It pretty much is.
They’ll be putting any interest in anything else to the wayside in favor of nothing else but peace. Worthless, undermining, dull as bricks peace. Anything that might ever benefit the Horde at the cost of the Alliance will be completely ignored in favor of not upsetting the Alliance.
And all for what? Taking the option to not slaughter Alliance pigs wholesale.
So yeah, peace is subservience.
Ha I miss you sometimes
Look, if they wanted to write a good Faction Conflict storyline, it is possible … but it would take a very deft hand, and a very different settup to properly do right. This is especially true by the realities that, the Horde is always portrayed as the weak, ineffectual villains in these stupid bouts of interfaction conflict; while Blizzard seems genuinely terrified to scratch the near flawless, perfect portrayal of the Alliance. A faction so comprised of virtuous demigods, that they can’t even be an antagonist for the Horde in a supposed Faction Conflict expansion; because making them antagonistic … that’s not a virtue.
I don’t feel good killing Alliance, because Blizz doesn’t want me to. Play on the Alliance in WoT or Darkshore and they make it easy to hate or disregard the Horde lives taken. They’re all either slavering bloodthirsty monsters who cannot wait to skin Alliance children alive and feed them to their own parents. Goblins who make quippy jokes when they die. Or Forsaken, who thank the person that just ended their unlives. Play it on the Horde side, you’re wiping out rightous crusaders trying to obtain justice for an atrocity … or victims of that atrocity who’s last words are meant to inspire guilt and shame for your acts.
EDIT: Why should I a person who was drawn to the WC3 Concept of the Horde ever be invested in a story thread that always seems to come so deeply at my Faction’s expense? One that repeatedly destroys the very themes that attracted me to the faction in the first place? That is never rewarding to play, because you’re fighting the “Good Guys” of Warcraft? And that is largely pushed by a group of Horde players that seemingly almost exclusively define “The Horde” as a Faction, by it simply being contrarian and antagonistic to the Blue Team? Bluntly, if I wanted to play a multiplayer game designed around mindless PvP … I’d play an FPS, MobA, or Battle Royale game.
Cailias is roleplay posting, and would likely respond with something like “Speak for yourself. That makes me feel good.”
Ahh … that would explain a lot.
nah he isnt, he actually doesnt care about the horde or alliance, he just wants to kill alliance in the name of his dark lady, if blizzard gave him and sylvanas his own faction he’d happily kill horde too I think.
At the end of the day, I’m fine or more than fine with all of those leaders except Voss. She doesn’t feel like a real Forsaken to me. She doesn’t even feel like a real Horde character. She didn’t want anything to do with either until BfA because she was threatened and strong-armed into helping the them from what I remember.
I think the Forsaken leader should be someone who was killed/raised by the Scourge, experienced the horrors of being controlled by the Lich King and forced to kill for him, and then broke free and fought against the Scourge, Dreadlord controlled undead, and and other hostile groups to carve out a home for themselves. I’d be good with even a very minor NPC that fits that.
Hell, I’d do it without Sylvanas too.
As far as “roleplay posting” goes, it’s only half that. I do actually quite love killing Alliance far more than any ideal of Thrall’s Horde. It’s far more fun.
And as for Droite’s example, the framing of it all is secondary to me. I enjoyed everything you didn’t for the simple fact that the enemies I killed were Alliance was enough for me to get a kick out of it, with what took Droite’s enjoyment away being mostly just something I rolled my eyes at.
So, yeah … you don’t care about the story then? You don’t even care about the Horde? Both are just vehicles to allow you to kill the Alliance, but they have no real value beyond that. I mean, more power to you if that’s what you like … but it comes off as extremely arbitrary and destructive to the Faction I actually do like; and a story I at least try on some level to remain invested in.
Problem with that is … there is nobody left, at least no one of value. Belmont, Faranell, Tattersail and Velanora I “think” would apply to that? And even then, I’m not sure about any of them but the second, because like Voss, Belmont and Velonara originated in Cata; and Tattersail originated in Legion. Ironically, Faranell, despite the age of his characters origins … is also the least developed; which admittedly isn’t saying much.
Its part of why I was sort of hoping beyond hope that Nathanos would get betrayed too and have a “come to jesus moment” where he chose his people over Sylvie; but clearly that’s not the route that self-insert was destined to go on. Voss is the next most developed undead character that still mostly represents many of the Forsaken temperaments and ideologies … which is why she was forced into her current role.
Starting from Cataclysm, though, an increasing number of Undead were being raised by the Forsaken that were never mind controlled by the Lich King or the Dreadlords or Arthas. Much like all the Undead that were raised at Kul’Tiras, that isn’t a shared experience for all Forsaken any more.
Velonara should work because I think all of the dark rangers and banshees were raised during the third war. That’s a good point about Belmont and Tattersail though. I’d be okay with a character that’s retroactively established as a pre-Cata Forsaken. So as long as they’re not explicitly shown being raised in Cata or later.
Well, we’ll see how it goes. Voss only potentially interests me as a Forsaken rep because she represents key themes of the Forsaken, while never falling prey to the Sylvie cult of personality. She is a good representation of Forsaken Free Will, I don’t think there is a character in the game that represents it better now. Her interactions with Stone and Zelling show that she is a good leader figure; caring about not just the physical wellbeing of those she feels responsible for, but also the psychological wellbeing of them as well. Stone and Zelling where without a doubt loyal to her before they were loyal to the Forsaken IMO.
So … conceptually, she would make for an interesting leader that foster’s loyalty accidentally, even if she doesn’t want that loyalty. She’s also apparently the type to feel it necessary to take responsibility over those she’s forced to; such as Zelling and Stone who she was essentially forced to raise into undeath by her own forced conscription into the War Campaign. IMO, the trick with building her into a proper Forsaken leader is putting her into positions where she feels she has to take increasing responsibility for the Forsaken people; and through that conduit and her actions to support it … her fostering loyalty to her amongst those people.
However, that would require a type of subtle writing I’m not sure Blizz is capable of anymore. But … my naive optimism is hoping we do get some content with her interacting with her Father in the land of the dead towards that goal.
That’s true but (at least from what I remember) the vast majority of named undead that were explicitly raised in Cata or later either leave the Forsaken or don’t appear again. Of the three raised in Deathknell, Marcus Redpath and Voss immediately abscond. Valdred Moray hasn’t been seen since but the Horde PC killed him in the first place so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s gone. Of the Gilneans raised, Dempsey is horrified by being undead so Godfrey kills him, and then Godfrey, Walden, and Ashbury turn on the Forsaken. Galen Trollbane and the Arathi undead also turn on the Forsaken in Legion. I don’t think any of the named Southshore/Hillsbrad refugees they raise ever appear again. And now it looks like the undead night elves might not stick around either.
I don’t think it was necessarily the intention of the writers, but what they’ve conveyed makes it seem like undead without that shared experience don’t really want to stay with the Forsaken in the long term. Especially as it was usually the Horde/Forsaken that killed them, so I would be surprised if Stone lasts after BfA.
The Horde is dead it died with BFA and Saurfang. It was murdered by hack writers.
If you wanna get technical about it, sure, I mean we are going to the Shadowlands after all.
No, I care about both. Taking enjoyment in killing Alliance for the simple fact that they are Alliance is not mutually exclusive with caring about the story and the Horde. I just always preferred the Horde to be the far more assertive one it was in Cata, and the constant villainizing of that Horde both in game and out of game has always given me even less reason to like the honorable sides of it than I already had after always preferring the Forsaken and Trolls to the Tauren and Orcs, given how those were the original “darker” races of the Horde, even if the Trolls weren’t to the extent the Forsaken were.
This. It’s not as though an overarching apocalypse scenario will always be a bad story, Legion was quite good. But that was because so much of the narrative, by way of the order halls, was focused on individual plot threads, known characters, and established lore. If the entire thing was just Legionfall, people would have checked out early on. On top of that, the Legion are the Warcraft third party antagonists, any major showdown with them was bound to get people invested.
Looking at Shadowlands, what is there that’s actually relevant or interesting in the long-term? A bunch of Covenants full of characters we’ve never seen before and won’t see again after the expansion is over? Old dead characters getting their last shots in the limelight? The most generic main villain ever introduced to the game? Most players are probably more excited to kill Sylvanas than “THE JAILOR”.
And what happens going forward? None of this actually seems to matter. It’ll all probably be forgotten faster than that sword stuck between Azeroth’s proverbial ribs. I don’t think Blizzard understands what invests people in a story long-term, because they just seem obsessed with upping the stakes higher and higher while ignoring the actual ramifications of what’s happening to people in the world. Like, the Scourge unleashed across Azeroth could be an entire expansion all on it’s own, but now it’s being relegated to pre-patch content. Same goes for the Legion invasion really, but at least we actually spent the expansion fighting them on the Broken Isles.
It’s Cailias we’re talking about, do you honestly expect anything else but inflammatory comments about throwing a cohesive faction and narrative to the wind so he can fulfill his Alliance hate fantasy.
Well, I can make a mean grilled salmon sandwich.