Warning: this is probably going to ramble. A lot.
I just finished listening to a video on the Winter War - a short war in 1939 where the Soviet Union decided they wanted a lice of Finland to make their own borders more secure and Finland told them to gtfo. The war ended in 3 months, with the USSR winning everything it set out for originally and then some - and yet the story left me feeling really proud of the Finns for their sheer tenacity, skill, and general badassery of what they managed to accomplish in that time.
And then, as I glanced over at the forums again, I wondered - just what was it that made me feel so proud of them and yet so disgusted with the War of Thorns, despite Blizz clearly trying to frame the War as a similar epic resistance?
As many people in this forum have pointed out, defeat stories can be epic, they can galvanize people to action, they can be the setup to a dramatically fulfilling resurgence story⊠so why does this specific story not hit those points for so many players? (I have no numbers and I wonât pretend to, but my experience on both Horde and Alliance characters is seeing only negative comments or âlol dead allianceâ vs maybe 5 people in total who actually like the story.)
As I thought about it, I came up with a few potential explanations, and Iâm curious to see what this forum thinks about it, too.
- The key themes of the Alliance presentation were depression and suffering - not tenacity, not revenge. It was all about being passive, not active.
We were told the night elves got a great KDR against the Horde - in a short statement sandwiched between great long paragraphs of just how terrible everyone felt, how sorrowful they were that âtoo manyâ of their people had died, between multiple (PoV or non-PoV) descriptions of the Hordeâs actions as genocide and how effective they had been at wiping so many night elves out. Sure, you can point to that one line and say âthey did wel for themselves in that fightâ, but the narrative sets the tone of depressive reflection on what was lost. - The night elf story abruptly cut out there, on that tone, for a whole patch.
âYou the night elf player a victim of what your faction leader considers genocide. Go sit in the corner and stew on that for a whole patch while we do other stuff.â Boy, thatâs a healthy mindspace to be left in for a long time. The night elf story set the theme of gloom and depression - and left it that way until the Darkshore patch abruptly appeared. I like the Darkshore warfront, but there should have been some more story seeds of it in the earlier patches - Tyrande gathering night elves together, the survivors in Stormwind beginning to train as soldiers with the stated goal of retaking their homes, etc - so that they didnât all feel they were in the same depressive fugue that the short stories left off on and they could feel like active participants instead of passive losers. - There were no specific even small victories to hold onto from the war or short stories.
Iâm not talking about big events, like killing Saurfang or Sylvanas or so on that would have affected the big story points, but there werenât even any small victories. Delaryn - dead. Her druid lover - dead. All their outposts - dead. Their ploy to burn the bridges - bought some completely irrelevant time and failed. Their ploy to send a spy into Astranaar - no Horde were killed because of that, failed. The bid to rescue civilians - funneled them into Teldrassil which then burned and probably killed a lot of them. I donât so much begrudge these points as Iâd like something to compare them to - introducing a minor character who gets to do a cool specific thing and then show up later in the warfront and do cool things there, too. Maybe a ploy where a specific character defeats a Horde scout force and leads some specific civilians into the woods, where theyâre confirmed to survive and show up in the story later - as characters, not nameless statistics like almost all the night elf refugee NPCs in Stormwind. Just something small we can hang onto as -something- that worked, -something- thatâs worth having pride in, -something- which isnât just more doom and gloom.
(And to me, losing every single point except having a good kill count in the end is like someone linking DPS charts at the end of a BG after fighting in the roads the whole time - sure, good DPS, but I donât respect them just for that and I actually lose respect for them acting like that.)
To tie it into that real-life example: Give the night elves our Simo Hayha (seriously, look him up, heâs awesome) - a night elf everyman who rises to the occasion and becomes so feared by the Horde that the Horde gives him/her a spooky nickname and looks over their shoulders every night. Let this war create named heroes on either side - the short stories sorta began this, but the Horde named characters disappeared and the night elf ones all died (except for Cordressa, whoâs a turn-in NPC in Darkshore now and not mentioned in the main story). - The night elves didnât particularly feel like night elves.
I think this is a small point overall, but itâs one that sticks with me personally. I loved the druid strike force in Elegy, but anything they could do, the Horde could do too - or even do better. Sneak in the forest? Horde rogues had one named casualty and completed all their objectives, night elves had the druid squad, who got some nonspecific victories before getting a detailed segment showing them getting out-sneaked by that one rogue and a hunter. Know the terrain? Thereâs some smugglers and apparently the night elves didnât even -think- about checking for alternate paths into Darkshore. Similarly, I donât think the night elves - especially not when outnumbered so much - should have been able to stand against the Horde in open combat. I wanted more guerrilla themes instead, for better theme preservation for both the Alliance and Horde.
Iâm happy with rogues being sneaky, but this didnât feel like the a good time to portray that without showing some night elf rogues be equally sneaky on the defense. Itâd be like if the Forsaken deployed their blight at Lordaeron, only for that one drunk gnome from Northrend to show up, yell âIâm an alchemist!â and instantly negate it before any notable Alliance characters are affected enough to even notice that the blight was ever deployed in the first place. - Since numbers have never meant anything, it didnât feel like an underdog story.
The might of Orgrimmar against only the night elves. Surely this is as one-sided as the USSR vs Finland in that real-life example? But, just before this, the night elves suddenly had a giant army -and- a navy with which to send them down to Silithus - an army meant to counter the exact same multi-Horde-subfaction army they thought was headed there. So numbers were already weird. And now - oh, no, weâre outnumbered! What a shame, to only have two absolutely ridiculous god-tier characters and a whole population who can perfectly blend into the shadows of their home territory theyâve explored for millennia - however shall we survive? I joke, but the story did give me whiplash from switching between âyouâre powerful!â âyouâre helpless!â âyouâve got every advantage!â âyou and all your loved ones are dead!â so much. And to cap it all off⊠those catapults. I donât think I need to mention the catapults. (The lack of machinery to reach across the water to Teldrassil itself was one of the reasons I thought thereâd be some big twist to âwho burned Teldrassilâ. But nope.)
In conclusion - presentation, presentation, presentation.
I think the overall problem with the War of Thorns is that it lingered on all the sorrow and spend excruciating amounts of detail to flesh out the night elves failures and deaths, while successes were only mentioned in passing and had no concrete examples for fans to hold on to. Some people can fill those gaps in their head and be completely cool with it, or not care enough to think those gaps need filling in the first place, but it caused a lot of frustration - which easily boiled over into anger - in others.
So, reflecting on these points I made, this is what I think would have made the War of Thorns so much more palatable (at least on the night elf side - the whole âmake Horde villains following an evil Warchief againâ plot really didnât need to happen again):
- Introduce another original night elf character alongside Delaryn. Let this other character survive the event, get a few notable actions/scenes/feats in, and join the night elf roster. (Or use someone like Cordressa whoâs already in the game.)
- Show some specific night elf successes amongst the failures. Name a few characters - perhaps the remaining population of Astranaar? - who fight some Horde scouts (in detail, not as a sidenote), win, and escape into the woods. Have them either show up during the Darkshore events, or for my own preferences, involve them in an Ashenvale-takeback scenario from Sylvanas loyalists after the war ends.Preferably have multiple small groups like this.
- Show how the Horde has been dealt a psychological blow from this fight, even if they won in the end. This doesnât have to be shoved in the faces of Horde players - though, if this were an actual morally-grey faction war rather than another stupid villain bat plot, I think the Horde player should have some experiences to show that the Alliance -arenât- the extreme pushovers theyâve always seemed to me on my Horde characters.
- Show the night elves start rebuilding themselves within the 8.0 and 8.1 rather than leaving them on the note of wallowing in despair. It doesnât have to be a lot, but show the night elves stockpiling supplies for the future invasion, show them training and recovering their strength, show or tell about them maintaining connections with some soldiers who stayed in Ashenvale/Darkshore and are running guerrilla campaigns there, and so on. A few lampshade-hanging moments really help people who think theyâre being ignored otherwise.
What are this forumâs thoughts on the matter?