Stop asking for the Alliance to take dark turns or be the bad guys

No! Please! I stored all my Brawler’s Guild Tokens in that Banana Stand!

2 Likes

The orcs are getting Thrall back, and it looks like he is a down to earth warrior rather than messiah now, so they should be alright. The Forsaken have a couple of B characters that are poised to move up the ladder if Sylvanas and Nathanos both die, so I think they are fine.

And as for the elves? I think being portrayed as one of the very last of your kind gets old after awhile, which is the background that most elf races now seem to have. It isn’t enough to have a story, but also what sort of story is being told. “Poor you” only carries the story so far. And in particular, the Night Elves best days are well and truly behind them now that they have no real numbers left, so I’m not sure what kind of story, beyond more victimization and tragedy, you can wring out of them, even if they do have several major characters. They lost their fangs in this expansion, and there really isn’t any way for them to ever get them back. Not for a score or two of Kaldorei generations at the very minimum.

Don’t worry I asked my trusted sister Yrel to take out an insurance on it.

It’s not just the Orcs, all of the Horde doesn’t have much presence in heroes anymore and a lot of the current ones are on the chopping block.
Thrall is an ethereal presence that could just vanish again at the end of the expac and Saurfang may possibly die if the leaks are true. If a Thunderbluff raid is coming then Geya’rah is possibly going the Nazgrim route of dying. Garona and Rexxar could also leave at any moment. That would leave Etrigg and Cromush as the only Orcs of note. Cromush, whose only presence before BfA was an existence born only to flex and dunk on the Undead in SFK.

Speaking of, the Forsaken have literally no one as Sylvanas is definitely going out and I’m pretty sure Nathanos is going as well. Voss is the only other undead of note.

Trolls have only Rokhan and only the possibility of Zekhan being of note.

Tauren only have Baine as a developed hero. Lot of potential but no one of note but Baine. Runetotem is with Magni so he’s not getting any screen time or development.

Goblins only have Gallywix as Gazlowe isn’t a Horde member technically.

Elves are the only ones that seems to have remained with a solid lineup of characters that are heroes and characters that can be developed further.

With the elves’ exception, every Horde race only has about 1 or 2 noteworthy heroes.

11 Likes

Bad as in stupid, spiteful brainless bad for no reason, as the Horde is being depicted right now. With leader slaughterhouse included…
I do not wish that, not even to my Alliance enemies.

But a little more of moral grayness to their characters and a little less (much) self conceited Humans would do Alliance much good.

I had enough of this bad depiction of H/A conflicts at the expense of my faction.

6 Likes

Thrall’s inclusion in future stories is entirely dependent on Metzen’s whims; so its up in the air what will happen with him. The Forsaken in contrast … what B list characters are you referring to? Voss? Belmont? Seriously, go look at their roster and see how unprecedentedly underdeveloped their character list is (its actually sort of shocking how a PC race can be around for 15 years and be so destitute on lore characters). Also, I was referring to the HORDE Elves who are the only ones to have a solid remaining roster (the Sin’dorei and Shal’dorei are in good shape all things considered).

Most of the worst parts of the ongoing faction war story lead back to Thrall. Plus, his demeanor was never very “Orcish”, many people see him as more of a green Human than anything else. As for the Forsaken, there’s really nobody to fill the hole that would be left by Sylvanas and Nathanos, Lilian is the best bet but she hasn’t much been built up as a leader. However, I am almost certain that Nathanos will stick around, it’s weird that people think he’ll get the boot despite so much of the story building up to him choosing to walk away from Sylvanas.

As for the Night Elves, they have prospects going forward, but they probably won’t be well-received by a lot of players.

There are some Orc characters left who could step up, like Thura, but they’ve been wildly depleted of characters, yeah. I still think Zaela had the worst and most egregious villain-batting of any character in the franchise, and that is a very high bar.

1 Like

Strap in 'cause my gut is telling me that Geya’rah is getting a face full of the villain bat by the end of the expansion. Which would be a shame as “AU female Thrall who was actually raised as Orc” is a really good character and a perfect portrayal of an Orc. Which is why I think she’s going down the Nazgrim route. Too proud to step away from what you know isn’t right and you die for it.

2 Likes

Yeah … they’ve been hammering home his weird assumption that Sylvanas’ vision of the future INCLUDES both him and the Fosaken for it to actually be the case (its weird, they’ve implied his belief in this several times). Combine that with his over-whelming presence in this story; and his strange symbolic absence at the end of Sylvie’s Warbringers … its not hard to assume what he’s being built up to do (or what he potentially will become to the Forsaken) post BfA.

I don’t think she’d be wrong, but I also don’t think they’re going that route with her. She’s pretty much the Mag’har’s only character, even if they have her stay sided with Sylvanas, or even be a boss fight, she’ll probably survive.

3 Likes

You mean how Zeala was the Dragonmaw’s only character who survived SoO only to die in the pre-xpac patch? I just don’t have my hopes up.

2 Likes

No, I don’t mean like that. At the very least, the Dragonmaw weren’t a playable race. Geya’rah will probably either betray once Sylvanas does something she really hates, get betrayed along with all the other loyalists by Sylvanas and defacto end up with the rebellion, or stick it out the whole way only to surrender once Sylvanas is overthrown. Probably option two. Ultimately they’ll need to combine both the traitor and loyalist storylines somehow, and Sylvanas betraying them instead of the other way around is probably the “”“best”"" solution.

Either that or the Sylvanas was secretly doing something good all along wildcard, but most people don’t even want to consider that.

It’s too ridiculous to even contemplate.

Anyway I do think that Sylvanas will betray the Loyalists at some point to bring them back in line with the story.

1 Like

These forums would be on fire if that happened.

8 Likes

Why should we?

For the most part, I hate the idea of the whole civil war thing. I’d just like to see a little friction within the alliance once in a while, and maybe a bad guy could be built up in and come out of the Alliance. Not even neccesarily a faction leader or popular character.

But at this point, why shouldn’t we ask the Alliance to eat itself entirely? Fans repeatedly asked for stupid stuff “let the alliance retake Lordaeron!! and give blood elves back to the Alliance” and crap like that.
We should be asking for the Scarlet Underground to murder Anduin and take over Stormwind, enslave the worgen; replace all the guards in ironforge with human gaurds; and outlaw the worship of Elune. THAT would be SO COOL right?

11 Likes

The solution to the Alliance content of Cata, feeling like a series of losses framed with defeatist language and then supplemented by nostalgic zones being meme factories, is not, and never will be “make the Horde have a similar experience.”

The only proper response is, “We’ve learned that was bad, let us make certain we do not do that to any portion of the player base again.”

The lesson from villain batting the Horde into a state that at times its original billed (and arguably still billed) themes are an unrecognizable mess of smarm, plot armor, and cartoonish atrocity is, similarly, not to inflict such on any portion of the player base again.

That aside, years ago, I wrote up a scenario where some person of Garithos’s line returns, gathers together disaffected Scarlets, Dark Irons and Worgen, and launches a series of aggressive and impactful attacks on the Forsaken. This causes popular support to rise. Said baddie, behind the scenes, reorganizes the Defias and other bandits to cut food supplies from Stormwind and generally cause bedlam to undermine support for the Wrynn, before taking over in a populist coup.

This would force the good guys to get help from the Horde to both reveal the truth and dislodge the baddie, ultimately attacking Stormwind. While it is woefully outdated now, in this way, we could have a morally righteous Horde attacking Stormwind without inflicting on the Alliance the same problems that should never have been done to the Horde. By keeping the baddie coup an obvious one to the player from the get go, it wouldn’t be the equivalent of removing a warchief so much as deposing a renegade warlord.

It isn’t perfect, but a far cry better than the villain bat. It is a select group of people who want to watch their good character side with people doing awful things.

13 Likes

Arthas is an awesome villain and probably one of the best written characters of WoW, why wouldn’t want to have such a character again?

1 Like

WOW apparently only has evil winners and good losers.

I thought the Alliance was tired of being losers?

No. Some of the best Alliance story is when they were realistic instead of the stupid good in overdrive nonsense we have now.

The Alliance was rather dark in the Second and Third wars and it created some good story. The political back manipulation and backstabbing made them feel like real nations.

We should see tons of racism in the Alliance specially aimed at Horde races but even some within the faction. Humans should see the dwarfs as greedy, elves should see the humans as destructive and dwarfs should think the elves as stuck up.

Heroes that are too good are boring they need flaws massive ones thats why Anduin sucks so hard cause hes never allowed to have flaws.

12 Likes

So…instead of pursuing the previously existing sources of conflict between nations - like political leverage and national interests - the Alliance should just adopt a bunch of generic, boring racial animosities borrowed from other fantasy franchises that have never previously been applied in WoW?

9 Likes