Apparently only horde players are allowed to complain about their faction’s narrative.
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Hey, if Night Elf players are passionately engaged in WoW’s narrative in 6 years, Blizzard probably sees that as a plus.
I see what you’re trying to say here and I think you probably just don’t understand the criticism being leveled. It’s not one of timeframe, it’s one of saturation. We’re hearing about Teldrassil a lot, we hear about Camp Taurajo being “gently raided” rarely and in context.
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Ehhh, highly debatable. People tend to bring it up at the drop of a hat whenever people say anything equivocal to “the Horde is more evil than the Alliance”. Every atrocity is answered with “Yeah, but what about CAMP TAURAJO?” as if the Alliance not having their hands perfectly squeaky clean absolves the Horde of… well, I’m not gonna go down the list.
It was definitely the go-to defense before the War of Thorns, but mention of it petered off because even the people who made frequent use of it realized that Teldrassil outweighed the burning of a camp and the civilians being allowed to flee.
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That would be called context. Even taking your assertion of these hypothetical events as accurate, an example of Alliance aggression and atrocity is a perfectly valid point when establishing the Horde’s motives for attacking the Alliance.
Now for War of Thorns it’s interesting not because of scale, but actually because it establishes WoW’s philosophy regarding collateral damage years before the Alliance started to get angry about all those dead civilians in Ashenvale. If the baker in Camp Taurajo is a legitimate military target, so is Astranaar. Technically so is Teldrassil, though the scale of that inclusion does tend to throw people.
It is unfortunate that Camp T keeps getting mentioned as an atrocity, between it, all those ‘legitimate military targets’ that High Elves fed to sharks in Dalaran, and the Forsaken “legitimate targets” being cut down in Undercity by Worgen, it’s pretty much every atrocity the modern Alliance has ever committed. I keep hoping that Blizzard will be as generous to the Horde as they are to the Alliance and give us more atrocities to get invested in.
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Trust me you don’t want that. Many Night Elf fans including myself got invested into the War of Thorns and thought it was self explanatory that they will eventually strike back and get justice but… nothing ever happened.
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No one said the baker was a legitimate military target, but the baker is not the camp. The camp was a target. It was a place to outfit and resupply soldiers in the expanse of the Southern Barrens, therefore, a target.
The baker was a combatant if he picked up a weapon and tried to fight the soldiers, as compared to the civilians in Astranaar who were seemingly slaughtered like (ironically) cattle on Sylvanas’ orders. We are shown no evidence of those civilians picking up weapons and fighting the encroaching Horde rather than being cut down before they can run.
Having played the H-side Undercity scenario very recently, all the civilians are out by the time the attack inside the walls begins. They suffered no known civilian casualties.
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You literally lost nothing in the War of Thorns or the burning of Teldrassil, and you gained motivation, unambiguous moral righteousness, widespread support for a leader who had previously been kind of unpopular, and more screen time than you’ve had in the past two expansions combined.
I want all of those things and am willing to pay the nothing that you paid to have them. Pick any Horde city, turn it into a phased wreckage that I can still travel to and use, glass it over pointlessly. Then let me build a character story where I can hate the Alliance and feel good about it.
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I mean lore wise we lost 3 zones there. We reclaimed 1 of that answered in the Q&A and the other one is uncertain. We lost pretty much all racial pride because not only did the majority of the Night elves get wiped out, they also couldn’t do anything about it after that, not even in the revenge patch where they achieved absolutely nothing even with the powers of the Night warrior. They didn’t even let us kill the noname undead npc that had death camps running there, instead Tyrande froze him so that the horde PC could save him later. Then 2 patches later everything is forgiven by Anduin because apparently his allies don’t matter to him.
If atleast we achieved something in the revenge patch, then we could start talking, but we did absolutely nothing.
Now there’s peace and the horde gets away completely without any losses and without regrets shown for anything they did in the War of Thorns, how can the horde ever feel good about attacking the alliance again if they don’t like being the evil faction?
Alliance players have wished to finally do something significant to the horde for such a long time now, but Blizz doesn’t want the Alliance to finally land a blow on the horde. Instead it’s all about Horde finding itself stories and blaming everything on the person that flew up into the air and disappeared.
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You’re looking at this the wrong way, because lore wise, you’ve gained lore.
This is not an empire builder, Ashenvale is not territory that you hold, and you’ve not expended a great artist in the Darnassus Acropolis to get a permanent boost to your tourism and religious pressure. YOU, and by YOU, I mean the WE you speak for, have lost nothing. You’ve gained story elements to use in building your character’s story, or to ignore completely if you so choose.
And I too would like to have story elements to add to my character, the ones I’ve gotten this expansion have been kinda… gross.
That’s a personal choice, I don’t control how or why you feel ‘racial pride’ but from my perspective that is a very shallow reading of events. You lost the majority of Night Elves, but still managed to route and turn a much greater army. You can be proud of the Night Elves if you choose too.
You did many things in the revenge patch. But you’re no longer talking about what you’ve lost. You have shifted to discussing what you’d want to be given. That’s cool, you’re definitely entitled to provide feedback about what you as a player want to see in game. But I’m not the guy who’s going to make it happen.
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Tiffin’s son.
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Don’t do this.
No… Anduin did not write any blank check of forgiveness. He made the pragmatic decision to table such matters in favor of the more immediate concern of stopping Sylvannas and making sure the Alliance survived this war.
Now, as to who answers for what… The Alliance is not in any shape to force severe reparations from the Horde. There’s nothing left to enforce an “or else” condition. The other chief architect of the War of Thorns is also dead as well.
Who are you going to punish? And how are you going to back that up?
If you’re are going to argue that Night Elf players need some form of payback for what their player race went through, I would counter that what every Horde player had to endure during this forced train ride more than counters that.
You got cool armor sets and some mounts for your troubles. it’s time to end the Pity Parade.
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No.
At the very least this new Horde Council should have a meeting with Tyrande and talk things face to face. If they don’t formally apologize at the very least they should promise these things won’t happen again.
I dont care what they say to Anduin. They have to say it to the Night Elves.
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horde promises are pretty empty at this point and something like an apology is never going to happen.
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I know but at least it’s something. Right now they are basically washing their hands and acting like nothing happened.
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That’s what the horde always does and it works everytime.
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~https://giphygifs.s3.amazonaws.com/media/ReDLLlU9fDqmI/giphy.gif
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I would be fine with that - if only to break the Alliance out of Blizzard’s somewhat bizarre, imo, views of what constitutes “lawful good”. The height of which was demonstrated by the post-Battle of Dazar’alor Alliance dialogue. The notion that a military commander or leader of a nation engaged in an existential struggle would throw away a military advantage the way Anduin did stretches credulity. Equally the notion that attacking the Zandalaari/the Horde immediately after Rastakhan’s death would make the Alliance morally equivalent to Sylvanas was laughable.
Some bring on the Alliance atrocities. Let’s give Alliance commanders and leaders some more realistic views on how to conduct a war. If the collateral benefit is an improvement to the Horde player experience, so much the better.
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Tabling the matter means that he plans on bringing it up again at some point or not at all. So once they’ve dealt with Sylvanas or the threat what’s his plan? As it stands he wants Tyrande to sign this ridiculous armistice with ABSOLUTELY ZERO Horde acknowledgment of what they’ve done, as if Sylvanas acted alone. The plan with Saurfang may have worked out in the end but but no one else has owned up to their part. So why should Tyrande be so quick to sign this treaty when Anduin hasn’t presented a plan to address Teldrassil at all.
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By that logic, it’s impossible to lose anything because any blow to a faction/race’s identity is a gain and homeostasis isn’t a loss. Guess things can only get continually better! /s
Nelf players lost any sense of racial pride beyond “We want vengeance”. Their race has been picked away, bit by bit, leaving nothing behind that is unique to them aside from Elune worship, and then they decided that many night elves have lost their faith in Elune as well (including her own High Priestess who got special powers?), so that seems to be on its way out as well.
Look at other races as an example. Blood Elves didn’t get their teeth kicked in during WoW, it happened in WC3, and then following that their ability to soldier on after such a catastrophic loss was a point of pride in their story. They turned that loss into their identity. Night elves, contrarily, are getting raised from the dead and going “there is no hope, Elune has abandoned us”.
Orcs also got their racial identity smeared, seeing as how in WC3 up to BC we were shown “Look, orcs were deceived and misunderstood. They’re actually a shamanistic warrior-culture that values honor”, then in WoD they went “HA. Just kidding, orcs have always been eager to murder and spill blood at the drop of a hat, with some minor exceptions. But hey, they live on a savage world so it’s not entirely their fault for having this mindset.” For a lot of orc players, this didn’t feel good because it undid what we’d been told previously. For some, they were glad and saw it as a return to form to what orcs should have been.
Nelf players, however, never wanted to be depicted as an eternal victim. We thought they’d be returning to their WC3 roots of quasi-savagery in Tides of Vengeance, with that Malfurion cutscene paving the way. What we actually got was just more of the same ineptitude.
That’s how people feel investment in the story. The whole premise of “faction pride” (and a great deal of WoW’s success) hinges on this. They attach themselves to characters or groups they enjoy, and seeing them continually beat down in a classic case of the Worf Effect isn’t satisfying for anyone.
You’d have to be completely disconnected from the story to not see why people are upset. A poor analogy, but imagine someone went into your account and deleted your characters. You get upset, to which they respond with, “Why? This hasn’t impacted your real life. These are just digital constructs with no inherent value outside of the game they exist in.” You invested a great deal of time into those, you argue. “But time invested is not intrinsic to value. Your connection to these things is ephemeral, and do not impact your ability to feed or shelter yourself.” etc.
I’m getting rambly, so I’m going to stop there.
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