For me it’s about the motivations.
Sylvanas’ genocide was irksome because it came from seemingly out of nowhere, the characters suddenly supporting her felt forced especially after what she did.
This whole war (at least initially) was based on a perceived idea of a threat.
Which is frigging bonkers. That’s like saying “Maybe one day China will be strong enough to challenge US and Nato militarily. So lets nuke them now while we have the chance.”
A logical mind would say… instead of that nuclear option… lets try to make our country stronger through alliances and economy to deter that.
If you want to use real world history then just look up the cold war post-WW2.
At least on the Alliance side the motivations and reasoning is clear so at least it was somewhat bearable. In short if Tyrande or Jaina started a killing spree then all I would say is “Yaaaas Queen!”
However, I am starting to suspect that Ammea is a disgruntled Alliance fan roleplaying as a caricature of a Horde fan to try to make Horde fans in general look unreasonable, with Ammea going out of their way to ignore any complaints other Horde posters are making.
It’s obvious trolling with the intent to ridicule horde players and make them look like hypocrites when they utter valid complaints and genuine unhappiness about having been forced into the villain role once more.
This is exactly what Ammea is - a version of Trivelfrank and Spuddyc with less dis-ingenuousness. They express pretty much no disappointment with how things went for the Horde whatsoever and regularly bring up the “hot buttons” for Alliance players. Not even the players who are the most positive on the Horde story - Cursewords and Deathisfinal come to mind here - view BfA as anything close to an unqualified success.
That several Alliance players seem to feel the need to cloak themselves in Horde avatars and make inflammatory arguments does seem to indicate there’s a very large anger gap in the two sides, which is why I think Horde players seem to be extremely resistant to a lot of the proposed fixes - the siege mentality is very strong right now. I know I personally feel that it’s Blizzard + Alliance fans vs. Horde fans in the story department right now.
Alliance players complaining about Thrall being in their story arc got what they wanted when Thrall was removed from the Alliance story arcs and sent back to the Horde players’ story.
Thrall being nerfed, neutered, and all but vanished from the Horde Story had nothing to do with Alliance players or any complaining by them.
That was the writers thinking it was an “interesting” story arc to put the character through. Put the credit/blame where it belongs.
The warchief that rigged the election and was plotting to send us all to Warcraft Hell, yes, I’d say she deserved it.
Oh, no, it was hot garbage, but between whinging for ten thousand years about how W horde player wants to be a genocidal maniac and X horde player doesn’t want to be a villain and Y Alliance player is tired of getting beaten up to satisfy player W, I’m going to go go ahead and be player Z who avoids Y’s pathetic loser faction, revels in the diabolical powertrips W gets to enjoy, but still recognizes that X has a nigh-objective point and that eventually we have to put old yeller down, however fun they might be. You can’t logically keep a war as bloody as W wants going forever before you find Y has run out of teeth to kick in.
I know that’s an unfathomable stance to the ceaseless complainers that populate the Story Forum, but still, that’s what I’ve settled on. Way more fun with this outlook.
Except not everything was true, this quote for example is a mischaracterization. Never a smart idea to declare someone’s motives, tends to make you look overly emotional. Using my above letters, I think people are just mad that I’ll laugh at and with W, X, and Y players in equal measure and my Z type is a rarity.
Perhaps, But it’s not the first time where you dissed any genuine complains Horde playerbase could have. So You being long time Alliance player could explain why you have so little regard to what is bothering Horde playerbase.
It matters because you never really switched factions. You only pretend you did, so you can crap on the horde in a different way.
Shocking revelation: it’s not working. And it’s not even funny. It only shows what a low opinion you have of your fellow forum posters on both sides for expecting them to fall for such a transparent ploy.
Hey, you try satisfying both the W and X players, those two are totally opposed to each other. Even the Horde players couldn’t satisfy the Horde players. I’ll just take the opportunity to say they’re both ridiculous stances. W moreso, but X as well.
Y isn’t particularly at fault, but being Alliance is a bit like being Lancer or a Magical Girl: it is powerful, but its existence is suffering. So I’ll just treat them like a, I believe the tvtropes term is “butt monkey.” They’re pitiful, but may as well laugh at their cities made of nitroglycerin coated gasoline and their raging tactical incompetence.
Didn’t I, though? I haven’t touched an Alliance toon since patch day, save to screencap my spell layouts.
Oh, I have a low opinion of both sides who are unable to laugh at themselves, I won’t deny that, but it’s no ploy. This whining fest has been going on since the Cataclysm beta. None of you have changed a damn thing. Your only shared policy is a victim contest, “I’m the most neglected!” “No, I am!” “I am!”
I used to think the lore was a tragedy, but now I realize: it’s a freaking comedy.
I get the feeling a lot of Alliance players are convinced that Horde players are actually happier with their storyline than Alliance players are with theirs. So they think they deserve to take some of that happiness away from Horde players in order to make things even.
I believe that the dissatisfaction is already about equal on both sides. But no matter how much Horde players try to explain to Alliance players that we’re unhappy, it doesn’t get believed.
And I will admit that the existence of some players who just live to be jerks doesn’t help in that regard.
I’ve been reading a very interesting book about polarization which makes the point that according to studies, when you create an in-group and an out-group, people start to care more about making the out-group suffer than making the in-group prosper.
I think we have to resist making each other into the out-group. We are all fans of the same game.
Actually, seeing the Alliance being supportive isn’t really in short supply this expac, with all the Anduin and Jaina stuff. I think seeing Alliance being aggressive is actually more what the Horde story needs at the moment.
I’d like to see that. That was sarcastic, by the way. The war is over, everyone takes their goodies and their achievements and goes home.
The tree probably had something to do with it. Speaking as a former Alliance player, it always came across as a nurse taken as a hostage yelling at an unanesthetized attempted murder victim.
“Well I didn’t want to have to help cut off your arms, think of how I feel!”
Meanwhile the Blizzard PD is hauling off the perpetrator while another guy in the background was yelling “Hey! Why’d you stop? Cut off the legs next, you’re only half way done! Why did you take away my friend?! This sucks!”
The victim suffers and bleeds out, but it turns out the victim is Kenny McCormick so they’re back up on their feet the next expansion.
The entire thing is a giant black comedy when you think about it.
