Ya know what fine. Give the Alliance all the cinematics they want of Turaylon being sad, getting repeated pep talks from Apothecary Lydon, and then getting insta gibbed by a now evil Tyrande.
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You guys are basically complaining about the original Horde warcraft story. Yeah blizzard keep plagiarizing themselves, but this IS the Horde story told and retold.
It was in WC2, it was in WC3, it was a persisted theme in vanilla and BC.
Horde does something bad.
Horde eventually stands up for the right thing.
Horde in-fights.
Horde (good version) pervails.
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Idk man I played from Vanilla to Wrath and I never recall Thrall needing pep talks from a teenage human.
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Yep. We liked Thrall’s Horde. Thanks for playing.
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And now its Saurfang’s Horde. its the same story but with different names.
Jaina was a little older. that is true.
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Nah, it isn’t. WC3 through WotLK were an isolated version of the Horde that vanished wholly into the edgelord wing of Blizzard’s team who thought I and II were what we needed. Now we’ve got the team who think Horde identity is toxic masculinity, so we get a bunch of depressed and regretful peaceniks on a council to overcompensate in the other direction.
Which amuses me, because every female orc is depicted as a bloodthirstier Grom imitation.
Edit: I’ll be fair and point out Draka escaped that characterization in SL. I actually enjoyed her in Maldraxxus, even though I’m still wondering why we got her instead of any other fan favorites in the DEATH FLESHPLANE OF WAR ETERNAL!
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Saurfang: The Horde player was wrong to join the Horde.
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Oh come on man this is the same Horde story over, and over and over again.
First Horde.
Honorable Horde, misled by Guldan and demons becomes bad. Does bad. Until Doomhammer rebels against both the shadow council and blackhand for a Better Horde
Second Horde.
Orgrim does bad by destroying SW and marching against the rest of Azeroth. Good guys band together and push back the Horde. Pivotal moment Orgrim abandons the Horde and goes to pursue Guldan.
Third Horde.
Thrall dealing with the aftermath of Horde’s many crimes and seeking for redemption goes west. Grom slips back to first Horde’s bad ways. Does something evil. Horde infights again for a Better Horde.
Forth Horde (True Horde)
Garrosh Horde start beeing evil again and attacking neighbors, they do evil act of Theramore, Voljin has an assassination attempt (even though he threatened Garrosh first) and starts a rebellion for a… wait for it… a Better Horde.
Fifth Horde
With Voljin dying to Trashmobs, Sylvanas takes over… for whatever reason we want to accept she decides to kill as many Night Elves as she can and start a war for X reason.
Saurfang and eventually Baine as well decide enough is enough begin to rebel and… yep to change the Horde for the better.
And now we have the 6th Horde version with a council which is now apparently THE better Horde we have been looking to achieve for the past decade.
Its always the same journey.
Mistake. Rebellion. Better Horde. Rinse and repeat.
As much annoying the themes of the expansion was this storyline was pretty on brand for the Horde. It was kind of like Blizzard sending us a reminder of the Horde origin story for new audiences.
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Nope. Thrall’s Horde was about finding a home for his people in a world that wanted to enslave or eradicate then. Thrall’s Horde was when Warcraft started playing against type. There was no quest for redemption, just survival, and they were willing to fight for it. It was not about finding the “True Horde” in their ranks, but making peace with their past and finding a new way forward, a continent away from their grudgewar.
Sylvanas and Saurfang were just a dumber retelling of Garrosh and Vol’jin. The reason every attempt to tell the story of Horde soul-searching fails utterly is WCIII already told that story. Every retelling just further ruins the only era of lore and faction narrative that was satisfying in this game.
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BFA as a whole was just a dumber retelling of MoP.
Sad times.
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After he found out about Grom? Working with Jaina, then finally with Daelin, proving his people were no longer the monsters Alliance knew them as?
Grom’s very ending in Warcraft 3 was about freeing (really redeeming) himself. Its persistent theme.
I didn’t say true Horde, only a better one. Whatever that goal post was.
Whether it fails or not is not really relevant, but you agree that this is the same story told and retold. And if it didn’t work for you is probably because you’ve already heard it before so its repetitive and doesn’t land.
Point is these cinematics… just retelling the same story, they weren’t doing some outlandish thing that completely made the Horde unrecognizable. It was too recognizable, that was the problem. Same story retold for the 5th time.
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Sorry, but you can’t recontextualize WCIII and Thrall’s Horde as just another crazy Warchief hellbent on conquest being overthrown and the Horde having a good cry about it. Grom was an aggressive foil to Thrall, for sure, but even his missteps came on the heels of looming eradication at the hands of the Night Elves led by the demigod Cenarius.
Garrosh, the Mag’har, and WoD broadly offered a stark counter-narrative to the groundwork laid between Reign of Chaos and Wrath of the Lich King. Sylvanas and Saurfang made The Horde look like they collectively suffer from dementia or have the memory of a goldfish.
I’ll gladly grant you the Horde keeps banging the same drum throughout its history . . . except for Thrall’s tenure. It was a fundamentally different story that did not yield to the lazy dichotomy of Evil Horde or Repentant Horde.
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This was my point all along. These cinematics, the identity crisis, it was tired and old BS that we put up with before but very much on brand.
It was relevant.
This is why when people try to monkey paw Alliance players for asking their own cinematic about crazy warchiefs and having a good cry about it fundamentally don’t work. Thats a horde story in Alliance skin, its not very relevant.
This. This is a Horde story, its going to be confusing and bizarre for Alliance. If Benedikt wants Alliance to have cinematic, that makes them miserable.
Idk just make all the Alliance leaders fall to their knees and worship the next human king. Maybe Tyrande will offer to divorce Malfurion and Marry Turalyon instead.
If I got a BFA expansion where it was the Alliance that blew up and genocided the Horde and we ended up killing our “Warchief” High King in favor of replacing him with a council of nations.
That would be the greatest thing to happen to Alliance since this game’s entire history lol.
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Ah man whyd you have to go and spoil the ending of Dragonflight.
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elf wives! elf wives everywhere!
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Those cinematics and identity crisis were a death knell to the Horde as it existed when this game launched. That is the crux of the biscuit for me with game direction re: The Horde. Blizzard breached the social contract, so to speak. It is why I tend to form some strong sympathies with (especially) Night Elves and Worgen, whose identity has been dashed on the rocks in the same tides.
Edit: dame tides is a typo that makes me laugh more than it should.
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She was wrong. This was blizzard not voss. Why does blizzard keep pushing for her to be leader of forsaken
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The Honorable Horde story and Night Elf/Worgen story struggled weakly against the chains the bound them to the jagged rocks of BFA. They were severely battered and weakened. A great wave swelled before them, assuming the form of a slightly overweight middle aged woman. “Oh my! Dear pardon me!” it bellowed in an upper-class British accent, then crashed down upon them with great force.
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modern Blizzard seems to have difficultly writing heroes who have a more complex morality than whiter than a WASP wearing white clothes while eating a mayonnaise, cottage cheese, cream cheese, and Wonderbread sandwich.
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While daydreaming about a dollop of sour cream.
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