It’s a bit sad and dumb that the Horde council only reflects the playable cast when some playable races like the Vulpera or Huojin are, lorewise, definitely of lesser importance within the Horde than some non-playable races. At the very least the Taunka, Ogres, Forest Hozen and Revantusk should get a seat on the council. Other more minor subfactions like the Dragonmaw, Frostwolves, Shatterspear, Mok’Nathak and Unshackled could also be represented, and I tend to think that if it is indeed canon that a portion of the Sin’dorei Illidari did join the faction, they should definitely get a representation separate from that of Quel’thalas
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It is a bit weird that there are factions within the Horde that have no voice on the council. And they probably could have a person to represent the groups with similar needs and wants, so the council doesn’t up being too bloated and ineffective in the end.
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Yeah I agree, for instance the Frostwolves and Dragonmaw could be represented by the Durotar Orc speaker, the Revantusk and Shatterspear by the Darkspear speaker, and the Mok’nathal and Ogres could be grouped together. Merely specifying this in the dialogues and lore would already be quite cool and more sensical
Alternatively the regular Horde council could also turn into an Extended Horde Council on special occasions, when discussing the most crucial matters such as going to war or preparing an expedition
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I feel like the Horde can go all sorts of places, now that they removed the position of Warchief. How much time do we have for all this? There is so much to be done.
Individual races aside, this sounds like a whole Horde Project that would be highlighting why races are in the Horde, more than highlighting what makes the Races unique. Which could be fodder for a massive questline.
Maybe if we expand the Council, they can add a massive quest chain. Make the Council a sort of Senate/House of Representatives in all but name. Every Race sends a representative, and we quest with each race to see why they love the Horde and who they settle on as a pick to represent them - for those races where it may not be clear.
I feel like the current council diminishes a lot of people in it. Some of them, like Talanji, and Mayla, and Thalyssra, are heads of state or royalty. If they went with a Head of State being the racial leader, and a different Character being the representative in the Council, it might be Character bloat… but that is what I would like.
As an example, maybe Lorthemar would send Liadrin. An example on the Alliance side - if they had a Council - Tyrande would send Shandris as her Council member.
I know it might seem like a bit of an insignificant gripe, but it just bugs me having the Racial Bigwigs involved in Horde Council politics. It feels like something a head of state should have a representative for. It diminishes them a little. I loved Shadows Rising, but the Council scenes were awkward. It made me realize that even in a good book with a capable writer, the Horde Council is pretty “oof”.
Thrall ran around being right about everything and being the Warchief in all but name, anyway. Maybe they should make a Parliament, with Ministers. Divide the Powers of Warchief between 4 or 5 Ministers - Minister of Defense (War), Minister of Economy (Coin?) , Minister of Diplomacy, and some others.
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At the very least they could have ambassadors at the Orgrimmar Embassy to represent them to the council.
Though I do wonder how the Dracthyr will factor into the council. Like will their leader get a seat or will they have to earn in it in some manner?
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At that point it’d be more of a Horde Congress. And they’ll probably want to get started on some other branchs of government to sort that out.
Interesting though the idea of the Horde becoming a proper Federation is, I genuinely don’t believe the Horde Council is going to do much narratively. Like it’s already kinda worrying enough there’s three Horde sub councils within the Council between the Forsaken, Sin’Dorei and Zandalari.
I very much doubt that Zandalari one is ever going to see the light of day again. Rommath and Halduron are barely present in the narrative to the point where Liadrin feels more like the co leader.
And I think we can all agree that any time spent on that would be better spent on the Desolate Council. At least so long as I wave this broken bottle around.
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Bloating the council with representation for every one-shot tribe and half-forgotten clan and loosely aligned subgroup would do more harm than good IMO. Blizzard gave up on trying to balance five leaders of the Alliance; fifty leaders of the Horde would fare even worse. I think it’s better said groups raise their mundane issues through their faction’s existing link to the council (the Revantusk through Rokhan, the Sunreavers through Theron, etc.) and come forward as special ambassadors when world affairs directly impact them.
But then, we’ve been given a weird power dynamic where the little fox dude working out of his mate’s caravan sits on a high council with thousand-year-old elves and a troll queen each ruling from their ancient civilization’s golden palace, so I’d feel bad telling Drek’Thar to wait on Thrall’s pleasure.
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The problem is such things shouldn’t exist. I really hope Blizzard eventually give up on their culture of introducing new races and subfactions only to never mention them again once the expansion is over. The Taunka are hilariously typical of that. That’s just the worst thing to do in terms of world building
I want to believe they finally came to realize that when I see that BFA had Hozen Horde Vanguards and friendly Revantusk in Dazar’alor and that Exploring Kalimdor gave the Shatterspear some proper lore for the first time ever
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You are right. I don’t think these powerful rulers should be sitting in Orgrimmar. They need to run their own kingdoms. Having a representative would be much better.
The council should not be that powerful. The Horde is more about autonomy of the individual members.
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Sounds like a setup for Horde just to get bulldozed again.
I think the Horde should keep the role of Warchief, merely diminsh it’s role aka -
Warchief serves as an extension of the council and serves primarily to defending and securing territory on the representatives behalf.
The Warchief has no autonomy to declare war on behalf of the Horde unless done so through the expressed wishes of the council itself.
This way the Horde can still retain some of it’s primal identity, I feel that a council dictating everything alone would be too Alliance flavored.
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Absolutely!
The full council:
https://i.imgur.com/n7qihln.png
- Kah Kah [Hozen]
- Ji Firepaw [Houjin Pandaren]
- Roanauk Icemist [Taunka]
- Mayla Highmountain [Highmountain Tauren]
- Baine Bloodhoof [Thunder Bluff Tauren]
- Rokhan [Darkspear Trolls]
- Talanji [Zandalari Trolls]
- Geya’rah [Mag’har Orcs]
- Thrall [Orgrimmar Orcs]
- Rexxar [Mok’nathal]
- Tharg [Stonemaul Ogres]
- Gazlowe [Bilgewater Goblins]
- Neri [The Unshackled]
- Kiro [Vulpera]
- Lor’themar Theron [Blood Elves]
- Fire Arcanist Thalyssra [Nightborne]
- Wrathion [Black Dragonflight]
- Calia [The Forsaken]
- Kael’thas [The San’layn]
Like in Mass Effect?
You gonna Volus the Taunka? 
3 Likes
Why didn’t the Revantusk trolls get a seat in that? While they were originally allies of the Horde, they become full fledged members in Cataclysm.
At least the Taunka would got some representation over nothing, especially if the Taunka become a customization option like the Darkfallen over a new playable race option.
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A favorite easily missed bit from BFA of mine is that the Unshackled have taken up residence in Bladefist Bay.
This is only represented by having the three NPCs and the one guy’s sea giant BFF chilling there. But that’s really all you need. After spending months with the little guys stapled to my leg it was nice to see they hadnt been completely forgotten about.
There realistically isn’t enough time to give everyone proper spotlight. But I don’t think thats needed. Just have a couple of NPCs milling around with some dialogue as an epiologue to their roll in the story.
It just makes Azeroth feel more alive. Like lets say the revamp Tirisfal and put a dock up north. I’d be delighted to see the Fogsail Freebooters anchored off the coast. If you fly out there you’ll find some friendly tagged pirates and Captain Owens who could say something to the effect of;
“Love trading with the Forsaken. Constant demand for smuggled goods and my men are too spooked to even ask for shore leave”
Just little stuff like that. Nothing huge just some indication the story has moved on and the illusion NPCs have existences beyond standing nailed to the spot with exclamation marks over their heads.
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100% agree with you. I doesn’t need to be much, little things like that would be enough to maintain the illusion of a dynamic world with a life of its own, as you said.
I’m confident that there’s something in store for the Unshackled, due to the Bladefist Bay thing and the fact that they were insistent on “going home” and visiting the Horde afterwards.
As for the Fogsail Freebooters, my guess is we will have other interactions with them in the future. Lorewise, could they really maintain their base in Tiragarde Sound just next to Boralus, after they sided with the Horde in the 4th War, without the support of said Horde ? Sounds like the Alliance would wipe them out in a second. Also, unlike the other Horde settlements on KT, Plunder Harbor was not said to have been abandoned by the faction after the war
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No. It needs to be dissolved.
A Warchief was a big part of the Horde’s faction identity, replacing it with some mundane council has done no favors to a faction that has been declawed over the past couple of expansions. There’s always a place for a Warchief considering there’s always some war going on, wars aren’t exclusive to Alliance v Horde.
I know we strive for equality and representation in the real world but come on, this is fiction.
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Most large fictional councils are pretty much characterized by certain big name characters that are representative of the different coalitions within the council while everyone else sticks to the background until something specifically relevant to their people comes into play. Don’t see why this council couldn’t work that way.
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The Warchief system doesn’t work. It leads to narrative disasters. We had it from the very begining, and look where it got us : more often than not it ends up with the Warchief turning out to be a psycho tyrant with genocidal tendencies, and so we are forced to overthrow him/her with the help of the Alliance. Makes the Horde look like a bunch of idiots incapable of governing themselves, constantly in need of external help, and going through a seemingly endless redemption arc.
I’m glad this is over. I couldn’t stand another Garrosh or Sylvanas plot. The council system is much better. And by the way, nobody wants WoW to revolve around a handful of godlike characters, first because Blizzard’s very bad at writing them, and because that’s inherently lame.
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I mean tbf it only went that way because of creative bankruptcy and outright lies.
They outright said Sylvanas would be morally gray and they wouldn’t be doing a retread of Garrosh.
She started a world war by blowing up an Alliance city in Kalimdor, which causes a revolution from within the Horde that culminates with a siege of Orgrimmar. But escaped justice by jumping into another dimension where we run into characters from Warcraft’s past.
Completely different from Garrosh. Because he at least got a fitting, in character send off instead of a cowardly backpedal and shelving.
Seriously it’s so depressing to me how tainted a faction war is conceptually now. It isnt even remotely difficult to write a war story with shades of gray. I know this for a fact because I’ve done exactly that for RPPVP campaigns.
Have some McGuffin or objective that both sides need and can’t compromise over. Then sprinkle both sides with good, neutral and evil motivations. Mix in some conflicting loyalties and agendas. And try to pace it so the final showdown is somewhere interesting and important to the plot resolution.
Villain batting a player faction if anything causes ludonarrative dissonance. Because simple human nature means you’ll run into both honorable and ruthless players on the other side. WPvP as just gameplay tells a more compelling story than the writers managed.
One time I Shining Force’d a Draenei Mage off a mountain. To save her. Because I knew that player was cool and I couldn’t exactly stop the other players from stomping her. So I blasted her off a cliff knowing full well she’d slow fall to safety and played it off as a brain fart moment.
7 Likes
Until recently the Horde was ruled by a single person autocracy.
It’s a bit soon to turn the goverment system into a mob.
Baby steps.
Narrative disasters are what the game runs on. Just because both Alliance and Horde have changed leadership doesn’t mean that new ones to drive plot aren’t on the horizon.
You don’t think that we’re just going to waltz into the Dragon Isles like a pack of tourists do you?
The Dragons sealing off their own island to the extent that THEY couldn’t find it unless a golem manages to turn on a magic lighthouse doesn’t seem to be that well thought out either.
6 Likes