You can discuss the lore without segregating players into fictional teams.
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The choices are reality. People pick them before they play (other than the pandas who might never pick a faction). Usually, playing initiates a faction choice. Posting Avatars have a color depending on what the poster chooses.
There are selections involved.
That is not to say they are determinative , but they can color an opinion.
I do think they have often not been good and some have even not tried. Maybe Afrisabi was the root cause. We will see. The quests at the end give some hope. But we have been burned before.
No.
They donât like Night Elves.
And Night Elves donât like them.
[quote="Pellex-hyjal, post:167,
To be fair, we havenât heard anything that suggests Afrasiabi knew he was on the way out when he came up with the idea. Maybe he genuinely thought it was brilliant.
[/quote]
Well, the same sources also said he was motivated by want big headlines for the expansion.
But yes, You have to be aware of Hanlonâs razor. â Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.â
There are âmemesâ that get pushed. Those are what they are. And referring to concepts and arguments is always fair game. But even then it is often incorrect to hold one person responsible for what another said about it. Even if they agree in the most part.
Tyrande treated them like cannon fodder, talked to them as if they were trash while Lisadrin empathised with what they were going through.
The Nightbourne are Highborne. Their only experience of the Kaldorei was that to them they were lowborne peasants whom they never wanted to get along with, and their leader was not interested in any sincere effort at making relations, making it clear that old grudges were very much alive.
Like, seriously, they had reason to care?
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That certainly happens here. I just donât believe the terms âAlliance playersâ and âHorde playersâ are purely destructive or even valueless. Sometimes itâs the only viable-length phrase to refer to groups of people who absolutely do exist IRL.
Little by little itâs mattering less and less. Theyâre continuing to open cross faction grouping to new options and the latest rumor mill is suggesting that tagging mobs will no longer make them gray to the opposing faction.
Before long Iâm wondering if weâll be seeing the language barriers be taken town, allowance of players to heal, buff, or raise the opposing side, etc.
I guess weâll see.
Itâs kind of awkward, really. After finishing the Secrets of the First Ones storyline, Horde players talk to Genn Greymane who clearly is dissatisfied with Sylvanasâ fate and wants the Horde player to face justice as well.
Iâm guessing heâll just have to swallow it and move on then? 
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Or⊠or hear me out.
The story actually addresses why Horde characters and players were ok with killing defenseless civilians in significant numbers and addressing those concerns with their victims so that we may swallow the issue and move on.
Alliance characters have swallowed this three times now. I think its time for another remedy.
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Heâs being offered the return of Gilneas for doing so.
That seems to be the way of things. In another example, playing as a Zandalari in the starting quests of Shadowlands, and working to help Jaina Proudmoore, who spearheaded the attack that killed your former king, whom your current queen swore vengeance against.
Realistically, Talanji will never receive vengeance against Blizzardâs favored blonde savior. 
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Can you get it through your head that most Horde players were NOT ok with the storyline? We all got hit by the horrible story in different ways, but for some reason a lot of people seem to think we canât move on without continuing to wipe the faces of players who preferred the Horde in the mess the writers made for some reason?
And thatâs a problem too.
But how many times have the Horde characters had to swallow gratuitous villainization for a story nobody wanted and getting ignored while the other faction does cosmic stuff heroically? I think itâs time for a new story from that too.
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We canât definitely say not every single Horde player was not ok. But that isnât the question that needs to be addressed. The story put the Horde players and characters into that position and the story has to pull them out of it.
Otherwise, that label would be a permanent fixture on horde players and characters in perpetuity.
Imagine a quest to save some baby dragon eggs that the Horde NPCs are telling you to save as a Horde player.
Where were these Horde characters asking you to save anyoneâs babies when in an earlier expansion they forced the player to sit through baby BBQ?
The story needs to to repair the damage they have done. its that simple.
Letâs take a page from the Alliance storytelling book.
We go back to Teldrassil and find a crispy old god corpse, TADA! The act is virtuous retroactively, no problems anymore.
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Is this supposed to be some lame false equivalency of Stormheim?
Lol alright if you enjoy the game unironically making the Horde play the Third Reich role in the story with zero story to distance them from their most horrific actions then enjoy the label I guess.
From an alliance pov their characters are Lawful Good that borders on Lunacy the Horde is what? third time fascist mass killers? Yey⊠so great 
I donât think thats a good path to go down but you do you boo.
I am continuously puzzled how a fictional character disavowing mistakes and personal failures is a source of shame for the players themselves.
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Of Stormheim, of Varianâs declaration of war, of the Purge, of Taurajo, of the Stonespire Tribe, of every single time theyâve made up a reason for why an alliance atrocity was ok after the fact.
I just think this is a two faction game first and foremost and you canât turn a non villain faction into an extremely ugly villain faction overnight and expect the people who didnât sign up for that to have to put up with the repercussions of that decision they didnât make.
Alliance does need to get away from Lawful stupid, and I wouldnât mind a story where they struck against the horde, just not a story where the horde keeps getting told they are evil in their own story. Let the Alliance attack, and let it be war.
Donât pull a Dazarâalor situation where they did a half unreliable narrator. Let either sideâs story be just as likely as the other. I donât think you would have lost much having the negotiation with Rastakhan being before the players arrive so they get a second hand and biased telling of what happened instead of the truth.
But the horde story has been screwing over the horde in a lot of ways since Cata (since it only seems to really involve us when we need to do bad things) that not many people want to do. Some sort of âAnd now we need to punish you for the stuff with did to harm your story in the first placeâ storyline isnât gonna help that.
I mean, Iâm continuously amazed at the way all the victories the alliance achieves in game are treated as defeats and the writing team hating that faction.
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Or those above the mental age of six recognize that there comes a time where you just either move on or quit the game.
What happened with BFA is not fixable. Itâs certainly not fixable by putting Horde players through a Humiliation Conga by having Horde NPCâs being put on a continual guilt trip.
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Some of those arenât atrocities, it was just military action based past events. And the story didnât treat the Taurajo civilians that go killed as a good thing. It was just tragedy of war and collateral damage.
The Stonespire tribe is treated as a crime for the Horde player and the Alliance player never knows about it because they donât get to quest there. But the Horde player is capable of going to the dwarf settlement and killing the people responsible. I think in Cata the whole base is blown upâŠ
Very true but that is the mistake Blizzard did. Several times now they have made the Horde very, very ugly villains.
We donât even have the excuse that every Horde leader that allowed it to happen got either killed or imprisoned so we have a whole new cast of fresh faces who are brave and blameless.
Nope. Its the same damn people that allowed Garrosh to happen also let Sylvanas happen. So⊠the only solution is for these characters admit their fault in very careful and cinematic moments similar to Saurfangs though probably with in-game models to mend the fences and close the rifts that have opened.
There is no possible retaliation against the Horde that Alliance can do to make things equalized. And that just punishes Horde players by taking things away for no reason⊠unless we are talking about Ashenvale and Gilneas. But thats it.
Horde characters whether they were faction leaders or lowly soldiers trying to address past crimes is not a punishment. Would you prefer they praise you for it as a hero for participating in âThe Fourth Warâ and âWar of Thornsâ?
Its interesting you think these two are at all comparable or synonymous with each other.
It absolutely is fixable and faction leaders or soldiers talking about BFA is not a punishment. Thatâs like saying a nation apologizing for actions of the past is punishment for the current citizens. What kind of far right ultra nationalistic mentality is that??
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Not until Golden got her hands on it, I think the original handling was some of the best sort of morally grey they did. Until they retconned the hell out of it and Baineâs there explaining why the alliance was right.
Or through just moving on. Weâve had a time skip, no one got conquered, I mean hell in the real world the USâs occupation of Germany after WW2 only lasted a little longer than the time skip (which is really overselling 5 years in my opinion) things continue on and the world advances. We donât need to keep repeating this over and over in the story.
Nope, and thereâs no forcing of contrition on the Horde that will make up for the years of being shelved unless theyâre needed to be a villain.
Iâd prefer weâd just move one from it. Itâs be argued to death and itâs made the fanbase more toxic than it was before.
Why?
The War of Thorns on Horde went so over the top in shame that it felt directed at me as player. It was blatant.
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