The one upside of the factions having little to do in Shadowlands is that maybe this means they’ll be busy fixing Azeroth so when we come back from hell Suramar will be an actual capital and the rebuilding of Gilneas will have at least started. Among other much needed updates of course.
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That is true, we can get of a nice little timeskip and get some rebuilding processes done! Gilneas rebuilt is the top of my list; such a cool city just rotting as a BG. It would be nice if Blizz also finally brought the BC zones into the rest of the world. I would also prefer the Forsaken rebuild Stratholme, if they are to resettle on EK. Open up that zone to the North which includes Stratholme harbor and build up some nice towns in E Plaguelands.
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And hopefully that would let some of the night elf-themed Anceints stick with the night elf faction, since then they’d have a Horde counterpart to balance against.
And I do want to see more and different terrain-based druids. That’s one of my favorite parts of DnD and Pathfinder druids.
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Ignoring that this is a really bad answer to the metaphor, they’re obviously not going to do that. Blizzard has no interest in such things.
“Lightning striking” is not exactly what made the game popular. It was in the right place at the right time, yes, but it also had quite a lot of work and care put into it, which I don’t really see present in the current story, or even the gameplay.
Anyhow, that “lightning” has already struck in multiple other places. Other MMOs these days have story that blows WoW’s away. At this point it’s painful to even log on, because the entire game world just gives me an overwhelming sense of wasted potential and bad decision-making. Nothing in Shadowlands really alleviates that feeling, if anything it’s exacerbated.
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Just cause they dont want to merge the factions doesnt mean that blizzard is gonna have them in super war again, wow started with no real war lol The war didnt start till cata, which was like 7 years into the life of the game.
Exactly, the Horde can finally get their own druidic theme, more reflective of the Horde cultures; and the NEs can finally get back what was very unfairly appropriated by Blizzard for the sake of game mechanics and convenience! Ooh! Does that mean that like an Alliance Shaman faction would end up with more Titan influences, or perhaps even Draenei aesthetics? A little more orderly, and less chaotic manifestations of nature?! 
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It’ll be like when we came back to Azeroth from WoD. Literally nothing will have changed.
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But it would be amazing! Like, yeah mechanically all classes will still roughly be the same, but aesthetically you could do wonders with this sort of variety! The Alliance gets something reflective of the more orderly themes of the Draenei and Dwarves! Bring the titans really into the Alliance in a more cultural way, since quite a few of their core races are Titan Spawn. Let the Horde really crash the Loa party for their Druidic themes, rather than coopting the NE cultural heritage!
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But it was still Lady Liadrin doing something even if it came off as the Horde’s version of Captain America sending someone to assassinate a member of the Red Cross.
Maybe they were concerned the genocide at Teldrassil and the massacre at Brennandam didn’t make enough morally grey memes.
I thought I read that got changed from Liadrin giving that quest to Usha Eyegauge giving it. Not that it makes any difference to me.
I am fairly certain that Liadrin was just one of the WQ talking heads and nobody at Blizzard really gave any thought to assigning her talking head to that quest.
One of the funny things about that quest is it seemed like it was designed by someone who specifically dislikes Horde players and wanted to get the message across to them that they were monsters. There’s another quest, in Drustvar, where you also have to kill a healer NPC - who’s clearly a member of the Alliance military and dies with a lame joke on his lips, like damn near every other quest-kill target in the game. The difference in tone for what amounts to the same quest was rather striking.
Apparently, the forum software saw fit to also remove the direct quote of your post from mine. That’s… weirdly creepy.
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The Alliance’s titanic heritage actually paying off is something I’ve always wanted, but I feel like Blizzard themselves ignore it most of the time.
The Old Ways of Gilneas or the fabled Wildhammer Druids from the RPG traced back to worship of Eonar
Dwarven Shamans taking after Khaz’goroth and Golganneth
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It’s really not a bad answer though, if a foundation is rotten, build a new one. That’s the only answer there is, to this dilemma.
That’s why they fail, they continue to build off the foundation of the rapidly decaying WC3 roster instead of moving the story forward with new characters like Garrosh, Zaela, even Anduin, these are the characters who were supposed to be that new foundation for the story moving forward, the next generation.
With recent expansions, they’ve all but killed off the “next gen” Horde characters and fall back to their still-rotting WC3 roster, who they fail to use properly. Heck they’re so desperate they decided to finally pull Rokhan and Rexxar out of the cellar for use in this “faction pride narrative”, and they’re so desperate for established characters that they conscripted Garona and Lilian Voss, two characters who were considered largely individual of the factions, and are suddenly pro Horde now?
It’s stupid, the writers ineptitude and laziness is the only thing holding them back for being able to put together a decent story.
I mean, a project like WoW had never been done before up to that point. The closest thing there was to it was Runescape and that was a low poly ftp game. Wow was a massive endeavor that cost lots of money, resources, and hard work put into it. So it had alot of expectations to meet up, it would’ve been a massive loss for the devs if it didn’t pay off and it didn’t help that mmorpgs had never been a particularly trendy genre at that point in time.(since they were either rarely made or weren’t nearly as ambitious as WoW). So either it succeeded and turned Blizzard into the world renowned gaming company it is today or it failed, and they’d lose all their money.
So it was basically lightening striking, when WoW absolutely exceeded and surpassed all expectations when it was heard that this small, indie game company had created one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.
However, yea, that same mojo isn’t exactly there anymore ever since Blizzard sold its’ soul to activision for a pretty penny. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible for then to get a second wind eventually.
And yet other MMO’s have yet to knock WoW off its’ throne. Not fable, not FF15, not Everquest, nothing.
Clearly it’s still doing something right. What that is is up for interpretation.
Not to worry, I’ll carry that torch for you. All I can do is hope that SL is amazing, yet remain aware of Blizzards recent track record for disappointment. Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t hope for success tho.
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Why do you set yourself up for disappointment?
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What, in all the history of “equivalent Horde-only organizations,” makes you think that would actually happen?
Look at how the BE magisters stack up against the Kirin Tor.
Look at how the Reliquary stacks up against the Explorer’s League.
Look at how the Sunwalkers and Blood Knights stack up against the Silver Hand.
The Horde is at “narrative sterility” when it comes to druids, just as much as the Darkspear are.
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But you didn’t just say “build a new one”, you said “[lay] down a new foundation upon the decaying corpse of the old.” If the foundations are rotten, just building more on top is pointless, it’s still a deeply, inherently flawed construction.
Uh, Ultima Online, Everquest, Phantasy Star Online, Final Fantasy 11, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, a ton of very popular MMOs came out before WoW. WoW wasn’t even particularly innovative, it just had (relatively) high graphical quality and was casualized enough that it was more accessible to a wider audience. It also had the advantage of launching at a time when online access was exploding, and having been built on an already-popular PC franchise.
And yes, I already noted that it had a lot of effort put into it, which aided it’s success in addition to being in the right place at the right time. But that effort now appears to be absent on nearly all fronts, and it’s no longer in that place and time. It’s a pipe dream to think that it can get a huge second wind rather than continuing to fizzle out like it’s been doing for years. Hell, Legion practically was that second wind, but it didn’t last forever.
By what metric do you say it still has it’s “throne”? Also, of the games you listed, one isn’t an MMO, one is the wrong entry in the series, and one predates WoW.
Go for it, but it’s already down to the nub. You’re going to get burned.
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I strongly oppose this suggestion, not just because I like the Horde Cenarion Circle members, but because it makes no lore sense. Malfurion himself sent the Cenarion Circle members down the Silithus in Before the Storm, and Hamuul and the others were down there before Saurfang’s march started and never got involved in the War of the Thorns or the Fourth War during any of BfA (not counting Horde players, who are Schrodinger’s Archdruid, given I am Archdruid of the Dreamgrove [too]). Hamuul and his students literally didn’t do anything wrong.
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This is a common thing I keep saying, but, now that I’ve seen hell with BFA, I am happy with purgatory in the Shadowlands.
I’m willing to get on the merry-go-round and soft reboot the series by returning characters they killed for the sake of needing a bad guy, or for shock value.
I don’t expect the same cool tricks that fascinated me from classic to WOTLK. I just want them to play it safe at this point. Something that doesn’t just (profanity) me off whenever I think about a game I’ve committed so much time to.
It is a cynical thing for me to say and I pray to god at some point they’ll prove me wrong but I do not expect greatness from this team and would prefer ‘eh’ background noise story than big, bombastic stories they just can’t seem to stick the landing (or flight, for that matter) on.
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According to the bronze dragonflight who for some, inexplicable reason, coughed out AU Mag’har as a faction, the answer is yes.
I wish it’d be for something worthwhile, like retconning Garrosh going insane, or Sylvanas’ character taking a drastic 180 and burning down Teldrassil, but, hey! Gimme dat non-green zugzug.
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But the Horde did. And they are Horde.
They can get a choice. Renounce their faction and remain in the Circle or rejoin their murderer, thief and arsonist friends.