There are lots of refugees in Stormwind, together with recovering Malfurion, I’m sure news would spread out, and arise suspicion that either Stockades are terribly guarded, or he was released. Which should also make Genn suspicious - I believe he should confront Anduin about it, and nelves should escalate it. It was a BIG deal to let architect of WoT let go free.
Honestly there are so many ways to make Alliance more dynamic, more diverse in it’s setting, and therfore more complex. And this is why even with all the villanbatting I still prefer Horde becuase it’s not so one dimentional as Alliance. Which is a pity - in vanilla Alliance was more neuanced than it is now. That’s quite a regression if you ask me.
Alas, with the writers like Golden, I think that even the plot with House of Nobles would be treated as mere nuisance, they’d be replaced in stockades, People would quickly deal with them, Wrathion would warn Anduin just in time before things would escalate and everything ends good and dandy. Wrathion has teary dialogue with Andy a’la “I’m not like Onyxia, I’m not the bad guy you thought I was like!” And Anduin was like “Oh yes I was wrong ,thankfully all is good now, and peace is maintained and so our tegridy!” They salute each other and say “Friendship is magic”
And all adult audience groans in annoyance.
Yeah it’s not like Alliance was camping in Orgrimmar twice in very short period of time. Showing how Horde has to be saved again from themselves, that’s totally not humilating
Or people are upset that Horde side continues to lose characters at alarming rate. Territories can be regained, but the proper narrative is gone. Horde needed a big powerhouse to rival Alliance’s demigods.
And lastly- it’s not Zandalari who were at the fault here, by all means go hit a Horde back. But what old Rasty did to you?
Magister Umbric: You and I have both lived long lives, Shandris. I know many who have been affected by the Zandalari’s barbarism.
This is a bit flip, I know, and I’ll address the entirety of this post after I actually something in my system. But it’s disingenuous to act like the Alliance doesn’t have a bad history with the Zandalari. It’s also disingenuous to act like the Horde doesn’t have a bad history with Kul Tirans. Those Marines have been in Durotar since the launch of the game.
Rastakhan, not Zandalari. And really I don’t see Zandalari as barbaric, quite the opposite. They’re very sophisticated. More than Night Elves after Sundering.
If Umbric tells Shandris of all people that Zandas are barbaric then that is a pure comedy. Since even Elisande called out nelves to act like trolls.
But what to expect by guy who is affected by void’s whispers
I don’t deny that Alliance have a bad history with Alliance, in fact all trolls have very brutal history with Alliance, but it’s not trolls that raising monuments for guys that are known from terminating their foes, like Trollbane breed or Alleria.
It’s not trolls that walking around with “Manslayer” as a profilic title.
And honestly each time Zandalari behaviour could be easily explained. But the point was Rastakhan as a both royalty and equivalent to Pope didn’t do anything to deserve such a fate imo, especially when we learn more about him. I believe he should’ve survived just to see him work out his mistake and grow into better person. And it wouldn’t make all the trollkind this pissed at Alliance, but in a way it should open a gate for all trollkind unification once and for good.
hey that’s a great point but you see all those localizations that were lost? they are still gone, even after all these years.
it was his fault that zul was around the world doing what he wants, the zandalari under his name attacked both horde and alliance and tried to conquer the world.
When rasthakan send a diplomat or something to the alliance?.
did he even cared?
i mean, i don’t really blame him because he just didn’t know exactly or didn’t cared enough, that could be considered as a flaw and thats great, i love flawed characters.
But the thing is, that he let the horde use his city has launching point for the horde attacks,giving them santuary, invading kultiras, stoling a scepter of the kultiran fleets in HIS vaults (not the horde) and of course, he let the horde have their ships so they can continue their genocidal conquest.
i mean, i never really saw him personally in the alliance narrative until we confront him in the raid, but i do know who he is.
don’t get me wrong, he could have faced consequences for his actions and still survive and learn from those mistakes (like i feel some ally characters do) he didn’t deserved to die, because there is no point in creating a flawed character if they are just going to kill him. and for that you have my most sincere sympathies.
dead just for the sake of it and shock value is why we have mess like teldrassil.
Zul acted against his instructions. And Zandalari tried to re-conquer back troll territories that were taken away from them.
It was less directed at Horde as a whole and more on belves. As for Alliance - they were only attacked in STV, and STV belongs to Gurubashi. So no wonder they were assaulted when they were camping at territory that didn’t belong to them.
And later year in MoP they assaulted dwarves who for years were exterminating and stealing from frostmane tribe.
What did Farraki and Drakkari do to deserve being pushed down to their fall? Nothing, they tried their best to survive. Where was Horde and Alliance trying diplomacy there?
They raided ZF because it had shinies they wanted. And instead of letting Drakkari fight, they made trips to completely put them down- why? They were fighting their best against the Scourge, enemy of my enemy should be my friend, no?
So Troll bitterness is imo perfectly valid. I am not saying that the course of their actions were done in the right manner ( some were some weren’t) , however they are one of those few morally grey factions which motives are imo very relatable.
However it was still not Rastakhan that was behind it. It’s like Blaming Varian for Benedictus. Or entire Alliance for Scarlet Crusade. Each faction has it’s rogue sub organisations. Nelves recently also had druids of the flame, Dark Irons were for years hostile to both H/A and now they wear blue colors.
N,o he let the Horde in, because they saved his daughter from Alliance imprisonment and let them prove themselves by helping with domestic issues. He said that he might let usage of his ships, but it would be still up to him for what those ships could be used. Zandalari even now, after all these stuff they went through still only acknowledge their own leadership as the supreme authority, not the Horde.
If Zandalari are guilty for hosting them, then so are Kul’Tirans and all the Brennadan stuff is apparently justified because Alliance used this land to launch attacks on Zandalari.
Which I also don’t think is fair. Brenndam was incredibly upsetting when I was playing on Alliance toon, and for worse you don’t have an option to learn about this stuff on Horde side.
this is indeed correct but that doesn’t really mean that he wasn’t responsible for the actions of those people who acted under his banner.
many people of the alliance has this problem of people going rogue and they can’t just control everybody and thats great because that is also one of their flaws, they can’t be onmipresent.
the difference is,like i said while alliance characters pay for their mistakes as leaders (like genn or jaina) they also survived so maybe they can learn from it.
i wish this was also true for rastakhan. i am not really someone who likes killing characters especially if they actually don’t deserve it, plus i know that other people may like them (even if i often rant about wanting to kill the horde that is just more my need to revenge more than anything).
isn’t a little weird that anduin of all people would imprison her?
well… anything to make the zandalari join horde i guess…
in any case… this happened after zul attacked both horde and alliance.
and who she was travelling with said princess?
The same dude that tried to conquer the world, twice.
and he did by the start of 8.1 before the raid started sylvanas confirmed that they got the ships.
i don’t think that can really work as an equivalent because this was a war that the horde started, it is an unjustified war in the first place.
so i hope you can see where i am coming from when i said that anything that the horde does is already wrong. and certanly doing even more atrocities to try to win the war at all cost like… really? is really the alliance such an existencial threat that can justify their cruelty ?.
“your death will bring me HONOR!”
-Orc grunt#2647, impalling an innocent woman in front of her child.
Yes it is weird, but that is one of the many things that doesn’t make sense in this expansion. But I guess even Anduin could be seriously prejudiced against trolls like the rest of the Alliance? Which would still make post BoD speech laughable too.
How Alliance would know he was behind all of this. Only Vol’Jin was previously directly talking with him face to face, and had some rough idea what he is up to and he still believed that he did it with Rastakhan’s approval (and turnes out he was wrong) . It’s not like Alliance had any bigger intel on what he was behind nd what he was not.
So I give you that Zandalari situation IS complicated. They were both cooperative and hostile in the past. And troll politics never were truly reviewed in a manner where it showcased them in sympathetic manner. In MoP it was pretty much “Oh they’re violent and attacking everyone! Lolmad Zandalari we need to put down these conquerors!” - and then you learn that Zandalar has sunked during Cataclysm.
:[
so I am grateful it was retconned but back then it was really shattering news for a troll fan. Not only trolls lost their biggest heritage, the cradle of Azeroth’s first (native) civilization - destroyed offscreen.
Ships were used for Azerite mining. And Alliance were lready assaulting them before 8.1. If Alliance was really smart and used their spying organisation in competend way, they’d even turn Zandalari against the Horde without wasting needlessly alliance lives. But alas, nobody in this game is truly smart.
And Yes and No, because Zandalari didn’t escalate this particular conflict either. They were as much hostile to Horde as they were to Alliance, and Alliance immediately started to target them.
Game is pretty brutal, on one side we have orcs impaling women, on the other hand we have dwarves actually killing troll children or incinnerating shoppers.
I also preffered when orcs were chosing to fight worty foe and taking pride in taking down creatures stronger than them. But look around how many true orcish fans are left? This kind of portrayal is also upsetting them.
beacuse zul was talking in behalf of rasthakan.
how the alliance would even know that he was a traitor?
again, rastha didn’t cared at all about diplomacy. maybe because it was too prideful but is the alliance supposed to ignore them forever and pretent they aren’t a threat from their perspective ?.
the only reason as well why the alliance attacked is because they started to negotiate with the horde, you know, the genocidal maniacs who are willing to do anything for victory. if they got the zanda ship and nothing to counter them, they would have lost the war.
but how else we could have 6 new zones and 2 continents?
i think that many things here are being forced due to gameplay reason.
even the land assault on rastha so the zandalari can “join” the horde.
they became a threat when they tried to talk the horde.
i don’t think the alliance had the luxury to wait until the negotiations were complete. because it was going in a good direction when they stopped g’huun.
While it was indeed a big deal, I’m still a little skeptical that this is the kind of thing that just would “slip out”, especially during that time. Afterwards, maybe. But I’m a bit hesitant to believe that would get out, as that’s the kind of thing that could literally undermine the entire war effort.
I apologize, as this is not directed solely at you, but this is the kind of thing I’m never going to engage with. I don’t like this whole naming thing in that sense. It ends up being far too easy to scapegoat one person, when it could be various teams engaging in something. It ignores the possibility of a complex mechanism in order to just single out one person, and usually it’s never positive.
And I may as well say this openly, and on the record: I actually like Anduin. His character, for example, has remained constant throughout the game. People like to mock him for wanting peace, but his mother was taken away by violence. His father. His grandfather. I don’t know what kind of relationship he had with Terenas Menethil, but him, too. And Anduin’s a priest. He’s more devoted to the Light than most people, and that includes the Draenei. There’s a reason Varian mentioned that he learned from Anduin in Legion’s opening.
But to the point, if you want to have a discussion with me - this is me in particular, I should clarify - about some of the writing or anything like that? Stick to “the writers” or “Blizzard” or something like that, unless someone actively came out and said “I am the person responsible for this particular decision”.
…context.
Why was the Alliance camping in Orgrimmar twice in a very short period of time? Was the first time when Mountains of Skulls & Rivers of Blood was trying to kill everybody? Was the second time when Blight Burn Blight Murder Scream lady trying to kill everybody?
I get that it can feel grating. But when you phrase it like that, it makes it sound like there wasn’t a legitimate reason for the Alliance to be there.
Two things about this.
Seriously, the Horde seems to hemorrhage leaders. I said it before, but I don’t actually know who’s in the charge of the orcs, the trolls, or the Forsaken. And it’s not just me, either, neither does Blizzard. I just checked. Do you know the current criteria of “For the Alliance!”, the achievement where you kill the other faction leaders to get the Black War Bear? It’s just Lor’themar and Baine.
You know, I keep hearing people mentioning things like this. “God-tier”. “Demigods”. All these other descriptions for Malfurion and Tyrande and Velen and all of that. Which is something that’s supported canonically, but…have you ever seen them actually do anything? I’m not trying to be facetious, I am genuinely asking. Did you see Malfurion wipe out entire armies of the Horde, like he wiped out entire armies of demons? Have you seen Velen call in orbital strikes from the massive spaceship? Alleria just pulling swaths of armies into the Void?
Because I didn’t. And that begs the question…are they really that powerful if they never have them do anything? If there’s never even a threat of them doing anything? In another thread, I mentioned that these god-tier characters should be easily - easily - driving away the rank and file Horde forces. That suggestion was met with incredulity.
I suppose my point is that I question if it’s accurate to refer to them in that light. If they’ve never been used, and people seem to be against even using them, then…?
Night elves suffered a genocide. High/blood elves suffered a genocide. Draenei suffered a genocide.
Trolls lost a war. Wars, plural. Their lands were taken from them, they were driven out, but…that wasn’t a genocide.
This is my understanding of it. I will freely admit I could be wrong on this case. I don’t think you’re talking about the Troll Wars, right? With the Amani?
Hence why I said “writers like her” because Golden flat out admitted that she liked the most Anduin and Baine because she is the most comfortable with writing lawful good characters. And time and time again emphasised why Anduin is so special and unique. People with similar mindset won’t create any novelty, won’t try other things for the sake of even breaking the routine. We have MoP 2.0 because they didn’t want to try something more challenging. And we’re all here unhappy because of it.
No, he is far bigger problem than that. I really dislike him for both meta and in-universe reasons.
In-universe he doesn’t grow at all, he is never trully challenged, he has utopian dreams which he imposes on everyone, and not even once I saw him fight for his own people. He could be good activist but he a terrible ruler because of that. Realistically his own personal experiences should’ve affect him in a way. But nope. And his believes has no foundations, you don’t know why he turned out the way he is.
From meta point of view, if he is face of the faction it means that whoever opposes him has to be the bad guy. Because only bad guy could be against such a pure and innocent soul that “only wants peace”. He is also terrible because of the guys like him Alliance as a whole feels flat, if they just parrot what he wants, with close to none opposition. And is not the best figure to write war-like stories with, and this franchise is supposed to be based on it.
I meant it from meta resons, That Horde was humilated because they were villan batted by writters, bamboozled with MoP rehashed plot nobody asked for and on top of that were additionally lectured and told that everything they ever stood for was a lie. I don’t know what could be even more demoralizing for a player.
So you acknowledge that prominent characters dropping like a flies left and right is affecting the feel of a faction, soon the Horde will be run by bunch of nobodies at this rate. There is noattachment to faction made by NPCs with no meaningful story behind.
Malfurion was holding down entire Horde army in WoT. Jaina with her appearance changed the tide of battle and pretty much made usage of armies pointless.
This is why I was advocating for years to tone them down significantly, but devs went full Marvel/DBZ instead.
it makes any theorycrafting about proper strategy and usage of armies completely pointless. There should always be serious drawbacks for using great powers. But Jaina doesn’t even break a sweat.
He doesn’t do it because there was no point in doing that, but Velen himself is a very passive hero, even back in Cataclysm he was plotting to run away instead of facing difficulties. However, he was showing a great strenght when using healing/ protective wards as we saw in Legion when he was shielding his people from demons.
Well, we never seen her doing that before, so why would she now?
And they did, Malfurion at least, the reason why he didn’t intervene sooner was because he was recovering from axe to back, his return contributted to nelves winning Darkshore.
Jaina on the other hand was also crucial in defeating Azshara apparently, she was the one who made assault on Zandalari possible, and we saw her freezing the sea.
Talanji was many times called Mary Sue, but she never did anything comparable. Most of her more impressive powers came from Loa, and she herself only casted 2 times a shield and made few totems. Which is something you should’ve expect from Zandalari priest to do.
It’s not just that, it’s also a narrative that is there, powerful characters are a reason for people to feel pride in. Especially if those powerful beings are a lore characters which have long established history.
What Horde has left now? Bunch of B-Tier characters and depowered Thrall.
But to be honest I’d rather have a lot of people depowered than getting off rise in power. I was rolling my eyes at Sylvanas, and I am not that thrilled with Vol’Jin anymore either- I guess it’s good that had some power boost after death, but I liked him for just being troll.
I mean, what is the difference? The Amani were butchered, the majority of their lands taken, and eventually their home capital invaded, looted, and leaders killed. The game just frames it as a natural act, with the invaders/killers being largely excused… because hey, it’s just trolls and they “probably” “started it”.
Troll wars ended with genocide. Humans and Elves summoned armaggedon to stop the trolls from winning a war over their own lands and then hunted down the survivors. One dynasty is even called “Trollbane”. As they take pride in hunting down the natives of the lands.
Malfurion has been called a demigod in-universe a few times. Ysera, while still having full Aspect powers, said that he had surpassed her as a druid and that whoever taught him next it would be someone beyond her.
He also chased off Archimonde during the War of the Ancients and briefly battled Azshara empowered by the Well of Eternity when he was still a novice druid. In Cataclysm he held together all of Darkshore with his sheer willpower, generating a massive tornado that could be seen from miles as he did it, and stopped the region from collapsing into the sea.
He can also fly around like a superhero and was soloing huge chunks of the Horde army in BfA.
Meanwhile Jaina’s most recent display had her one-shot the walls of Lordaeron with arcane cannons powered by her alone and casually froze miles of Blight to save the Alliance from certain defeat. She also wiped out a small fleet by teleporting bombs onto all the ships.
Oh, and then she chased an entire team of some of the Horde’s heroes and the PC out of Stormwind with the game auto-killing you if you tried to fight her. Then went on to be a one woman raid encounter that stalls an entire Horde force of elite heroes before escaping mostly unscathed.
It is very accurate to refer to them in that light and they can and have been used.
The only Horde characters who are comparable to either example are Thrall and Sylvanas, and Thrall got depowered and Sylvanas just became a villain.
I just want to let everyone know that there are a lot of excellent points for discussion being raised here, and I’m not ignoring them.
I also like that people seem to be making an effort to remain civil, which makes it much, much easier to have a conversation.
There’s just, you know…a lot of them, so please forgive me if it takes me a while to get back to everything. Just so people know I hear them, I want people to know that I plan to address the following things that have been raised
The Troll Wars (Amani)
The treatment of the Horde and Alliance by the writers (Megaevil vs megauseless)
God-tier characters
I promise I’m not ignoring people. But…like I said, it’s just a lot, and I have to work on other, equally important things (in a couple of other threads, and this outfit does not make itself, darlings).
Good points. Keep things civil. Talk amongst yourselves.
I had actually wanted to raise a point regarding this myself, but work and all, you know. That said, you expressed frustration that the Alliance’s powerful roster of characters kinds of… stands around and doesn’t do much, and a great deal has been made of the Night Warrior vs. Nathanos debacle. That said, I want to offer my opinion as to why this has come about.
Power creep of lore figures has definitely been a thing for much longer than just BfA or Legion. Thrall is probably the original example of power creep in this sense, getting buffed to fairly ridiculous levels of power in Cataclysm, and it seemed as if Blizzard realized they had gone a little overboard and then went too far in the other direction - to where we now have Sad Dad Thrall who doesn’t seem to have any Shaman power at all.
The problem with this is, even though they reversed Thrall’s power creep, later teams of writers decided that they were okay with it, and around the same time they started to inflate the power levels of characters, the Horde character roster started to take serious hits. Fast forward to the current time where the Alliance has a lot of very powerful and, as Kisin said, legitimately “god-tier” characters compared to the Horde’s… none. Of course, in any kind of assessment of military power, one has to account for these hero characters…
…except Blizzard realized, if they did THAT, it would completely upend the story they wanted to tell of faction struggle. The story would turn into “and the Horde’s armies were slaughtered to a man by Jaina…” which, we must admit, is not a terribly compelling narrative. Sure, it might feel good to watch your Alliance-side heroes flex their muscles and mow down orcs and trolls, but it doesn’t feel too great for the Horde players who have to stand by and watch their faction go down the tubes.
So, in order to tell the story of nearly-balanced military struggle that they want to tell (which is a joke in and of itself), Blizzard has to handicap the Alliance. That means keeping most of their characters in side roles. It means not letting them unleash their full potential. I wrote a quite long thread last year detailing how the Horde’s military weakness is actually making the Alliance story worse, because that imbalance in strength forces Blizzard to artificially cripple one side. Just like it doesn’t feel good to be beaten down with no chance of fighting back, it doesn’t feel very good to have to tie one hand behind your back before battle.
In a more balanced narrative, the Alliance’s characters would get to look cool, because their coolness would be matched by equally cool actions from the Horde’s powerful characters, and then the heroes would clash in some fittingly stupid DBZ-style battle while the soldiers fight each other. Put another way, the best way to get more mileage out of cool Alliance stuff is to give the Horde (non-atrocity) more strong stuff, and let their toys smash into each other and break apart in spectacular action-movie fashion.
I’d be okay with going in either direction - retcon some Naruto-style shadow ninja powers onto Rokhan and the Shadow Hunters, pump Rommath full of the Sunwell’s power and make him a walking firestorm, give Gey’arah power armor and a chainsword. Or dial back the absurd levels of power some Alliance characters have gotten - better for the story overall imo, but difficult to pull off without sounding contrived a lot of the time. The point is, put everything back on a level playing field, rather than having to invent artificial stumbling blocks for one side (and continually eviscerating the other).
I still think Thrall’s power was overblown by everybody. His super power was being able to hold the Dragon Soul because he was the strongest Shaman and even in Dragon Soul he admits he can’t use it without being killed until Kalec brings out the Focusing Iris.
Meanwhile, Malfurion is in Darkshore doing his demigod bit and… no one cares I guess?
