Well that’s simple. They expected Saurfang to carry the story and maintain his aura of coolness despite the story he was in. So you pick a side, Horde. Then you emotionally relate to characters like Saurfang who want Sylvanas dead, and Rexxar, who is only here because he needs to protect the Horde. Then you cheer when Saurfang is told to get off his lazy green butt and do something by the leader of the Alliance.
If I had to guess, I’d say it was a “robot cat” that we have to blame for all of this. Everything wrong with Saurfang’s story to date can be simply attributed to needing Saurfang to be in a position where the Alliance can feel involved in his story. You remove that need and Saurfang doesn’t need to pointlessly linger in a Stormwind jail, but can instead be spending 8.0 doing something meaningful for his rebellion, if you remove that need, Saurfang doesn’t need to be told to fight for what he believes in by King Manduin, and by removing that conversation, you remove the retcon that makes him secretly in the corner of the Alliance while Horde soldiers are fighting and dying at Battle for Lordaeron.
I don’t blame Alliance players for this. They don’t want their part in Sylvanas’ downfall to be the guys who told Saurfang to get off his butt either and if the story plays out the way it looks to be playing out, they’ll be just as angry as the rest of us. We can call this a monkey paw response to Alliance complaints for Siege of Orgrimmar.
This Xpac has been so exciting, I leveled an alt thru Draenor pet battles instead of BFA quests.
I play mostly night elves. Yep, I enjoyed seeing Mally and the Priestess finally find some fight, essentially tell little lion man to go fly a kite - we’re breaking to get our home back is a nice touch too in one of the pre-scenes.
I really feel bad for my horde playing friends though, for as bad as this xpac has been for me, they seem to have so little to be happy for - and the writing has just been so consistently bad this time thru
That’s why I’m gonna choose to help Saurfang. The guy isn’t perfect, but it’s way better than Miss Sylvanas “I burn children and kill my own troops for the lolz” Windrunner.
At least Saurfang is not gonna turn the Horde into Scourge 2.0
I think the core of the problem here is the emotional manipulation Blizzard employed. It promised we would feel faction pride, that the narrative would be amazing with lots of shades of grey.
But what we got?
Horde being cartoonishingly evil with Sylvanas doing absurdly abhorent things and people are conveniently complacent only to rebel when the plot finds it convenient.
Alliance being criminaly incompetent and the writing team flat out admiting they are “forgeting” about the Vindicar, wich is pretty much the one thing Alliance could use that horde has no means to fight against.
Result? Horde player feel like crap cause they where cheated into being badly written villains and Alliance players feel like crap because the writting team is cheating on them in order to have a war.
I can sympathize with the OP, but after the burning of teldrassil there’s not really another way this could have gone IMO. How exactly are they supposed to portray the night elves here as morally ambiguous when the forsaken are invaders in their ancestral home, who burned their capital city and the land around it while still full of civilians?
The other shoe NEEDS to drop for the night elves or they’ll just come across as the punching bags of the alliance again. Maybe later in the expansion they can go too far, but I don’t think there’s a way to do that in Darkshore.
This expansion was sold on a massive pack of lies, but “we don’t want you to feel like you’ve picked the wrong side,” was arguably the biggest, with most of the rest being more along the lines of obfuscating the truth by feigning uncertainty.
I imagine they were probably counting on a lot of the people who got fed up with the Horde story just playing Alliance, instead, but… honestly, this is why I completely get players who are siding with Sylvanas out of spite for what the writers have done to her. It’s painfully clear that the writers have no interest in letting the Horde feel vindicated, but I’d rather stop playing entirely than abandon my faction when it’s being dragged through the mud.
I think there are two perspectives to look at here.
Firstly, the perspective of someone who doesn’t know a thing about the lore of the game (which Blizzard seems to presume most players fall into, because they just don’t care to know). For these people, that cinematic doesn’t portray the Horde as evil, it portrays them as victims. It’s like a clip out of a horror movie with Malfurion playing the monster/psychopath. You have these people transporting supplies and being slaughtered en route without a chance to defend themselves, being terrorized before a grizzly demise. That Troll left alive is likely to suffer PTSD for the rest of his life (however long or short that may be).
From the perspective of someone who knows the lore and the story, I understand completely where Horde players feel no investment in the Battle of Darkshore. It doesn’t hold meaning to them. A better Warfront might’ve been Tirisfal Glades. However, Darkshore does hold immense strategic value for the Horde as it’s largely become the final bastion of Night Elven power in Kalimdor, and is also placed closely to the Draenei Isles.
Night Elf fans will certainly feel pumped going into this, there’s no question there, but I think that’s going to be the case for every Warfront this expansion. The Alliance will feel pumped for finally going on the offensive, while the Horde is going to feel ambiguous because this expansion started in a way where they no longer feel motivated to defend the Horde or it’s interests.
My condolences to Horde players. I think the best we can hope for is a Warfront on a place the Horde players care about and are invested in. A Barrens Warfront, perhaps.
You are 100% justified in feeling that way, but if you didnt predict this was going to happen the minute Sylvanas was made warchief i dont know what to tell you, mate.
Ever since Cata she has been more ScourgeLite little by little- now shes the one that calls the shots instead of acting from the shadows where most players can ignore if they wish
Look, character development is a thing. Even if you think Sylvanas has been 100% evil since day 1, that doesn’t mean they can’t write a story where she gets better. Being thrust into a position of responsibility that she clearly didn’t want could have been a turning point for the better. And her early appearances in Legion were much more anti-hero than villain.
I dont think she has been 100% evil since day 1, but the character development and arc she has been getting since cata slowly but surely made her more evil than she was in, say, vanilla or tbc.
Post wrath Sylvanas only cares about numero 1- the writing was on the wall
And her early appearances in Legion were much more anti-hero than villain.
She literally tried to enslave someone and their entire race, the way that cutscene is framed and edit is clearly meant to paint genn on the right (wheter or not thats true is another debate thats already been had many times and i wont get into it here)
Her character arc isn’t consistent. She’s been written by so many different writers during that time that it’s been near-impossible to tell where they’re going with her at any given moment. Also, that STILL doesn’t mean they couldn’t have written her coming out of it.
“Clearly meant” is in the eye of the beholder, and I do not see this rightness for Genn that you say is so clear.
Nah, she bubble hearthed at the last moment. That’s my personal headcannon and I’m sticking to it!
It’s hard to add to what has already been said, but I’m one of those demoralized Horde players. I barely play anymore. The most time I’ve spent lately is leveling my battle pets and collecting pet charms.
Yes, the Night Elf fans deserve Terror of Darkshore and vengeance. Hell, my original character is a Night Elf hunter (and my only alliance 120 right now) and I get it. This whole expansion has been one gut punch after another.
Horde players should have known when they picked their faction…that 14 years later all the writers with any nuance would have quit Blizz, and new terrible writers were going to start writing the Horde as a generic evil cartoon villain faction.