I think what you describing here is exactly my point that events are contrived in a way for the Horde to march into battle, crush the defenses they need… or go around them in a super smart way that a 5 year old would have seen coming and grab the victory before marching right back home.
Which is my main complaint in how Blizzard treats Alliance military “victories” compared to the Horde.
I think the topic you are opening here is what we call the victim olympics on this forum. I am in no way insinuating that the Horde has all the sunrise and rainbows but to show that they caused the Alliance to lose something, got away with it and Alliance failed to bring any Horde characters to justice. But thats from the Alliance perspective.
Yes the Horde did look quite foolish and immoral but thats why Blizzard gave them those cinematics. We have never see this before or since but Blizzard made that for the Horde. They also had an entire quest line within the Horde to show this conflict between Horde identity which was ultimately resolved at the gates of Orgrimmar.
The Alliance was just kind of the spectator in all this despite being the primary victim of yet another Horde identity crisis.
Both the Alliance and Horde have their issues. For the Horde is being made the bad guy and losing characters. For Alliance is not getting story focus regarding their faction identity and fantasy and their military defeats. Like right now we are still unsure if the Alliance members are still equal members or subjects of the High King. Is the Alliance a human empire now? Blizzard denies it but when characters bow and call Andiun their king it really puts things in a grey area.
Horde doesn’t need more military victories, they need characters and be heroes for once… meanwhile Alliance needs to reassert their identity and actually make a stand for once rather than be a weak revolving door.
Which is why I am interested in seeing Alliance shown in a different light than what we are used to. And maybe if there is a shift in the Alliance story maybe it will allow the Horde to be more than what we are used to. Far too many times Blizzard forces an Alliance character go neutral and shove them where they don’t belong and that does nothing but hurt their faction and racial identity (please see Night Elves and Jaina/Andiun) being present in the afterlife.
Which I think is fair and something that a lot of people of both sides want.
It feels like Blizz have started down the path a few times now, only to subvert or drop it in the end. I’m not sure why.
I had hopes for BfA following the conflict between Genn and Sylvanas in Stormheim, then you had Teldrassil and it seemed like a fracture within the Alliance might occur in earnest with Genn joining up with Tyrande in their shared disdain for the Horde/Sylvanas.
It could have even been a really nice point to test the leadership of Anduin and show him that his idealism can be naïve at times as he’s forced to struggle with his desire to be the super pure golden child in contrast with the very real hurt/anger that others in the Alliance are experiencing.
Overall I think they just need to stop with this linear approach. Stop with the Alliance consistently bordering on being too good. Stop with the Horde consistently bordering on being too bad.
I don’t know if eye-for-an-eye is the right approach, but I would definitely like to see Blizz take an overall more balanced approach to how both are depicted.
Because at the end of the day, the goal is for people to have fun. It’s not particularly fun to feel like you don’t really get a tangible victory over the other faction because yours is seemingly too preoccupied with being as morally righteous as they can be. It’s not particularly fun to feel like you’re faction is consistently the antagonist in the inter-faction conflict or your leaders are unreliable. So who then does consistently pushing those depictions serve?
A growing number of players are exhausted of factions. It’s failed on a narrative level, debilitating on a pve level, and borderline useless for today’s pvp.
I think there are more players that don’t want the faction war anymore, and those that never wanted it, than those who still believe Blizzard can or have written a quality faction war.
Honestly, I am tired too. I think gameplay needs the faction merge but Alliance is pathetic as a faction right now, they can’t even defend themselves, multiple territories lost and turned to ash. A genocided race thats barely on its legs with a justice/retribution arc that went absolutely nowhere.
Now both factions are supposed to get along? After Legion I would have embraced this with open arms but now after BFA? It seems incredibly in poor taste.
Its what Alliance needs to recover from BFA… in a similar way its like withholding new characters or rebuilding of the Horde identity if these things were denied to the Alliance.
As far as A Good War, an unsaid (until now) interpretation of mine is that Brooks was hoping to be noticed for what he thought was a critique of the 2nd Gulf War.
We should be getting a lot more about what was going on with Sylvanas, but, I’m fairly certain now that they don’t even know.
Going by what they said before it wasn’t intended; but with the cutscene they made, between the light/dark comparison, and then the moralization all being one sided… Yeah…
The Alliance haven’t got the leadership to really go for an all out revenge/retribution arc. Anduin is so intently focused on keeping the peace and the rest of the Alliance leaders seem to follow that ‘revenge is a bad thing so we just won’t do it’ line.
That leaves only Greymane and Tyrande that actually want retribution for the actions of the Horde. Tyrande is a mess now thanks to Shadowlands ruining a lot of her motivations for revenge, if she still follows that arc to get it then she’s defying the will of her goddess? Genn has been relegated to an NPC at this point to where he’s just there to spout exposition for other characters these days.
It should be the other way around, the soldiers present there didn’t know what Sylvanas would do but the ones who fought in the war after did and still went along with her.
But I want Horde civilians to die to, so the Horde knows the Alliance knows business. There will never be peace if the Horde thinks the Alliance are weak and gutless.
In the midst of this crisis, the Alliance is going to need to pull together like never before. At the BlizzCon lore panel we promised that key Alliance characters are going to get more time in the spotlight throughout Mists and the subsequent patches, and I wanted to reiterate that here. They’re going to come out of this stronger than ever, but the road ahead won’t be easy.
On a more related note on OP they should really hire Makani as the creative narrative quality assurance director. And all she would do is hear Danuser’s ideas. And then make them actually work for a human audience who have a basic cognitive function.
Decent beats, some funny jokes, no idea how to get the Alliance from point A to point B in the time he had left ever (and the Horde only fared slightly better because the default setting was CHARGE.)
tfw fans volunteer to put more effort into a franchise’s story than paid writers and directors.
The problem is we’ve had more cinematics and story about how the Burning of Teldrassil effected other people - including the perpetrators of that war crime - than how it effected its actual victims. (eg; Delaryn deserved far more spotlight regarding that than Saurfang got in BfA, Sylvanas in Shadowlands).
I think Sylvanas needs to get the Loghain treatment from Dragon Age. Her legacy in tatters, she makes a huge sacrifice to help makes things right and her story ends there.