I guess it isn’t as bad as some threads in GD. Besides, these forums require farming if you want to post Pancake GIFs.
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Ugh, I know it’ll be coming because alliance-side BFA’s ending was specifically set up to be disappointing on that front but I’m already not looking forward to this.
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That’s the problem, it ia fiction and not even ours and that’s your problem as many nelfies fanboys, they can’t accept theblore and the narrative aren’t controlles by the customers not even by majority.
So, the rest of this is kind of sludge. But I will reply to this.
You’re right that the narrative isn’t controlled by the customers. The narrative is controlled by management, which hires writers to work on the narrative, and can fire them if they’re mishandling it. Management’s job is to earn a rate of return for the Company’s shareholders, who own the narrative. To do that, they have to satisfy customers - and in an MMO, there are several communities of them. One of the ways those communities can indicate their satisfaction or dissatisfaction is by leaving commentary in the company’s official channels for receiving it - this forum is one of those channels.
… and, if management replaces those writers, they will leave the franchise with no further agency over it. In other words, the narrative doesn’t belong to the writers, and they only have so much control over it.
The labor theory of value isn’t correct, and it certainly isn’t how corporate governance or incentives work.
@ Sarm
I get that - and again, I think there’s a way that it can be done to be satisfying to both sides. But that’s also a different conversation.
The Pancake GIFs you post are half of what I’m here for tbh.
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I do gotta ask, because I haven’t been scrolling through this too much, but what exactly are the NE players demanding of the Horde for recompense now? 
Right now? Speaking as the NE player in the room at the moment: I’m demanding that you not be given a quest where Tyrande screams at you as you assist her in saving her people.
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Not sure. But apparently there haven’t been enough consequences for Horde, characters or players.
The sad part my friend is that these people pay for a game which they not only hate but also half of the other playerbase and want those player to suffer as their entertaiment.
At least this proof one thing, better ignore people these and treat them as non-existance and speakiiing about Ardenweald, want any new form added? I want a corgiiiii so bad 
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Forgot this beauty too Kyalin. At leas be honest and not deceptive
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Not for me there isn’t, at least. I’m at the point where I’m not terribly interested in the story coming back to Azeroth and I’d rather dink around in side story stuff than anything focused on the factions again, even outside of a faction war context.
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Oh, there’s a few gems
Namely this gem right here
In an ideal world, PVP content should be an option, and so should PVE content. I think you can have a faction conflict and have a decision not to participate in it.
@ Micah
I’m not sure what you find to be controversial about that. Having the victim be saved by either the perpetrator or representatives of the perpetrator is more than a little icky to me.
They didn’t offer that as a reasonable option last time and it saddled the horde player with canonically having to support a genocidal regime, even if only nominally at best. I don’t believe they’d suddenly give an opt-out the next time around either. I don’t see them not focusing the plot on the faction war again when they do decide to reignite it.
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That’s true and I understand the reluctance to trust that a future faction war narrative won’t do that. I think when we are discussing what Blizzard should do though, we do have to hold them to something of a higher standard.
Otherwise, you’re kind of just stuck with “well, this sucks and there are problems, but we’re not going to meaningfully fix them”, and I don’t think that’s a good answer.
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It is because you aren’t even taking the feeling of the actual PLAYERS into account, it’s your My way, damn everyone else and it’s more than disgusting. No one asked for the burning to happen, so punishing the PLAYERS even more is disrespectful, but you just have to have your precious power fanatasy fulfilled at all costs
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Right now, Micah, the narrative is punishing the Horde playerbase. Let’s get this out of the way first. Tyrande is shaming them as the narrative shoves their face into a genocide that they did not have the option not to commit while their faction war opponent - someone that they should be motivated to fight - is being framed into an object of pity that they should feel bad about fighting.
Horde players have had plenty of time to weigh in on that fact, and I agree with them. Now in sharing my perspective - yes, I think it’s disgusting that this is happening from my perspective as well. I don’t want Horde players to pity the playable race, and I don’t want Tyrande to be accepting their help. There is something visceral and gross about taking that kind of loss, and then being pitied by the group that brought it about.
I also know that you know the framework that I come at these things from. I don’t think the Horde should be shamed for going after their faction rival. I am just sharing, at the same time, that I don’t think the Night Elves should be the object of pity from their faction rival.
Why not? So all those innocent members of the horde, who didn’t participate in the burning, shouldn’t show pity or remorse for what happened right? That would go against the power fantasy you want.I think it’s unrealistic that no one should show regret or remorse over what happened. Bu than again, if they, it would be hard to scream and rant about the kaldorei are victims right? Oh look at how that evil horde doesn’t even care!
I mean, you do find it disgusting that horde should have a chance to redeen itself, so we all know, even though you’re deceptive, what you want. Nothing less than the total dismantling of the horde.
Sadly, its too late for this.
At some point during Cata Blizz made the decision that while the Horde had to be antagonistic to the Alliance, the Alliance could not be antagonistic to the Horde. At the same time, during this same transition, you saw this decreasing amount of effort in allowing the Horde justifications or motives for that antagonism; while the Alliance increasingly was buried under them … or their fewer and fewer acts of grey handwaved away. Thus, “the Horde is just evil because we’re evil” … no greater effort needed than that.
As a result. There is no going back from the reality that “guilt” will always and forever be linked towards any dispute, tension, or conflict from the Horde towards their Faction Rival the Alliance. Its been hardcoded in. We can never again feel “good” on a story level about battling the Blues, unless you revel in playing a villain. Not that I personally ever found enjoyment from the F. Conflict anyway.
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Micah, why do you say things about my position that you know aren’t true? Things that we’ve discussed and argued about? Things were we have had to bow to a metric ton of nuance, horse-trading, and conversations about game balance?
You are by now aware that I want to segue into a balanced faction war with content that’s used to be built around battlegrounds. That is far and away opposed to “the total dismantling of the horde.” These proposals are not hard to find, I have littered them all over the place.
In regards to redemption - there are two points to consider.
- Assisting Tyrande in freeing Night Elf souls - and yes, this is where I point back to the idea of the repeatable quest - is not a requirement to make people feel like they’re doing good. Injecting Tyrande however introduces this weird situation of her berating the player for helping, and of her in part forgiving the Horde. I think this is a problem from both perspectives.
- This does not rise to redemption - and this is another unfortunate consequence of Blizzard trying to twist the faction war into a good versus evil narrative. The Horde’s primary motivations for starting the war can be summed up as a) the Horde culturally likes to fight things, b) Saurfang was convinced by a racial paranoia argument, and c) the Horde wants to expand. Rescuing the Night Elf souls in this context is something I read as “I wanted to fight and kill your people so that I could take their stuff and because I felt that your very existence was a threat to mine, but I didn’t mean to take it this far” - and I see that as being pretty far from redemption.
To Droite’s point, GETTING redemption, or even getting motivation back is going to be a hard slog, but I disagree that this means that we can’t have a faction conflict where this motivation is restored. Right now, the answer that I land on involves the Kalimdorian Alliance striking back and taking things too far - and the game shouldn’t attempt to whitewash that as it has with so many other atrocities. The Horde should be motivated to stop that, and make clear that they have the right to survive and to maintain their civilization. Somewhere in there I feel there has to be a refutation of the impulses that led them to follow Sylvanas and Garrosh.
… and I admit, that’s not an easy question to answer. It’s probably going to be the subject that I’ll ask people to consider in another thread.
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Sadly, I don’t even think its possible. And this isn’t me just being cynical, this is me looking back on over a decade of deep neglect shown from Blizzard towards actually rebuilding the Horde as a Faction after their joyrides. I would not be shocked if Sylvie got more effort placed into her “redemption” than the Horde. And I would wager based off how they are using Baine and Calia their goal in “redeeming” the Horde is more synomous with “making the Faction and its characters as convenient for the Alliance as possible”. .
As stated before, you cannot even hope for a “good” Faction Conflict story so long as one of the two factions retains moral absolutism. And thanks to Teld, and Blizz’s refusal for the Horde to respond to it (because it would have been inconvenient for Sylvie’s narrative if they did) … its safe to say that Alliance held Absolute Morality is secure. Even if Blizz were willing to “not whitewash or bury” any grey the Alliance commits (which they aren’t), the Alliance could do pretty much anything at this point to the Horde and have it be justified.