I won’t lie to you. I have two moods regarding the topic.
One: I agree. The Alliance shouldn’t be subjected to the same asinine plot the Horde is being shoved through.
Two: The mud is lonely and the Horde could really benefit from having someone suffering as we are. Join us.
I care. It makes me sick that we stand side by side with Jaina and Shaw just one patch after the murder of Rastakhan and the deaths of so many innocent Zandalari civilians. But the Horde doesn’t get a choice. As usual we’re asked to just ‘play along’.
Not ‘fairness’ Zerde, not tit for tat. I said equal treatment. I don’t want every wrong redressed between the Horde and Alliance because if we did that then the faction war would never end.
I just want the same capacity to make the wrong choices to be present in both sets of leaders. I just want an Alliance leader to have his own faction turn against him and call for his head. I just want an Alliance leader to be able to fall from grace while still marching under the banner of that Alliance.
Equality of representation, not of deed, Zerde.
You can simmer over your grudges from the past until the sun goes out for all I care, what I want is an equal stake in the story. For the Horde to be as much the protagonists of their own tale as the Alliance is the protagonist of theirs.
Your first argument amounts to claiming that deliberate story and worldbuilding choices (‘humans in this story are european-fantasy-US coded; their cruel pillaging nonhuman enemies are various exotified caricatures’) are just quirks of chance with no actual thought or meaning behind them. Since this is a manufactured product purposefully created by real-world humans, I don’t believe this.
Your second argument seems to advance that the elves of the Horde are portrayed as anything other than a distinct and unusual subgroup within it whose story purpose is often to create interesting tensions between themselves and the rest of the faction. And that they aren’t often argued as ‘not belonging’ to the faction properly by both Horde primitivism advocates and Alliance players who wanted them on their side. I don’t think this is plausible either.
I think they both probably dither from Lawful Evil, to Neutral Evil, then Lawful Again, then swing hard over to Chaotic Evil for the lulz.
They’re written inconsistently in that regard… but always Evil regardless.
I want a story that both factions can enjoy. Dragging the whole of the Alliance down into the mud with the Horde is not the answer.
Would I like to see an Alliance character or two get mud thrown on them? Sure. Makes for some interesting stories that can be told if we had the right writing team which I’m pretty darn sure we don’t.
I was always comfortable with the Horde being morally gray, making the hard choices when the chips were down. It’s echoed in Ji Firepaw right at the end of the Pandaren starting experience on the Wandering Isle.
Frankly, the Alliance is a bit boring. Too much of everyone playing nice with each other. We got a tad of conflict with Tyrande telling Anduin to go shove it, but that didn’t lead anywhere. Just because it’s an Alliance doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be any internal conflict.
Hell, just look at us here in real life. By and large the US is friends with a lot of countries, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have arguments and even get into tiffs. But when it counts, we’re there for one another.
There is just way too much goody-two shoeness, for lack of a better term. Anduin can be Anduin. Fine, I don’t care, but not everyone should have his same moral code. Tell me, where are the shady elements in the Alliance?
You have my deepest sympathies forcing you to help people that you hate, i have no idea what the hell blizzard is thinking.
i know how is to help people that is supposed to be your enemy, the same enemy that blizzard has been seeling to you.
Why we have to deal with this kind of crap?
no one should be forced to that NO ONE.
With that being said, my point was more directed at the story.
No one will ever mention it again, probably because alliance leaders don’t even know about what the dark irons were doing, no one will ever mention it again in the story. Just like breannadan, everyone already forgot about it.
in consequence, no one really cares in the story.
This is something that i actually agree on, alliance characters should have different ways,methods or personalities on how to deal with situations and this can be used to create conflict.
Do we need to turn one of them into a supervillain? No. because that is what this thread is suggesting.
the thread is suggesting just to ramdonly turn alliance characters into villains because it would be “interesting” forgetting that it would be kinda incredibly out of character.
That’s fair enough, and I know the Alliance gets their fair share of having to work with Horde characters that they would rather butcher.
But I think stuff like the atrocities in Dazar’alor and the attack on Breanaddan get ignored for the same reasons. Blizzard doesn’t care about maintaining any kind of through line or plot consistency in the story. All they care about is doing something shocking, moment to moment, to rile up players.
It’s like they have no faith in anyone being invested in the story their telling or the characters they are writing so they just try to make an impact the basest way that they can and to hell with there ever being consequences to any of these actions.
So basically we get to lose one of our leaders and also lost the moral highground while also not being able to inflict the same amount of damage done to us by the Horde. That is not “equal treatment”. If our leaders have managed to noy go insane it is because the Alliance as a whole have had to suffer and kept getting punched first by the Horde. If you want the Alliance to not end up having the High Ground, the Horde needs to suffer by our hands as much as we have from them. Or else, it is as Grimtale said, you only want the Alliance to be dark so you can benefit from it!
The part where that was something I actually wrote during my break and just didnt have time to post hence why I didnt see your response.
Personally, I wouldnt mind. But as I mentioned I doubt Blizzard will simply do the reverse of what they did and both factions will have to glare at each other grass from the other side of their respective fences and believe they would actually be ok if the inverse had happened(considering Horde fans whined about Taurajo to no end I doubt most would be ok if the amount of damage done to the Alliance was done to them)
The alliance honestly can rarely afford to go evil or have disunity or even be wrong because the horde gas been hyper agressive since garosh or at least cst mop and bfa but yeah if they btokd ranks the allisnce crumble so for alliance to have resl infighting or villains the horde has to become passive no expsnsion no agression they have to stop being an ever present looming threat. I dont think horde players could stand being passive like the alliance is and having to take the big punches and be happy with allisnce getting a slap on the wrist.
Thing of it is is that we already had Alliance villainy as a story told to us beforr: it was called Warcraft 3. It’s not a new and revolutionary thing to do anymore and I certainly don’t see the pro’s of doing it again, personally I’m not a fan of WC3 for that exact reason because it entails the Alliance losing… and losing… and losing again until of its cool elements were just completely stripped away from it until Blizzard decided WoW should be a two faction game.
And quite frankly, the idea of the noble misunderstood monster vs. the pretty villain has actually been far more commonplace in fiction than people are willing to admit here.
Ever thought that if you lost the ‘moral highground’ you think you have, that would lead to doing exactly the same amount of damage you are so jealous of the Horde doing? That for an Alliance villain to turn heel that they would have to do exactly the kinds of unspeakable atrocities you claim to hate so much, but to the Horde?
You know Zerde, I think that’s what I don’t like about you as a poster. It’s not that you aren’t intelligent or that you don;t make good points. It’s that the very actions you claim to hate so much that the Horde does in the story are exactly the kinds of actions you salivate about getting the chance to do yourself.
Here I am saying soley that all I want is an Alliance leader to turn villain and all you can think about is how badly you want to damage the Horde as much as possible in return.
Orlok’s right. You want it so bad you can have it. Take the story shaming you, degrading your favorite races and characters. Go ahead, we won’t stop you. You can have all the ‘Horde bias’ you are so envious of.
As long as the story balances how the factions are represented going forward I don’t care.
I don’t think the whole Alliance should take a sudden swan dive into villainy, but I think a few more villainous characters would help.
A bunch of Garithoses (Garithosi?) taking over and plastering the entire Alliance with their ideals would be a terrible plot, but a Garithos-eque character here and there could bring interesting plots to either side. The Horde would get a reason to not trust the Alliance, and the Alliance could get a plot to uncover and reprimand the modern Garithos to reaffirm the overall Alliance ideals.
I think the big issue isn’t whether the Alliance should have darker elements: it’s whether, in the game’s current state, the Alliance could feasibly have darker elements without suddenly being written as -only- being comprised of those darker elements. Which is a reasonable fear, it seems, as the Horde’s bruises from their relentless villain batting will attest.
You know, we actually had an opening with Tyrande but the writers kinda botched that potential opening.Sympathetic Villains stem from tragedy in which we could have had one if they pushed Tyrande even harder off the rails. But instead “she got her revenge in darkshore.” BS.
They could have had a moment in the war where all of the alliance look at Tyrande once she got her Elune buff and go… yeah its time to put a stop to that.
I also wish they did not stop with the Scarlet crusade faction. That had potential to just go well beyond Wrath but instead it just fizzled out. its espally disappointing with Yrel’s Lightbound being stuck in timeline bad house.
Moria also had potential to be a villain but The Shattering ended her arc in like a few chapters which was disappointing. it was a good arc, but that could have been expanded on well beyond the book.
Do you mean Alliance villains, or human villains? Or both? Because the latter, yes, has been lacking. But there have been many, many, many many human villains. They just cease to be Alliance when they go villain, or actively try to dismantle the Alliance.
We’ve had plenty of villains who were human. Where are all the Forsaken villains? The only one we’ve ever had thusfar that we’ve gotten to kill has been Putress, and that was waaaay back in Wrath.
We have Godfrey as well. With any luck we can drop a house on top of their wicked Witch of East as well.
Fandrel sort of counts
Remove Golden and problem solved.
This, i think that we could have plenty of that material like dark iron dwarfs adventures burning goblins or void elves condemning… more goblins to the horrors of the void.
Point being, we do kinda have more darker elements that could be explored more, but going from one extreme to another isn’t the answer.
Honestly they would need to make the Allliance do something so blantly evil to bring them to the horde’s level it sad. The Writers really screwed up making the Horde go down this path again that it has essentially made the Horde seem unredeemable.
I’m all for the Alliance getting its hand dirty in this war, to have its moral code tested as we fight an enemy that has burned children alive. However it needs to be believable it can’t just be randomly killing little fox people for no reason.
Simply having had the Alliance press the advantage after Drazalor instead of leaving them be, None of this waiting for the Horde to surrender rubbish.
or having the Alliance abandon the Tauren to face sylvanas forces alone while they press the attack elsewhere. Maybe drive the Horde out of Ashenvale instead(though id prefer night elves to go elsewhere).
It doesn’t need to be necessarily super evil, Just more morally grey.