Malfurion to Tyrande in WC3: “You’ve changed.”
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What about…and stay with me…what if said players said for months “Hey Blizzard…please don’t have my faction complicit in genocide…hey Blizzard…I hope you have some plot twist up your sleeve where Sylvanas and the Horde aren’t responsible for the genocide, like maybe Azshara did it…remember everything you said about Morally Gray…I hope you don’t just have an elaborate series of high-priced cinematics intended to make you empathize with the honorless Orc that planned the War of Thorns and not the actual victims of the genocide…Hey Blizzard, Garrosh 2.0 is the absolute last thing we want for the Horde, please never ever do that ever in a million years…Hey Blizzard, Brennedam has been datamined and the Horde come across as bloodthirsty lunatics, can you please, please, please change it so that it isn’t that at all? (spoiler: Blizzard left it in)”
And finally “Hey Blizzard, please don’t just blame this on Sylvanas alone, that is the epitome of lame writing”
How about that? Would you still feel the same way?
Just to be clear, Horde players BEGGED and PLEADED with Blizzard for months not to do this, and they did it anyway.
Enjoy Shadowlands!
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The worst part about Brennedam is that they actually toned it down due to the complaints and it was still weird as all hell and almost indefensible.
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We complain about writing all the time in the story forums, but by golly Brennedam is one of the stupidest, most indefensible story moments in Warcraft history.
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BfA is rife with those moments where people see something in PTR/Beta, went “um, wait, no.” and then instead of changing it completely they just… toned it down or buffed it, one of the two.
Brennedam is the worst one, obviously. Then there’s the Darkshore quest where Tyrande fights Nathanos, and then there’s the Alliance invasion in Vol’dun where you have warlocks(?) attacking vulpera.
Brennedam was toned down and kept, Tyrande’s fight was buffed so that it wasn’t… really sad, and the Alliance Despoilers were toned down as well but still attacking.
And we all know damn well that if people hadn’t complained, they wouldn’t have changed anything and we’d still have things like Forsaken mages polymorphing Brennedam citizens into fish and then laughing as they slowly die out of the water.
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A lovely reminder; Brennedam was supposed to be Quilboar, but Blizzard thought Quilboar was boring so they swapped the Horde in to be more exciting.
It’s why a stupid amount of Stormsong has a Quilboar problem for almost no logical reason.
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I like that insult. I’ll pay that one.
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And it would have made a fair amount of sense as quillboar, because if it were an escalation of the quillboar threat then it wouldn’t have amounted to the Horde loudly announcing their presence in Kul Tiras with a full-scale invasion and conquest of lands when their presence on the island was supposed to be a covert operation.
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Even having Quilboar was weird. They’re native to Kalimdor and aren’t exactly at the technological level necessary to cross the Great Sea, let alone establish a foothold population large enough to threaten an entire region of Kul Tiras. They’re just…there. It would’ve made more sense to use the troggs that are just on the other side of the mountain range.
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And we’ve got gnolls in Kalimdor too. Along with furbolgs in Northrend. Numerous non-seafaring races exist far from each other on more than one continent, presumably because they lived in multiple parts of ancient Kalimdor prior to the Sundering.
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The thing about the Quilboar though is that they stuck to one specific region of Kalimdor because it was sacred to them. For all of the game’s lifetime, up until BfA, Quilboar only lived in The Barrens, Durotar and Mulgore. Now though they’re also on Kul Tiras and one of the islands in the Island Expeditions, without any explanation.
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If you consider that Cultirans throw the pc in jail and sentenced Jaina to death it makes no sense at all. Sylvanas wanted to feed the hungering darkness but why attack a rather hostile towards Alliance nation? Makes more sense to attack somewhere else.
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For some reason both sides were utterly convinced that the best way to prevent new allies from joining the other side was to attack those potential allies.
Not enough to destroy them. Not enough to conquer and occupy them. Not enough to even completely cripple them militarily. Just enough to…somehow…“scare” them into not picking a side, I guess? Even though most of the races in either faction are literally members because at some point they needed mutual protection against attacks by either the other faction or a third party threat?
Yeah, none of it made a whole lot of sense. The whole expansion was full of characters doing the exact opposite of what the circumstances called for, seemingly for no reason other than to move events down a desired path whether the reasons stood up to scrutiny or not.
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While I agree that we have no good or clear reason why the Quillboar would leave Kalimdor, I’m not sure seafaring has an insurmountably high technological threshold to prevent it. It is, after all, how humans in ancient times colonized much of Oceania.
Plus they have shaman. Who, being shaman, should have Water Walking. Which, while not an especially efficient (or safe) way to cross an ocean, is amusing to visualize.
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Unsurprisingly, captain sleepsalot was wrong.
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I now have the mental image of a bunch of quillboar being tossed up into the air from the ocean waves, much like that kindergarten game where you put a bunch of small balls on a sheet and everyone takes turns whipping the sheet up and down like a trampoline.
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Honestly the entirety of Stormsong Valley felt like a fever dream. One moment I’m fighting off the Horde, the next a bunch of Quillboar pop up, after that the Venture Company and pirates everywhere, then I stumbled into an in-progress Call of Cthulhu campaign.
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Well, there are Quillboar among the Bilge Rats. So Sailing isn’t exactly a foreign concept to them.
Okay, the Alliance characterization of the Horde has gone way off the rails. This is getting ridiculous.
Why would we waste perfectly good Night Elf hair on tissues? That’s some cloak-weaving stuff!
Jokes aside, I’m with Kaleaon. I worry some people have crossed the streams between the Horde as the ingame, “IC” lore entity and the Horde players, who have zero control over what the ingame Horde does and, frankly, shouldn’t be punished for dumb decisions the writers made.
I don’t think most Horde fans actually eat babies and burn villages down, we just want to have fun and feel good about the story like anybody else. Blizzard has failed to meet that desire time and time again.
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I agree, but there is a provision to that agreement. The Horde is trying to change, and the Alliance is indeed not letting them, but that is because the method of said change is extremely detrimental to the Alliance.
WoD did a lot of damage to the identity of Orcs as the victims of the manipulation of demons, that they’re only ever violent because of the demon blood. We saw quite clearly they’re as capable of those same atrocities on their own. Combine that with the war through Cata-MoP, and then more recent events, and being under the influence of demon blood comes off more as an excuse for the First and Second Wars than anything else.
Well, when one of your first actions is to kill the living who worked with you, who were keeping their end of the agreement, then yeah, you are going to be seen as monsters, especially when there was a demon involved. Also kind of makes the whole point of calling themselves, “Forsaken,” silly.
Thanks to Zul, the Zandalari have a history of trying to jump-start the old Troll Empires, even allying with the Mogu in Pandaria. The Alliance attack on Zandalar was not with the intent of killing Rastakan or even of causing much casualties. That’s just how it unfolded.
Well, the novels make it clearly Saurfang was the only one present trying to stop it, and everyone ignored him.
You know, for how much the Horde has protested they’re trying to change and not commit the same crimes, it’s amazing how they allow themselves to not change and commit the same crimes. It’s as if they learned nothing from Garrosh’s time as Warchief.
Daelin Proudmoore attacked Durotar, and not without reason, considering the Orcs stole Alliance ships to flee to the other side of the world. His big mistake was that he didn’t listen to his daughter.
I imagine she knew the Horde leaders would sooner die than allow the Horde to be dismantled.
So, coming full circle, the Horde is trying to change, and it’s methods are obviously detrimental to the Alliance. That’s why the Alliance isn’t allowing the Horde to change. The Horde needs to find methods to change that don’t involve slaughtering Alliance races, invading Alliance nations, betraying cooperative efforts with the Alliance, etc…
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me three or more times and call me the Alliance.
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