And, at risk of repeating myself, why? What does it change? The Horde has still done a terrible thing that it needs to make up for.
You and I have very different definitions of fun.
Why, why, and finally, why? What would be the point? Not to mention, the Horde arguing that it isn’t a genocide would make them look even worse than they already are. It’s akin to the turks calling what they did to the armenians a “conflict”. The perpetrator doesn’t get to define it’s actions. It’s defined by a third party.
What is your goal with this? What purpose does it serve? To make the Horde look worse in the eyes of everyone? It would acomplish that, for sure. But not much else.
Only old soldier was good. The other Saurfang cinematic’s, especially with Anduin and all of his rebellion were terrible. Derek as the catalyst and not Teldrassil for the rebellion was terrible. This narrative is so bad.
The thing is, all her “new”, or last books are really trash. War Crimes was a mess. BtS was horrible. I mean, I still don’t get why anyone likes Knaak.
It’s really not. I know it’s subjective, of course. But Golden’s writing has become so bad it’s mind boggling. The way she wrote Sylvanas as a emotional lunatic killing animals, her “woman is insane and need man” nonsense, not understanding what neutral means. I cringe at almost anything in her last books, it’s that bad.
Comparing her writing of the last years and today to other writers at this point would be a disservice to many.
Sadly Blizzard is also responsible for this. That’s why I’m disappointed in Exploring Azeroth and the story in general. This goes in to the next point.
Same goes for me.
I agree with all of your post under this quote too.
It’s quite a shame how lazy their world building has gotten, but it’s like that for many years now.
There are mostly no consequences in the story, no exploring how the people and different races are living. We don’t see their fears, their struggle, or even if times are getting better and things rebuild. Non of it. The world is stagnant, losses are ignored and almost nothing is getting updated in years. It’s jarring.
I also agree with your take on Saurfang’s arch and why his portrayal in the War of Thorns and the rebellion around him is more than only flawed. It’s flat out terrible, for the narrative, the Horde and it’s so confusing anyone would think this was a good idea and can not see all the problems and bad messages they are sending with a story like that.
It really ignores Saurfang involvement in planing this war himself.
While I don’t know if this is directed at me in particular, I will push back on this aspect (from at least my perspective).
If we are given the hypothetical situation where Sylvanas learns the Arbiter is broken and all souls are now flowing to the Maw and Sylvanas decides to go “undercover” with the Jailer in the hopes of thwarting him, she would have a rational argument for her choices. I don’t know whether the hypothetical is actually true - there’s plenty to suggest it isn’t and I doubt Blizzard will pursue this narrative.
However, if it is true, then Sylvanas could reasonably rationalize that the X amount of Night Elves dying in Teldrassil and being obliterated in the Maw are acceptable to save Y amount of the Universe from the same fate (where Y > X, which is basically always true given time). It’s an argument about the ends justifying the means, very much akin to debating whether murdering one innocent is worth saving millions of lives.
In-game, likely almost all Night Elves will, quite reasonably, disagree with her choice. A random stranger from a random other planet likely will agree with Sylvanas. Out-of-game, we can debate whether she had other options, whether she could have involved others, whether the ends do justify the means, and even whether or not murder as a means to any end is ever acceptable.
That scenario gives Sylvanas a motivation that reasonable people could debate regarding the merits. In comparison, the scenario where Sylvanas decides, “Let’s go destroy the Universe because it’s unjust” offers almost no reasonable argument. Sylvanas rationalizing destroying the entire universe because it is unjust is akin to Sargeras believing annihilating all life in the universe was preferable to the Void controlling a Titan. I can grasp the concept that either of them believe that but there’s really little argument to support her belief.
I’d definitely prefer she had a somewhat understandable/relatable narrative, regardless of whether I agree with her choices or not. If that’s hyper-rationalist (X vs Y obliterated souls), extreme coercion (her soul and the souls of those she cares about are being held hostage), or some other option I haven’t thought of, it’s a lot more interesting than simply, “Burn it all to the ground because it’s unjust.”
In fairness, reasonable folks may disagree. Personally, I prefer stories that make me ponder what I would do given extreme circumstances (i.e. the Culling of Stratholme; Arthas burning the boats at Northrend and/or killing the mercenaries; Illidan melting Icecrown; etc) and at least give me an opportunity to consider the points where heroes make choices that might (or might not) make them villains.
Gul’dan being chaotically evil can be fun but I don’t find him as interesting as a character to me. Arthas’ decisions that led to him becoming the Lich King are far more interesting and engaging. Illidan’s decisions that led to him being banished and ultimately the jailer of Sargeras provide for a compelling motivation for crossing lines in morality. Gul’dan’s just a bad guy who does evil things.
I hope that wherever Sylvanas’ story goes it at least offers a compelling narrative closer to Arthas/Illidan and further from Sargeras/Gul’dan. That doesn’t mean I believe genocide is fine, it just offers a more interesting discussion than, “Burn it all down.”
It is true that the word genocide does tend to end an argument (though I’m not sure there is any description of wholesale mass murder of civilians doesn’t). That’s akin to describing someone as racist/sexist/xenophobic/etc. Once the narrative portrays someone in that light, it ends most discussions (in our world). In survey research they refer to these types of words as hot-button terms, they immediately bias the results in a direction. Inside a video game, I’d argue it has a very different context and a lot of conversations that seem to occur avoid that difference.
I like to refer to the Mass Effect trilogy because I’m a fan of it. Inside that universe, a sentient species - the Rachni - threaten the entire galaxy and pose a threat to all life. Genocide - to the point of complete extinction - is portrayed as the only cure because of the nature of the Rachni. Later, the Reapers (a hybrid of synthetic and non-synthetic life) are deemed an existential threat to all life that must be completely destroyed (even to the point of destroying an inhabited colony to slow their assault).
When a fictional universe with multitudes of life is invoked, the concept of genocide takes on an entirely new meaning because the numbers potentially saved grows so dramatically. Because our view of the word outside of the game is based on a single world and much lower stakes, differentiating the context becomes very difficult. It’s partly why I hate the narrative that moves into the cosmological realms because we’ve now created stakes that are so high that reasonable people could rationalize almost any action. Algalon alone mentions wiping out a million-million people (1,000,000,000,000). If burning Teldrassil had prevented those deaths (for whatever reason) the conversation is very different when comparing hypothetically burning Teldrassil (for whatever reason) to potentially stop Yogg-Saron.
I will say this argument does hold some amount of weight with me. Intention does play a role. People will argue that Sylvanas is a liar, her actions were of a genocide because they know she intended to wipe out the Night Elves, and her inner monologue was also just her lying.
If she intended to destroy all Night Elves, I would imagine she would have simultaneously hit all of the Night Elf occupied territories. Or at least push from Teldrassil into other places. Their plan never evolved into that. In fact it relied on Night Elves to be alive and able to petition Anduin.
I hadn’t seen anyone make the comparison between terrorism vs. genocide in this case before, but I think it’s a reasonable one. I’m not sure I agree, I hadn’t read that until now, but it seems a decent enough concept to debate (ignoring the fact that Golden, as narrator, declared it a genocide). With that said, calling the Horde terrorists vs committing genocide really doesn’t sound much better.
Retcons - as you pointed out earlier - don’t magically “undo” an event. If Genn refers to it as a genocide while Anduin expresses doubt it might mitigate some damage. If Golden had never used the word genocide, it might have mitigated some of the damage.
But honestly (and I think you and I disagree on this but I may be wrong) at this point I’m not sure there is a way to undo the moral disparity. Even going forward, if the Horde spent the next decade trying to make reparations and suffering at the hands of the Alliance, it’s done in response to the atrocities committed under our banner.
I don’t think retcons fix this (or even time travel) but I honestly don’t know how to fix it. Even if Sylvanas were deemed to have been saving the universe in her choices, the rest of the Horde is unaware of that and still burning Teldrassil. Heck, Saurfang even thinks it’s the right course of action (so much as it could be) at the time. The narrative has broken the possibility of the Horde being the protagonist and made the Horde PCs into the villains of their own story. It’s pretty disheartening.
Conceptually, sure. The issue lies in the transition. At that point, some folks use a word differently than others, content and context are lost, and discussion usually devolves into talking at/over each other rather than to each other. The distinction between systemic racism, systematic racism, and racial prejudice is nuanced, but folks will throw out the word racist and expect it to mean one (or even all) of those concepts. Some say that the definition of the word racist is one thing, while others say it is another, and the entire topic is lost in the process.
The fact that this is true is what hurts. I love being engaged by stories in general. Now I just try to ignore it and kill raid bosses (and I do enjoy raiding so it’s not like I’m playing a game I hate). It’s just a bit depressing to lose that aspect.
For what it’s worth, I know what you’re getting at. Unfortunately, the exchanges between you and some of the blueposters on this thread show that it’s probably too late for that approach. Some people’s sense of grievance is so hardened that by now, they’re not interested in any solution to the issue that doesn’t involve some form of abasement in-game on the part of the Horde.
People just want to the horde to actually suffer or get their teeth kicked in, just once, for the crimes they keep comitting instead of blizz putting the blame on a single person. It’s honestly not too much to ask for.
I feel the same way. I ended up posting this stupid little rant about the topic of character identity in the lounge the other day, but even if all I do is mostly solo PVE, I STILL enjoy WoW’s core gameplay even after 14 years. It’s just that everything surrounding it got upturned and it’s a huge bummer when you still want some investment but you don’t see any direction forward that’ll fix that.
I get it. I think you’d find a lot of Horde posters in here actually wouldn’t care (as long as our heroes stopped being killed). Please feel free to make the Alliance be portrayed as the evil antagonists - it would definitely be a first (where it wasn’t retconned after).
Just tell me how you could do it, at this point, and not have it seem justified (and actually let the Alliance be evil). An entire expansion where you put the Horde into camps, enslave us, beat us, kill us for sport, make us kill each other for sport, etc? Burn all of our orphanages and/or children? Hunt the Highmountain and mount their heads/antlers on walls? Have Calia decide the Forsaken are unsalvageable as a people and torture/execute them all with the Light? Turn Baine into a steak dinner that all the Alliance leaders dine on together? Have him skinned and turned into a rug under the throne of Stormwind? Make Tauren steaks a regular item on Alliance menus?
Because I have no idea how to implement something even remotely feasible that doesn’t feel “justified” and doesn’t feel like a massive arbitrary shift in the narrative that requires a full suspension of disbelief.
Also, after completing this feat, please don’t go back and rewrite it to have it happen immediately following the Horde burning schools or killing explorers or something. It’s just not funny anymore.
Fair. I think I mentally conflated you with Morghel (the other M-worgen) for a moment. And I also get why people feel that way, and it completely sucks that Blizzard encouraged them to feel that way.
It sucks for sure. No doubt, and I get it that horde players are tired of having their leaders go evil every other expac and than proceed to get killed off.
And this is just me, I just wish blizz did more with the whole Worgen vs Forsaken thing. There is a ton of morally grey escalation tactics blizz could’ve used between those two groups. For me, that’s where I would’ve started the Fourth War conflict, is have the worgen lay siege to Lordaeron, and the war just escalates from there.
Depends on what sort of “Teeth Being Kicked In” you’re referring to I suppose? Because Blizz did punish the Horde. Ruthlessly, Mercilessly, for BfA. And the playerbase, as they continue to shame us for their own writing choices themselves even now. Our Faction Identity, Several Racial Fantasies, and Character Roster in this extremely Hero Driven game are also absolutely in ruins. With little indication so far Blizz intends to rebuild any of it beyond their “easy outs” like Thrall. I’m not even convinced Baine will get any. The fundamental problem is that they just didn’t let the Alliance do it.
Like, I personally don’t mind the Alliance being allowed to just SLAM the Horde. Especially if say, the Lightbound show up to tip the scales dramatically in their favor (leading into something grander with that). However, such an event would require a certain level of Plot-Armor for our character roster (with a focus on development for them) in such a story. I also don’t quite trust Blizz to ever fully commit to “Alliance Aggression” stories either, without a monumental amount of whitewashing (which they frankly don’t need at this point). But such a story cannot JUST be about the Alliance reinforcing their dominance and power-fantasy (no matter how much Alliance players convince themselves thats what the Horde got in BfA). There needs to be something tangible and beneficial for the Horde, and the ONLY thing the Horde has to gain in such a brutal Alliance beat-up-the-Horde story is that aforementioned character development.
Let’s take small steps.
For starters, the night elves will return Azshara (you can keep Bilgewater Harbor). Then, in additions for four, the night elves will militarily occupy the Orgrimmar quarter.
Six years later, Malfurion the Nightmare will die, he will be killed by Tyrande Whisperwind, after which she will become a hermit. In order to preserve the Horde’s population, you will donate a significant chunk of Forsaken land to the Alliance.
And you will get “moral superiority”. You’ve changed! You turned your cheek when you were hit!
Scream. But this is not enough for you.
Personally, and this just me. Blizz could have shown that the alliance in such a scenario isn’t as much a white Knight organization that people like Anduin think it is, and that there people within the alliance with less than noble intentions concerning the horde.
While horde side, they could show that horde does indeed have a lot of good people in it, and they, like everyone else, want a good life for their family and such.
Show that both sides have GOOD and BAD people and it’s not as black and white as certain NPCs/players think it is. But that’s me. And I never advocated for the death of horde heroes.I’m on board for them getting some much needed love.
Oh we’re way past that point. The Alliance has become a faction of nearly flawless people, who are comprised of every conceivable virtue known by man. Born inherently good and pure down to their genetic code. And validating constantly through their “right” Light faith. The Horde is comprised of deeply flawed, prone to evil monsters, who are constantly tricked through their primitive faiths. And who can only possibly prove themselves “not evil” by how convenient and submissive they are to the paragons of morality itself … the races of the Alliance.
Personally, I think they made it to revisit Saurfang’s deathwish and to try to soothe Horde players who were upset about the WoT. I base this on the comment in that Korean interview about how the pre-expansion cinematics would show the good/normal side of the Horde. I also remember some dev saying early in BfA that Horde players could rejoice despite Sylvanas’s villainy because “the heart of the Horde still beats,” or something along those lines—meaning Saurfang. They were presenting him as the lifeline hero that Horde players were supposed to grab onto, to the degree that they never even planned for people not to want to join his rebellion.
I think if the Siege of Lordaeron occurred first it would have gone pretty far to change the narrative of BfA. If it were portrayed as the Alliance decided to attack the Horde, destroy the Forsaken, take Lordaeron, get vengeance for the Worgen, etc. then the entire context of Teldrassil changes. Especially if the invasion of Lordaeron is done with the Night Elves protesting the decision.
Even then, it would likely require some narrative involving assuring the Night Elves of their safety by providing them with a stockpile of Azerite-based weapons that ignited during the battle and burned the tree.
It also would have required rewriting the entire Silithus, Goblin, Dwarf, Azerite fiasco as well as A Good War/Elegy.
But that’s a giant hypothetical - and a missed opportunity - and where we are now doesn’t seem salvageable for the most part.
