Worse, Shaman’s have seen a real decline in power since the Cata Thrall era for some reason. We’re essentially worse at Fire and Water manipulation than Mages, and worse than Wind manipulation that Druids, with far more restrictions. Its pretty much Muln, Zekhan, Rehgar, and Kiro that fill that Horde Shaman roster atm. Two of them new, two of them haven’t been seen since Legion.
And yeah to your other points. Its very strange how much the Horde seems to operate in an entirely different genre of fantasy than the Alliance when looking at its characters and themes Its also fascinating how we’re the ones villain batted all the time, despite that fact.
(Commentary): I almost want to say the writers keep the Horde in a gritty, grimdark kind of atmosphere of low technology, low magic, etc… until they need to start a war at which point they unleash super weapons and Sylvanas has power from another plane of existence. By comparison the Alliance is much more High Fantasy with powerful mages, floating cities, steampunk/clockwork engineers, british werewolves, space-traveling light aliens, etc…
Which is really weird too, because like … we had comparable tech to the Alliances up until WoD. Less magic certainly; but probably better manufacturing ability due to Goblin influence. Legion the Horde had no real input, so its hard to say there … but jeezus, look at the WoT. Outside of a handful of Cata Era Goblin Shredders and some prototype Azerite ammunition (we created in Darkshore), nothing we used in that conflict in either tech or tactics post-dated even BC era Horde. Outside of, frustratingly, some of Sylvie’s SUPER catapults from Legion.
And while I get that the Horde was hurting after the Legion invasion as well, its to the point where its actually nonsensical in that conflict. Like, no Airships, no Zepplins, no Air Balloons, and the only ships we had fielded were ones we stole from the Kaldorei? How on Azeroth did we expect to even get onto that Skyscraper sized tree in the middle of the ocean to capture it? Like, I get “the fleet was destroyed at the Broken Shore” … but the ENTIRE Horde fleet was?
(Speculative): I don’t think the Horde’s fleet was ever particularly large. I mean, supposedly large enough to blockade the entirety of Kalimdor at one point in MoP if I recall correctly, but the Alliance supposedly always had naval superiority.
(Commentary): But the point stands that the Alliance is presented as very High Fantasy and the Horde as very Low Fantasy. I don’t think this would be a huge problem except that these two narrative directions aren’t compatible for factions that are supposed to be different but equal. The discrepancies have to be addressed in a way that causes more discrepancies. As you note, the Horde attacked Darkshore without even any aerial support, but later in BFA, we see the familiar airships.
But the Kaldorei didn’t. Yes, you could argue that the Vindecaar should have not just been “washed away”, but if you look at the NE’s military one of their biggest weaknesses is their Navy isn’t particularly good. Because, to upkeep, maintain, and upgrade a navy … tends to be very resource intensive. They also culturally never really needed one, thus their ships are just sort of glorified troop transports with some frisbee ballista’s attached.
Like, with the Air ability and Naval ability of the Horde by the WoT … there is a sort of irony that we never really needed to go through Ashenvale and Darkshore if the goal was to invade Teldrassil and hold it Hostage. Which was the entire point of the WoT. To hit that tree fast, lock it down, and prevent retaliation by essentially use it as a bargaining chip. We didn’t even need to fight those defenders who could hold the line against 8 to 1 odds. Just use the Feint, then send in the artillery.
Yeah, honestly Shaman have come across as the poor man’s spell caster since Cata and even then there wasn’t one shaman character involved in the Firelands campaign which seemed ridiculous to me at the time. It would be like visiting the Emerald Dream to fight the Emerald Nightmare and having no Druids involved and Nightmare Shaman as villians.
Even then, as far as the Shaman line up goes, with Thrall depowered the Alliance had at least the same strength in showing. Muln is almost an unknown to people and barely developed compared to people like Nobundo and Rehgar always struck me as a brawler and fighter rather than a shamanic power house.
Honestly I am not sure I would say there is any catagory of classes or magic where the Horde actually has stronger representatives than the Alliance.
Because the Alliance definately reclaimed Darkshore and won Arathi which had been contested since Vanilla. Frankly, if the Alliance gains back Ashenvale, which we have no actual answer on but would seem likely if the Horde is trying to appease Tyrande, then the Alliance actually gained more territory than it lost in BfA.
Possibly Blizzard hopes to motivate you to take revenge through PVP for land lost to the Horde. But if that’s their plan, you’d think they’d realize by now that it doesn’t work, after 10 years of trying.
You said you can take revenge on them through game play. You have the same options vs them as you do vs horde NPCs. So I doubt that’s what you actually want.
That fire is an eternal fire as long as Blizzard refuses to explain why the night elves are even in the Alliance, and as long as WC3 exists.
They could have minimized it by not making the zone turnovers be faction-related. But this is Cataclysm: the vitriolic “bring war back to warcraft” expansion that’s infamous for the OP’s quote and some frankly terrible PR from Blizzard that probably is why they no longer talk to fans.
The Twilight Hammer drives off or wipes out Alliance settlements. The Horde moves in for geopolitical reasons, and/or because no one likes the the Twilight Hammer or anything related to sparkling in the sun.
Boom, zone switch without smug new devs mocking Alliance fans on stage.
