Silvermoon of Quel'Thalas and the holy city of Stratholme

Lore Story Forum
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Playing a part sure, but you’ll see enormous masses of Horde players and those who are passionate about the Blood Elves storyline — Worried that the Ren’dorei + Windrunners are going to take up all the best parts of the story, be the key star-heroes and ultimate saviors of the day, whilst the Blood Elves probably get humbled and maybe even shamed on …

Void Elves whole existence already did that as it is.

The Blood Elves use to be the kingpin elves of ‘Taboo magic’ — and now they don’t even hold that status. The Alliance hold that crown by leagues, with:

  • The Void Elves
  • The Dark Iron Dwarves
  • Alliance-aligned Forsaken (Darkfallen)
  • and even the Man’ari …

Whenever the Horde playerbase got irritated about the Alliance holding all the fame & glory in the ‘Light’ category — Alliance players would always retaliate that the Horde held their own top status in the ‘Shadow’ or ‘Void’ category, but that’s clearly not the case anymore … The Alliance own both.

Ultimately?

The Horde is PATHETIC with both light & void powerscale and knowledge in comparison to what the Alliance hold.

As for magic?

The argument that the Horde hold that category thanks to the Nightborne + Blood Elves is retarded.

  • Human potential takes a squat and squeezes out a rotten festering dump in both the Nightborne and the Blood Elves mouths for them to chew up — and swallow. :drooling_face:

Because they’re always seemingly outmatched equally or surpassed by the humans – not to mention that given the Alliance have both the Silver Covenant + Void Elves on their side, they can hardly use the Blood Elves as a principle to the argument either.

So :clap: …

My overall point for mentioning all of this, is that making Silvermoon and Quel’Thalas officially neutral and equally as much the Alliance’s as it is the Horde’s — would just further that divide.

Along with what I said earlier too:

Because the Horde need more characters to hold moments of grandeur & story relevance … Making everything ‘Thrall’ – isn’t going to cut it. :joy:

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We will all be happy because Quel’Thalas, Silvermoon, Sunwell… will be revamped.:partying_face:

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That alone doesn’t justify the Horde’s neglect. :no_mouth:

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Void Elves will likely be the sole diners for any Void related themes going forward, but you are drastically overstating a lot of the others.

  • Horde still has shamanism on lock, even with Thrall still pouting in the corner being Aggra’s ringside cheerleader. Dark Iron got a leg up on the Firelands, but the Firelands is only one plane with a recurring Firelord vacancy issue.
  • Death/Undeath themes always go to Death Knights, which sucks for Forsaken players. I don’t think Darkfallen have really come up at all since BFA. They’re basically just a cosmetic option (that exists for both factions).
  • Man’ari will be in the same boat as The Forsaken. Any time demons/Fel comes up, it will be a Demon Hunter show.
  • Dalaran in rubble and the Kirin Tor in shambles could lead to breathing room for non-Humans. I’ll believe it when I see it, but they have set the stage for it at least.

Granted, even having said all of that, it is still a lopsided distribution. Life/Nature will go to Nelves, with Hamuul showing up to be a token Horde dude. Light will go to Draenei and Humans, with Liadrin showing up to be a token Horde dudette. Void will go to Void Elves, led by Alleria, and … like … I dunno, maybe they’ll pull a Shadowmoon Orc out of their hat to die to a trash mob five minutes after we learn their name?

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Shamanism isn’t really on lock, the Alliance have the Dark Iron Dwarves to sort of claim that too – plus as a culture, Horde rarely even incorporate shamanism into it, let alone their power field.

Death Knights aside — The Death category goes to the Alliance too, now that they got Forsaken themselves (Darkfallen) along with Drust magic + knowledge, thanks to the Kul’Tirans.

Kind of – but Man’ari would add additional power to their demon hunters far more than the Horde can to their own.

Jaina still outmatches any and every single elf of the Horde amongst the entire Nightborne & Blood elf race, as we saw in BFA …

Yeah even with Dalaran void-boomed’ — the Horde don’t hold a candle to the big ole human potential card.

So ultimately yeah, the Horde still get squatted on.
Especially in the story and prime significant moments of whatever aesthetic we’re on too.

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The alliance also have the wild hammer dwarven shamans

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That too!!

Yikes can’t believe I missed that one :joy: Yeah, haha

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The Alliance is pretty solid on having one type of dwarf for each element at this point.

Our base dwarves have Stoneform, so, Earth (although the Earthen work better now).
Dark Irons are our Fire Dwarves.
Although not playable, there’s the Wildhammer Dwarves for Air, who are in the Alliance.

All we have to do is formally recruit the Frost Dwarves in Northrend, and we’ll have all four. Maybe they already count? I don’t know what Muradin is to them anymore.

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There is a difference between “Alliance has groups who can do X” and “Alliance has groups who are dominant in mastery/themes of X.” A handful of Darkfallen doesn’t mean Alliance have a monopoly on Death themes, for example. Nor does having access to a playable class like Shaman—Nobundo is like 99.99% of Alliance “shaman representation” and he’s a Broken that heads up a neutral faction.

Put another way, there’s no need to exaggerate and overstate the situation when the reality is lopsided enough as is.

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They still have a larger foot in the themes & stories than many — if not most, of any Horde characters & strong theme-holders do.

  • As for the monopoly on death themes — The major Death Knight hero, former-Lich King was human, who played a major part in Shadowlands – Additionally, it’s reflected the Drust have a strong hold on the theme of death itself; particularly in nature too, with a realm of theirs residing in the Emerald Dream that has a reflection of life (in death) called Thros, the Blighted Lands. Given KT druids hold strength in such powers, well … Yeah take that as you will.
  • Back to the point of Shamanism, akin to Nobundo who has 99.99% of Alliance “Shaman Representation” — Thrall sort of holds the same merit for the Horde Representation on shamanism, as all the rest of the Horde shaman are rather forgettable or rather inconsequential & don’t really hold much power or awe.

Light, Void and Magic

These are three themes that hold major relevance in WoW, and ALL THREE are dominated & held by the Alliance in the monopoly of ownership.

Sure, the Horde has groups that can do X theme here & there → but the Alliance certainly have far more mastery and most of all: Significant INVOLVEMENT — with such themes for quite a long while now. :person_shrugging:

It’s hardly an exaggeration & overstatement when it’s true.

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The issue with Thrall is that the Devs just seem to flip a coin to decide if he still is a shaman at a given moment. In Shadowlands he still didn’t have his shaman powers back, but I’ve heard he either used some in TWW, or mentored some Earthen with the Storm Rooks.

Its pretty bad when players can’t even keep track of whether or not Thrall is a Shaman.

Its also kind of sad that after Thrall Nobundo probably IS the most relevant shaman to the setting, and he’s done about as much as Rommath.

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It is Aggra now. The Kosh’harg and the Stromgarde shorts have made that clear to me.

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I can’t say I disagree honestly — The Horde’s days of holding kingpin or wisdom status via Shamanism are long gone.

However yeah the Storm Rooks story was at least something albeit many would’ve loved more, but yeah … Anduin essentially did a speedrun of Thrall’s healing journey @ his mental-conflict with his powers, lmao :joy: :joy: :joy:

As for the significance of shamanism itself …

What’s more is Shadowlands took a rotten festering dump on Shamanism in general – Their whole spiritual relevance & overall spiritualism? … :poop:

:no_good_man: RETCONNED! :no_good_man:

— the foreshadowing of the shaman feeling the “unrest” of spirits and their spiritual connection & potential done by the book ‘Shadows Rising’ was also rather useless or retconned too.

You know who our SPIRIT GUIDES in the Shadowlands were?

  • :x: Shamans? Pffft NO! :joy:
  • :x: Priests? Nah, light & void hold absolutely NO spiritual or cultural relevance whatsoever – They’re just light sorcerers & shadow wizards now. :roll_eyes:
  • :x: Paladins?? No, they’re just a superior version of priests according to their insisted upon lore and as per the above – hold no such relevance.

The answer as which holds more spiritual relevance & are best for being spirit guides?

:exclamation: DEATH KNIGHTS :exclamation:

Shaman held NO spiritual lore, connection or mention whatsoever.

:unamused: Honestly I’m not even sure why they bother having shaman keep spirit wolf, spirit link totem and other spiritual themes including their transmogs now – as it doesn’t quite make sense with Blizzard’s writing of shaman … It’d be like giving a two handed sword legendary with loads of strength-stats to a mage, lmao

Dragonflight at least made shaman seem pretty cool with the Primalists – albeit the only spiritual connection they held was that with the elemental spirits, as opposed to all spiritual beings like they previous held in lore.

I mean Aggra is pretty forgettable too, with little relevance in comparison to the Alliance’s heroes of themes.

If you compare Aggra with the elements to say Alleria with the void, Turalyon or Velen with the light — or heck even Jaina with magic – people are probably going to know most or even all of those Alliance heroes, but try hard to remember who Aggra was again.

As many players in the past have stated back in Cataclysm: Aggra felt like a very forced character in the story & didn’t seem to hold much likeable or relatable personality traits either … Her power scale on the above tier-list of heroes too, is hugely sub-par as well.

She’s hardly comparable to Thrall; at best is a second rate C or D list character who just-so-happens to be a shaman. :person_shrugging:

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Drek’thar and Thrall have both called Aggra an incredibly powerful Shaman, possibly better than Mr. WORLD SHAMAN, and she was being displayed at parity with Jaina in stopping Stromic and Mag’har forces from killing one another.

Sorry, but we’re not going to say that undead Night Elves that haven’t been mentioned again since BFA = stranglehold on Death themes, then turn around and say Aggra is a nobody. She is the current ranking Farseer of the orcs (Drek’thar clearly on the way out from old age). We’ve still got Muln and Rokhan kicking around somewhere too.

Again, Alliance have a stranglehold on Light, Nature, Void for sure. Probably still Arcane, but we are on the precipice of the first expansion with a new creative director who was the creative lead during Warcraft’s best days. We could see the scales begin to balance more going forward, and Dalaran’s destruction could be a start down that road.

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Yeah but they still have nothing to show for it … My friends & I could call myself one of the greatest NBA players that the world could ever see, but unless I actually show off some skills – It’s not really going to carry much weight. lol

They were literally re-visited in Dragonflight @ Amirdrassil … They’ve been very much canonised. :person_shrugging:

Somehow I’m doubtful @ the scales balancing.
Sure – Metzen is great and all, but it sort of feels like the damage has already been done. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

  • For :one: : The Alliance have Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei – Crowning them kingpins of the void & light forces, which honestly was a stupid move to give them BOTH in the first place; so they’re very unlikely to topple that … And by any chance they DID, you’d have a whole angry blue-mob raging how it “Doesn’t make sense!” because of the mere namesake of those races.
  • And :two: : As for Dalaran’s destruction and its potential for changing the scales for the Arcane — The Alliance still hold Jaina and they’ve already spared most of the Kirin-Tor from the destruction, not to mention according to Zerde’s forced notions to the forums: Even the Silver Covenant “Mostly” survived — so the Alliance’s races & forces are still going to be quite strong in that area too.

Ultimately, both the the faction power-balance and the tier-list of the factions’ heroes is severely unbalanced & sadly, I’m both fearful and doubtful that’ll change much in Midnight either — Heck, if their current writing patterns in correlation to the factions & their heroes go unchanged? I’m sure it’ll even get worse.

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Take your wins where you can get them. If you choose to interpret everything in the worst way possible (and this is coming from my jaded, cynical, derisive self) and discredit everything to the contrary, you’re going to become Mirrorworld Zerde.

And if they continue with dogturd Horde direction, we can always vent about it or quit then. This is certainly my last stop if they learn nothing.

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I’d argue Erevien is the mirrorworld Zerde :joy:

But honestly, I probably will quit WoW if they continue with dogturding the Horde @ a particular extent in Midnight :person_shrugging: … But I suppose time will tell.

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It’d be great if Blizzard would do anything like this with her in-game.

Most players don’t concern themselves with comics, audio books, short stories, novels, manga, etc… So the exploits of Aggra in the Heartlands isn’t going to reach most players.

For the longest time, Alliance characters and content existed almost solely in external media. It’s why when Varian Wrynn finally showed up in Wrath that players reacted with visible confusion, wondering who he was and where he’d come from.

You’d think Blizzard would have learned their lesson, that external sources need to be balanced with in-game development.

Aggra might be OP, but most players will never know it since she only demonstrated her ability outside of the game.

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She has been around since Cata, was a part of the Shaman class hall, and the Drek’thar encounter is during the Kosh’harg. Her being uber powerful is a new development though, for sure.

I actually liked her being just a highly competent shaman, myself. Like, she had a firmer grasp on the fundamentals, unlike Thrall, but wasn’t outrageously OP, unlike Thrall. Which makes her a great mentor figure. I don’t know if today Blizz has it within them not to take the “and teh womens is even stronker!” path for every character at this point, though.

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Again, she’s hardly relatable or liked all that much in her personality appeal and isn’t really show-cased in awe appealing epic scenes or memorable moments either.

Likewise to how Calia feels like a Mary-Sue “light” character at the moment for the Forsaken — Aggra kind of feels like a Mary-Sue insert female shaman character for orcs … :person_shrugging:

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