Oh my sweet sweet WC3 Night Elves.
As soon as they got tossed under the Alliances blue banner they were ruined, Never to be the same ever again.
A Binary faction system in a game as complicated as WoW is hilariously bad. It oversimplifies everything…
Every single race should be able to work with every other race.
We’re the player characters. The “Champions of Azeroth” We should be able to put on our big boy pants and save the world together.
That’s fair. I actually didn’t know the First guardian was a Half Elf. Generally speaking however, after the establishment of the Kirin Tor most of the Significant mage characters have been Humans.
Jaina, Antonidas, Khadgar, Medivh, Kel’thuzad. Etc.
Yes. I’m well aware the people allegiances change, I’m well aware that most of the Citizens of Lordaeron are on the Horde as undead.
But simplifying everything down to what races you encounter isn’t a good way to look at things. The Broken Isles had nothing to do with the 1st or second war, and had very little mention in the 3rd war.
They remained mostly untouched, so it makes sense that there aren’t too many orcs running around.
high elves would be a massive boon to alliance. especially if they were a core race visible on the starting screen, with their own starting zone/mounts/quest chains/etc like core races use to get.
half elves would also, provided they did a really good model series for it. it’d have to be spectacular though.
Adding Blood Elves to the Alliance would literally change nothing.
You’d be taking a race that exists on the Horde, and giving them to the Alliance. A faction with a much smaller less established raiding community.
There is literally 0 reason for anyone who plays a Blood Elf on the Horde to leave their guild, leave their friends, leave their faction to go join the faction that has less community and less raiding guilds.
Instead, you should remove the faction divide. Then every race is accessible to everyone. all the time. And The Alliance players could all play blood elves.
The class halls weren’t all in the Broken Isles. Off the top of my head only the Hunter one was. The only surviving native inhabitants of the Broken Isles are now in the Horde, btw.
Humans weren’t there either yet like half the class halls heavily emphasise Alliance history.
That’s easy to say when it’s races on your faction that are the ones taking point on all the storylines.
It’s literally the exact same story for both sides though. An Alliance Character and a Horde character do the exact same quests.
It’s equal treatment, Even if you don’t like it.
If you think the story was too Alliance focused, that’s fine. The story absolutely had a major focus on significant Alliance characters at multiple points. But all of those characters had good reasons for being there.
But It was the exact same story for the Horde and Alliance throughout the entire expansion. THAT’S what matters. Equal treatment.
All the Order halls have a story involving significant members of that class. If a lot of those characters are humans, than so be it.
If there are any lore breaking inconsistencies in the Order halls, please draw them to my attention.
I Play Horde yo. I’ve been a Turncoat. But the Horde is my favorite faction.
Well, it’s more like the Horde + Night Elves. Who are Pagan, Savage, and don’t belong on the Alliance at all
It’s not our fault that your faction doesn’t have any really notable characters when it comes to an actual threat. The only notable “horde” character in legion would be Gul’dan lmao. Legit the only way blizzard knows how to get the horde in the story is to start a civil war.
Yeah and that’s the problem. Despite all the piss and vinegar from Alliance players about how their faction is poorly treated by the writing staff, the Horde is basically the NPC faction that only shows up every couple of xpacs when the Alliance needs another war to win.
Legion was a great chance to create and expand on Horde history and character but instead they just decided to ignore all that.
Doing the Plot of Legion, In order. An Alliance Character will:
Save Dalaran from the attacking Legion and warp to the broken Isles.
Assist the Illidari in stopping the Encroaching demons and Naga in Aszuna.
Work with the Blue Dragons and the Highborne ghosts to Find the Tidestone.
Assist the Druids of Val’sharah in cleansing the Emerald Nightmare.
Save the People of Bradensbrook, and rescue Maiev Shadowsong.
Unite the disparate tribes of Highmoutain.
Stop the Drogbar from stealing the Hammer of Khazgoroth
Complete the 3 Trials of the Valarjar in Stormheim.
And Attack the enemy faction, Saving Eiyr in the process.
Then help the Nightborne stage an insurrection in Suramar
Meanwhile. A Horde player will:
Save Dalaran from the attacking Legion and warp to the broken Isles.
Assist the Illidari in stopping the Encroaching demons and Naga in Aszuna.
Work with the Blue Dragons and the Highborne ghosts to Find the Tidestone.
Assist the Druids of Val’sharah in cleansing the Emerald Nightmare.
Save the People of Bradensbrook, and rescue Maiev Shadowsong.
Unite the disparate tribes of Highmoutain.
Stop the Drogbar from stealing the Hammer of Khazgoroth
Complete the 3 Trials of the Valarjar in Stormheim.
And Attack the enemy faction, Saving Eiyr in the process.
Then help the Nightborne stage an insurrection in Suramar
That is Equal Treatment.
Because they are literally the same quests.
Alternitvaly in BFA. The Horde gets all 3 of their questing zones leading up to the first raid tier. The entire War campaign which shows tangible cracks forming through the ranks of the Horde. A rebellion story involving Saurfang showing the difference between Honor and Loyalty. And a climactic Finale at the gates of Ogrimmar.
The Alliance Meanwhile: Gets 3 zones of entirely unrelated side stories that have no significance to the Horde focused plot of BFA. A War campaign that exclusively involves following the Horde around and eaves dropping on their story, only to team up with them in the End for that finale in Orgrimmar.
This is DIFFERENT treatment.
Because they are different quests.
Because both factions are being treated unequally.
If literally every quest in Shadowlands turns out to be some variation of Ghost Varian showing up out of nowhere to Batista bomb Thrall and burn a Horde flag, would you consider that equal treatment?
Actually only Trolls. Boood elves don’t care about Loa. In the same way that Gnomes or Worgen don’t care about Naaru. Sethrak could easily go Alliance.
It would be garbage tier writing. Laughably bad, considering Varian has a very legitimate respect for thrall.
But if the quest is exactly the same, the rewards are exactly the same, and story leading up to, and after that quest are exactly the same.
Then yes, It is equal treatment.
It’s equally crappy. But it’s still equal.
And yes. I would also agree that Ghost Garrosh showing up, doing a powerslide with an electric guitar and blowing up Anduin with a bolt of Lighting is equal treatment. So long as it is the same quest, for every player, on both factions, with the same rewards.
Equal treatment is NOT the same as Just treatment.
Justice means everyone is being treated the way they should, Equal means everyone is being treated the same way.
One of these is subjective. The other is not.
I want to make one thing abundantly clear. I Believe we will never get a good story involving the Alliance and Horde so long as the two factions remain separate.
If the players were separated from the Alliance and the Horde, then you could have a legitimate story involving both parties fighting, squabbling, or generally hating eachother.
But If you have players on the Alliance and the Horde. Then the 2 factions will always ALWAYS break down into just being friends and working together.
The problem is they don’t give any of your faction leaders any true power as well, we have Jaina who apparently has a floating warship now. We have Khadgar who wield’s Atiesh and seems to be one of the most powerful mages, maybe even more insane than jaina with his teleportation of Dalaran with the help of a few mages. We have prophet Velen who has a deep history with the eredar. We gained Turalyon and Alleria, one gained us the literal army of the light then we also gained the power of the void. We also have Anduin, while many regard Anduin as a joke he is very capable in battle and his use of the light. Do I even need to start about Tyrande and Malfurion?
Meanwhile on the Horde, what do you guys have? Thrall? The dude they made powerless so shamans could get his weapon? Baine? We have about an army of power on the Alliance then you switch over to the horde and realize just how uneven it is storywise.
Yeah, and it gets even more ridiculous when a blatant self-insert like Nathanos just “Nopes” an NPC that is power level 9000. It’s clearly meant to be an epic moment to show how strong this horde shmuck is, but it falls flat because that kind of power is ridiculous for the character and the players in his own faction HATE him. Not just dislike. Hate.
Authors often use a very powerful antagonist to make a victory for the main character seem all the sweeter. When done well, it works well. When done badly, when there is no plausible reason for the main character to win and he just wins because of Sudden Incompetence Syndrome [TM], it is extremely jarring and takes the majority of readers out of the story. I think this is the case for the Horde storyline. The alliance is super powerful to provide a “great victory” to the Horde down the line; unfortunately, the Horde is so “underdog” story wise, any victory on their part reeks of plot armour.
So, where are our high elves?
And where is the Horde’s space ship?
Why haven’t the Sunreavers built a competition organisation to the Kirin-Tor that rivals it in power?
Why haven’t we 40k’d up the orcs with goblin technology yet?
Shamans pact with elementals. There are a bunch of powerful elementals introduces in Cata that could be utilized properly by the earthen ring to provide a counter-point to the immense power of the Alliance casters.
Why does none of this happen? The sides are easy to even out. And when you even them out a bit plausibly, scenarios like a Horde character one vs one against Tyrande or Malfurian is suddenly much more plausible. But you need to set that up properly. Because you’ve spent all this time explaining to us how powerful their counterpart is, and none of that how they gained the power to triumph over that.
So, what can I say?
Dear Blizzard,
Manowar is a great band, but their album covers do not make good protagonists. Not without a lot more work than the illustration.
Bloodelves ARE Highelves though.
They got kicked out of the Alliance in Warcraft III by Garithos.
What Blizzard SHOULD have done (too late now I guess?) in 2007
is make Highelves/Bloodelves a NEUTRAL race like the Pandaren and let the player CHOOSE which faction to be on. That would have solved a lot of problems, and there’d be no need for Void Elves (which are basically welfare belfs imo for the Alli).
this exact same scenario was present for the horde at the end of vanilla. they were behind alliance on population, by quite alot. nearly 70/30. and the horde races were monstrous and unpopular with most alliance players. the blood elves alone, nearly fixed the faction imbalance, bringing it up to 52/48, with each successive expac, increasing their margin till now, its nearly the reverse
