And I’d almost forgotten why I had such a visceral joy reaction to seeing it in ruin when I first returned to Hillsbrad in Legion.
Then I played Classic and remembered why. Southshore got off easy. I would’ve recommended raising the populace into undeath then chaining them to anvils and kicking them off a boat.
Seriously just;
And this is why it was the best zone. Ever.
I loved travelling to it as we pass by Stromgarde, the orc pens, dwarf holds and a little piece of Lordaeron before we run to Shadowfang Keep or Scarlet Monastery.
It was like a little crash course of Warcraft history before a fun dungeon.
Sometimes on the way we see a horde or two and we slaughter them on our way there.
God that zone was so much fun.
It was all I used to love about Warcraft.
Then why did I get quests from Alliance to take them out too?
Something about going too far and needed stopping I think.
I mean yeah my usual interaction with Alliance in WPvP is they’re harmless unless they have a gigantic numerical and or level advantage so, sure it was fun for you. I’m glad it’s melted.
Sad Alliance noises.
Well it served its purpose, now everyone flies and teleports. The world is somehow smaller now than it used to be back in the day.
And yeah. Wpvp was fun when I had numerical advantage.
Honestly I get nothing from a curb stomp, and have a real distaste for guilds on either side that roam around in raid groups.
Before WM mode that was just unsportsmanlike. But now it’s actively killing the WPvP. Because most people are just going to turn it off instead of trying to fight.
Honestly even when we get to Azeroth I doubt they’ll be much fun in trying to take over an enemy town. People will just bolt for the inn and WM off, even if you’re merely offering a challenging and not completely one sided fight.
Now that I think about it, I wonder how much places like Hillsbrad solidified my interest in primarily leveling through dungeons back then. I remember originally quitting on the place and trying to mob-grind in the barrens more because I had someone specifically stalking and camping me over a period of a couple of days because I had the gall to fight back when he tried to solo gank me next to two friends who were still introducing me to WoW.
I would have preferred Blizzard went with the original design of wiping the place out with a tsunami, though.
Well since Alliance is like 30-70 Horde you wouldn’t catch me dead with WM on but I did cheer for those roaming Alliance pvp raids fighting against a numerically superior enemy.
Everyone loves an underdog story.
Not the Horde’s fault yall need to be literally bribed to wave that flag ya’ll seem to like so much.
Also that’s not how it works. In BFA it was a curb stomp 7 out of 10 times. In the Alliance’s favor when they offered them really great rewards, and the Horde everytime else.
I’d know. Because I only notice I forgot to turn WM back on when the world’s suddenly populated. And I rarely pick fights, on this toon at least. It’s just fun to have the risk of a fight breaking out any second that breaks up the monotony of dailies.
Also it makes working with the Alliance actually an accomplishment. Because I think daily I’ll be accidentally targeted or accidentally target someone and you just /wave and /sorry and go back to your business.
People working together when they’re actually incapable of attacking eachother isn’t interesting.
I tried to play with Warmode on but most of my playtime I was corpse running because I was outnumbered 50 to 1 and it was Alliance hunting season all week.
There is no advantage to playing Alliance besides if you like their aesthetic. You pretty much lose out on all the benefits of having a wider pool of players in Horde.
And I never used the 30% buff because it just wasn’t worth it since you needed to stay alive to take advantage of it.
Sounds like a server problem. Which isn’t actually uncommon. ED’s pretty balanced though and I’m friendly with most of the Alliance RPPVP guilds, sometimes even ICly, so it’s not too bad.
Personally I blame the Maw too. If you don’t care for that content, and I’ve not met one person who’s more positive than indifferent about it, why make it harder with WM on? You’re just trying to get your souls and get out.
And the portals in Oribos are out of the way enough that you won’t want to go back to your Capitol unless you need to. I think WM should at least be as easy to turn on as it is to turn off. I don’t see why not.
Had a similar experience but I’ve a fairly competitive streak. So I wrote down the names like Arya Stark, rolled a Rogue, and eventually got sweet, sweet revenge.
I really have to get my current Rogue back up. So many fond memories of lounging in SW, stalking people who wandered away from the ever crowded trade district with their flag up.
I’m the opposite and would go out of my way to help the opposite faction if I could. I remember running across a gnome warrior in Terokkar Forest that I followed around for half an hour and polymorphing her so that she didn’t have to sit down and use up food to heal. And my server’s alliance population was so low at the time that I actually camped out in a room in Stormwind to help with the pre-Cata elemental invasions back then.
It was funny to see the occasional confused alliance player take a whack at me, only for a handful of other ones to start typing in unintelligible Common to make the person leave me alone.
I don’t mind helping the Alliance or at least ignoring them. Yesterday I rescued some poor Nelf Druid who’d bitten off more than he could chew with an elite, and gave him a /pet before going on my way.
I’m also the type who will stalk you if you kill me while I was on an escort quest or was about to beat a world boss.
Oddly enough 8.3 probably had the best WPVP I’ve ever played since returning to Legion. You had honorable players who wouldn’t attack you while you were seconds from downing a rare, and those that weren’t who’d make the ish list. And for some real naughty sobs we’d use the sliver of N’Zoth to gang up on them.
Which is completely stupid and I fully agree with that as someone who mainly plays Alliance. Although personally I am not really a fan of assigning a certain type of morality to factions or groups, and I am more in favor of having characters act the way they do because of their history, their personality and how they got shaped by certain events and moments.
In the end both factions should feel like what they are doing is the right thing to do, even though the opposing side might not agree with this. Again I think Stormheim on its own did it quite well: As an Alliance player you were essentially on a witch hunt, while the Horde defended against unprovoked aggression.
It became even worse later on, when they retconned it in the Chronicles that Sylvanas always wanted to strike at Gilneas. Like…that went against everything established up to that point.
What? A paladin in Southshore even gave you a quest to go to the Scarlet Monastery and slaughter the Scarlets and its leadership (although the entire questline is more about, “Ey yo Alliance players there’s a cool dungeon in Tirisfal. Go check it out!”). And in the Western Plaguelands you could find an SI:7 agent who worked against the Scarlets. (Details are muddy it’s was quite some time ago.)
But, overall the Alliance never really cared about the Scarlet Crusade. They maintained some diplomatic relationships (as seen by Crowley in the Cathedral or the other Scarlet priest in Desolace) but that’s about it. And why fight against them? They served as a good buffer against the Scourge, the Forsaken etc.
(Side note: Outside of that I personally feel that both factions are far too clean anyway, the Alliance obviously more than the Horde. Might also be because I’m watching Attack on Titan right now, where good and evil no longer really exist and everything is just gray.)
That was apparently part of their long plan to make Sylvanas the sort of villain who couldn’t enjoy eggs at breakfast unless she could make the mother hen watch.
Like there’s no reason for the Forsaken to want Gilneas. They’ve got spooky forests for days, none of their existing territory is land locked, and there’s not even a mcguffin miracle resource there or anything else special they’d want. Wanting the Scythe of Elune to have a spare werewolf army is dumb, but at least it’s a motive I can understand. I imagine a werewolf army is a bit like buying a tuxedo. You’ll seek out opportunities to justify the purchase.
But just Gilneas? Why?
It’s the sort of war an aggro lunatic like Garrosh would start because he kinda seems to want the Forsaken dead anyway so, this way he gets an extra city if they win and one less subversive element to worry about if they don’t. Win win for him. Pyrrhic victory or extinction for the Forsaken and by extension Sylvanas at absolute best.
I figure the answer is just that Blizzard wanted a cheap Bowser figure to point the new “darker” race at for their first faction war expansion and if you work backwards from the premise of Sylvanas just being bad then you can backfill in any explanation en route to their last-minute zombies VS werewolves idea.
Which was the original reason btw. It was Garrosh wanting the Forsaken dead, but wanting use their deaths to distract from his real prize of Kalimdor. That was the original reason the Forsaken were thrown at Gilneas. They had no reason to want it themselves. Though, Southern SP and Hillsbrad did have some mechanical reasons to give them those (still have no idea why the BEs and Forsaken never tried to take the Plaguelands though. If nothing else, for national defense reasons. Hell, even the Hinterlands (with Aerie Peak being used as a funnel for Human resettlement) would be a more understandable target to hit than Gilneas … to close that border issue.
In the Hinterlands the Forsaken seem content to help out the Revantusk while they research the local spiders and goo monsters.
You do take Jintha’Alor by the end of the questline. So, if that ever gets updated hopefully we’ll see a thriving forest troll community stretching from the pyramid down to the current beach base.
As for the EPL it seems both the Forsaken and Sin’Dorei have good enough relations with the Argents as to not want to bother them.
Keep in mind the EPL is still so severely cursed that buildings there begin to wither without constant maintenance. Seems like it’d be a massive drain on manpower and money to try to establish a foothold. It’s also still very much teeming with feral undead and Scourge remnants. It’s an extremely hostile environment that desperately wants you dead.
I imagine the Forsaken could make it work there better than most. But it still seems like it’d be a long time until you could make the place benefit you.
God Jintha’Alor. That is single handedly one of the most underappreciated cities in this game. That terraced look is a classic, and quite functional. Personally, since Aerie Peak is a thematic (and functional) peeve of mine … I would love to help the Forest Trolls under the Revantusk take and secure the Highlands. Then give them the once Scarlet Enclave to reunite their southern borders with their Northern ones (Zul’Aman and Zul’Mashar). It would give them a sizable, stable, defendable strip of land to rebuilt with. And would bolster the natural defenses of the Frostwolf, Forsaken, and BE territories.
As for the Argents. Look, they bother me solely because while they as an organization are neutral … their operations in the Plaguelands are not. They are not healing and purifying those lands for the sake of it, but with the express purposes of Living Human resettlement. That is still the case. They aren’t doing it for the local FTs, BEs, or Forsaken. But rather, to one day … passively push them out.