I don’t see it as villainizing, as the idea is not that the Night Warrior is evil. It’s that it’s power a mortal was not meant to wield for any extended period of time. It’s a power that always ultimately destroys its wielder.
It’s something only to be called upon in a moment of desperation by people who feel their situation is so desperate, that they’re willing to risk their own destruction to see its power invoked. It is dangerous, and not just to the Night Warrior’s enemies.
News flash. I’m gonna put it in bold for ya.
The Horde player already feels bad.
Shandris, and presumably her troops, also fought in Darkshore, but were present in Anduin’s forces and were committed to his cause.
If the Horde had already been routed from Darkshore/Ashenvale, I find it hard to believe that Tyrande would not have descended on Orgrimmar, especially given her refusal to accept the armistice and the War’s conclusion. I find it far more likely she was still tied up in either territories.
Anduin’s comment still holds, even without the Army of the Black Moon.
why would she want to work with saurfang He holds just as much blame for the burning as sylvanas
Not in the same way. My bad feels are a direct consequence of what the Horde and its playerbase participated in.
Your bad feels are essentially “Yo why are my leaders so dumb?” which trust me both factions share in equal measure.
So first you said Horde players never can be made to feel bad in any way, and now you’re saying it doesn’t count if it’s not exactly the same.
That’s called moving the goalposts.
Version 2.0. Trying to take in comments and suggestions regarding my first draft…
Have Tyrande become less and less herself. Most avatars of the Night Warrior would have died by now, as this is a power no mortal is supposed to possess for this long, but Tyrande endures. The Night Warrior persona is slowly taking increasingly greater control over her. It’s granting her even more powers, but at some point, it stops being in her control as a means to dispense justice and takes over with its goal of lashing out in pain and vengeance. At some point, Shandris or Malfurion try to speak to her, only for her to reply something along the lines of, “I am not Tyrande. I am not Elune. I am their pain. I am their suffering. I am their vengeance.”
Now under the near total control of the Night Warrior persona, Tyrande and the Army of the Dark Moon start to become an even greater force. Using Darkshore as their base, they spread out from there. They move into Ashenvale, Felwood, Moonglade, Stonetalon, and Winterspring, but they don’t just restrict attacks to military settlements. They also attack civilians, Horde Druids. Really play up any friendly/neutral Druids, Tauren, Vulpera, or Blood Elven deaths.
Meanwhile, the Horde council doesn’t want a full blown war, but they can’t just sit by and do nothing while Tyrande’s forces ravage their villages and kill indiscriminately. They send the hero to help evacuate people and bolster local defenses, but the Army of the Black Moon keeps advancing.
So the Horde leaders go to Anduin, Genn, Malfurion, Shandris, and other Alliance leaders for a solution. Genn doesn’t want to intervene, arguing that the Horde deserves this fate. The others, being the much more forgiving people they are, don’t wish to see every Horde man woman and child wiped out either. Shandris and Malfurion are primarily concerned with getting the real Tyrande back. They also explain how having the Night Warrior in mortal form means that only half of Elune is currently locked into a mortal entity- which means the rest of Elune is only at half power.
The best course of action is determined to be separating Tyrande from the Night Warrior. Tyrande gets to be herself again. Elune is made whole. The slaughter of civilians ceases.
So begins some quests to gather mcguffins, interspersed with some skirmishes with agents of the Army of the Black Moon. Under the leadership of Shandris and Malfurion and alongside the Night Elf forces who are not part of the Army of the Black Moon, they’ll face the Night Warrior and her army.
It all ends with a big climactic battle in which Aduin is fatally injured, and after some big emotional beat or after she attains her “FINAL FORM” and we defeat her, Tyrande is able to break free of the Night Warrior’s influence for long enough to see what she’s done, and how the desire for vengeance at any cost has only resulted in more death and is on the verge of plunging the whole world back into war again.
Tyrande manages to excise the Night Warrior from herself and Elune is restored to her fullness. Anduin dies, and in Before the Storm he actually named Genn his successor. So Anduin gets to die a tragic death as a saint, and the new King of Stormwind is a guy who really doesn’t trust the Horde. Since Genn’s also not a blood heir, and the King of Gilneas, you could totally start another storyline inside the Alliance, where the people of Stormwind -especially the nobility- refuse to accept him, and he sees challenges to his throne and authority.
Meanwhile, the territory gained in the fighting remains under Night Elf control, with only the southern parts of these territories abutting Horde lands being contested. Genn holds firm on this, as he was always sympathetic, and doesn’t want to give the Horde anything.
And thus, we return to a cold war state.
No the Horde player can never be made to feel bad in any way as a direct result of Alliance action against them…
Similar to how the Horde playerbase got to invade 3 zones and burn one of them for fun at my expense I will never get that opportunity because of the reason I described above.
No, its implied context.
Yeah just give the alliance the horde story, that’ll fix all our problems totally Just what we need right, more stories about the victims becoming the villains all while ignoring all the evil the horde has done, what about the horde owns up to its mistakes and tyrande forgives the horde because they actually do something good for the alliance for once in there miserable lives, and stop being the selfish faction
That’s every Warcraft story. Every antagonist is, at some point, a decent person who got put into a terrible situation where they either got seduced by evil, tortured by evil, or enslaved/possessed by evil. And most of the time, the evil is less petty and sadistic, and more like someone who saw a flaw in the cosmology and decided the best way to fix it was by destroying everything and killing everyone.
Even then, I’m not even suggesting that the Night Warrior is evil. The Night Warrior is the yin of Elune, and without her yang, and when crammed into the body of a mortal, especially one in the throes of grief and trauma, god-like powers can be very bad thing.
It’s not even an original story conceit. I’m basically ripping off popular retellings of the Phoenix Saga. And Akira.
very much untrue, sure some of the villians have reasons like this, but yeah you know why your idea is really bad? Nothing to do with tyrande being evil, but asking for mop 3 right after we had mop 2 lol, THIS TIME ITS DIFFERENT CAUSE THE ALLIANCE ARE THE BAD GUYS
yeah right
maybe you should play alliance side a bit more before you suggest stuff for us, you dont see me saying the horde coucil should be killed off already so gallywix should rise as the new warchief and blow up gnomes now do you
Warcraft only has two plots.
“The demons/undead/old gods/whatever are attacking and we need to stop them.”
And…
“One of our leaders is doing something bad and we need to stop them. Also, it’s probably related to demons/undead/old gods/whatever.”
The following sounds evil, so I disagree with you that it is not villainizing the Night Warrior:
if you want to go that simple wow only has one plot, everyone teams up against the big bad. Now argue that didnt happen with garrosh or sylvanas,
If having a character’s actions result in negative consequences ever is villainizing, then yeah. But unless we want this to be a story where perfect Alliance characters just curb stomp all over evil Horde and everybody just sits back nodding their heads and going, “Yep. That’s all good,” then we need some more reasons for people to want to stop it.
I have to focus on civilian deaths because if she’s only going after legitimate military targets, what is the conflict? Why should anyone Alliance side care? Removing any mention of civilian deaths is a big part of why Teldrassil had so much impact and Undercity had almost none.
When everyone reacts perfectly reasonably and rationally and makes nothing but the most ideal choices at every time, and nothing they do ever has any kind of meaningful consequences, then you have no conflict and no story. Somebody has to be the antagonist. But the antagonist doesn’t have to be evil or even a villain in the classical sense.
I won’t. That’s an even more concise summary of WoW’s plot.
Why cant the horde just not be evil, ever think of that, a story where the horde actually gives up there evil weapons like the blight, and actually changes like they said they are, this is like the 3rd time they’d said they’d change you know, and with the genocide they commited against the alliance, the alliance is justified for life
In my story, the Horde isn’t doing anything evil.
You can just not do anything evil hon, the horde commited genocide, they actually have to make it up to all the people that suffered because of them, you cant just have them sit there and be all, “Hey we are good now, trust us.”
Sure you can. Narratives do it all the time. Especially when you’re goal is to reestablish a new status quo going forward.