Eh…that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s not like Thrall was brought up in a nuclear family, or something.
On an unrelated note, the cinematic looks great! I hate the story direction and the fact that Blizzard just keeps doubling down on everything I dislike about the Horde story while pretty much abandoning the Alliance narrative, but they definitely know how to put together a cinematic!
Message is loud and clear buddy… Welcome to the Red Alliance, I wonder how much time before Thrall prostrate himself in front of our treasure God King Blanduin?
That doesn’t describe Thrall. He was raised as a slave. And even in Azeroth, that’s not human custom. Thrall’s story is his triumph over this origin.
I wonder if Blizz will ever actually address this.
Outland is supposed to have a finite lifespan before it crumbles away completely. What happens to everything on it then? All the Mag’har and Draenei still there? The wild life? The Sporelings? The Mok’Nathal and those super smart Ogres?
Or is it always going to be on the back burner and never actually happen?
I really love all the cinematics that are being created for this xpac. I love getting to see these very character-driven, often really quiet moments for the big players in the expansion – Sylanas, Jaina, Saurfang (three times now?) Anduin, now Thrall. So I’ve been waiting patiently for some nice character moments from the perspective of the kaldorei, whose wholesale slaughter at the hands of the Horde is what kicked off this conflict, but Blizzard thinks they told that story with the Night Warrior scenario when they “told some of [Tyrande’s] story and she got her revenge for the Night Elves.”
I don’t know how it’s possible to look at what happened and think that the kaldorei have been in ANY WAY avenged. Or even noticed. She killed a bunch of forsaken and a valkyr, and dead Sentinels are being raised as Dark Rangers working for Sylvanas. This isn’t revenge, it’s barely the start of a story of revenge. The pre-expac quests gave us the gut-punch of trying to rescue people from being burned alive in Teldrassil and seeing a freakin’ counter showing us how many we failed to save, and if this all we’re going to get for the kaldorei, then Blizzard just fridged them. Gave us a heartwrenching story of near-genocide so that some other folks could go fight a war about something else entirely.
I’ve been waiting and waiting for the kaldorei to be relevant in this xpac as anything but a sacrifice so someone else could fight, and… I’m so discouraged right now. If I weren’t running a guild, I’d probably unsub and just write fanfiction.
I know we are all (rightly) outraged by these turn of events but will someone stop and indulge me in why the iconic sky of Nagrand is not there?
In all seriousness, the cinematic is technically wonderful, and pretty great. However, the context sucks so majorly. I don’t like Sylvanas or Forsaken, and I almost feel cheated by everything that has transpired and lead up to this point.
BFA’s story is hot garbage.
Thrall got education mirroring the goals of a human noble that pretended to use him as a tool to rule… Ergo the cultural and political background he got is NOT the Orc proper, it’s the human one.
He was a slave yes… But one that was being prepared to help a human nobody to usurp a kingdom.
Can you even explain what Red Alliance means other than the Horde is no longer genocidal maniacs lol
You have quite the active imagination!
What about when he travelled and learned from Drek’thar and Orgrim Doomhammer and epically rode through liberating Orc camps side by side with him? What about when Doomhammer himself named him Warchief? Right, it was just allllll humans that taught Thrall every thing!
This cinematic IS Blizzard addressing it.
Sure, it means that we now share the Alliance’s primary objective: defeating the evil Horde!
You should be familiar with this story arc. We’ve seen it before.
Looks very nice and I will always have a soft spot for Thrall even with all the garbage hes about to do soon. But I’m too emotionally broken to care. The fact that I was over joyed to see forsaken try to kill these 2 really says something.
So thousands of night elves were burnt to death and Thrall is all “I am nobody’s savoir” but when someone attacks HIM its all “Time to get my Horde back” just like that? What a load of bull&@%#
And I’d never though I’d see the day that I could hate a character more than I hate Malfurion, but somehow Blizz did it with Saurfang. I am sick of him and I will NEVER be on his side no matter what Blizz does. He is just as responsible for the war and when things weren’t going his way he was willing to jeopardize it all and put faith in a 19 year old kid to do his dirty work. And as long as Saurfang feels bad about everything it will get him off the hook. I will always be on team Sylvanas and Blizz has done an awful job to convince me why I shouldn’t.
And this is what it has all come to. Thrall and Saurfang are going to restore honor to the Horde despite the Horde has shown time and time again how its “honor” has been a complete load of bull#%&! long before Sylvanas had anything to do with it.
I am so close to having a small soul crushing mental brake down with this game. And know its silly to let a game get to me, but I invested 10+ years to this. And its times like this I wish I could go back to 2009 during Cata and tell myself to quit.
Actually, I’m pretty sure the Alliance’s primary objective is defeating Azshara, as per Jaina in 8.2.
The Horde shares many primary objectives with the Alliance since they are both inhabitants of the same planet which is being threatened every other year by world ending disaster. The war between them since WC3 onward has always been a weak point which distracts both the factions from working together. Sure, the Horde turning on it’s crazy Warchief is a repeated story beat but it doesn’t fundamentally turn the Horde into a “Red Alliance”. I have no idea what that even means.
I’m pretty sure if someone sent an assassin to kill you you too would try to fight the sender.
Aside from lines like the one Saurfang had, I doubt it’ll ever be properly addressed. It’s something that’ll happen “someday” after WoW’s lifetime. I used to imagine that when the time came, the non-hostile, intelligent peoples of Outland would be brought to AU Draenor. Clearly, that is no longer an option. I guess they’ll just travel to the Dark Portal and evacuate to Azeroth.
I still don’t get what people were expecting when Sylvanas was made warchief.
Every character has acted in line with how they were built up.
Not a freaking complete rehash of a story they just did 3 expansions ago maybe???
Why would you not expect that though? Sylvanas has never been aligned with the rest of the Horde’s values. And she’s always been a schemer. It was only a matter of time until that came to a head.
I don’t need to explain too much, go back and play WotLK or Legion and come back to tell me how “relevant” was the Horde and tgeir heroes in those expacs. But you’re right we won’t even become a red version of the Alliance, we will just fulfill the subservient nonexistant place on the story as usual when not vilkain bated.
Dude, after MoP the Horde should had never EVER go back to “genocidal maniacs”… You think we should feel happy and proud devs had the gal to literally villain bat us the same way they already did a couple of years ago? You think your ridiculous grudge against EK Horde races is a good reason to applaud THE WHOLE OF THE HORDE characterization being thrown in the figurative trash can?
Btw, don’t worry, we will go back to being the genocidal maniacs in a couple expacs from know… After all the only narrative development Horde gets is how they suck so much into policing themselves that they must fulfill the “supposedly decent ruler chooses warmonger No. 35795347 to replace him, Horde happily follows said warmonger in increasingly cartoonish evil actions until finally they decide it’s not viable anymore and then they depose him with the help / inspiration of the human hero”… This is MoP 2.0, and if it happened one more time it can happen n more times in the future.
Did you see how Saurfang needlessly crushed that wheat plant. He just walked up to it and crushed it.
His aggressive tendencies for destruction that slaughtered Humans in Stormwind and Draenei on Draenor were on full display.