That money doesn’t do go back into development anymore. They go to pay for some Microsoft execs new yacht.
1 Like
The Amani joining the Horde would fit with their theme of accepting trolls formerly antagonistic toward both factions (starting with the Zandalari), so it makes sense.
For The Last Titan they could add the Gurubashi. 
Again, the exact same thing happens with faction stories too, except instead of Argent Tournament flags it’s Horde flags.
TBC was a neutral story. Wrath was a neutral story. The other faction got in the way because they had to shoehorn in the faction conflict, not because it made the story any better. Or maybe there was a tactical reason why we had to kill each other on the doorstep of a man whose army swelled with the dead?
This reads as a failure to understand the message MoP was sending; that the faction conflict resulted in people that might otherwise be friends killing one another over misguided patriotism and honor-before-reason. Also, it’s not my fault that Blizzard can’t write for the non ‘Hero’ races. If you’re not an Orc, Human, or Elf you don’t matter to the story. You want to ask when the last time the Pandaren mattered to world events? I could ask the same of Dwarves, or Tauren, or Trolls, or Gnomes.
While I like Garrick and Grimaxe, it should have been Aysa and Ji leading the diplomatic effort in the Dragon Isles. You know, the thing that they specialize in, talking to newly-discovered cultures and convincing them to help their respective faction. Just because Blizzard has no idea how to write for Pandaren doesn’t mean the Pandaren are a bad race.
Care to elaborate then? Because I can point at many, many story beats that are screaming 'Azeroth would be way, way healthier if you two morons would just stop fighting.’ And these beats date back all the way to Warcraft 3.
Be responsible for your emotions or bad things occur
Oh and Haranir are not elves, elves came from Haranir. I can see you are confused.
Did you see the new Yacht the Steam guy got with it’s own sub!?
1 Like
The Wrathgate at least reminded us that the forsaken were not to be trusted, and the subsequent war could probably have been avoided if the Horde had ejected them immediately and assisted the Alliance in burning every last one of them.
I agree, the Forsaken were the worst thing to happen to the Horde since their introduction. It made the entire rest of the faction look like hypocrites and/or fools, and muddied every theme of the Horde.
EDIT: Also, Wrathgate was a neutral event too. It hit both Alliance and Horde equivalently.
It didnt.
Wrath was still heavily faction focused, by example, the horde started the continent with the warsong offensive with Garrosh and saurfang leading, you befriend the taurens there, its an entire different questline to the alliance in another place
the exceptions like the argent tournament are made to temper the faction focused stories and do something different
It doesn’t work now when everything is argent tournament
Yet the two playable pandaren groups dont show at all in the entire expansion, besides the leaders cameo in SoO
Easy, taurens were important in DF with Baine finaly doing something, it was crap, but he did
Dwarves? this very expansion TWW
Trolls? BFA and zandalari
Gnomes? BFA with the mechagnomes and their leader becoming king.
Hardly to know what they specialize in when they barely are in the story
and the game would lose its appeal and the fun of a wargame with deep grudges between factions.
It doesnt matter if something would make sense to us as players in a meta perspective, what matter is the people in the game, the ones who live in azeroth feel or think.
The grudges between the races and factions are never going to end just by simple joining hands and singing kumbaya, neither it should, if so, it stop being warcraft
???
We literally dont know that yet, the lore is so bad even people playing beta dont know because its not explained yet
I miss the classic days when the Alliance were xenophobic and bigoted while the Horde were the underdogs just trying to survive and that in some cases gave the impression of being uncivilized. Both sides had an appeal.
2 Likes
I don’t hate the Haranir I just see them as night elves 2 this time we swear they will be more savage.
Overall… I think plot wise the amani should of stayed dead. I don’t know if there is much pleasing me though ive not been a fan of the plot since bfa…and then only bits and pieces there.
Uh, did you have a different instance of Icecrown than I did? Because I remember AT flags everywhere and running the Tournament raid several times on my BDK and Disc priestess. I barely saw Red or Blue, instead the flags were primarily white with gold.
That’s not a faction story, that’s literally the faction version of ‘we landed at Northrend.’ And we both helped DEHTA, we both helped the Argents, we both helped the Kirin Tor, etc, etc. The only actual ‘faction’ action was Wintergrasp and the idiotic airship boss battle outside of Icecrown where, and I’ll remind you of this, the Lich King sourced his armies from the dead. Faction aggression just made both factions look stupid in the fact of a foe we really couldn’t screw around in front of.
Because the Tushui and the Huojin were busy establishing themselves in their respective capitals, and really did not relish the idea of embracing Varian and Garrosh’s ideas of conquering the Pandaren homeland. Remember, the Wandering Isle was vanishingly small compared to the breadth of Pandaria, so those factions and philosophies were very small compared to the larger Pandaren population. Would it have been nice to see Ji and Aysa more during MoP? Sure, but Ji and Aysa don’t hate each other, so why would they fight outside of orders? They disagree, strongly even, but when the chips are down the Pandaren try to stick together and help each other out. Thus, what happened in SoO.
Just because Baine is there doesn’t make it a Tauren story; it makes it a Baine story. Unless you think Broken Shore was a Troll story just because Vol’jin was there. The other racial stories were literally to facilitate the introduction of a new AR (which then proceeded to vanish off the face of the planet narratively as soon as its time in the spotlight ended, much akin to the Pandaren, or is Talanji actually up to something useful nowadays?). We just hadn’t gotten to whatever Pandaren might introduce. Sadly, because Blizzard cannot handle writing for non-Hero races, they missed the opportunity for Aysa and Ji to ‘score big’ and serve as diplomats and representatives of each faction for Dragonflight, each helping convince the denizens there (and more importantly, the Dracthyr) to aid their respective side. Instead, we get the standard Human/Orc reps and the Pandaren are sidelined again despite this being their literal jobs.
The Pandaren not being involved in current events isn’t because they’re a bad race, it’s because Blizzard doesn’t know how to write for anyone outside of the Big Three.
They’re literally the contacts for each faction in respect to them joining. This implies via worldbuilding that Ji and Aysa are good at working with exotic cultures and getting them to agree with and align with their factions’ priorities. Not everything needs to be explicitly spelled out. I could infer that the individual with a big melee weapon and heavy armor is, in fact, a fighter and dangerous in close quarters without a big tooltip screaming ‘WATCH OUT FOR MELEE COMBAT’.
And I’m not asking for the factions to go away, mind. I’m asking for the races to stop being locked to said factions. The Alliance and Horde can bomb each other into oblivion for all I care, but I want to focus on the protection of Azeroth as a whole, not saving the face of an overzealous leader that thinks they can own the world. Ironically, the factions would be great for PvP-centric storytelling and gameplay, and that’s how they should exist, but they should not be the main engine by which the story moves.
You should get a job as a software manager. “If I only had a nickle” for every time I heard a software manager, strong on company politics and weak on technology, come tell us “It should only be a small tweak”.
3 Likes
how is that NOT a faction story? 
what is a faction story for you?
From your meta player perspective
not from the imaginary people who live in that world
They hold as much as they can, because they know killing each other strengthens the scourge, but they are emotional, flawed… but they fall for it, for anger, resentment which is those situations that conflict arise and the plot keep going
This is what wow was.
Or you know, because they cant rly force a neutral race in a game that main pillar is faction conflict and conflict between different races that easily.
Same reason no one will se dracthyr or earthen doing anything in midnight or forever after
Baine is the leader of the taurens, that is more than what the pandarens get, and they were important back in MOP and CATA as well
Cataclysm an expansion heavily focused on the factions was able to proper give spotlight to TONS of different races
I didnt say they were bad i said they were neutral, which is one of the main reasons they are not being used ina faction based game
Yeah that implies, if you read about it
thats why i say is hard to know if you dont rly search for it
Which is the same thing
It breaks immersion and the entire point of the factions and the pillars the game are build in making needlessly complicated and EVEN harder to write
Hard disagree, lot of stories from vanilla to MOP that were faction focused were great without any pvp related
Faction conflict is sidequest material. Like in wrath and cata, we kill each other but we stop to beat the main villain meanwhile(scourge-lich king/twilight hammer-DW).
I would do it for blizzard for free
I would even write the quests for then without using chatgpt like they have being doing lately.
/googles
Yep that is what I am talking about.
1 Like
Simple, a ‘faction story’ is a story that cannot be told without that specific faction. Something like MoP or BFA are faction stories, because without the Horde or Alliance, those stories do not happen. TBC and Wrath though? Someone needed to stand up to and fight the Big Bads in those expansions, and Shattrath and the Argent Crusade were doing the work. We just happened to show up and be a convenient ace-of-aces for them to use for their efforts.
Except the Argents, and their own experiences, should have been screaming 'this is a very bad idea and only makes the fight ahead even harder.
I get being emotional and carried away by one’s beliefs, and in that spirit let me share an opinion; Garrosh was actually a fine character throughout his arc because he was what he was; a petulant hothead who everyone knew would get everyone around him killed should he ever gain actual power. And Thrall getting starry-eyed and pushing Garrosh to Warchief anyway is also a completely fine thing, because Thrall’s entire schtick is redemption in the face of the past and his desperate search for a future where Orcs no longer bear the stigma of their past. Garrosh was that potential future, and this hope blinded Thrall to the very real danger Garrosh posed.
This is an entirely understandable and valid character arc that resulted in a tragic downfall. Not just of Thrall’s exit, not just of Garrosh after he went wild, but also of the position of Warchief in general, its problems now exposed and laid bare. This was good storytelling from multiple perspectives. Professional soldiers knowing what they knew about the Lich King and then deciding to have a spat mid-air regardless is not good storytelling, nor is it even compelling. It’s literally a fight for the sake of a fight and it makes anyone even remotely aware of the stakes go ‘why, you idiots?!’
Again, that’s not the fault of Pandaren or Earthen or Dracthyr, that’s the fault of Blizzard being unable to write compelling stories for races that aren’t Human, Orc, or Elf. Hell, MoP had amazing narratives and felt genuinely tragic as a Pandaren player because I saw the culture being torn apart zone-by-zone by the hunger of the Alliance and Horde and their hell-bent fury toward one another. Far more compelling than ‘an Orc and a Human met and fought, because that’s what Orcs and Humans do when they meet.’ This was the story of a proud and independent people letting the disease of hatred and war slowly seep in and spread under the guise of ‘necessary retaliation’ or ‘glorious conquest’. Varian and Garrosh were both out of line to fracture Pandaria the way that they did, but that’s the point of MoP’s narrative; the Horde and Alliance at war wounds the entire world.
Aysa rushing to Ji’s aid in SoO is a standout moment and solidifies my belief that the Pandaren would be a happier people if not for the forced divide faction membership imposes on them, and that makes the Pandaren as a people more interesting, compelling, and tragic than ‘every Orc a Hordie/every Human an Ally’.
Again, I ask if Broken Shore is a Troll storyline because Vol’jin was leading the charge there? Baine can have stories independent of the Tauren people. Not every Anduin story is a Human story, but Humans are one of the three Hero Races so you see them everywhere there’s Alliance or neutral content.
As far as Cataclysm goes, I’d argue that while faction stories were present, they still weren’t entirely integral to them. Even Vanilla, too. Your first 10 or 20 levels were basically you exploring your racial culture and philosophy (and Cataclysm was exploring your race’s reaction to a world rent asunder). Then you meet up with your faction capital and leadership. But you didn’t have to focus on the storylines your factions offered; you could work for the Argents in EPL and WPL, you could work against Venture Co., go fight Onyxia or check out BRD. Faction stories were present, but Cataclysm as a whole was not a faction story. It was a struggle to reach and defeat Deathwing, a very ‘neutral’ effort.
Which is why factional storytelling is harmful to the game’s narrative as a whole. Not only do races that might have non-factional philosophies or something more complex than ‘we serve the Alliance/Horde, right or wrong’ become problematic to explore (because they’d highlight just how dumb forced factions are), but because it makes characters act completely against their own identity simply because their faction leader told them to. Again, every Horde became a complete monster and every Alliance became a hapless victim at Teldrassil. This would have been fine if it was a PvP storyline, but it was a global PvE narrative that dragged everyone into it!
If I see someone surrounded by members of other races that works at what looks like an administrative desk, it’s not a huge leap of logic to assume they’re a skilled diplomat and an expert at navigating cultural differences. Again, not using Aysa and Ji in Dragonflight is a massive shame; that scenario was practically custom-built for them.
What are you talking about? The point of a faction is to promote a philosophy, it is a construct of contracts and agreements. We have to individually pledge to our respective faction after all, even as ‘Alliance’ or ‘Horde’ races. Hell, this mentality of ‘let’s make every member of every faction a cheerleader for that faction’ led to the dismal concept of ‘fist-pumping moments’. My heroic Horde character (Tauren prot warrior) was very decidedly not fist-pumping over the ‘victory’ at Teldrassil. She was horrified at what she’d helped enable over the years and, had she the option, would have quit the Horde on the spot. But because races are locked to their faction, she had to march along to the orders of a being she would have gathered 24 friends to go raid for loot otherwise.
Making factional membership a pillar of the game and a requirement for every character was a massive narrative mistake and leads to moments like the above that are severely unsatisfying, and that’s putting it gently.
You said it yourself; the factional stuff is sidequest material. PvP is a side activity, so the two are prime to be married. Plus, keeping the Alliance and Horde as PvP-exclusive entities and storylines means they get to have teeth and really go at each other with horrific weaponry and appalling tactics, not needing to worry about looking the part of hero or having to call themselves the ‘good team’. Meanwhile, those uninterested in squabbles could work with everyone else to do the actually important work of keeping Azeroth safe.
I’m skeptical about this. You might use ChatGPT to write the quest story. But that’s not the technical part of what a software person does. That’s what the story person does.
If you really had the ability to write quest software you would know that it is the human that designs the software then uses the AI to write the code. Then the human debugs it.
I’ve done this myself. It makes software development go a lot quicker.
Why would the insular, clannish, shamanistic wilderness-dwellers who are wary of the Light and Titans align themselves with the Alliance? They’re basically shaved tauren, they should be Horde if anything.
1 Like
Well, we don’t know for sure. There hasn’t been proper description of trolls evolving into night elves, it’s just speculation, so it’s a possibility.
I guess that’s the best alternative. Shoving Haranir between the two races might cause some serious timeline issues.
1 Like
god no.
Haranir are an interesting addition to WOW lore,and finally answers the age old question of where did the Elves and Trolls really come from? Answer Quillboar-Elf-Trolls (QET) aka Haranir.
Everything about them is perfect, honestly the single best addition to WOW since Dragon-Elves aka dracthyr.
I do like the Earthen, but wish my classic Dwarf women could also have Beards. My Main Hunter she would work well with a beard as she has the Lumberjack L vibe going on. If I could give her a D-ring keychain a Subaru, and a Canadian Accent … ah one can dream.
But yeah, I love the Haranir, I am looking forward to being a Bat Moonfire Mage.
1 Like
Just no, these guys are the decendants of the common ancestor that spawned the night elves and trolls.
It’s in the lore that elves and trolls evolved separately from a shared ancestry. This is one of the most based races in the game now.
Just look at the customization.
- Elf look = normal feet, small nose, no fangs
- Troll look = clawed feet (they even have a claw on their heel), big nose and tusks
I don’t know how else to say it. You’re just factually wrong. These haranir just never went to the surface and affected by surface influences that changed their evolutionary path depending on where they went.
2 Likes