Anduin honestly couldn’t ask for better people to have on the Horde council.
Rhokan is just a budget Vol’jin- bland and inoffensive. Thrall was raised among Humans has always had a close relationship with Jaina. Gazlowe’s done business with the Alliance out of Booty Bay for decades. Lothe’mar almost left the Horde for the Alliance. Voss used to actively hunt the Scourge and initially rejected the Forsaken.
And we all already know about Baine.
If I have to listen to Talanji’s righteous sermon for even a minute of my time in a future expansion, I swear to god…
The moment you start defining good Horde leaders by those that exclusively are antagonistic against a Blue Faction … your doomed. This is especially true if you place too much value in the Faction Conflict for the Horde’s Identity.
The Horde can never, and will never, come out ahead in that War. Hell, the Alliance has become so much the peerless paragons of every virtue under the sun; that they can’t even be portrayed as antagonists to the Horde in a Faction Conflict expansion. This is because they’d have to actually be antagonistic to the Red Team, and that’s not a virtue. So, the Horde needs to be comically, nonsensically antagonistic towards them instead to compensate.
Rokhan is one of the original WC3 Darkspear. There is no Goblin in all of Warcraft with more of a history with the Horde than Gazlowe. Thrall, even if he’s had ups and downs, founded the very faction you’re complaining that he’s a part of. Voss, as forced as she is in her current role, is the living embodiment of Forsaken Free Will. Baine may be frustratingly spineless, but he is at least attempting to pursue the very thing his Father lost his life in a fight to the death for.
So … my question is, what reps do you like? Sylvanas? Gallywix?
Supposedly void visions see all possibilities, all but one which will actually happen, so if anything he’s seen an infinite number of his own defeats.
He’d be jealous that he didn’t have the Horde’s catapult technology when Ragnaros wanted him to burn Nordrassil.
True he would, but I was thinking of him as if he had never flipped and was still as he was Vanilla-Wrath with what happened to Teldrassil.
Zaela would be embraced by Horde fans with open arms in the same way that Kael and Uther are, I can assure you, assuming it has to be Horde female that is.
Otherwise the Horde has a whole slew of dead characters to pull from that people would be grateful to see come back. To name a few;
Doomhammer
Garrosh
Kargath
Putress
Sen’jin
Rastakhan
Zul’jin
Cairne
These would all be excellent characters to re-explore and re-analyze from a new point of view.
This is true, but it is because of this that having all Alliance-friendly leaders makes it feel like we lost the war. And not even in a “We gave it our best and went down fighting” sort of way.
So? Then don’t consider the Alliance in your thought process. Omit them.
I can honestly say that the Alliance was never a factor in my appreciation for the potential these characters could have in their current roles; beyond me simply detesting the weak, flawed, disgusting story thread that is the Faction Conflict. I also didn’t dislike leaders like Gallywix and Sylvanas because of what they did to the Alliance … but exclusively how they used the Faction and treated their own people. Sociopathic despots just using others for personal gain, nothing else.
Screw the Alliance. Look at each character for what they can bring to their people, and ask yourself if they have the ability to represent them well. If you look through this lens, there is no guarantees that you’ll like all of them … but you’ll at least enjoy more of them than you otherwise would have by worrying about what the Blue Team wants. You also might be just a bit more open to the potential each of these current reps truly have for the Horde.
I don’t share your adoration of Gazlowe or your disdain for Gallywix, so I am quite “meh” on this choice.
Nothing against Rokhan, but he’s not Vol’jin and never will be. So again … meh.
No. I think Thrall is too tainted by failure and player hate now to ever regain the status he once had.
I liked her better when she was the non-Forsaken undead. Therefore, any situation in which she is part of the Forsaken, let alone their racial representative, is a step backward for the character in my opinion. So … my answer is no.
I also don’t agree that she “truly had the foundation for ages to be a proper Forsaken leader,” either, because see above about her whole schtick being not one of the Forsaken, but a free agent. That character has been replaced by someone completely different.
Maybe, but the world now isn’t the same as it was in Cairne’s day. I’m not convinced that “pursuing the goal Cairne died for” is what is currently needed.
But anyway, considering that I’m not thrilled with any of these leaders for their own sake, the fact that they’re all varying degrees of Alliance-friendly does not do anything to warm me up to any of them.
I wasn’t being sarcastic.
I legitimately cannot think of a Horde council that would be more amenable to lasting peace with the Alliance. If anyone is of the opinion that the Horde leadership needs to be dismantled and replaced with more cooperative individuals, I can’t imagine who’d they go with short of just inventing new characters whole cloth.
They also happen to be among the most well developed characters among their races. I think it’s mostly a happy coincidence, but it really couldn’t work out better for the direction they seem to be going in.
I mean, I personally would have preferred Gazlowe stay Neutral and Horde leaning while Boss Mida steps up to the plate, but she’s got basically no characterization, so I can understand the decision not to go with her.
And how I feel about how the Horde (or at least the orc/troll/tauren/goblin elements) have been used in the game’s stories (for good or ill) is a whole other thing. It’s really kind of immaterial. If they really want to restart an all out faction war again ala MoP or BfA, they’ll just introduce a new character or have someone start turning villain.
So, then, there is nothing that can be done it seems. It has nothing to do with the Alliance-friendly characters that are seemingly introduced here; its that there just seems to be a lack of characters you like on the Faction at all.
I don’t care about the Alliance, but I do hate the Faction Conflict. I genuinely think people who ever believed that story thread, so riddled with contradictory expectations by so many corners of the fanbase, could ever be written in a satisfactory way are just plain deluding themselves. It does not matter who was writing this story if the story thread itself is a deeply flawed mess that never evolved beyond just being something created to justify PvP; and one that the players constantly prove they despise any sort of real consequences from.
The Horde and its races have never in the history of Warcraft had a positive outcome by being in direct conflict with the races of the Alliance. We always lose, because we are always portrayed as the antagonists fighting against an opponent that Blizzard clearly is unwilling to portray as antagonistic against us. Because, of course, the Alliance is Faction comprised of unquestionable moral virtue … and being antagonistic isn’t a virtue. This reality will never change … ever. So, when it comes to picking what Horde reps I like … the Alliance aren’t a factor for me.
The faction conflict was written in a satisfactory back in Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and even up through much of Cataclysm. It was mostly just the Horde and Alliance being world powers that squabbled over stuff like land, resources, political influence, trade routes, old grievances, etc. It tended to be the underlying basis for why there were separate Horde/Alliance storylines in each expansion, up until the later patches, when they’d ally with a neutral organizations to start doing end game dungeons/raids against the BBEG.
It wasn’t until Mists of Pandaria, where they decided that the Warchief was instead going to be a lunatic who turned the Horde into a faceless army of evil mooks against an increasingly innocent and squeaky clean Alliance that things started to get silly. Doubly so when it became necessary for the “good” elements of the Horde to team up with the Alliance to take him down.
The renewed Horde and Alliance tensions in WoD and short lived peace followed by increasing hostilities throughout Legion didn’t get a whole lot of criticism- because the Warchiefs acted like they had some common sense and didn’t start off the expansions by blowing up a city or two.
People were even super hyped for BfA, mostly because of its faction conflict themes. It looked like it was going to focus more on the revamped zone stories, faction politics, and war drama, and lacking a central BBEG with army of zombie/demon/monsters to fight for the fate of the world/universe. A return to classic WoW style storytelling, really.
But we got MoP 2.0, only this time everything’s kicked up to 11 and it ends up again being a battle for the fate of all life, where the “good” elements of the Horde have to team up with the Alliance to take down a Warchief gone mad.
The lesson shouldn’t be, “Don’t do faction conflict,” as faction conflict’s been generally well received. The lesson should be, “Don’t keep doing MoP,” as that storyline was contentious then and even more so when they tried to basically repeat it. You can do a faction conflict without having factions blowing up cities, engaging in race based exterminations, and turning into characters so vile that even their closest allies are disgusted by them. We have plenty of expansions where this has been the case!
If Blizzard can’t continue the faction conflict without retreading MoP every couple of years, then sure, end the faction conflict. But I don’t see that as something to be celebrated. It’s just a sad state of affairs.
You mean when the Faction Conflict was a C Plot at best in Vanilla? Or a C Plot at best in BC? Or was ramped up in WotLK only because of the Forsaken’s betrayal at Wrathgate? Yeah, great story thread that … on that’s only good when its as far in the background as humanly possible; never amounts to consequences; or change; or growth; and artificially maintaining it becomes increasingly more difficult, deranged, and nonsensical with every bout of forced cooperation.
A perpetual cold war where it just cant deescalate or escalate because its just gotta stay the same for convenience. A story thread that can have no real impact on the world as a whole, because fans always freak out to ridiculous degrees when it does. A war where both sides expect a narrative that totally validates them slaughtering the other side without an ounce of remorse; while simultaneously not wanting the integrity of their Faction Identity damaged.
The Faction Conflict is a joke of a story. Its something that was created solely to justify PvP on a story level, which is why it isnt shocking when people treat it like a game. Its no different than a BG, where people throw on their team jerseys for a good “war” against the other team before things return to the status quo when its time for the real story to be told again… There is simultaneously too little and too much going on with this story thread to make a coherent story from.
That would be really difficult to imagine because of how much of Malfurion’s story was tied into Fandral in Stormrage that if Fandral hadn’t always been flipped - with Stormrage covering what Fandral was doing with all that Morrowgrain in Classic-Wrath - then Malfurion’s story would have been entirely different as well, and with how tied into the War of the Thorns Malfurion was we would have probably had an entirely different story there, too.
Would Fandral have been there to help Malfurion and Delaryn? Would have Fandral died to Sylvanas? To Nathanos? Would he have burned on the tree? Or maybe Fandral would have been sent down to Silithus with the other Cenarion Circle members and wouldn’t have been able to get back in time to help and the War of the Thorns would have played out exactly as it did as we know it now.
Would he be sitting around saying “Tyrande and Malfurion have no idea how to lead our people”? Or would have have flipped 180 like Maiev and suddenly support them at Darkshore? Or would he have just stood around at Silithus without saying anything like Broll Bearmantle?
I know you’re trying to frame it in the least generous terms, but yes. Exactly that.
The conflict works well as an overarching conflict that ties together all the smaller stories told. The best stories in WoW are the smaller zone stories that occur against the backdrop of the conflict between the Horde and Alliance. The Zandalar and Kul Tiran campaigns and individual Horde/Alliance experiences in Nazjatar, for example- are better than the joint Horde/Alliance war campaign quests or Heart of Azeroth stuff, and it doesn’t look like patch 8.3 is bringing us amazing story. The interesting stuff is all in how the Horde and Alliance are dealing with the aftermath of the faction conflict.
When is the WoW story at its worst? When they have to trot out some lore character to serve as BBEG and muck with the cosmology or time/space to justify why this person is suddenly a threat and then elevate the player character to the status of grand champion so he can team up with OP faction leaders to save the world/universe.
Garrosh and Sylvanas weren’t cardboard cutout characters with no growth during Wrath of the Lich King or Legion; even though they were engaging in ultimately meaningless battles that didn’t have an impact on the world as a whole that you deride. They didn’t become that until they were pushed into the same narrative role as Illidan/Arthas/Deathwing/Sargeras/Azshara/N’zoth and started undertaking villainous actions that required everyone in the world to stop them, lest the world be destroyed.
The fate of a single village/city/zone being decided by the faction war is way more engaging than a battle for the fate of the world.
The problem isn’t the constant war plots as much as it’s the constant “we need to team up to save the world!” plots.
Well yeah, WoW is a game first and foremost.
Even then, the idea of factions in general and the Horde and Alliance in particular were built conceptually into the bones of franchise with Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans and continued in all its sequels. It’s so firmly rooted in WoW because the conflict between these two factions is one of the few universal elements throughout every iteration of the franchise.
The Zandalari and Kul Tiran stories at best are only loosely associated with the Faction Conflict, and even that loose association was clunky as all hell. We approach them because we believe we need as many allies as possible to help with the War effort.
However, their motives up until 8.1 had absolutely nothing to do with the Faction Conflict itself, and that conflict abruptly ended without their input. The Zandalari campaign was great, because it almost exclusively avoided the Faction Conflict beyond the Faction Conflict merely being the excuse for us being on Zandalar. It was all dealing with Cultists; Dealing with G’huun; Dealing with Zul; Dealing with Blood Trolls; Dealing with Sethrak outside of that. THEIR problems … not ours.
To be frank, when a story thread can almost exclusively be defined by “increasingly arbitrary” when its not the focus, and “staggeringly destructive” when it is the focus; its a trash story thread. This is especially true when you realize that such a thread now involves 24 different groups of people who have nearly all suffered near-extinction level events in the last 35 years. So, it doesn’t even make sense for the peoples of Azeroth to remain invested in to boot.
So, don’t act like you like the Faction Conflict because its a good story; because really its never really provided one that people dont flip their lids on. It is something that justifies PvP on a story level, and nothing else; and is a function that honestly … is no longer really needed anymore.
I suppose you’re correct here. I assumed that because the Green Dragonflight and Emerald Dream are so interwoven, that anything having to do with one probably had to do with the other. The Green guardian sent to watch over the temple was corrupted by “unknown forces”, which I assumed to be the Emerald Nightmare.
I dont like the faction war because the story is good, no. If I wanted good story I wouldnt be playing an MMO to begin with, least of all WoW.
All the plots are artifice designed to justify broad gameplay elements or highlight a marketable character, with a narrative cooked up after the fact. Sometimes its okay. Sometimes not so okay. It’s almost always schlocky and over the top fun. But its never winning any awards. For me, its good for lore and making up my own harebrained RP stories with others.
But back to faction war in particular…
The Horde going to Zandalar and the Alliance campaign in KuL tiras were pretty much made possible by the faction war. If the two were at peace and cooperating against N’zoth from the outset, we would instead have gotten one universal zone to go through as default, and it most definately would not have been Mesoamerica Troll Voodoo land.
The relatively lower stakes of a war/rivalry between the factions also gives more room to explore local issues and tell morr personal stories- as its far less immediately pressing than an extinction level invasion.
A bunch of people who’ve survived near total extincion band together to face the 6th(8th?) extinction level threat in nearly as many years is just as, if not more contrived. Its not a good story either.
And yes, its not at all uncommon for groups that have recently suffered large losses in terms of population/territory/resources or national/ethnic prode to continue squabbling.
Is the faction war a GOOD story? No. A BETTER foundation for the central conflict of the franchise and each expansion that makes more sense in a long running franchise built on unique factions? Yeah. Better than an endless succession of apocolypse scenarios revolving arounf a cast of humans/elves and the token orc. at least.
Okay? That’s all very well and good, for you.
Why should I be forced to go along with it? I rolled Horde in Vanilla to kill Alliance scum without a single care for how or why it happened, so what makes that any less of “the right track” than what you joined up for it?
Getting rid of Sylvanas is the last thing the Horde ever needed if we wanted to be on the right track. Now what is it? Cowed under the Alliance’s shadow, led around by the biggest Alliance sympathizer we’ve ever had, and actively excising any elements that might disagree with the new subservience to the Alliance that Baine and the Council seem so on board with.
Yeah, “right track”, sure buddy 
Call me when we get to bomb another Theramore or burn another Teldrassil, then we’ll be back on track.
Wanting peace is subservient lol , sometimes I wish blizzard did make the horde vassals would be funny to see the salt