Seems they’re covering this in 8.3 with her being a boss in the vision of Stormwind that we prevent from ever happening.
Nazjatar was a literal “Splat.” The Zandalari don’t show up again until the Vulpera recruitment, where they can’t even defend themselves from the Naga that are still attacking them.
One of the armies that won one of those fronts, the Army of the Black Moon, didn’t join the Alliance and Horde rebels at Orgrimmar, so Anduin’s comments were missing their count. This same Night Elf army was meant to counter Saurfang’s entire Horde army at Silithus.
I suppose If that army was the power house of kalimdor and matched All of Sylvanas’s loyalist faction it would make sense that the Alliance won darkshore. Considering Sylvanas had to pull back to Orgrimmar to defend it against the rebels. Also makes sesnes that Alleria wouldn’t be aware of that army as Tyrande had it busy taking back the night elf lands. Now only if they showed us in game that happening.
Also just goes to Show if you don’t follow Anduin you have armies to spare.
Our entire initial Vol’dun War Campaign was Shandris taking out targets efficiently while Wyrmbane came up with unnecessarily overly elaborate plots, after all.
Eh I wouldn’t sell wyrmbane short, I mean its was his plan to sink the zandalari fleet. He just used the tools at his disposal alot smarter than Anduin did.
Ok, so the horde as a faction is motivated about the shadowlands, but why are the players behind those characters motivated? Seriously consider the track record.
BfA was just waiting around to see who were gonna lose again, I mean did you see the cinematic when we rescue lady ashvane? We are just left standing there by syl WITH NO NARRATIVE REASON WHAT SO EVER JUST LEFT.
Footnote in legion, while orcs and belves had major beefs with the burning legion too. You’d hardly notice the difference if the horde just wasent there in legion.
Our character roster is pretty meh. Like cursedwords said, two of the characters in SL just used the horde and peaced out.
‘musical warchiefs’ is more detrimental than you think.
I mean the last time the horde had an xpack it was focused on was WoD and it was cut short.
So generally blizzard flips expansions as to who gets more focus, and it seems if bfa was the hordes…
So why would the horde (players) be motivated again?
An even WoD came with its own set of problems. Most notably, the fact that it retconned Orc lore and removed the tragedy from the savagery that was the Orcish people’s histories.
WoD portrays the Orcs as always having been bloodthirsty monsters, almost on a genetic level … and runs rampant over tons of big name orcs; while the Horde faction kills tons of a signature Horde race. On top of this, the only MU Horde characters to actually get spotlight in that expansion were Thrall … and Liadrin. If Blizz flips between the Horde and Alliance focused expansions, well then historically the Horde focused ones have been alarmingly damaging to the Horde itself. We get “Horde Expansions” and “Horde Stories” that strangely … never seem written for the “Horde Players”; or benefit the “Horde Faction”.
EDIT: Jezus, now that I think about … when was the last time Blizz wrote a powerful, positive, victorious story for the Horde?
I mean, to be fair the clans who weren’t so portrayed - Frostwolves in particular - remained fairly consistent to their pre-WoD roots (in temperament, if not geographical placement). Even the Shadowmoons were, at the start, kind of threatened and extorted by the rising Iron Horde into becoming what we saw in WoD rather than having always been bloodthirsty monsters.
On the other hand, the “idyllic and peaceful clans tricked into savage barbarity” never really made sense for most of them anyway, considering so many clans were already called things like Warsong, Bonechewer, Shattered Hand, etc. And when it comes down to it, that narrative was already somewhat demolished by Thrall’s revelation via Grommash in the WC3 campaign when he learned that contrary to what he’d thought from learning under Doomhammer and Drek’thar, the clans that succumbed to fel corruption had actually done so willingly rather than being outright fooled into it.
The most glaring issue orc-side of WoD was that we received basically no meaningful retrospection from any MU orcs upon seeing how so many of the clans were acting even in the absence of the blood curse. It was treated like a vacation or something, where familiar orcish names could just be tossed out like killable easter eggs rather than addressed in the context of how they existed in the MU.
But then, such an exploration would have undermined their desire to unceremoniously reset the post-Pandaria Azerothian orcs back into mindlessly eradicating in the Warchief’s name once BfA came around, so I suppose it’s hardly surprising that they once more skipped over a golden opportunity to examine the orcish role in a Horde that isn’t just a Legion-forged machine of death and defilement.
And … tbh, it wasn’t so much the savagry that bothered me … it was the cartoon villainy levels of savagry; which … OK its Blizzard so… Like if nothing else WoD did show why perhaps the Orcs are a fairly rough, hardened, ruthless people. That world sucks. Everything, from the wildlife, to the plants, to the land, to the friggen air is bigger, stronger, meaner, and is trying to kill you in any number of bizarre and horrific ways. No wonder Orcs aren’t as worried about chopping down NE trees … the Trees on their world would infest them and make them zombies.
EDIT: I also suppose we did get the Laughing Skull out of WoD. So good!
Well said. You’ve put into words some things that I have been trying to articulate for a while now.
… Which is a terrible waste of N’Zoth. He deserved better.
Only because Blizzard wrote them that way. The position of warchief arguably should be more likely to produce good leaders than a hereditary monarchy, because at least it’s built on something besides “who your parents were.”
Maybe you could explain a little more from your PoV? Seems the only time the alliance had it that bad was bfa, and never really shorted from a story standpoint before.
People are very much motivated to see Tyrande. The idea that her story and the Night Elves were being forgotten has been a major point of criticism. People very much want to see that story continued.
Uther is much less so. But as a former Alliance champion and founder of the Silver Hand, he’s much more important to the Alliance’s history than Draka or Kael’thas are to the Horde.
Draka elicited sparse applause and reactions of “Who?” from the audience when announced and Kael’thas spent all his time prior to becoming an agent of the Legion in the Alliance!
Laughing Skulls were indeed awesome. We also got to see a lot of Shamanism and other stuff when dealing with the Frostwolves. Well Horde did at least.
The Alliance didn’t get to interact with the Orcs clans on Draenor that weren’t members of the Iron Horde, so in an Alliance play-through, yes, all Orcs remain savages who readily jumped at the chance to join Garrosh and later, Guldan.
Tamanii covered my personal point of view pretty well - except the Draka part. I mean, just check my server name.
But my point is that for anyone not interested in Uther (I have no personal interest in Bastion at all, not even for the owl stewards) or Tyrande (there are Alliance fans that don’t want anything to do with Night Elves for some reason), they have about the same motivation for Shadowlands as any Horde player that isn’t interested in Kael’thas or Draka. That is, whatever motivation people get from the Shadowlands realms themselves. Or not.
Uther, Cenarius and Tyrande are very relevant to Alliance players. Cenarius and Tyrande especially, given recent events. Much more so than Draka and Kael’thas.
The first three are past and present Alliance heroes and tie into BfA events. The latter two are Neutral characters tangentially related to the Horde. Proper Horde equivalents would have been figures like Orgrim Doomhammer, Garrosh, Cairne, Vol’jin, Bwonsamdi, even Rezan etc. If those names had been announced, I think Horde players would have something to look forward to in the same sense Alliance players do.
My point was the opposite. That no matter who gets chosen, someone on either faction won’t care about that character. What I was referencing from your post that I mentioned was that I very much want to know what’s going to happen with Tyrande. But Uther much less so, to the point of disinterest, despite other people being interested in Uther.
And opposite of me, another Alliance player might be interested in Uther, but not care about Tyrande at all.
Or they could be a Draenei player who only cares about Draenei content guessing they’re going to care about Shadowlands about as much as a Horde player that’s not interested in Kael’thas or Draka.
But even in the examples you gave, I would absolutely bet there are plenty of Horde players who are excited to see Kael’thas again, but wouldn’t care about Cairne at all if he showed up again.
I will grant you that more news about Vol’jin would have been far more likely to interest people than Draka, though.