Ahn’Qiraj came first. Uldum is the one that shouldn’t have been weirdly similar to AQ. Black Empire is just scaled up AQ with modern graphics.
How do you guys feel about the characters?
I hate how little of a representation horde characters have, it is just weird they are absent. There should be some level of parity, we have a total of 2 horde characters in leveling. They do very little, and feel like blizzard forgot about the horde and were like lets throw them in.
I like the villain, like the fact it didn’t just pop out of no where. It is someone who we had known but I do not like the fact that out of the blue the power level is sky high.
I do not like
- Alleria - she has always bugged me, she went on a vendetta because her home was attacked. Now her home is with the horde but she isn’t just weird to me I know a lot of people disagree. I get some people think this is natural, but it is weird to me. Also do not like the fact she is wielding a cosmic force that is considered chaotic by nature. This power should of gone to a forsaken or orc as historically they were the ones to weild that school of magic.
- Anduin - bro you did nothing wrong you were mind controlled. I do not get it.
- Thrall - elemental issue really it has been a decade already fix this. Blizzard still isn’t clear why, nor have they done anything to fix it.
Drawfs - I am glad they got screen time.
Earthen - they should never of been natural in my opinion. They are just bigger drawfs, this takes away from faction identity and do not like it
Leveling and main story? Zones?
I liked the zones and questing. I feel like blizzard has always done a great job on this.
Secondary quests?
Seemed cool, it would of been better to see some longer quest chain and have epic moments in the end. I remember that quest chain in original wow where you summon a earth giant, or patches. More of those please.
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I feel detached from the story. But that is probably just because the Horde is detached from the plot. Which presumably doesn’t affect you as an Alliance player?
Otherwise, I think it was “decent”? The races presented are decent. Peoples isolated in strange places or struggling to overcome long term decline. Reasonable premises and with a decent presentation, at least for WOW standards. (I’m mean, ever expansion can’t be Legion. And one can’t expect Pulitzer level writing.)
The Anduin development is decent). I think he is just so overused. Alleria and Moria aren’t are a bit formulaic, but otherwise OK.
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I agree, everytime the horde is detached from the story i feel detached, they keep trying to make me care for alliance characters, but if i cared about them i would have played the faction
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I naturally switched to Alliance in Dragonflight, without realizing it’s due to representation.
Playing Alliance, currently, feels more immersive due to, again, amount of representation of the faction.
The same can be applied to TWW.
I would like to play Horde for the uniqueness of their culture and unity, but the essence of it fades away with every following expansion.
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Been pretty solid.
The main story could’ve done with a bit more diversity as I really don’t find Anduin or Alleria terribly interesting but the Dwarves certainly carried it for the first half. And Xalatath’s a fun enough villain that I was looking forward to her turning up to vamp on screen for the rest of it.
The side quests have been some of the best I’ve seen in awhile. They really flesh out the cultures we’re encountering and have the nifty addition of making your class and race factor into some quests like with undead / velves getting a unique version of that introductory Arathi one.
And the factions themselves are all pretty cool. I still think I’d prefer the Earthern if they were more Dwarfy and likewise the Arathi if they were more xenophobic and alien. But the Nerubians hit the sweet spot between doing weird stuff like communicating with pheromone but also being mundane enough to have flea markets and group therapy clinics.
So far this has been pretty good imo. Could use more Horde characters in roles beyond cameos but Gazlowe’s getting a new model soon so hopefully that’ll be addressed. Who doesn’t like Goblins?
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The thing is though, even back in vanilla it is implied that Ahn’Qiraj was once a Titan facility. Given that C’thun was imprisoned there.
So the question was, did the Qiraji themselves give Ahn’Qiraj the Egyptian look or was it something they simply appropriated. Like how the Scourge did with the Nerubians.
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It was a titan research station that the aqir , who would later become the Qiraji, took over.
It’s been speculated that the qiraji rebuilt much of the facility in the style of the black empire, but never maintained their structures for whatever reason
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Not saying you are wrong, but isn’t there fairly recent lore, can’t remember if it was DF or TWW that has Odin ordering the claiming of virtually all structures on Azeroth to have been created by the Titans?
IIRC he ordered that everything that wasn’t Titan be rebranded as Titan in origin.
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I really liked that scene in Azj’kahet where Xal just tosses the bow right out of Alleria’s hands with an exasperated sigh. I just truly felt that - “ugh” - from her after having to spend two zones listening to Alleria’s b.s. .
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None of the Horde races had a vested interest in Kaz Algar, whereas the dwarves arguably do. The only Horde affiliate that could sort of make sense would be the Reliquiary, though it looks like Blizzard didn’t want to do a “Kaz Algar Expedition” as a sequel to Dragonflight’s “Dragonscale Expedition”. Not to mention that the Explorer’s League was restricted only to Delves, so it’s not like you’d have anyone from there also taking part in the main story. There’s also Anduin being part of this because I guess the writers realized they forgot about him through all of Dragonflight (even if what we saw in TWW would have made a LOT more sense in the expansion directly after Shadowlands).
I mean, looking at the active non-native characters, we have Anduin, Alleria, Moira, Dagran jr, and Magni. That’s four established characters and a new one we don’t know much of. Of which:
- Alleria is a non-character since she only shows up when the story needs her to and then runs off.
- Anduin vanishes until Hallowfall, which arguably could have all happened without him. They wasted story beats on him.
- Dagran is a brand new character who I guess could become the designated scholar character…assuming he doesn’t fall under the Metzen curse descendant characters suffer from and ends up getting killed before the end of the expansion.
- Magni was basically a punching bag.
- Moira showed off her diplomacy skills but backed off once the story focused on anything other than the Earthen.
With that in mind, who would you replace?
- Rokhan or Lor’themar Theron would make poor punching bags, so we can’t replace Magni with either of them.
- Another diplomat character (Baine or Calia) wouldn’t have been as convincing in Moira’s place because from my place as a viewer/player, the only reasons the earthen listened to Moira so quickly was partly because of Magni being a Thraegar, partly because she was similar enough to them that she could quickly earn their trust.
- I don’t think you’d want to inflict upon any Horde character the non-character status that was given to Alleria this expansion.
- Replacing Andiun, funnily enough, could work. Liadrin or perhaps Calia (playing on her light undead thing) may have given us something to chew on.
It takes more than saying “I wish X faction characters were represented”. To help put things into perspective, if the campaign had been set in Zandalar (had they not wasted that setting in BFA), I wouldn’t complain about being surrounded by Horde characters leading the story because it’d make sense for that setting.
They found a way to add human and elf’s in. They could have done a number of things differently to include human races. I’ll give you some easy examples.
Forsaken are were known to use the void or shadows. Surely they could of played a role, same with the orcs
Taruens literally worship the earth mother, we are going inside the earth.
That being said the setting and the races were decided by blizzard. They chose to online stuff for drawfs and humans/elfs. They wrote the settings, hand picked the characters. It is inexcusable in my opinion to have an entire faction be absent. Even in the most horde leaning expansions alliance has always existed they had their own characters and own stories. You can say this is the 3 expansions where one entire faction is mostly ignored its races and characters.
You might not but others will. See this happened in cata with Thrall and there were other alliances characters who just as much screen time like malfurion. But for the last decade and half we were constantly reminded of this happening.
Ever since we haven’t from another horde characters, since than we worked under alliance leaders in legion, SL and now. While my factions characters an absent or sit around like idiots in SL.
Also the setting is whatever blizzard decides, even when they had a setting for horde to be a part of they weren’t included.
Legion orcs had a history with Kiljaden, Guldain and the legion but they were the only race absent for a large role. They lost their world culture due to the legion. Even if they didn’t you would think one the 2 major Azeroth power would have a role.
SL orcs worshipped their ancestors and should have been spirit guides in the shadowland instead of dk. As orcish shamans actually talk to their dead same with Taurens spirit walkers. Again they were ignored.
DF we fought dragon who use the elements, where were the shamans?
Now a void themed expansion and the 2 races in the horde which were the original users of the void are ignored and we have void elf’s and Alleria.
Also want to add WOD both faction had their own leader, and kadghar was the natural to lead both. It would have made a lot more sense to have a OG horde character like rexxar or Etric who remember Dranor and the world because they well lived there. Just another example
Writers also seem to have forgot about thrall and his elemental issues for a decade now. Atleast they got Anduin to use the light after 1 expansion. Or Voljin for that matter, or
Samuro who has yet to make his appearance in wow. Guys been every Warcraft offshoot and was in wc3.
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Me.
They’re unobtrusive american-like filler for the alliance playerbase to digest.
Which is just another way of saying that Blizzard wrote the expansion based on only the Alliance.
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Its kind of a self fulfilling line of thought, blizzard writes a zone that only the alliance will be interested in, and thus whenever anyone complains about a lack of horde presence, others just say But there is no reason to have them in this story. Blizzards literal job is to write stories that include both halves of their playerbase, not just lazily slap half the playerbase in cause they feel they can just only write alliance stories,
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And it never applies to the alliance.
They had nothing to do with the shadowlands and yet the alliance were the only ones that mattered.
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People who don’t like the real life stereotypes goblins play into.
This is an over-simplification. The only “humans” and “elfs” that were inserted were Alleria and Anduin. You’re talking as if a group of Alliance elves and humans somehow got involved, when that is not the case. Let’s also not forget that Alleria’s connection to the story is a bit hokey because it was all about revenge on Xalatath, whereas what was done with Anduin would have made more sense if it had been a small set of quests during the tail end of Dragonflight. Not stellar places for Horde characters to be inserted into.
The forsaken are victims of arrested development because they’re either edgy, bitter, “crazy”, all about their struggle, or all of the above. There’s a reason the only notable NPC from that lot is Lillian Voss, and even she took a while to break away from the pigeonholing that mars the forsaken. IMO, that is something that needs addressing before we start trying to use someone other than Lillian as serious characters in a story.
More to the point:
- The forsaken don’t have an NPC that’s an authority in shadow magic, to my knowledge
- Said NPC would need a reason to be in Dalaran when it was attacked
- Said NPC would need to draw Xal’atath’s attention
- Said NPC would need to have it in their character to want to hunt down Xal, which as I mentioned would essentially make them a non-character in this story just like Alleria was
Worshiping the earth mother is not the same thing as wanting to go spelunking or underground. I’ll grant you the Highmountain Tauren might sort of work here if it included the gym bros since those guys were all about going underground. That leaves figuring out who should be volunteered for this and who they would be replacing in the current main cast.
That just tells me they care about surface-level representation instead of looking at the actual story or setting.
This is a terrible example because Cata is not a “horde story”. Cata was about the breaking of the world with side-stories about the elementals (even if the Neptulon raid was dropped). Thrall being world shaman has several issues, but there’s a reason he left the Horde and became a neutral NPC. Malfurion was also neutral, in case you forgot.
The only Alliance leader that had any type of action for both sides during Legion was Velen with the Argus campaign. Which, given the set up and the story involved, made sense.
As for others, Malfurion was neutral, prince whatshisname in Aszuna was neutral, the highmountain tauren were neutral, Stormheim had faction storylines, and Thalysra was neutral. Khadgar and Illidan were also neutral.
I think I see where you’re coming from with this, but entry into the shadowlands was entirely a DK thing (because of Mograine and the helm). Also, I don’t think orcs would want any part of the proverbial “urination on the concept of the afterlife” Shadowlands perpetrated.
From the looks of it, on the side of the primalists. I’ve never seen so many shaman before, which was jarring when the primalists had shaman of every race (including freaking night elves).
That would have required replacing Thrall with either Rexxar or Eitrigg. Good luck convincing Metzen to write out Thrall in favor of either of them. That said, you are right that one of the oldheads would have been helped. The Draenei live pretty long lives, so Maraad made sense on Alliance and I’d say Eitrigg should have gone along with his son, even if it was as a guide.
Thrall’s thing looks like a permanent nerf, which I welcome because it at least brought some change to the character. I’ve said it before, but this expansion gave us a taste of Thrall as a mentor/teacher character, which to me is the right move because it moves him to a spot where he’s no longer the Horde protagonist and gives room for someone else to rise up.
Here’s the thing about Anduin: love or hate him, his absence creates a notable gap in the Alliance because the freaking king of Stormwind decided to go on a walkabout. That’s something that should have been dealt with during Dragonflight because trauma is believable when it is still fresh. Waiting until TWW implies Anduin laid on his bed and cried for the number of years that passed from the end of Shadowlands to TWW, and that’s a detriment to his character.
More to the point, Anduin leaving like he did would be like the Desolate Council deciding to take a group vacation while leaving the roach seller from Undercity in charge. That’s going to leave a gap.
Son.
He’s talking about Hallowfall.
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The Arathi as they are have plenty of issues (they shouldn’t be called Arathi, for one), but that has nothing to do with the topic at hand because they’re not part of this “alliance races get used more” discussion. Bunching them with the Alliance is nonsensical because of how they’ve been presented and used so far.