Dude, the Goblins just built an entire town ontop of one of the most explosive materials in the world. The race’s intelligence manifested from generations of exposure to heavy metals in slave mines. You think a little Arcane radiation is going to stop them? And not one of the Goblins you just mentioned actually lives in Bilgewater Harbor btw. Mida lives in Org. Hobbart operates out of Crapopolis. Sassy lives in Hardwrench Hideaway. They may build on powderkegs, but at least they don’t put all their eggs in one explosive basket.
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Imagine thinking anyone but Goblin players even know who those characters are.
Heck, non-Goblins (and goblins that don’t have their heritage armor) don’t even know what’s up with Gazlowe hanging out in Org.
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Honestly, I have my heritage armor and I still haven’t found that dialogue between Thrall and him in game. He’s the Trade Prince I’ve wanted for ages, but I’m not going to pretend anyone but Goblin players are excited about that. Hell, I would wager most non-Goblin players preferred Wix. Because they like his personality, but know nothing really about him either. That said, Mida, Hobart, and Sassy are ours. They aren’t much, but they are.
Though it is funny how NE and Draenei fans think blowing up Goblin cities and killing off our bare bones characters is going to hurt Gob players. Not … really? It would suck, but the Goblin racial fantasy is all about being an underdog and rebuilding from nothing in a ruthless world. Its par for the course if Bilgewater Harbor was blown up. We’ll just rebuild again. Though, even Blizz doesn’t have the guts to kill off NE characters (even Sira and Summermoon are still kicking); so I’m not sure why Alliance players feel killing more of ours is “even”?
2 Likes
It’s an amusing train with the Warbringers. Because unless you are being purposefully daft, there was a reason for all of them being women. But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was only 2 of them were actually Warbringers. Azshara was there purely to round it out to 3 when everyone was hoping she would be the reason why the world was at war. The unseen Warbringer who set Azeroth in flames.
Instead she did nothing until we were dropped in her lap and ooo nooo N’zoth.
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The Warbringers thing was weird all around. They had almost no equivalence. Jaina never started any war, and instead had yet another ‘finding herself’ character arc, which was great and impressive but oddly out of place. Sylvanas was ‘around’ enough to drive people crazy, but had almost no arc whatsoever and we learned almost anything about her.
To me it’s just another sign that BFA was far, far less planned than they would have us believe.
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Jaina wasn’t exactly a warbringer either.
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I mean I’d argue only one was a “warbringer”. Jaina was at best a war reactor. She really didn’t do anything that was antagonistic other than walk slowly through stormwind while the pc was infiltrating. Umm she was a raid boss, but that was to buy time to escape. Talanji hates her probably. Heck didn’t we give her bro back that same patch?
Edit: nope a patch after…
Would have been nice to have a Jaina-level storyline for the other two warbringers as well, visiting their pasts to give us some context. Imagine a story where we see Azshara at the fall of her civilization, her struggles and descent. We don’t need to think she’s good, or even agree with her decisions as a result of those trials, but damn it would have been nice to see some humanity from her, some literal character, to raise our investment in the story.
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It was one of the most disjointed masses of story threads and plotlines I think I’ve ever seen. It was crazy man, we had Sargaras’s Sword (that went nowhere); the Heart of Azeroth & Azerite (that also kind of went nowhere); the Naga and Azshara (that ALSO didn’t really go anywhere); and finally N’zoth and Nialotha (which, wow, that was disappointing). Oh wait … right … there was a faction conflict, and rebellion against a Warchief in there too I think?
My, god, was BfA overstuffed and busy.
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Well name not withstanding but I figured based on what we saw from Jaina’s Warbringers would be these women would be the face of the war for their factions, taking the stand and that chestnut.
Then Sylvanas came out and she just burned the tree and everything went to pot, but at least she seemed to be the face of the war.
Then Azsharas came up and she did all of nothing.
I keep seeing threads like this but I am yet to see a suggestion that is in any way workable, narratively logical, wouldn’t make the Alliance villains or wouldn’t be ‘punishing’ to the Horde player base.
There isn’t a situation this could work to ‘fix the Alliance’s experience’ that doesn’t come at the expense of Horde players. This feels even more emphasized by the fact that you still refer to the Horde having ‘technical wins’ in BfA. If the Alliance wants ‘technical’ wins then I think they would find them a lot less satisfying than they seem to think they would be.
Here is where the main issue is. For it to be ‘fair’ for both factions we would pretty much have to swap positions and that means the Alliance getting slapped with the villain stick and probably dealing with the same sour taste at the end of it. If the situation had been the other way round, the NEs would still be without Teldrassil and be refugees in Stormwind. The difference would be that Tyrande would now be a villain being hunted and Malfurion or maybe Shandris would now be dead after getting a pep talk from Thrall. People who think they want ‘fair’ probably don’t really.
End of the day, the best we can hope for from now on, assuming we want neither side of the player base screwed, is that whatever Blizzard does forward they don’t screw the factions further. Honestly I would settle with them never touching faction conflict again. Unfortunately I suspect they have ‘plans’ for the Alliance.
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She brought war to Dazar’Alor.
It’s what caused azerite to appear.
The main plot device of BFA.
This lead to N’zoth.
The trigger to Chekov’s Gun; since the beginning of the expansion, azerite has been built toward obliterating N’zoth.
Eh, she participated, but her role there didn’t feel like justification for a video.
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(Commentary): This is likely to backfire. We lost Bolvar, and then we got Varian, a Wolf-God empowered gladiator who walked in the footsteps of Anduin Lothar himself. Varian dies and we get Turalyon and Alleria, one being an immortal embodiment of the Light, the other being the second living being in our universe to successfully master the Void.
(Satire): If we lose Tyrande in the Shadowlands I expect nothing less than the entire cast of the Shadowland’s Pantheon, including a returned and suddenly good Sire Denathrius, to join the Alliance.
(Conclusion): My point is Blizzard has this weird quirk where, whenever the Alliance loses someone of significance, not only are they satisfactorily replaced within an expansion or two, their replacements tend to come with a significant power-up compared to the one replaced. So, to put it bluntly, go ahead and let the cast be trimmed. It’ll become twice as large with power houses three times as strong as the ones we lost, and five times as inactive during wars.
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Strange that is when you point it out like that. On top of that, when the Alliance suffers a character death, their replacements do shift even further towards the magic spectrum. Which, Blizz has been scaling up pretty heavily with each subsequent threat.
The Horde in contrast has a weird oversaturation of Rogues, Hunters, and especially Warriors … which the Alliance also has powerful representation of. So we’re not particularly special there. Classes, which sad to say lack relevance or power without a magical twist.
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(Commentary): It’s just weird as the Horde could easily have a different selection of power houses. Why aren’t there more Shamans? That one surprises me the most. At least Thalyssra finally brings an active mage worth their salt (poor Rommath is forgotten), but why isn’t Lor’themar at least a Spellbreaker? Even Sylvanas being a Dark Ranger wasn’t all that impressive as she wasn’t exactly a necromantic power house like a Death Knight or a Lich.
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To be fair, it was cool as hell when the rogues in the Saurfang/Thrall cinematic actually flashed in and out of visibility. I wish they would lean more into the fantastic aspects of warriors in the lore, shouting so hard it knocks entire battalions flat, leaping like a superhero (they did this a bit with Skyhold), feats of superhuman strength, etc.
It wouldn’t be such a problem that the Horde had lots of warriors if Geya’rah, etc., responded to Jaina’s bullcrud by just brute-forcing their way through her magic with sheer force of will. I mean, that’s how the PCs do it. Take the mages down a peg with a well placed dropkick. It only takes once to break the spell (hah).
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That’s a big question there.
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.
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(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…
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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?
12 Likes