It is, you just aren’t an empathetic person.
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It is possible to fix that Horde’s storyline without affecting the Alliance.
It isn’t possible to fix the Alliance’s storyline without affecting the Horde.
This is why all the horde storyline has been bad stuff will always fall flat or sound like a cop out or the devs favoring the Horde.
This is why all attempted suggestions of fixing the Alliance storyline will be rejected by the Horde Players. They don’t want to suffer through a Teldrassil style event even if it is to balance the scales (even with the Alliance having an UC style event to counter balance it.)
Is it even acceptable to Horde Players for the Alliance to dish out a humiliating defeat to Sylvanas costing her Nathanos, her Val’kyr, and her Dark Rangers?
Even after her insulting the horde?
1 Like
Wow. You have so obsessively been caught up in your self pity that you have completely ignored horde posters issues in your ‘its all about poor little me’ mindset.
Comparable? Yeah it is. However it is fundamentally different. The main difference for you is that you don’t give a crap about what is making horde players unhappy so you don’t give it any value.
I don’t want blizzard to completely flip the tables and reverse the current narative ‘meta’ because that wouldn’t be good for either side but honestly posts like this kind of make part of me wish for it just so people posting like this can actually find out what the grass is like on the other side of the fence. In 90% of cases it is clear from posters posting things like this they have no concept of what they actually seem to think the horde experience is like.
While it is relatively pointless since you don’t want to listen, I will still point out to you that the horde pretty much lost every conflict in BfA after the War of Thorns. The closest we come to a victory at all required us blowing up our own city and losing a lot of territory. The Horde for all it’s aggression has taken jack all from the alliance since vanilla. At most you could count Southshore and Azshara and at the same time the Horde lost territory in the southern barrens and now Arathi Highlands as a result.
I honestly don’t care what happens to Sylvanas at this point and Nathanos is a lost cause too now. We could find her dead in a ditch in Shadowlands and all I would think is ‘good riddance’.
Too much of the Horde’s identity, pride and likeability has been sacrificed for the sake of her character development. Blizzard tries to distance what Sylvanas did from the horde but the reality is that it is impossible for the horde to not be complicit. Sylvanas ordered Teldrassil burned but it was horde soldiers who did the burning. ‘But I was ordered too’ is a pathetic defense. We didn’t even have a good reason to go to war with the NEs.
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If Blizzard lets Alliance attack the Horde and their territory without it becoming a guiltfest it would validate all the things the Horde has done too.
In the next faction war both sides could fight with no restrictions or moralizing which would result in yet another batch of characters getting offed.
Seems to me the best course of action is to stop the current moralizing trend and let both factions kill each other into a proper stalemate.
Perhaps both sides eventually obtain WMDs that assures their mutual destruction if used.
That was the subplot of this expansion, or so we were told.
Didn’t seem to matter much, unfortunately.
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No it wouldn’t. By the very nature of the history we are working with and by your own admission anything the Alliance does would be considered justifiable. Frankly to both sides.
I hate to break it to you but the righteous revengefest you want will never be a fair deal for the Horde. The context at this point makes that impossible. It never really was in a two faction game. Conflicts like this, when your dealing with two perspectives, have to be more us vs them than right vs wrong or good vs evil and blizzard can’t manage moral ambiguity.
For the story to be accurately flipped, Tyrande and Shandris would have to be your Sylvanas and Nathanos, Genn probably would have to be your Gallywix, Anduin your Baine, Baine your Anduin and Turalyon maybe your Saurfang. You really like the idea of Turalyon getting lectures on how to be honorable from Baine?
Plus the Alliance would have to attack one of the groups least deserving like the Volpera or the Tauren. Then you would have to lose pretty much every conflict afterwards only to be saved from total defeat by say Tyrande making a deal with the Legion or something and effectively betraying the Alliance.
Considering the considerable power difference and the fact the only reason the Horde didn’t get totally trounced by the Alliance in the war was the Naga’s intervening, that doesn’t seem realistic. Pretty much since the War of Thorns, the Horde has won some battles but lost pretty much every theater of war in this conflict.
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I think good stories will have both sides be justified rather than just one side.
Its an error that needs to be fixed.
The story suffers because all the blame is thrown at one or two characters.
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I agree but I don’t see a scenario with the current set up which makes the Horde justified in what it has done. I don’t see it as an error that can be fixed in the current context. We will need to move on and see a change in the dynamic before the Alliance coming down on the Horde doesn’t just seem like the Horde’s just deserts.
This story suffers because the blame is all on the Horde’s side of the equation. The Alliance isn’t really responsible in any sensible way for this last war. Frankly the Horde hate and fear of the Alliance has made less and less sense for a pretty long time with how tolerant and measured the Alliance has been towards horde shenanigans. The Horde getting upset at the Alliance at the moment more often than not comes off as a petulant child getting upset for suffering the consequences of their actions.
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They have no issues, they have been absolved of all wrongdoing because ‘it was all Sylvanas’ fault.
And in doing so the Night Elves lost not only their home but a majority of their population, while the Horde has lost nothing to the Alliance because the Alliance for whatever reason doesn’t take at all.
Undercity and King Rastakhan don’t even count because the Alliance don’t even destroy Undercity and ol Rasta was pretty much killed himself because he used Bwonsdamdis powers.
I don’t get why people have the balls to even mention Horde ‘losses’. Imagine winning a fight against someone a thousand times and gaining nothing, but when they win they burn your house down and kill all your pets. In what universe is the guy who won the most fights the ‘winner’ in that situation.
Alliance come off as the most worthless, sissy group in all of fiction. Like seriously our ‘victory’ is that we got to reform the Horde so they no longer keep bullying us, for now anyway, like wow thanks Blizzard. Horde aren’t even ‘evil’ because they get to cut off their bad apples, but Alliance still has to keep worthless twits like Jaina and Anduin who care more about Horde and Zandalari wellbeing then the Alliance.
Really though the Alliance should demand a capital city from the Horde as recompense, I’d say Thunderbluff to give us more Kalimdor presence. Not only that, a sizeable portion of the Horde’s gdp should go to ensuring the Night Elves and Worgen live like kings.
Lol it wouldn’t even be a betrayal because at this point the Horde is even worse then the Legion, so she’d be no worse a betrayer then Andruin. I’m serious, I would rather my characters team up with the legion or even the void then ever team up with Horde races ever again.
Regardless of past story events, narrative decisions that amount to “This will make one side feel like crap for the actions the writers had their faction take” should be avoided. That’s not healthy for the game.
Like, during Cata, the Alliance leveling experience became “Red Warchief screams “FOR THE HORDE” in all its memey glory. Your forts are half built and sometimes on fire, his forts are towering iron edifices. Prepare to feel like you are losing for years.”
Now some of that was due to multiple writers doing different things in different places, but the net effect? “You should feel bad for playing Alliance.”
In fact, it was during that xpac that I adopted the stance I’ve taken since- people should be able to cheer on their faction. Not helplessly watch them lose (Alliance), or have their core theme changed from “differently heroic” to “gloves off, full blown evil guys.” (Horde).
This can be achieved without beating the piss out of one faction or the other. The now pretty tired obsession with faction war makes it much harder.
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What do you define as fixed?
In my opinion my narrative is fixed if Andiun would finally shut up and let us bring the pain to the Horde’s populace.
Would you not say this would unite the Horde in their fight for survival? Even if they deserve everything they get they still have a right to fight for themselves and thrive. There is nothing wrong with that.
And you prove my point by showing you have completely ignored any post about the Horde story Horde players have posted cause you hare so absorbed in your own self pity.
“What happens to the Horde doesn’t count. Only bad things that happen to the Alliance count. Only what I think is important because it affects me counts.”
- Ikaar 2020
Oh no. Your not teaming up with them. You are getting completely outclassed by the Alliance and only don’t get defeated because your leader betrays you by allying with the Legion or the Void and the Horde has more to lose. You don’t get to pick your sides, even if you want to, except perhaps in an empty token way that Horde players did which ended up with you helping the rebels regardless in the end.
See? This is my point. You clearly are so caught up that you haven’t even tried to consider the Horde experience in this expansion and why it is rubbish too. You just want to have a temper tantrum about how the horde got something you didn’t without actually realizing what it is the horde got and what it would really be like for you to get it.
The horde’s issue isn’t that it isn’t united. It’s issue is it deserves an asskicking which Horde players had no say in. The whole time we would be getting attacked by the Alliance we wouldn’t be feeling 'HOW DARE THE ALLIANCE!!". We will be feeling ‘Well we kind of had this coming.’
This is the issue of justification, motivation and hypocrisy. We had no good reason to fight the War of Thorns. Blizzard had Horde players go against characters they were being buddies with just the previous expansion. The Alliance on the other hand is lathered in justification on everything they did. It makes any Horde outrage feel hypocritical at worse and pathetically sulky at best, like someone who throws a punch and then gets indignant when the person they attacked fights back. Honestly I develop a rapid hatred for any Horde character who talks about the Alliance being weak now because the last war showed pretty conclusively that without underhanded tactics the Horde is generally worse at war than the Alliance.
17 Likes
So what’s your solution then?
I know what fixes my narrative. And yeah it involves the Horde players getting hit over the head. That’s the only way to fix it.
You oppose it because you don’t want the stick even though you agree the story at this point demands it.
This constant forgiveness and convenient turn of events that spare the Alliance from any moral dilemma is hurting the story so why resist it? What’s the alternative?
Lets imagine you are in a position of control right now with no going back to fix the lore and you have the current plot of Shadowlands and the next expansion. No backsies.
What will you do to fix this? Because I am already ready for another faction war due to how poor this one was.
This isn’t about what happened to the Horde, this is about what the Horde has done to the Alliance and vice versa. Alliance have done literally nothing to the Horde short of stopping them doing further damage. We didn’t destroy Undercity, they did. We didn’t even kill Rhastakan since his power was killing him anyway. So no it doesn’t count.
I literally have no idea what you are going on about here.
Just because the Horde experience is ‘rubbish’ doesn’t put it on equal footing to the Alliance. The Alliance got a race genocided and an entire city burned, and have to keep our weak, ineffectual Human leaders. The Horde meanwhile lose only what they sacrifice themselves and get to shed Sylvanas at the end.
God it still pisses me off how we had quests and cinematics in game to help the Horde. It’s disgustingly tone deaf, we fail to save our Alliance allies but manage to help these guys apart of this monstrous faction.
Exact same thing with the Alliance. We gave Horde another chance in MOP and they turn around and try to destroy us, 'Well we kind of had this coming.’ Only fair the Horde get a turn of it.
Dial back the stakes. Stop making everything about the end of the world, or the existence of one faction or another.
Take it back to something closer to Vanilla. With more skirmishes far away from the capital cities. Spy vs spy plots. Proxy conflicts. Piracy/privateering/raids. Diplomatic and economic rivalry. Seriously, the Goblin vs Gnome, thing has soooo much potential.
And now, given the history of the Horde and the Alliance, the Alliance has just as much reason to go on the initiative in these limited exchanges as the Horde.
You can maintain the constant threat of the conflict going hot, but stop short of having large armies mobilize or nuking entire cities. Emphasize in the text that total war would be so costly and logistically taxing that even if you did win, said victory pyrrhic at best.
In short, make it a Cold War setting. And you can do a lot with a cold war setting. We’re still telling stories about the cold war between the US and USSR decades after it ended. And it’s not like it was devoid of action. All the Rambo, James Bond, and every Korean/Vietnam war movie is set during the Cold War. To say nothing of the many other conflicts that rarely get any mention.
13 Likes
It fixes the Alliance narrative maybe. It only makes the Horde’s one worse. This is why I say it is an outcome which would only make sense if blizzard decided to write the plot for Alliance players by treating Horde players as second class customers.
As for a solution, I don’t see one. Blizzard cornered themselves with this. I don’t see a way to dig it out. The best we can hope for, unless we want to start advocating the other half of the playerbase get screwed which I don’t, is to hope that they leave this mess behind and maybe just don’t repeat it again in the future. Faction wars have ALWAYS ended like this because it is the closest Blizzard can get to a compromise after making the war so black and white.
A crap outcome sure but we really only have crap outcomes. You cant fix a burning wreck.
So basically you want all the in game destruction that the Horde inflicted on the Alliance without any of the drawbacks the Horde suffered? Yeah, you really have a good sense of fair.
I small typo. In the second sentence I meant horde not Alliance. I am describing what it would be like for you to get what the Horde got. The Naga didn’t side with the Horde. Sylvanas betrayed the Horde to the Naga and it was only coincidental that it stopped the Alliance from curbstomping the Horde in this war. You have actually bothered following the story this expansion right?
Those ineffectual human leaders were winning the war for you until the Naga got involved. You were weeks from defeating the Horde by both the Horde and Alliance’s view.
Plus you don’t consider it equal footing because you dismiss the issues horde player had simply because you don’t care if the horde players had a bad experience.
Oh please. For a start it was stated several time that Varian realized that to actually ‘dismantle’ the Horde would leave the Alliance militarily crippled and exposed. Did you really think the Alliance should have gotten to wipe out the Horde? Oh wait, you probably do.
Regardless, there is a fundamental difference. The Horde has never been given decent motivation for this war. Horde players were forced into it because blizzard wanted yet another evil warchief plot. Alliance players are ALWAYS bathed in justification for everything they do. It is ALWAYS the horde’s fault. Horde players are forced into the role of antagonists. Hell, we had an Alliance king telling us about how to be honorable.
You want us to experience what happened to the Alliance but I don’t think you want the REST of the experience flipped. Or rather you don’t understand what the rest of the experience is because your so caught up in your self pity that your are unable to consider the other side’s viewpoint or experience.
Bad luck. We are sub payers too and we shouldn’t have to pay a sub were we get screwed over both ways just so you can get some pay back. We don’t pay a sub to be the villain for your story.
15 Likes
So instead of sniping at each other, maybe offer some solutions.
So Syriyna, what would you suggest to actually fix the Alliance story. And yes, I mean fix it. Leaving as is won’t work.
1 Like
Already answered that.
There can never be a resolution for Alliance story because it would make the Horde player feel bad.
And that is unacceptable.
Which is odd because it never stopped Blizzard to penalize the Alliance playerbase to push the Horde’s story forward.
It happened in Cata, it happened in MoP and it happened in BFA. The entire story was completely revolved around the Horde and its characters.
That is why I said leaving it as it is unacceptable.
It is also that is why the horde story was done so badly this x-pac, giving them an pre-planned built in excuse to not hit the horde back to fix the Alliance story.
I get some of the coddling of horde. If you look past WOW there really isn’t much similar to the horde out there. There is no Lord of the Rings, Eragon, or other high fantasy/epic fantasy novels, movies, TV shows, video games that feature the type of Orcs, Trolls, or Goblins like the Wow Horde does.
This is likely why so much of the promotional material for Wow pushes the horde. The Alliance has a lot of similar stuff to push it for Blizz. That is also why so much of the Alliance victories and stuff get pushed off screen into novels and such as opposed to being put front and center in the game.
It is also telling that they had to add an Alliance race (High Elves) to the horde in TBC to boost flagging population numbers. That is also the most requested race that the Alliance wants added to its roster and that Blizz has tried every trick short of the Worgen dual forms racial to not do. (See Void Elves).
So in a sad way it makes sense that they can use spiked knuckles to punch the Alliance in the face (Teldrassil) then have to turn around and use kid gloves on the horde while the horde wears a face mask (UC).
But none of that excuses the fact that Blizz needs to fix the Alliance’s storyline. So how do they do it?
Having the Horde wreck their own storyline isn’t an acceptable answer. And honestly it was foolish of them to try and use that as an answer. That said, this is the hole that has been dug, how do we get out of it?
3 Likes
Oh, oh! pick me, teacher!
The problem with the Alliance story is that they keep trusting the Horde, never get to be the aggressor, never have any internal conflict, and Anduin’s aversion to conflict prevents them from ever advancing on these fronts, yes?
Well they’re already having Tyrande outright refusing to any kind of ceasefire, distancing herself from the rest of the Alliance.
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 vengence.
Now under the near total control of the Night Warrior persona, Tyrande and the Army of the Dark Moon start to become a threat. They already recaptured Darkshore, and they can spread out from there. Have them start attacking Horde- but don’t just restrict it to military settlements. Have her attack civilians, Horde Druids. Really play up any friendly/neutral Druids, Tauren, Vulpera, or Elven deaths.
Have her actions are condemned, not just by Anduin, but by the other Alliance leaders. Not only do they not blame every man, woman, and child in the Horde, they also don’t want to risk yet another war while they’re still recovering from the last. Have them be opposed by Genn, who argues that Tyrande has a point. Of course, none of them know yet that she’s been completely taken over by the Night Warrior.
Meanwhile, the Horde council doesn’t want a war either, but they can’t just sit by and do nothing while Tyrande’s forces ravage their villages and kill indiscriminately. They have to do something, but mobilizing another army and marching to face her on the battlefield would look pretty bad, wouldn’t it?
So rather than mobilizie, the Heroes+Champion, led by Shandris and Malfurion, get together and go to confront Tyrande and her Army of the Dark Moon.
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 her 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 excises the Night Warrior from herself. She and the rest of the Alliance apologizes to the Horde for the incident, but it’s not like there’s not still a lot of bad blood between the two factions. 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.
We return to a cold war state, but Genn has is eyes on reclaiming Gilneas.