SW is more interesting to explore I feel. But I only explored it because by accident I forgot to put on masks. So, not wanting to just blow the vial, I wandered all over the place and stuck my nose in every nook and cranny.
There’s a lot of weird, sad and darkly funny stuff there. Could be the same for Orgrimmar though. Not sure why they put so much hidden detail into something that is kinda designed to hurry you along.
My recollection was that the Alliance War campaign and Kul’tiras storylines were pretty good. I find it hard to say this expac was a disgusting heap when I found the majority of Alliance content to be good.
Night Elves might feel differently.
Sure, the civillians of darnassus provoked the horde for simply existing.
and if they really wanted genn, they should have demanded it before to anduin.
they didn’t.
Wait, the horde cares about if the alliance punish internally?
so if anduin actually punished genn (even if he could) they wouldn’t have attacked?
thats a little random don’t ya think?.
Absolutely. Even Baine (who is usually entirely down to lick Alliance boot) agrees that securing the Horde’s flank in the face of the Alliance’s completely nakedly hostile intentions, that doesn’t happen if the Alliance makes even a single indication that Genn’s breaking of the peace was unintentional.
If the Peace treaty was still in place Sylvanas would likely have next to no support for an assault on the Night elves. I mean even with the rock solid Casus Belli that she had, even then she had to pitch the engagement as a limited one intended specifically to minimize civillian loss and to force a better defensive position for the Horde.
False, baine didn’t even know about the attack on teldrassil.
he was purposely send away do he can’t interfere.
He would never really agree in such a random attack. and honestly it would be extremely OOC for him.
Yeah but the thing is that the horde never really cared about it, sylvanas doesn’t mention it at all during the arathi meeting,so they care or not?.
and if they do, they should have demanded genn to face reprisal and no one else.
but i am sure that the innocents of teldrassil are guilty for the crime of existing, thats usually how the horde works anyway, they were always have been pure warcriminal scum.
Oh yeah, the Alliance never kills civilians. Ever.
Oh wait they do, you just rationalize it as okay 
on purpose? not really happened. maybe a few here or there going rogue.
but of course the alliance still needs to do a lot of catchup, maybe kill a few thousands on purpose to be at the same level.
I’m not mad that the Alliance gets a nice thing. But I agree that it would be nice if the Horde also got some development of characters that we were going to keep.
Didnt you got that on talanji and zappy boi? i havent done squat on horde questing, plus you got an upcoming book for them!
Not being sarcastic, as alliance i dont feel compelled to buy that book however i expect most development to be around those 2.
Horde characters did gets lots of development.
Saurfang, Baine, Zappy, Lilian Voss, Rastakhan, Talanji and even Vol’jin.
Now liking those characters and their development is a completely different thing. I think a more accurate statement would be that Horde players wish they got character development they actually liked.
To me, it felt like Zekhan was rushed in a little too early to capitalize on his early meme status. My guess would be that since Blizzard knew they were already offing Saurfang, they’d rather get his conceptual replacement in ASAP. But I thought that it felt weird because he just pops in out of nowhere to beg you for help despite never meeting him before in-game.
It also doesn’t help me that BFA felt so bad that even characters I should have liked just felt worse for existing in it. In a twisted way, Rastakhan got off easy because he was no longer around to have him soured like the other named characters in the list.
I don’t know if this has been said already (but fairly certain it has been stated in other threads) but part of the reason why Umbric, and to a lesser extent the other blueberries, got so much development in BFA was because they had none in Legion. And they didn’t get development in Legion because they didn’t exist.
The development in BFA was essentially used as a way for them to “catch up” with the other allied races in terms of usage (who all had their initial development done in Legion) that they were released alongside of.
To be fair, thanks to the haphazard way the void elves were introduced, we really needed it.
We don’t get allied races with any thought or effort put into them, you see.
But of course, you wouldn’t know that with those red-tinted goggles strapped so tightly to your head.
Part yes, and part no. Of the characters you mentioned…
Saurfang’s character “development” was obviously very controversial. It’s also however a moot point… because he’s dead.
Baine is almost universally disliked, and he didn’t even really develop past “Jaina’s Best Friend” which he really already was. In less memey terms, we already knew that Baine was an Alliance-leaning, peace-first leader. He was consistent to form - a form which not many players like.
Zek’han wasn’t really developed at all. He shows up twice with minimal dialogue. He will GET development in the upcoming book, but it takes more than that to endear a character to players. Like Sarm said, it feels like they latched onto the popularity of a minor figure and are just trying to cram him in the players’ faces, rather than let him show up and do some stuff and let that relationship grow a little bit more organically.
Voss is probably the best-developed and best-received of the characters you’ve listed. That’s being generous and ignoring the fact that her character did a hard 180 from previous characterization, but the end result seems to have worked out, so I’m not going to complain.
Rastakhan got great development and was liked by a lot of Horde players and… oh yeah, he’s dead.
Talanji got lots of screen time, but didn’t change essentially a single iota from the Precocious Princess she was presented as from the start.
Vol’jin… I don’t really feel like he was developed as much as he was set up for future development, which he seems set to receive.
There’s one thing I will say, however. “Development” is often a coded way of referring to a character being out there on the map, doing stuff in the story. Umbric is getting accolades in this thread because he was present in the Alliance war campaign fairly often, was doing stuff for the Alliance fairly often. He was a visible presence - you can even see him doing his dinosaur thing when playing Horde during invasions. (He’s right next to one of the neutral flight points).
The Horde war campaign features lots of Nathanos - oh yeah, he’s gone now too - and Baine, with a smattering of Rexxar and bit appearances from some other characters like Valtrois - who is, oh yeah, comparing the Horde to the Legion when you see her. So, part of it is that a lot of character development went into characters that didn’t see the end of the expansion, part of it is that character development went into characters who are by nature passive actors, and another part of it is that the very nature of the Horde story sucked a lot of the oxygen out of anything that wasn’t the main narrative.
We didn’t get any development for main characters like Tyrande or Jaina do, we didn’t get memorable fun new minor characters like Flynn Fairwind or Taelia, and the development we did get for characters like Thalyssra or Baine was entirely unflattering. (Thalyssra has been done super, duper dirty by the narrative, and she’s barely done anything wrong - they just make her look like a jobber any time she shows up.)
I think the kind of characters a lot of Horde players are looking for are something like Occuleth. (Bear with me here). He’s quirky, he doesn’t make grand moralizing statements and isn’t used as a stand-in for whatever message the writers want to convey, and he has something that he’s good at and is visibly doing for us often. In short, they aren’t trying too hard with him, and he’s a decent minor character who is fun when he shows up. He also isn’t dead, which is a plus. Chadwick Paxton’s Forsaken squadron is another example of this.
Its where I got it from. I’ve seen far too many brown-nosers or people who just so happened to be the “politically disadvantaged” group get medals just for having a pulse. I have more than once just thrown a decoration request back in my leaderships face even though I’m part of said disadvantaged group.
Especially since the senior enlisted are going board-only, and the board has documented favoritism towards fast burners. Not getting a PCS dec right now hurts your career harder than an Article 15 in the Air Force.
The horde had all the characters from legion, void elves were out of no where with zero characters or story. Lightforged don’t even have any characters really.
One of the most interesting dynamics here that I see is how the Void Elves were recently members of the Horde. Conceivably, they have friends, comrades, and possibly even family on the other side. I think it would be an interesting dynamic to explore that “I have to prove myself to these new Alliance friends by fighting my old allies” concept. Are there any internal conflicts there? Do the Void Elves feel regret? They started exploring the Void to see if they could master it to protect Quel’thalas, so they’re extremely loyal to their nation and to a people who now utterly reject them. I imagine some Void Elves would be immensely bitter about that while others would try to help Quel’thalas in whatever way they can from the other side.
And sacrificing Shandris on the pyre to make all that happen. But hey! Human potential. Let’s use her to stroke Umbric’s ego and make him look neat. My faction pride doth runneth over from mine cup.
It’s sad that players on the forums can come up with better storylines than those paid big bucks by Blizzard.
I totally agree. The Void Elves should have been the High Elves who remained in the Alliance territories. Whether it was the Silver Covenant or those High Elves in Outland, it would’ve been a better story. And it might’ve finally ended the “High Elves for Alliance” nonsense by completely removin’ the “non-corrupted” Thalassian elves from existence.
One of the only cool Alliance characters is Magister Umbric bro.