Warrior? Bit too diverse to lean to any one race, let alone faction. The Odyn/Valhalla theme was probably the best they could come up with given how broad “guy with weapons who hits other guy with weapons” is
Rogue? Ravenholdt and the Defias are big deals lore wise, but I’ll grant you this one. The Shattered Hand was right there and they could have leaned that way.
Hunter? Night Elves are the prototypical hunters, but again, I’ll grant you. BElf Rangers exist and could have led to more Horde flavour.
Mage? Magi have been prototypical Alliance entities since WC1. Same with Priests.
Warlock? Probably could have been MORE Horde centric honestly. Let’s see some Shadowmoon stuff.
Paladin? Been an Alliance mainstay since WC2.
Shaman? This should be as Horde as Horde gets. Though I will say Nodundo getting to be a major leader probably has something to do with Thrall always having The Sads and running off. Srsly you Hordies need to talk to him about that. It’s rubbed off on Anduin and is causing problems.
Druid? Druids are heavily influenced by NElf lore. Sorry.
Monk? Pandaren, which are a neutral/both sides race.
Demon Hunters and Death Knights are both heavily rooted in the lore of NElfs and humans. Again, sorry.
Unless we count WC2 DKs, who were Orc Warlocks in the bodies of slain human knights, but it’s clear WoW has all but abandoned that style of DK.
Nah, I’ll break it down for you. The Horde has very, very deep and interesting lore… when it comes to Orcs. I mean it. I really dig Horde lore when it comes to the Orcs.
Everyone else though? It’s shaky. Sure the lore is there. It exists, but it’s just not… well… interesting. At least from my perspective. I donno. Maybe inter-troll politics is your thing.
But it’s become increasingly clear that Horde identity/flavour/lore whatever has suffered because too many people complained about Orc fatigue. Which has led to the Horde having to co-opt the lore, flavour, and identity of Alliance foundations like Silvermoon and Lordaeron to carve out any identifiable Horde identity.
As an Alliance player? It bugs me. The Horde had to swipe Alliance elements to appear interesting when fans (stupidly) said they didn’t want more Orc lore.
And this plays out in the class halls. Most- not all, but most- of the classes have roots in races that either are, or were, Alliance-centric. Like… even if the Hunter class hall went full BElf Ranger. Congrats. It’s “Horde” themed in as un-Horde a way as possible.
The Horde doesn’t lack for lore, interesting characters, concepts, and symbolism. But because the central pillar of the Horde- Orcs- got shouted down by fans, Blizz has had to graft Alliance iconography onto them in increasing amount to make the faction “interesting.”
There’s all sorts of interesting scenarios you could get into with the Tauren or Darkspear. but they don’t want to.
People find them boring because the devs don’t want to do anything with them. Drinking deep from the elf well because its easy to write is laziness and/or devs having strong preferences.
e: I don’t even think its a bad thing that belves are getting some focus, its just kinda banal things that don’t matter or basically tied to Alleria’s/VE lore. Rommath and Occuleth becoming bros and establishing an academy seperate from the KT due to recent history would be cool.
The rest of your post is mostly just saying “well, all these classes are Alliance-leaning, so Blizzard has no choice.” Well, God forbid Blizzard put in any effort to change that.
Nah, even with the Vykrul being human progenitors, Odyns campaign dealt with none of that. And you dealt with Keepers and titan constructs more than actual vykrul.
The warrior campaign wasn’t Horde or alliance leaning, it was just kinda bad.
This is my point, though. Horde races have almost nothing to do with the Titans and even the ones created by them don’t really have any tradition of revering. Compare that to Humans Dwarves and Gnomes. And the Forsaken are a whole new race with who couldn’t care less about Tyr.
I don’t buy Vrykul being neutral-leaning anymore than I buy it for Earthen.
I’m not defending the Warrior class hall, I hated the warrior class hall. It wasn’t about Warriors at all. You just did Odyns chores for him because he lost the key to his front door.
The Token human representative sat in the back after the opening just as Saurfang did outside of one weapon skin unlock. A single unit type was 7th legion or Kor’kron.
Thorim and Hodir were the Keepers you do the most with outside of Odyn himself and they aren’t really tied to any race’s story as tightly as Mimiron is to Gnomes/Goblins or Tyr and Humans/Dwarves.
The Warrior Order hall should have just been a giant cobbled-together fortress built by a mixture of Horde and Alliance hands, and staffed with soldiers from all races just holding the line against an endless wave of felguards and other demons.
Like what’s happening at the foot of the Dark Portal when you cross over into Hellfire Peninsula.
The War Table is literally that. A table with maps and strategy, surrounded with the best officers the Alliance and Horde could muster, all looking for an edge, all reporting losses and gains. Night Elves sharing their wisdom from the War of the Ancients, Orc Battlemasters preparing for suicide charges, Gnomish and Goblin engineers offering up artillery and support… just pure cooperation.
And at the very least, such a cooperative organization would have made it much much more difficult for BFA to be justified so soon after, despite the fact it’s clear that if the Directorship desires something dumb, everyone has to roll over and receive their free company brainworm.
It should have been a cobbled together group of the best warriors willing to put aside their differences lead by Wyrmbane and Saurfang collaborating as the current/former leader of the factions respective elite forces.
Start the expansion with the H/A forces mostly working separately and distrusting one another, end with them being a well oiled machismo driven machine. Then just don’t do BFA.
This isn’t the RTS anymore, the Horde has since recruited two entire civilizations built around the mage fantasy. Dalaran and Jaina enjoy a monopoly on developer interest, not lore material.
