When the Horde is being lead by evil, betraying it is the right thing to do.
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It was a betrayal of Sylvanas, not the Horde. The difference between them is now very obvious.
Pay attention to the names of those soldiers on that quest. They’re also allowed to live if they surrender.
No it isn’t.
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Except the point is then made later in 8.2.5, a point I agree with, that they are still Horde.
So yes the path IS the problem. Not to you. Fine.
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Notice that that comes after they have chosen the Horde over Sylvanas, too? Like Baine did?
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Nothing says Horde loyalist by sending pieces of yourself to the Alliance, calling for negotiations during a war whem things start to turn slightly out of favor, and now looking like to be in SW permanently for this patch on PTR.
I feel bad for Horde that the Alliance cant kill him.
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Eh, he’s the Alliance’s problem now.
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Wonderful gatekeeping going on here.
Who is Trivel?
He’s the Thrall of the Tauren, he may look bovine on the outside but he’s secretly being piloted by a tiny human.
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Posting in a legendary alternate thread.
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I was here!
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Back on topic: Baine.
I think Baine is a problematic character not because he doesn’t hate the Alliance, but because he is so often depicted as wishy washy, and uncomfortable with being Horde.
Keep in mind that he is first introduced to the story, way back in WC3, as a victim who needs saving. And that is, in effect, his main purpose in BfA, as well. That doesn’t make him a bad person, but it does make him hard to admire, especially in a heroic narrative like WoW. This contributes to the perception of him being just sort of a sad sack loser, which was really hammered home at the end of the Dazar’Alor raid. From a Horde perspective, you’ve just had the Alliance raid your city, kill the king, and get away with it, and the first words out of this guy’s mouth are about surrender. Ugh.
Secondly, he really is shown as having more meaningful Alliance ties than Horde ones, aside from his father. In the novels, for example, his emotional interactions are primarily with Jaina and, especially, Anduin. It is the Alliance, rather than the Horde, that help him retake Thunderbluff. He warns the Alliance about the upcoming Horde attack on Theramore. And his trigger to finally rebel, in BfA, is specifically a threat against Jaina.
So seeing him in Stormwind is part of a larger context. It’s like Blizzard wants us to see Baine as not really Horde. That’s why when a character like Lor’themar declares that Baine represents “all that is best about the Horde” it comes off as insulting. Because Baine is essentially always coded as an Alliance character at heart.
The obvious contrast with Baine is Cairne. Cairne was not in favour of conflict with the Alliance, either, but he was always depicted as Horde through and through.
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That’s been my problem with Baine too. Given what is known about his personality, all of his actions make sense in a vacuum. The problem is that, at least for me, I don’t see him ever DO anything unless it’s against some aspect of the horde. That’s part of the larger problem of the horde being written as the villains twice and causing in-fighting, but it still all builds up to make him look like a character who doesn’t want to be horde. Sometimes I even have to struggle to remember he even has an assigned class to him, because I think of him more as a boss level civilian.
I had to skim through his Gamepedia article just now and apparently you fight alongside him a little bit in the Highmountain allied race scenario, which I had forgotten about. But then the next time you’re with him, it’s to clean out a forsaken boat to rescue Derek. While it was nice to actually do something good in the war campaign questline for once, the fact that Baine’s involved just dragged down the entire mood. It didn’t help that I had put off the campaign questline a bit, so I was doing this literally minutes after fighting Jaina in LFR.
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To be honest I want to start waving the blue flag myself but still be a Blood Elf Paladin.
The Horde I experienced as a kid playing Warcraft 3 and on my parent’s WoW accounts has been incredibly disrespected over the years but has really gone over the edge in BFA. The Horde doesn’t feel heroic in its own way to me now. Nothing to feel proud about.
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Hey cool, the mods let us keep the thread and just nuked the troublesome posts.
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Ideally we’d have three factions:
Alliance
- Human
- Dwarf
- Gnome
- Draenei
Horde
- Orc
- Tauren
- Troll
- Forsaken
- Goblin
- Vulpera
Elves
Think that would be great. Alliance would be classic human-centric fantasy. Horde the noble savage trope. Elves would be all sorts of dicks.
Perfect.
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It really irks me when people bring this up out of context. Baine’s comment about negotiating is in response to Nathanos reporting that the Alliance is on the cusp of victory. To call that “slightly out of favor” is a bit disingenuous, isn’t it?
Just like this whole thread’s premise, really. Someone characterised as a diplomat is doing diplomatic things. Why isn’t he frothing at the mouth? The horror!
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Going to quote myself from another thread, and note that this latest development just makes the issue worse and worse:
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He’s intended to be received at the embassy. I guess that small room can’t accomodate our Tauren sizes, so our Chieftain was passed over to the keep
Perhaps they are priming and foreshadowing a moment when Baine does defect to the Alliance in a future expansion. I could see that being a shocking “wow!” story point which is usually what Blizzard really aims for.
From the sarcastic way Baine says “For the Horde” at the Battle for Lordaeron, to his blood thirsty cold-blooded, unprovked rampage murdering several Horde members to rescue an Alliance character, to now this it is clear that Baine has never really seen himself as a member of the Horde. He probably resents Cairne’s decision to join the Horde in the first place.
Most important of all, we managed to make it through BfA without a Warchief Baine moment so all in all I would call that a win. Friends don’t let friends declare Baine the Warchief!
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