Not really. High King is still a recent and unknown thing compared to Warchief. It doesn’t help that Blizzard has explicitly avoided explaining how and why the Alliance needs a faux-warchief, outside of a lazy advertising department. It only comes up with Metzen and Kosak trying to sell the idea when Varian was hogging all the spotlight in the Alliance’s stead. That would probably qualify as a inner-faction conflict. And only the Horde is allowed to have any for good or ill.
I’m sure the only people who would be upset over losing it are MHP’s and Anduin/Varian -stans. The vast majority of Alliance players are probably ignorant of the title to begin with.
Because what you don’t seem to understand is that yes, we see the Alliance doing everything you listed above. Just like we saw Greymane trying to assassinate the Horde Warchief back in Legion due to his own personal vendetta.
But what pisses off a lot of Horde players, and rightly so, is the fact that while both factions commit a lot of similarly-immoral actions against one another, literally only the Horde is ever punished for it, while the Alliance gets a slap on the wrist.
Because yeah: you and I might see every crime you listed above as morally-atrocious—and rightly so.
But in the context of Battle for Azeroth? Blizzard’s message was pretty clear:
“Eh, nobody cares what the Alliance does to the Horde because Teldrassil!”
I don’t think anyone would care about that either outside of Anduin fanboys.
No one asked the Dwarf fans if they were okay with losing their monarchy to a Council, all to weaken their nation’s stability so that Stormwind could usurp their role as the Cornerstone of the faction.
What exactly is, ‘punishment,’ in the context of this discussion though?
How has the Horde, specifically, been, “punished,” for it’s actions? Were the soldiers that attacked Brennadam rounded up and put to death? Were there public trials for the architects and participants of the burning of Teldrassil?
I think what Horde players want isn’t so much the Alliance being called out on it’s actions. Look at the cinematic between Anduin and Saurfang before the second Siege of Orgrimmar, when Saurfang launches into a spiel about bad things the Horde has done and then Anduin starts listing off stuff the Alliance did. Was that some great cathartic moment for Horde players?
I think what Horde players want is satisfaction. They want to feel morally superior to the Alliance for once and not have it turned around on them, explained away, or even partially justified. They want the Alliance to be the aggressors, to be in the wrong, and to have no excuse for it.
Unfortunately that won’t really give them any satisfaction. No more than the Alliance has gotten by canonically winning these wars. Because everything bad the Alliance will do will be pinned on our version of Sylvanas/Garrosh, and the Horde will be told they’re horrible bigots for daring to think the Alliance would actually be bad without being manipulated into it against their will, no matter how gleefully they slaughtered Horde orphans.
The Horde has literally had its Warchief villain-batted twice now.
They’ve been repeatedly humiliated as a faction that is apparently so incompetently/fanatically-devoted to its primary leader that it inevitably needs its perennial enemy to come bail it out (again, twice).
Its core races—orcs, trolls, and tauren—have especially been victimized in this manner, to the point of—as many have pointed out—even the Jailer thinks Baine is completely useless.
Regarding your second point:
This is irrelevant.
And no, I’m not saying that out of defense of the Horde, or because I’m playing “what about,” I’m saying it’s irrelevant because, by the same token:
Ok, so where was Alleria holding her people to account for what were very real crimes against civilians?
So when did Moira, Falstad, or Muradin hold their people accountable?
Did Jaina or her mother ever do anything to stop this, considering Jaina has traditionally been our diplomat between the two factions?
If you answered, “No,” to all three questions, congratulations! And that’s the point. This is literally how Blizzard unbalances the scales of morality between the two factions; it’s how they started Mists of Pandaria years before BfA.
They open with some gigantic, horrific, and in the context of Teldrassil, genocidal attack that is so irredeemably-evil that no one even cares what the random NPCs of either faction are doing.
If the Alliance commits war crimes, it’s in response to what the Horde did (“they started it!”).
If the Horde commits (more) war crimes, well…that’s just confirmation of their villainy, which we already knew about because Teldrassil.
No, this is literally what Horde players want.
They want Blizzard to hold the Alliance just as accountable for its crimes, and to stop actively villainizing the Horde with such gigantic, cataclysmic events like Theramore or Teldrassil to the point where anything Team Blue does can be considered “fair game” by comparison.
I’m going to say no, considering Anduin’s “examples” are, quite frankly, pathetic. Arthas wasn’t even representing the Alliance during most of his atrocities, and even Stratholme was an act of gray morality, at the very least.
Not to mention, again, that Anduin’s attempt to earn a participation trophy—because that’s what it was, make no mistake—rings completely hollow given how the expansion began.
If you honestly believe that the Horde playerbase wants to feel morally superior to the Alliance, then you are seriously disconnected from what is going on.
Just going by a lot of the comments I’ve read, I’m going to say that most Horde players don’t care about moral superiority. They do, however, want to stop being villainized. They want the scales of morality to be balanced again, like it was back in the Vanilla - Wrath of the Lich King era: both factions have the potential to commit great crimes, but neither is truly more evil than the other.
At least, not to the point where a faction leader was made into a third-party villain.
Great, and then you’ll know how it feels.
The Horde has already been told they’re a bunch of horrible bigots, so this is kind of a moot point, to be honest.
If Anduin was progressive as Blizzard want, he would make Stormwind a democracy like the Earth Prince did on Korra series
Does he has any or just people trolling?
I remember very few backslash tbh, mostly because many people wanted Dark Irons as part of customisation for their dwarves. Stormwind on the spotlight it was something people complained back in Cataclysm(and a huge step back as the other cities got AH to make them more usable, oh how the tables have turned)
So in this case, “Punishment,” means feeling humiliated outside of the game?
How can you say that and then turn around and ask:
On one hand you’re asking for the Alliance to be held accountable for it’s actions while on the other you’re saying its completely irrelevant for the same to be done to the Horde.
Which is it? Are we looking for In-Game, In-Universe, Lore/Story based punishments, or are we looking to make players feel bad that their faction went on an Evil Bender for the expansion?
I was once upon a time, but not only does it become toxic when faction, “pride,” (for lack of a better term) crops up, but the writing has been so abysmal for so long it really is hard to maintain it.
At this point? I’d be happy playing a neutral character, a member of the Kirin Tor or Argent Crusade. Both factions have been written into a pit of awful. The Horde has been villain-batted, but the Alliance is sitting there drowning in the drool of its own incompetence.
I had read the rest of your post. It doesn’t answer the question I asked you though.
So, which is it? Do we want:
Lore-based punishments from leaders calling out and punishing those who do wrong.
Meta-based punishments where players are meant to feel bad about their faction.
See, Horde players say they want this, until it comes time to discuss how it happens. For example, who does the Alliance commit genocide against for Teldrassil? What Horde cities do we blow up the way Theramore and Teldrassil were? What Horde capital is abandoned the way Gilneas was?
From what I’ve seen, Horde players do want moral equity between the factions, but they don’t want to lose anything in the process.
I think the closest you could try to get for equivalency would be tumbling Thunder Bluff, for the one-two punch of destroying a racial city and because Baine’s the closest the faction has to a horde-side Jaina / night elf combo.
Its not as if the Horde lost nothing, but let’s imagine for a moment…
Tyrande attacks Suramar. She has the Void Elves darken the city with Void Magic. The Nightborne can’t even live there anymore. They flee to Quel’Thalas… and get like, one tiny building in some corner of the city. Thalyssra spends her time in Orgrimmar despite Silvermoon being their new capital.
Then Silvermoon is blown up. The Blood Elves have suffered a genocide. The Nighborne are refugees for the second time. There are now canonically more Void Elves than Blood Elves, more High Elves than Blood Elves (they’ll still field armies, of course, because there are always enough numbers for that).
Through all of this? They also lose Bilgewater Harbor somehow. Over on the Alliance they blow up the Exodar when the Horde attacks it, wiping out most of its army, while Yrel stands on the deck of the Vindicaar and flies away, smirking at the Horde leaders saved by a last minute Thalyssra teleportation.
Would anyone enjoy that? Only the most HARDENED Alliance fanatic, I think. That’s not a story I care to see either.
Roll a demon hunter; you’re literally encouraged not to give a $#%@.
In a nutshell.
Ideally, more of #1 with far less of #2, which is really only possible if Blizzard gets off its “Hollywood effects” roller coaster where it insists on these gigantic acts of genocide by one faction that the other can’t possibly—and, of course, doesn’t want to—compete with.
Because that does result in shaming players for playing a certain faction (Horde) while giving the narrative that the other (Alliance) is not only superior, but is so morally-superior that only it can save the other side from themselves.
Which is about as demoralizing—both in-game and from a meta perspective—as you can get.
There have been several topics on this very subject, with multiple points of view from players in both factions.
Like I said above, no more big/dramatic, Game of Thrones-style acts of genocide, for starters—leave that stuff to the big bads like the Burning Legion, the Scourge, and the Old Gods.
If they’re not going to use Gilneas, give it back to the Worgen and find some other Horde capital (Suramar or Quel’Thalas, please!) to expand on/improve into a proper city.
Which necessarily requires that the Alliance give something up.
Namely, its claim to moral superiority, which it doesn’t deserve to begin with.
That’s a meta problem though, blizz simply has to stop giving the alliance the moral high ground, because after BfA? Any attack against the horde is more than justifiable
While I agree with most of what you’ve stated in your post, this I disagree with. I think we can argue the Alliance only has moral superiority because it was written that they should. However, Metzen himself states the Alliance was going to be a faction of, “Lawful Good Overdrive.” That was the intent, word of god.
I don’t think the Horde deserved to be Villain-Batted.
I don’t think the Alliance deserves to be Incompetent as the price of Lawful Good.
I’d prefer a story with moral equivalency, but we’re at the point where there isn’t a way to achieve it. Either the Alliance does the same things to the Horde that the Horde did to them, and the Horde responds in the same way the Alliance did, or forever will the Horde be known as the morally challenged faction.
I’d be very interested in knowing the context of this, considering Metzen himself gave us Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, which directly demonstrated how the Alliance was not necessarily morally-superior.
Unless, of course, he was talking about the more fanatical end of the spectrum with the words, “Lawful Good Overdrive,” which I could see being the case.
In which case, the game will eventually end in a Cuban Missile Crisis-style apocalypse, with both sides mana bombing Azeroth into oblivion.
Unless, again, we have something in-between the two poles, where the Alliance is shown to have the potential for moral corruption and villainy, but certainly not to the extent that we keep having these giant, apocalyptic acts that produce little more than shock value.
Faction conflict doesn’t have to be ugly or toxic. It can be—and, in WoW’s history, has been—fun, and even intriguing.
But only if it’s understood that neither side truly is morally-superior to the other, even if—and especially when—they claim to be so.
Let’s hope not, as that suggests the Horde has more than half destroyed the world already.
At this point, it doesn’t matter what Blizzard makes the Alliance do, or what the Alliance is shown as capable of, because unless it is the same stuff the Horde has done, players will always state, “Hey, the Horde did X. This is justified.” It will NOT be justified but players will argue that it is.
The Horde has crossed a moral event-horizon, and the only way for the two factions to be morally equal is for the Alliance to do the same, and that CANNOT be by different means, or else players will argue it’s not as bad as what the Horde did, or it’s justified because the Horde did X and X is way worse.