Glad they didn’t do that.
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I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is that up until burning the tree, the Horde having a victory over the Alliance was an entertaining prospect. I enjoyed the short story A Good War. There are Alliance people who want the same thing, only for the Alliance. An absolute victory is a lucrative storyline.
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My main issue with the burning is, the lack of respect and dignity there was by putting a genocide in game, on a playable race by a playable faction, and than blizzard seemingly going out its way to mismanage said event.
It was handled with such callous disregard towards their playerbase, that it certainly gives me the impression they only added in game to be malicious towards the playerbase and those who dared to criticize them.
I could be looking way to much in to it, but its a feeling I been having a tough time shaking
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Can I answer this?
For me it’s both, because this is what happens in war, it could have been a real interesting story of how war can turn even the noblest of man into a monster. However the execution was flat out stupid, Sylvanas started a war for no reason and the Alliance were portrayed as purely good, moral and justified. The idea itself is not taboo or uninteresting but the writing and justification made it so.
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"THIS SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!
Blizzard Presents- THE BRAWL TO SETTLE IT ALL!
ADOLF HITLER VERSUS JESUS CHRIST!"
It’s so Morally Grey, you’ll NEVER be able to guess the Surprise Twist about which one is the Good Guy and which one is the Bad Guy!
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I do agree that Blizzard tried to lure Horde fans into cognitive dissonance, beginning with the Broken Shore where Sylvanas showed an uncharacteristic care for the Horde leaders. But it’s important to have critical thinking. All events and information should be examined and compared with what we know and what’s happened previously. Horde players should’ve known from the start of BFA what they were getting with Sylvanas. To go forward without some looking back is naivete.
Is it naïveté to want emotional payoff? I think that’s all people wanted. We wanted our choice to mean something in the end and for the reassurance that we made the made the right choice. Blizzard failed Loyalists because in late BFA interviews Danuser said that Loyalists were right, but then he walked back that comment and Shadowlands showed over and over that Loyalists made the wrong choice. See, that’s where I and others felt betrayed by the writers. It’s unfair to allow the illusion of choice, and then tell the people who made that choice that they made the wrong choice, why give us a choice at all? Going along with the single Horde narrative would have been better than what we got.
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Well yes, you were not paying attention to what was going behind the scenes, which again was pretty well documented at the time. Granted this is more a Blizzard fault than the player, but knowing the reason why you got a loyalist choice was a huge warning sign to not get your expectations high. Also the reasoning behind “starting a war because the maybe the next alliance king will probably not be as chill as Anduin” should have been your first red flag for shady stuff.
As for Denuser… yup that was 100% gaslighting and he did take advantage of people having hope for a decent story.
I don’t believe that was the idea behind it, to play devils advocate I think Blizzard misunderstood why people wanted to be team Sylvanas, from your perspective you wanted to side with her because she was right or “moraly grey” at least, from Blizzards perspective Sylvanas loyalists wanted the option to pick the evil side.
A lot of players would disagree with this. To this day there are many Horde players that want the Horde to be turned into the “evil” faction.
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I don’t agree with any of that, really. It’s natural to have hope. This whole idea that we all have to constantly have our guard up is a bit ridiculous. Fiction is about emotional payoff, that’s why we invest ourselves so much in this story. Like what Baal said above, we engage in a contract where we expect to be rewarded emotionally for our investment. We suspend our disbelief to accommodate this story, to have good fiction they can’t betray their player base.
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Wanting emotional payoff is natural. We got that but not in the way the majority want. We can’t always have correct choices. Blizzard failed loyalists because Sylvanas didn’t win, and it shouldn’t be surprising that the Sylvanas fanboy said she was right. Yet he also lied. It’s fine to have the illusion of choice, so long as that leads to a unique experience, which was given through an exclusive questline. But the root of the problem is making Sylvanas warchief which shouldn’t have happened.
It’s perfectly reasonable to have hope but knowing the your choice was a last minute decision when the next expansion was well into development is and having hope that the story would change is just asking for disappointment. If having the choice was actually planned then sure you can accuse Blizzard of misleading you, but this was a last ditch effort to please the fans.
Ahm, no we don’t. We decide to get invested in the story or not, Blizzard are not obligated to satisfy you, it is preferable for their busyness to do so but there is no contract.
Ok so how does that work, if Sylvanas was completely justified wouldn’t the Alliance players or Saurfang supporters feel betrayed by Blizzard? It’s a case of “you can’t please everyone”, and I am not saying that Blizzard pleased anyone but it quickly becomes damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
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I disagree, I think it was poor optics to make Sylvanas the first female Warchief and then have a civil War where you could back a old male (boomer) orc who was mad that his Horde was moving in a direction he didn’t like. That lack of optics allowed for radicalization because there are a lot of WoW players who liked the nostalgic past and Sylvanas becoming Warchief, and Blizzard pushing a more progressive agenda, was seen as threatening.
I think the should have addressed why Saurfang has mistrust of Sylvanas and bigotry for her for being undead long before her actions at Teldrassil galvanized the Horde afgainst her. At no point in BFA was Horde bigotry against undead in the narrative addressed and that could have provided more context and made Saurfang wrong.
Even if Sylvanas in the future gets redeemed and come back as Warchief, now there were be a group of players who just won’t accept her on principle because she stands for a feminist agenda the current writing team has.
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The way it was presented to us in Warbringers, that of a petty act of cruelty to pour spite over a dying woman’s defiance, was pretty OOC. Bad as she’d been in Cata, she was never presented as pointlessly evil; her actions, no matter how heinous, always served some strategic purpose.
Sure, the burning puts her back on track to amorality with the proper context - that she actually committed genocide to help her evil benefactor dismantle the afterlife - but as far as I’m concerned, it was a disaster to commit her to this rubbish in the first place.
lol
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Saurfang was not bigoted towards Sylvanas for being an undead or her being a women, her being the first female warchief means absolutely nothing. What Saurfang meant by “his” horde is that Sylvanas was turning something that meant family into a machine for war. The same thing could be seen as Baine and its the reason why he rebelled as well, hell even the person who created this version of the Horde saw what Sylvanas was doing. It has nothing to do with a hidden agenda or bigotry, it has everything to do with “we are trying to redeem ourselves and you are just ruining the whole thing”.
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Have you played WoLK?
He thought his son being turned into an undead was no different than being tainted by Fel. He has a lot of prejudice against undead. Most orcs and trolls and tauren actually do. In Cata this was presented through the PoV of Cromush. Garrosh had left him to basically keeps tabs on Sylavanas and keep her in line, but Cromush witnessed first hand the bigotry the Horde, especially the orcs had for the Forsaken. in Arathi he asked the noble Forstwolves to assist the Forsaken and he was called a Forsaken sympathizer, he was basically called a traitor orc for having sympathy for the Forsaken condition.
I’m not pulling this out of nowhere. When I saw the Old Soldier where Saurfang essentially grieves his son. His entire relationship with his son was re-contectualized and white washed to present Saurfang as this tolerant father grieving his son. but in WoLK he refused to listen to his son and the Alliance murdered Drannosh for being a Death Knight. I believe that Drannosh could have been saved but Saurfang was so focused in his child being “pure” that he would rather see his son dead, than undead.
These biases were present in Before the Storm and A Good War. Baine and Saurfang constantly disrespected Sylvanas, Baine even “spoke before her” to Magni which was seen as insulting to do to the Warchief of the Horde. The Horde wasn’t respecting Sylvanas’s leadership long before she burnt Teldrassil, the Horde just needed an excuse to hate her.
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The Frostwolves refused to support the Forsaken because of what they do, not what they are.
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Yes because becoming an undead is a curse. It’s not a race it’s a condition, you would not want your friend getting a cold but do you hate everyone that has a fever ?
Garrosh is not Saurfang and was justified in doing so as Sylvanas A) wanted to use the blight and B) wanted to create even more undead. Being undead is a curse it’s not a gift, even Sylvanas agrees with this.
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Drek’thar was a traitor to the Horde because he refused to help the horde based on his personal biases against the undead.
How were the Forsaken ever going to get redemption if they were treated like monsters at every turn? At some point, the Horde has to show that they have faith that the Forsaken can be better than who they are at their worst, aka when they are backed into a corner and forced to survive on their own.
It’s not unreasonable to ask for positive, Forsaken development after 15+ years of stagnation.
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If you do ICC as Horde, Saurfang’s language is pretty dehumanizing to Dranosh. He says “My boy died at the Wrathgate.” He doesn’t consider him to be a person anymore. He could have at least pleaded with him to come back. The Ebon Blade broke free from the Lich King. It wasn’t impossible for Dranosh to do the same.
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I feel like Saurfang’s dialogue in WoLK sounds a lot like a parent rejecting thier kids for being LGBTQA+ and I hope I’m not the only one who feels like that verbiage was intentional, for the time, this was mid-late 2000’s kids where just starting to “come out” to their parents.
Forsaken have always lowkey represented people who were ostracized from society for being different.
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