Guess the most disappointing thing is how easy it would have been to make both sides feel justified in going to war with just a few small changes.
-Horde find Azerite and weaponize it to put them on equal footing with the Alliance, worried that the Alliance will attack them after what happened at Stormheim.
-Alliance find out and decide that between Sylvanas’ shenanigans in Stormheim, the Broken Shore, and now Azerite, they should bring Sylvanas and the Horde to justice.
-Alliance attack and destroy Undercity rather than Sylvanas blighting it.
But, I don’t think that’s what people want out of World of **War**craft
I mean, they even had those ads about faction pride and rivalry… and now here we are, teaming up to take down some big evil at the end of the expansion for the… 7th time?
The faction war theme gave me hopes we’d finally get the definitive end of interfaction cooperation, but alas, it seems we’re going the other way instead.
OK, how are they portrayed as weak? Unless you’re considering struggling against their literal conceptual kryptonite in the nightmare; or fire given will in the Firelands (when they rely on PLANTS and WIND as weapons) as weak … not sure what to tell you? Unless you’re suggesting them holding the line against 8 to 1 odds is weak? The Kaldorei are LONG overdue for a genuine (unquestionable) win, but they have NEVER been portrayed as weak.
They may be portrayed as weaker than some NE fans seem to desire them to be (which seems to be them being portrayed as more powerful than every single other race combined … not really through merit, but almost exclusively through privilege), but NEVER weak.
You can think whatever you want man, I really don’t care to argue this point with you because you seem to think it’s not a narrative failing when NE get slaughtered in every battle they’re a part of and the excuse for that is “well they weren’t REALLY trying” “they didn’t have their WHOLE army” or whatever contrivance they can come up with. “uh acktually it took all of you to take me down” is what the worst player on the server says when they have a 1/8 KDR.
And I don’t care about whatever whataboutism you care to bring up either, like orcs getting slaughtered in MOP or WOD or whatever. A lot of Orc fans were pissed off about that and they had every reason to be too.
The problem with doing story on a war between two playable factions can be summed up with the question, “Would you like it if Alliance lost the war to the Horde?”
Of course the opposite question can be posed to Hordies, and in most cases the answer would be no. The only way to avoid this is having more than one war and each have a turn winning, but it would be pretty boring if you already knew the outcome.
At least this way things can end on fairly even terms
I would be fine with losing the war if it felt like the Alliance was actually fighting. None of this half measure rubbish or just going after Sylvanas.
Blizzard has failed spectacularly with the “faction Pride” of this expansion that I would rather lose the war currently if only to point out how stupid Anduin was.
Yeah … I’m sorry, but outside of the Horde I’ve never really considered the NEs as doing that poorly against what they were pitted up against. They SHOULD struggle against the Nightmare (its like a cancer, perverting one of THE most powerful assets at their disposal). They SHOULD struggle against the Firelands (ANYONE would, let alone people who rely on Plants and Wind as weapons). I also seem to recall NEs holding lines against the Legion on several fronts, all on their lonesome. That … is … extremely … powerful.
The sole exception of them having a strange showing is when pitted up against the Horde; which … tbh, the Red Faction SHOULD be making up ground against the NEs. They’ve done absolutely nothing to maintain their once immense military advantage on Kalimdor; while the Horde continues to advance explosively in both tech and tactics. The expectation that the Kaldorei just remain more powerful than THE ENTIRE HORDE COMBINED without any tangible effort on their part to actually do so … is a little insulting as a Horde fan tbh.
They did struggle against all those things and needed the help of heroes of every faction to help them. I’m not sure where you’re getting that they did it by themselves, because they didn’t.
Again, where are you even getting this? Wasn’t this some throwaway line in one of the short stories or something? Like they mention Jaina also fighting off the Legion even though we don’t see any of that. Literally worthless from a narrative standpoint. They also mention that every place on Azeroth was fighting the Legion and had scars too. So it wasn’t just the Night elves holding off the Legion, every faction was defending their homelands from the Legion.
Where are the Horde getting resources that they can put their combined power on Kalimdor and win handily against the Night elves then have time to get back and reinforce Undercity to the point where Sylvanas is able to hold the entire Alliance off from Undercity until Jaina just saves everyone with a magic boat? Is it maybe because the Night elves are garbage and didn’t even slow the Horde down enough for them to be left exposed? Why should anyone like or be proud of that?
If the Horde put their combined might to take out the NE once and for all, fine. But then you know what should happen? EK should be Alliance territory now. And no, it’s not. Undercity was blighted out and Tirisfal still seems to be controlled by the Forsaken since there doesn’t seem to be any lasting Alliance presence there. Horde should also lose Silverpine because that is the equivalent of Alliance losing Teldrassil+Darkshore. Throw in Gilneas too since Night elves don’t have control over Ashenvale either.
But you know what they could’ve done instead? Just not wrote this contrived story and left the NE alone for a change. But nope. Can’t have that. Have to have the purple gremlins getting stomped on just like in Cata to make everyone else go “man… war… rly sucks… rly makes u think…”
Yeah dude, all those demons Jaina killed. Got me really invested. I was on the edge of my seat when I read that one line about her also fighting the Legion, didn’t know if she was gonna make it out of that one!
And when I read those couple of lines about the demons also invading elsewhere in Azeroth other than the Broken Isles? Blew my mind. It was like I was really there while it was happening!
I mean, it’s no more insulting than those same Night Elves losing vast swathes of territory they’ve held for millenia against far more powerful, advanced, and insidious foes like the Legion, or Old Gods (or both, depending on who exactly satyrs work for), every time the least Orc peon so much as sneezes somewhere on Kalimdor.
I think a large part of the issue (and it affects the entire alliance) that blizzard never shows the Night elves as winning anything in the Game.
its all good and well to tell night elves that they are powerful and won all these wars in the past however if they never give the players the chance to feel powerful it all falls flat on its face.
Blizzard back in MOP during 5.3 had the Nightelves push the Garrosh Horde out of Ashenvale through scenarios similar to what the Horde got defending the trolls and attacking. Then had the Alliance delivery supplies to Night elf forces instead of trolls from the barrens.
You don’t just write a few lines in some throwaway book that read “They’re really good at warfare and win lots of battles”. If you do that in a story you get an automatic F. That is not showing, that is telling. Showing is writing the story in a way that portrays that thing happening and allowing the reader/observer to glean the information for themselves.
So all this supposed Night elf power is told rather than shown which is why it is awful.
Oh yeah, even terms. Story-wise the Horde genocides a large Alliance settlement and gets away with it at the cost of their Warchief, for the SECOND time. Horde loses one major NPC, while Alliance loses thousands of civillians story-wise (along with whatever shred of pride it might’ve still held).
well at least it was better than left if ambigous like they do with different things in the story.
like “why the nelfs joined the alliance?” even to this day we don’t know exactly why.
“how and why the alliance captured talanji?”
“why this character didn’t show up or did x thing?”
this is actually correct.
we are TOLD that malfurion is probably the strongest mortal alive
that tyrande is basically a god now.
What do they show? a random like nathanos mocks them,insults them about the tree burned and raises nelfs in their faces while escaping without too much of a problem.
The Horde turned the technologically advanced Draenai, that were backed by not one but multiple Naru literally into a road with sticks and rocks. The Horde doesn’t need technology; infact it’s why they should be losing.
Garrosh’s Iron Horde relied on technology and look what happened to them?
So your argument seems to be that because the PC character is INVOLVED in a GAME, that the Kaldorei are portrayed as weak? That the ONLY way that they can be portrayed as strong is they alone (as a race, exclusively) are allowed to solve their problems without the aid of the Player Character? What sort of game do you believe you are playing in WoW where that is even a possibility? Stories that exclude the PC character will NOT exist in game, and the only chance they have of existing at all is in external material (like short-stories and books).
Yeah … but if you didn’t notice Blizz ALSO nerfed the Horde into the ground as well during the WoT (and after on Kalimdor). Why was it we were almost exclusively relying on tech and tactics that dated back the BC? Outside of a few odd Cata Era Goblin shredders, there wasn’t a single piece of equipment on the field that actually reflected the Horde’s CURRENT level of advancement.
No Airships; No Subs; No Napalm; hell … not even a single Zepplin. I understand the premise of doing the war then and there was because both fleets were decimated in the Legion attack, but am I expected to believe that the ENTIRE Horde fleet was destroyed (down to the last ship)? Because there wasn’t even a single Horde ship involved in the WoT.
What’s the Underhold being used for in BfA? NOT the massive manufacturing center it was developed to be, but as a glorified prison for Baine instead. How about Sylvie’s PRIMES, what are THEY up to in this war? Well, apparently Blizz forgot their ability to summon nearly infinite Common Val’kyr (and that the Kaldorei aren’t the ONLY side that can use dead spirits as weapons)?
On top of this, using ANY of these things wouldn’t have interfered with the “Honorable” War Saurfang was running … they’d just be well used assets.
Well, in the Horde intro to Stormheim, Sylvanas remarks how the Horde’s new catapults are “faster and more powerful than ever before” and she says they have their “Goblin Allies to thank for that.”
The Horde catapults are the weaponry that steal the show.
No, that’s what you’re saying my argument is. I don’t care that the NE needed help against the Twilight’s Hammer or whatever. What I’m telling you is that they didn’t hold off the Firelands or Nightmare on their own, you’re the one saying that. I’m telling you that they didn’t and we know they didn’t because we played through that.
That’s not what this is about and I think you know that. This is about every time they meet in battle with the Horde they are shown to be just completely destroyed. And your argument is that should be ok because the Kalimdor Horde is better. But for this to be interesting at all then there should be a cost associated with the Horde just rolling over Kalimdor. If that is the case then the Forsaken should be in the same position that the NE are in. But they are patently not because they are in the much more dominant position.
It actually does not matter to me what happens anymore though. You could delete NE as playable characters from the game and I would not care, you might as well given how much of a liability they are to the Alliance. There is literally nothing Blizzard could do that would win me over to being the NE fan I was when I first played WC3. I don’t care if Tyrande goes super saiyan and they write a throwaway line in an upcoming book that the NE totally annihilated the Kalimdor Horde and drove them from their lands again. I just don’t care.