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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I hope you dont complain about the alliance taking the lead again for “neutral” Xpacs. Seems horde players love the villain bat as they never want to do anything heroic anyways
I implore you to read fantasy books because they manage to tell a story with all characters behaving rationally and yet somehow they manage to tell a good story.
I believe they’re out there in theory. I just know from experience that they’re rarely in the heroic fantasy genre, in which WoW and the Alliance in particular squarely fits.
Still, I’m open to recommendations. Where should I start?
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I’d love to see more heroic leads for Horde. Unfortunately, Blizzard’s never been quite good at figuring out how to make the Horde the heroic leads without people complaining due to past missteps where the Horde were villains. Also, the fact that the Horde doesn’t generally conform to a lot of standard high fantasy tropes seems to put them off using them as the “default”. They’re just too exotic it seems.
And it’s not just Horde, but Horde races. The overwhelming majority of Trolls, Goblins on Azeroth were/are unaligned with either Horde or Alliance, but are seen as Horde races, and also not really utilized in the same ways as other neutrals in the narrative.
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THe most played horde race is blood elves, they should just be front in center, and since when has blizzard cared what people think when it comes to the story lol
So?
If the players are suffering, why do you care so much about the cause of the suffering?
Not from where I’m sitting.
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Heroic fantasy?
Can’t go wrong with Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. That one is a classic for sure for all fantasy lovers out there.
Some other recommendations would be The First Law series first book being “The Broken Blade”. Joe Abercrombie is hands down one of the best authors there is when creating unique characters and developing them throughout his books.
Mistborn and Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson are superb series and probably one of the best authors there is when it comes to world building.
Dresden Files is also a great series but it is set in the modern setting with magic and magical creatures hidden in our world but still very much present.
The Book of the Ancestor is a great series as well with a great female protagonist.
Though not strictly high fantasy.
Disc World has your typical fantasy creatures like Elves and Dwarves and whatnot but I have not read it myself, so I can’t personally recommend it but people seem to think its great.
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Because of relevance?
Each suffering has its own remedy and because my suffering in this instance is due to the Horde’s action the only remedy is to make them suffer directly so my faction doesn’t look like a bunch of wankers for my enjoyment.
Try harder then. But I am glad the misunderstanding has been resolved.
Your last point contradicts your first, as Shandris and her presumed troops were not part of the Army of the Black Moon.
Killing civilians because you’re high on magic powers is being a classical villain in the Warcraft sense.
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So killing Horde civilians makes me a bad person? hm… I disagree.
We didn’t get to pick how the Horde is presented. We didn’t make the Horde pathetic. Blizzard wrote the Horde this way.
It also still craps on Horde players who after watching their faction screw up for the second time in only the space of a couple of years then gets totally butt kicked by the Alliance because ‘the horde deserves it’.
I can’t speak for everyone but I have a hard enough time finding things that make the Horde a faction to be worth representing at this point. Having it punished for an Alliance revenge fantasy and totally having it’s butt kicked raises the question what is the point of the Horde as a faction at that point. As it is I feel like my interactions with the Horde are more about cleaning up its messes than being supported by it as it’s champion. The entire faction is a monumental screw up. The fact it has some strength is it’s only saving grace left.
Give me a faction worth representing and I will be happy to see you have your revenge fantasy. Getting our butts kicked and being the incompetent bad guys at the same time isn’t going to work.
The Horde were made to feel bad for attacking the Alliance, particularly when they were never given a good reason to attack the Alliance in the first place. We had not emotional investment give to us in this war.
What your saying is the Horde should feel bad about every aspect of the war they fight. We were guilty for what we did to the Alliance and you want the Horde to get stomped by the Alliance knowing the whole time that they are getting punished for their evil acts.
Mean while, while the Alliance suffered great losses, it has never had to feel it is the bad guy in this conflict. Every act the Alliance has, even the ‘grey ones’ are justified out the wazzo. Blizzard goes to great lengths for that.
This difference is exactly why your never going to have a fair ‘fix’ and why what you propose only helps the Alliance story by giving it some closure at the cost of making the Horde playerbase’s experience worse.
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