purely a broadside against the Horde and its players. Typical forum garbage.
But all you have to do to get likes in the Story Forum echo chamber is screech:
Last I recall, Blizzard made pains to dismiss the word “evil” in relation to Sylvanas and her leadership of the Horde. Something about … a world of greys.
Fan emotion added with the PoV of characters like Anduin, Jaina, Lorthemar, and Saurfang does not make the entire narrative.
There is a Warchief with the support of her people and she has characters who see merit in her position.
It is a bit early to claim Blizzard’s position while they still have multiple sides arrayed against each other.
There’s a difference between what Blizzard claimed and what they’re showing, though. Between Teldrassil, trying to kill off opposition within the horde, those Darkshore concentration camps that ended up getting pulled from the PTR, and her having certain books burned in BTS, the horde’s not “just” being fascist, but are being written to have obvious Axis Powers analogues.
And I’m familiar with the person who wrote this. This wasn’t meant as a shot at horde players at all, and is in fact appalled that Blizzard roped the playable faction into this. It’s all a critique of what Blizzard is putting into the game.
So… now content that Blizzard chose to not include in live is some sort of suggestion of intent?
I would think it’s removal would show that it was not a direction they chose to go.
By this sort of opinion… if it’s initial inclusion is some form of intent… then the fact that it never made it to live should prove something to the contrary.
There may be a difference in what they are claiming compared to how it is received by some fans.
They are claiming something. And showing something. But the reception is where the difference comes. Blizzard can claim and show - the reception depends on the receiver of the information.
I will admit Blizzard probably over shot and underwhelmed with the story. But that is a far cry from attaching IRL nomenclature to one Faction, out of context and in a vacuum. That seems like tailoring a dress to fit.
They didn’t remove it because they didn’t intend to show something like this. There was a massive fan backlash, and they switched it to something different. They removed the death camp because people didn’t like it, so they replaced it with something to placate them.
Much like they included the Sylvanas loyalist side in the Saurfang quests - they didn’t include it out of an intent to have a choice from the beginning - this is abundantly obvious, as the Sylvanas side has nothing prepared other than abrupt quest endings and “play along” with the Saurfang side. They included it because the fans didn’t like that it wasn’t there, it shows nothing about intent.
One of the most disappointing things for me about BFA is with blizzard yes, but also with the players. Here, in this expansion we’ve had blizzard call Sylvanas morally grey. Then she committed genocide; with little provocation I might add.
Like, do people not see the implications here? Sylvanas committed genocide and blizzard won’t even call her evil.
And where are the players during that? They aren’t outraged. They aren’t quitting in droves due to that. No, instead, half of them seem to agree with her somehow or defend her in some way or instead choose to blame the writers instead of stating that genocide is outright evil. The fact that there seem to be so many different ways both players and blizzard are using to justify Sylvanas’ act of genocide is… I mean, there are kids that play this game too. What sort of message does this send to them? What sort of message does this say about blizzard? about us?
I mean just look at the belf dude you’re quoting in this post, he regularly equates things like Stormheim or the purge of Dalaran (Which itself only came about as a result of the horde trying to acquire a weapon of mass destruction to in turn commit genocide) in which a political group was damaged to the actual genocide of the night elves. Which itself didn’t receive anywhere near the attention it should have.
I mean heck, not only that, look at the quest they did tributing to black panther called ‘Zandalar forever’ they had the race with jamaican or african accents pay homage to a popular and proud moment for african americans via black panther… and then had them join the genociding faction. Gee, I wonder what kind of message this sends.
Like a ton of it is just so irresponsible, at times it feels like a lot of these are the sorts of messages the alt-right would try to put in a game and i’m left wondering about blizzard and whether or not these messages they’re sending really are unintentional, or if they’re meant to slowly make them more acceptable.