I work for the opposite faction because of it, does that count?
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this is interesting because i feel like the strongest point of the expansion was 8.0
and the stories of both zones.
Then, in 8.1 the war returned and everything went to the thrash after dazarlazor.
Iâm having a bit of a tough time putting this thought into words, but here goes:
One reason this story bugged me is that Iâm normally a big sucker for doomed last stand stories. I wanted to like this one, but I just canât.
The fact that the tree would burn was looong spoiled before the novels happened, so their little bits of foreshadowing that âthey all knew the tree would burn somedayâ were more in-jokes than spoilers - but either despite this or because of it, it made the story feel rushed. Like they werenât even pretending there was that last moment of âmaybe there is a way to solve this after allâ like most tragedy arcs have. (Further reinforced by how I saw the return of the fleet as a really bland spot in the story - I thought it was meant to be that âlast ray of hope in the climax before everything falls apart againâ, but it was handled pretty unceremoniously and wasnât really relevant.)
And that just reinforces the ânothing you do matters, go wallow in despairâ underlying tone of the whole event⌠which is fine as -part- of the tragic story, but (especially for a group who didnât actually go extinct in this event and is playable during and afterwards) fails to provide any forward-moving or productive outlets for all that unrelenting pathos they piled on the story.
I think much of the current rage is because there still hasnât been a big enough outlet. Dazarâalor, Arathi, etc beat up the Horde without making it meaningful for the night elves (leaving both sides angry), then Darkshore started with the necessary-for-story-but-still-unpalatable depiction of Tyrande v Nathanos, and then there was no conclusion on the same level as the Burning to close off that arc. So thereâs a surfeit of anger (and/or a feeling of helplessness which boils over into anger) and nothing in the story to direct it or promise that itâll be handled - which leads a lot of those people to vent that anger on the forums at anything they think they can hit with it.
The story of the War of Thorns is made out of a lot of small parts which by themselves Iâm okay with, by themselves can be explained away like a few certain posters have been doing, but add up to a disappointing story. Itâs like an arch without the keystone - itâs missing the big important event that makes all the smaller ones work as a whole and keep from collapsing under pressure. And boy did the Burning ramp up the pressure.
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Well not always, Kimbul wasnât there when his followers needed him, bit he avenged them. Hakkarâs demands made Gurubashi break for good. As for Drakkari -itâs very tragic but very understandable either, it was fight for survival.
So that leaves two traitors who met their end.
But I agree that Loa worship is far more benefitial overall, itâs not a relation of being granted things just because. Itâs relation of giving and taking, and loa can deny assistance if the request isnât important enough.
As for main topic. Not having meaningful victory and being vandalized is something that troll playerbase has been facing since start of the game. And not only trolls, a lot of playable races either has been shown as incredibly incompetent, villanized, wiped off left and right on and offscreen (like magâhar orcs).
The only positive thing is that Blizzard at least tries to adress it. Instead of villanizing nelves for even loosing and making their iconic leader as a raid boss - like it was with Amani. So I wouldnât cross it out entierly. Blizzard heard the nelf cries, and did something to remedy that might not be much but itâs still better than nothing for entire expansiin span. Darkspear fans were left without update, no reward to wipe out tears after crippling blow with VolâJinâs death and were even openly mocked by devs.
So Itâs not just the nelf plot that was done in underwhelming way - that is the theme for entire expansion. And can apply to everyone - even Nâzoth who attributed to nothing really.
There are no winners in BfA only the loosers. If you will acknowledge that, perhaps it will somewhat ease the pain.
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As covered before, the fleet returning served its purpose for me. Without their fleet, the Night Elves were able to slow the Horde. With their fleet, the Night Elves were able to stop the Horde in its tracks. The whole Horde. With the rest of the Alliance, the Night Elves would have crushed the Horde. But obviously Saurfang made it through the smuggling route in Felwood before then as the event was scripted to happen.
And it was only possible for the Horde to do as well as they did at all because Tyrande was away.
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Footage of King Anduin Wrynn explaining his battle plan to his Kaldorei allies, 33ADP, colorized.
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Nah, Horde won. Alliance lost things they canât recover easily, not so much for us. The boy king was down to his last handful of farmers when Baine generously and mercifully offered to let the faction live.
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I disagree, Horde was essentially desintegraded. They lost every front, they lost few more prominent characters, their core tarnished beyond anyrecognition. âFaction Prideâ nonexistant. There is close to nothing to look forward in Horde as a whole. Unless you have interest in racial lore, but that is pretty vauge too.
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Name two that werenât tit for tat, taking back something we took this expansion, or ultimately in our favor. Dazarâalor? Replacing a stubborn old king with a Horde favoring queen? Definitely in our favor.
Prominent charactes? I can name four, two of which were on their own sides, and one of which is on the side of one of those two. Acceptable losses!
Looks about the same as itâs been since the Wrathgate to me.
Speak for yourself, troll!
Hah, our comparison point is the Alliance, theyâve never had anything to look forward to, except when they announce weâre going to blow up one of those cities of theirs, again.
Nah, AvH is a game of Risk, and we conquered their land, lost fewer pieces than they did, and are generating more pieces than they are.
Just because you donât see it as serious loss doesnât make it be. And I disagree about Rastakhan only person that was not paying attention would say that he was stubborn. Rastakhan was completely different character at the end of his arc, his loss was great. And Yes Darkshore AND arathi were looses, they put their forces there for waste.
Really? Which prominent Characters Alliance lost in BfA? Because I can only see big gains. No matter how I see Sylvanas and her biggest fan, they did stole lots of spotlight just to be turned out to be faction traitors. Which will annoy Horde players beyond belief each time they will do new bg, WQ and plenty of other quests as well.
Not to mention Saurfang who was barely promoted to orc racial leader who died soonish after. So maybe theyâre acceptable to you, but theyâre not acceptable to others. So that makes them 3 big characters that are gone from faction.
:[
I could say the same to you.
Or you could acknowledge that Horde has itâs serious issues as well. I never denied that Alliance had them, but that doesnât neglect that Horde is screwed a lot too.
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vulpera posters are already proving themselves to be as bad as most undead posters
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And we managed to wring out some nice Ws from her before she ran off with her boy toy and took the traitors with her, before we even caught the brunt of her scheming. We lost pretty much no civvies to the alliance! The only thing we did lose was Undercity, which wasnât even a proper tit for tat, since we destroyed it not the Alliance (âYou won NOTHING!â really describes the Alliance this expansion) evacuated ours first and the tree elves evacuated theirs into the bonfire, lol, and we also could reclaim it when the blight gets taken care of. We didnât even lose all of Tirisfal, they lost all of Theramore. Itâs not even funny how much to our advantage this is.
Iâm really not seeing how weâre screwed in any way, shape or form. We lost a couple backstabbing corpses and the worst boss in history? Great! Means they canât lure us into any more traps!
Nobody ever has pride in defeat in Warcraft. Every loss is used as racism fuel for the next century.
Ah so the city was lost, but not really? It got the same treatment as Teldrassil, that place is unhabitable. Alliance wanted to take it over, and now nobody will have it, just like nobody will have Teldrassil. Besides it was not the point I was making, You you donât have to lose a city to get a terrible treatment, getting villanized because the writing team is creatively bankrupt, going yolo evil for âspotlightâ , making any progress in positive direction being utterly pointsless can make faction as much of joke.
Well I know it might be hard for you to imagine, but there are people who actually liked those corpses, and losing Nathanos who had a hints to become something more than bootlicker clearly was a big deal, I never liked a guy but I was willing to give him a chance.
And I have no idea what do you mean with losing âwost boss in historyâ.
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Not to mention Nathanos is a major speaking character in the azerite BG for BfA.
So⌠That is forever. Horde is going to have a traitor screaming at us that weâre not up to his standards every time that BG pops in the queue. Even long after BfA is done.
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Thatâs what I meant, I could give a pass over Sylvanas, but the amount of spotlight Nathanos got shouldâve ammount to something more than just following dead waifu, his investment turned out to be utterly pointless therefore but on top of that double frustrating. (I found fim insufferable from the start due to over the top voice acting, but in the bigger picture he is even bigger pain).
Though you propably shouldn´t be saying that (I mean, pot meet kettle)⌠it is indeed akward and a little creepy how some Vulpera posters apparently took the âclown raceâ supposed motto to heartâŚ
Damn, the actual clowns we have as writers weren´t even decent enough to let Hordies keep Nathanos (I mean if you remove his weirdo fetish adoration of Sylvanas, Nathanos is actually a refreshing character that isn´t devoted to polish the PC´s behind every 5 seconds)âŚ
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Hereâs a YouTube summary laced with all the dank memes that war historians love.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jmC9jJuXAbQ
Tl;dr- Finland may have lost the war, but they utterly humiliated the Soviets in the process with some extremely visible battles where they won. It wasnât until Stalin got so upset and âretiredâ several generals that the Soviets just overwhelmed Finland. It is even theorized that the USSRâs laughable performance is what made Germany think they had a chance at going to war with Russia. When the snow starts speaking Finnish, Russians get nervous.
However, I donât ever see Blizzard subjecting Sylvanas or the Horde at large to the same level of humiliation when they seem to only reserve it for singular races that they donât like such as the Night Elves. Stalin was the laughing stock of Europe after the winter war. Sylvanas is a âtactical geniusâ even ignoring that tactics arenât relevant in strategic level planning, the blatant author favoritism, or the garbage writing that Blizzard is famous for. Blizzard will never let Sylvanasâ reputation or pride sink as far as the average penal unitâs life expectancy on the Eastern Front.
As for why the night elves never got any of that âprideâ that the Finns to this day brag about, itâs simple. Blizzard doesnât care about them outside of being a victim for sad orcs and sad humans to feel bad about. No one on the writing teams has an ounce of passion outside of their narrow spectrum of interest, and theyâve admitted that they wonât put any actual effort for anything thing they donât have passion for.
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My thoughts?
I think this was a wonderful read that successfully captured the major problems with the bumbling way this was handled. Iâm actually irritated because Iâm thinking of how good some of that could have been for even people not quite at level. The night elves training in Stormwind? They could have filled Stormwind with something behind refugees just lamenting their homeland. Thatâs nice for, like, farmers, but not the night elves. I would have liked to see them training Stormwindâs archers and rogues, bits of dialogue about them explaining how shooting in the forest is different than the fields. Players arbitrarily getting knocked down, then having a night elf apologize and tell them itâs part of a training exercise, give them some little trinket or something.
Instead, as you said, the consistent message of the night elves was suffering. I will admit I also fell for the 8.2 cinematic. I think that was the one that introduced the Darkshore stuff? The one where he dismantled the caravan by himself as a bear? Just a bear. When he told that troll âTell herâŚwe are comingâ, I thought this was actually going to be something.
Malfurion Stormrage, the most powerful druid Azeroth has ever known, someone who can (and has) stand toe to toe with Archimonde was healed, and pissed. This is someone who helped kill the Firelord in the Firelands.
And by the way? His wife and boss? Tyrande? Yeah, the millennia old warrior priest that created the Sentinels, has been known to waylay armies, and is a physical match for several Wardens? Yeah, sheâs pissed, and stronger than sheâs ever been.
That shouldnât have been a fight. That should have been a scenario where, as someone else said, the Horde ended up pushed back to the Barrens. That should have been a consistent threat to the entire Horde war campaign. It also would have led weight to Saurfang telling Sylvanas that they would all come for her, after Teldrassil. People talking about Horde supply chains being routed.
I will disagree with someone you said that you felt was a small point overall. âNight elves didnât particularly feel like night elvesâ. No, I think that was a huge point. After one of the largest losses in their history, something that they could galvanize around? You had night elves being out night-elved in their forests. Night elves are known for stealth, assassination, knowing the territory, all of that. But apparently, that whole homecourt advantage thing goes out of the window?
Itâs like if they had a bunch of dwarves getting lost in tunnels, then getting drunk under the table. It doesnât reek so much of disrespect as it does of just not caring. No effort was made to think about this. Just âeh, whateverâ.
It was just disappointing.
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This argument has been made and debated a bunch of times before, so Iâll just ask you this:
Do you consider that there are people playing the other side when you make proposals like this one?