how? How does it harm the Horde if the night elves merely reconquer their territories, eh?
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When did the Horde get its butt kicked?
At best they got pushed back to the starting line with some notable wins like Teldrassil or Theramore and a bunch of other smaller locations they blasted into nothingness.
In contrast the Alliance “wins” was just pushing the Horde out of their home ground and then being too weak to push any further without Horde Help.
Your only valid complaint is you didn’t want to be the bad guy and the game has gone out of its way of making many, many cinematics and my faction leader to tell Horde players how good they are and this is not representative of them.
This is hands down the greatest Horde expansion ever produced by Blizzard where they try to please both the blood thirsty Horde players and the Honorable peaceful misfit players.
I disagree with you.
But you already know this, so it’s not worth discussing this with you again. I put you on my mute list to save myself the headache from now on.
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I’m familiar with Mistborn, Dresden Files, and Disc World, and all of them have antagonists that are being unreasonable and conflicts that could be resolved if all people involved would just act like reasonable people.
Not that I dislike these stories. However, they aren’t examples of all parties involved being one hundred percent rational actors. Many of the antagonists are driven by and act on very human motivations and perspective, many of which are downright petty and irrational.
Harry Dresden Files in particular is basically hard boiled crime drama and the protagonist’s choices often cause as many conflicts as they resolve. Plus there’s plenty of just plain good ol’ fashioned evil guys in there to stir up the conflict.
Mistborn’s central conflict comes from its dystopian world and… well the reason it’s a dystopia means several people messed up at several points.
And Discworld is a comedy, so of course people are making silly decisions at various points in order for the comedy to work. Comedy thrives on contrived misunderstandings.
And the First Law series sounds like a darker fantasy world where pretty much everyone is a jerk to some degree, and the focus is always on low stakes personal conflicts.
Never actually read Wheel of Time, but isn’t the principle protagonist literally called, “The Dark One” and an immortal manifestation of evil?
Now these books all do a much better job at characterization. Absolutely. I’ve enjoyed plenty of works with great characterization. Where you can take a character that makes terrible decisions, and give them depth, and pathos, and sympathy, and have them be the protagonist.
I do not claim that all stories require people acting in flawed and imperfect ways as a criticism. Conflict is the essence of drama, but the irony is that in an ideal world, where everyone does the right thing, there is no conflict.
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Thanks for the laugh, I guess. Your ability to ignore and deny everything that goes against your own fixed mindset never ceases to amaze me.
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Well I’m already on 2.0. I’m not adverse to more changes.
Is there another act that the Night Warrior could perform that could motivate Horde and Alliance to want to oppose it, that does not reflect badly on any parties involved? Heck, does the Alliance at large have to get involved? Would it be better served by making the story all about Shandris, Malfurion, and the Night Elves, with the Horde/Alliance champion in tow?
EDIT: Apologies, my quotes got all mixed up.
It hasn’t yet. It has lost pretty conclusively and achieved very little for its years of evil acts but it is yet to be completely humiliated. My point is describing what your asking for.
Your told all the time your winning and yet you complain that it isn’t convincing. Blizzard’s attempts to tell the Horde they are good are completely contradictory to what we are shown in the narrative. Hell, were you convinced by those cinematic and such? Apparently not since you still think slaughtering horde civilians wouldn’t be an evil act.
What a load of crap. This expansion is a rehash of the last disaster we had in MoP. The only noticeable upside is they didn’t leave races with no faction leader for two expansions this time. Oh wait. We don’t know who the Forsaken faction leader is now. Scrap that.
The Horde in Hyjal are there because the CC asked them to be there. The Horde can also easily just withdraw from Ashenvale without having to be ‘reconquered’. Aszhara is a fully horde zone at this point and was barely occupied by the NEs prior. There really isn’t a need for the Alliance to reconquer anything beyond having them give the Horde a butt kicking.
This is a key issue. The reason this is a key issue is that currently the Horde really seems to serve no purpose apart from either being background cannon fodder or a cause of conflict and issues. Horde players have helped Alliance characters (or at least characters related to the Alliance) protect Azeroth and its denizens in almost every expansion. With the sole exception of Thrall and a very small showing from Vol’jin, that isn’t true for the Horde.
It is time for the Horde have it’s people step up and pull their weight on content that isn’t focused on faction conflict. This will give Horde players some sense of pride in their faction and a feeling that their guys are actually heroic while showing Alliance players that the Horde aren’t all hypocrites rambling empty words about honor while committing horrible acts of genocide on the Alliance at the same time.
The current mess can’t be fixed, but work can be done to change the context for any future tension (though god I hope they just don’t bother with faction wars anymore since they NEVER end well for either side).
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Dresden Files and Mistborn? What do you mean they are being unreasonable? Each character has their own motives and acts on them.
Petty, maybe but what do you mean by irrational? Can you give me some examples?
It is darker and the stakes are high in some plot points while others have much bigger ramifications. There is no white or black and everyone is a shade darker in their grey. Which is good, perfect creatures like Andiun do not exist in real life.
Yes but his minions and wayward good guys all have motives and behaviour that makes sense. The Dark One is almost like a force of nature while his minions are the main antagonists. The main antagonist that you mean in the opening chapter actually has a really valid point in being the bad guy. His main purpose is to stop the wheel from spinning and to free himself from these predestined outcomes that he has to live through lifetime after lifetime.
Him joining the Dark One is the only way to escape the Wheel of Time and the repetitive patterns (timelines) it weaves.
Like I said, good characterization does not mean a flawless character that makes all the correct decisions.
Yes, your characters may eventually have “very valid reasons” for being the dark lord and wanting to crush all hope, but that just still makes them a person who made some pretty bad choices somewhere along the way that most reasonable people would not make.
That’s why I don’t consider characters making poor choices in order to act as an antagonist a bad thing in and of itself. It’s a necessary thing if you want a story.
But just because you have the necessary elements of a story, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have a good one.
After all, Sylvanas also likely has some speech locked away about why she’s spreading all the death and suffering. But I don’t think anyone’s going to admit that makes her actions reasonable or the story good/better.
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Because I am never shown to win.
I just get told over on twitter.
No they were not convincing but I can’t deny the effort they put in them just for your benefit while I got… what? A comic about Jaina?
The Alliance has many Dwarf leaders and look how relevant they are. Just because we have more faction leaders doesn’t mean they will play any significant role.
This expansion has been the greatest “Horde finds itself” story that Blizzard ever made and it was solely for the enjoyment of the Horde player.
All the Alliance got was a torched tree and Jaina becoming sympathetic until she threw it all away to befriend the Horde (Again!)
So you think if Alliance players are following another Thrall character in Shadowlands this is going to help Alliance players see the Horde in a more positive way?
I am not Julia, so I do not know what Julia sees as needing to be fixed with the Alliance story, nor if Julia agrees with your original questions of what the problem with the Alliance story is.
I do not agree that the Alliance needs to be aggressive, nor that anyone has to be opposed to Tyrande. For example:
So I don’t have an answer to your question Tamanii. But as I said, I am not Julia, nor am I Syriyna.
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Your assertion that being told “What you’re doing is evil” in a fantasy game is somehow worse than being told “Your chosen favorite is literally incapable of doing anything. You are nothing but a victim and will only be a victim.” is laughable.
If you don’t want to be a Genocidal Monster then maybe you shouldn’t have rolled a character on the side that’s been a group of Genocidal Monsters literally since it’s inception.
And Night Elves and Draenei shouldn’t complain about being victims since that’s been their role. Or maybe there’s more to all of it, hmm.
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Night Elves weren’t sat with being the perpetual victim for Horde Power Fantasies until around Cata. Horde has always been the Genocidal Monster Group. Always.
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No, they were basically already victims when the Horde rolled in and destroyed Cenarius. And they would have been wiped out without teaming up with the other factions to survive. Like how the Draenei were introduced being running from the Legion for tens of thousands of years.
No they haven’t.
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Real talk the only way to fix the current story is to reboot it with people that actually care about the lore and can write at least halfway decent plot lines
That’s all it would take. Going into shadowlands the lore is FUBAR
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Path to Glory in the MU.
WoD proved they don’t even need Fel Juice.
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Not seeing the problem here. The night elves got held to the curb, stomped on, their home and family burned to death, and can’t get say anything without some smooth-brain going ‘lol, ashes.’ All just so some hordies and a few humans could “feel sad.”
I’m sure the Horde can survive a sucker punch or two.
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Very quick to hop off the fact that Night Elves and Draenei have always been victims. As long as you come to accept it, I guess.
That doesn’t mean the Horde has always been a genocidal monster group.
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That is literally the beginning of the Horde. And every moment since they’ve spent trying to eradicate other races of people off the face of whatever planet they are infesting.