Warcraft is not a morality play. Blizzard’s only obligation is to tell an interesting story, whether you personally find it interesting or not. They are under no obligation to tell a moral one.
Do you have this much angst everytime the Joker gets away?
This whole “World of Warcraft has to have a morally upstanding story” thing…where does it come from? I feel like I never once saw this crop up in the community until the last few years.
I’m not sure what to take from this, except that, apparently, you take umbrage with Buffy. But that show was awesome. I mean, the last two seasons weren’t good - I’ll grant you that - but the rest of the show was really entertaining.
The only “psychopath” in the story at the moment is arguably Sylvanas, and she’s not portrayed as a hero. At least, not at the moment - we’ll see if we get our big Kerrigan “Windrunner is now one of the First Ones” moment, but for the time being, she’s pretty much seen as the villain by everyone but the most delusional loyalists.
And I think both factions would like to see a little more thought and effort put into the writing, frankly.
Probably from Blizzard trying to insert some trite moral lesson into the game everytime a blue character glances at a red character.
It seems like revenge is OK if you are Alliance but not OK if you are Horde.
After the assault on the Warchief at Stormheim, the Horde had good cause to seek justice and put an end to the Alliance once and for all - but when we get a leader who is willing to do it, she actually just wants everyone dead, so now we can’t have a Warchief anymore.
She explains it well in A Good War, and Saurfang agrees. But then it just ends up being “old hatreds used to manipulate”. As if we should just let the Alliance attack and never retaliate. Ah well.
I guess the lesson is: if we don’t want the Alliance to attack our Warchief, we can’t have a Warchief. If we don’t like being attacked by the Alliance in the middle of a demonic apocalypse, we may as well stop existing, or something, because it is gonna happen, and getting mad about it makes us evil.
See, the unauthorized assault by Genn and Sky Admiral “We Can Scarcely Afford Another Stormheim” Rogers would have been the perfect opportunity for the Horde to pursue their goals through more diplomatic channels. Anduin is obsessed with keeping the peace, and he wouldn’t have wanted to risk a war, so the Horde could have demanded economic and territorial concessions from the Alliance as reparations. And given that the Alliance tried to off the then-leader of the Horde, they could have made some pretty big demands, and possibly caused some internal friction within the Alliance as well.
How do you think the leaders would have reacted if Sylvanas had demanded Gilneas be formally recognized as Horde territory as a result of the Stormheim situation? Or Night Elf lands? Even if Anduin and some of the others had been willing to agree, there’s no way Tyrande or Genn would have, and then suddenly the Alliance’s leadership is divided. Sylvanas could have even demanded the extradition of Rogers into Horde custody for punishment, then interrogated her for military information. And if the Alliance refused to make amends for Stormheim, then taking military action would be far more palatable to the rest of Azeroth as justified defensive measures.
“Putting an end to the Alliance” is a gross overreaction, not because the Alliance’s attack wasn’t big enough to justify it - because it was - but because it wasn’t authorized by the High King, thus making it more of a rogue operation, and taking out the entire Alliance was not a realistic military objective, especially with the addition of the Vindicar and Lightforged to the Alliance roster (even if they went ignored). Sylvanas’ “original” plan of taking Teldrassil and using it as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Alliance was actually a much smarter plan, had she been acting in the best interests of the Horde. It could have avoided a big, ugly war, a lot of needless civilian deaths, and could have acted as pressure to ensure that Greymane and Rogers were held accountable for their crimes, even if Anduin didn’t personally want to hand them over.
But why meddle with politics when you have intercontinental catapults?
I take umbrage with the “last snarky remark wins the argument” dialogue that plagues Wheton’s works, and much of the comic book genre in the 90’s. Blizzard and most of the internet likes to subscribe to that form of debate going off of Sylvanas and Kerrigan’s dialogue.
I’m also linking “psychopath” with “anti-hero” because the writing staff thinks that slapping “anti-hero” on a character is an automatic get out of morality jail for free card. There are things like anti-villains and villain protagonists, but WoW isn’t set up to work with themes such as that. This is perhaps highlighted best by the flip-flop story the Horde gets. A good example was WoD retconning Orcs as murderhobos just looking for an excuse to pillage and kill instead of a corrupted people forced down a dark path. Compare this to a well known villain-protagonist like Tony Soprano. No amount of caring for his family, trying to change his bias will change the fact that he is a self-made monster walking around in a human skin truly deserving of the first-class ticket to Hell the show highly implies he gets.
Just as a reminder: Justice =/= Lawful
They are not intrinsically bound together. In fact, they can be polar opposites. (ever heard of unjust laws?) The ideal is for the two to run parallel in harmony.
Yes, that would be correct. The question I would have is: Is Blizzard trying to moralize and make commentary on a deeper philosophical belief? Or is it a means of justifying allowing things to happen in the story and their video game?
Basically, does it go deep or shallow in regards to why they would do this? I am of the opinion that it is a bit of both. They see the use of in-game/universe justifications to allow characters to stick around and do what they do, and also are experiencing a modicum of culture shift. A shift that espouses the idea that any form of crimes committed by certain groups are not their fault, but the fault of their circumstances or due to others’ interference in their lives/history/etc. How much of each is certainly up in the air, and pinning down which is the greater contributor will likely never be known. Probably. But dev interviews can certainly provide some insight, if I could ever be bothered to slog through them.
I would be very interested to learn where each story dev believes their locus of control resides.
Edit:
I loved Buffy, my late father and I watched the entire series at least twice during the last few years of his life. Plenty of criticism abounds, but it will always hold a special place in my heart.
I think your takeaway should be: pay your debts, before someone comes to collect. Stormheim was because of what happened in cataclysm. Reap, and sow.
Only if the Horde tried to make ammends for cata. Stormheim was the consequences of not doing that, so there is that.
Except it was for many years:
The game STOPPED being a morality play in Warlords of Draenor.
Where they were forced to pivot the entire expansion because their plans sucked and bit off more than they can chew.
And ever SINCE then, they finalize the plan and start the following patch DURING the preceding patch, allowing for constant last minute pivots to the narrative that are less obvious because there’s less “seeding the field” in the launch patch.
You can’t tell a morality play if you don’t know the story when you start it.
Genn’s only crime at Stormheim was not bringing a second gunship.
I know you won’t see my post, but I just wanted to clarify I liked your post due to most everything except for the racism parts. (as expected, right?)
To be fair: Revenge is not good. That’s why the death penalty is seen in most nations as barbaric.
In the case of war criminals it’s different sure.
That said: I like it in fantasy and it can be a good part in a story. The Night Elves are deserving of revenge and Talanji too.
That aside: I don’t think it’s the Themen of WoW. It could fit. If you are looking at factions and races not belonging to the Alliance and Horde then yes, it is anti justice for those.
Yes it is anti-justice. This turn tyne other cheek crap is annoying. Has anyone ever gotten what they deserved outside of being a raid boss? No. The stupid eternals were going to give mass murder Garrosh a second chance. Don’t even need to mention Sylvanas. Arthas got what he had coming but he was a raid boss. Meanwhile getting pissed about your people being screwed over, Tyrande, Jaina, hell even Varian, gets you nothing but a finger wagging from Anduin and Velen. 
The Alliance is the protagonist of the game. You are already getting more then you deserve. Be thankful for what Blizzard caters to you. The Horde is only an afterthought.
Horde doesn’t owe you anything. Stop being delusional.
They are not. Sylvanas needs to wipe the floor with them a second time so that we can deal with them for good. No more Night elves polluting the game.
Uno reverse card.
That’s not what I was taught in Sunday school. That sounds more like American Evangelicalism.
I was refering Roman Catholicism.
I mean expecting a game about war to teach you morality lesson is even more weirder…
I mean are we gonna forget all those time that we had, as player, to do x amount of genocide on many species tribe just for 20 gold without having any bad ‘‘repercussion’’ and all that since vanilla?
Wow was never about teach us morality lesson…
Did Anduin do anything to try to cool things down after Stormheim? It was a pretty blunt declaration of war at an insanely stupid time.