The Forsaken, Worgen, Forest Trolls and Wildhammer when the humans finally decide to stay on their side of Thoradin’s Wall;
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The correct answer
Calia’s lineage is completely irrelevant ultimately since the Menethil line never had any rightful claim over the Forsaken nation, so her giving up on it was always a nothingburger. The undisputable legitimacy of the Forsaken’s claim over their current territory never lied in the presence of a Menethil in their ruling council. The Menethil are the extinct royal line of a dead kingdom.
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Hey guys.
Lordaeron is for the Forsaken.
I know you’re playing up “alliance favoritism” as a reaction to the voiced legitimate grievances of alliance players, but I’ll bite anyway.
Any time the faction war was relevant, Blizzard showed that they favored the horde.
- They had them win in wc1 (btw the horde campaign is first in the menu).
- They gave the alliance an obligatory parity type win in wc2 solely to keep things interesting. And of course the alliance only won because the horde was divided against itself
. - They cannibalized high elves and lordaeronian humans in wc3 in preparation for introducing them later in WoW as horde races.
- In vanilla, the war wasn’t really a thing, it was mostly small skirmishes here and there. The war doesn’t really flare up until cataclysm, when the horde were given vast swathes of former alliance land, culminating in the bombing of theramore.
- In mop, the alliance gets allowed by the horde rebels to participate in sieging orgrimmar. Teldrassil barely escapes from being annihilated.
- There then really isn’t any major faction conflict until legion comes around. Varian gets killed off, sylvanas becomes warchief. Alliance get a rare win in that they successfully prevent the horde warchief from acquiring an infinite source of new soldiers. However, that was never realistically going to happen anyway, so it’s a hollow victory. Losing Varian alone probably makes this expansion an overall loss for the alliance. And it’s a double loss because whiny, shaky voice anduin takes his place.
- The alliance get a double whammy loss in the beginning of bfa by losing teldrassil in the most weak, pathetic way possible, and having their parity win in siege of lordaeron be the most bumbling, incompetent, reliant-on-deus-ex-machina affair possible. The horde gets the moral victory here. Due to the demands of plot, the alliance is allowed to attack zuldazar, but does no lasting damage (at least not any that’s not mirrored on both sides. See both fleets being destroyed by the beginning of the very next patch). Does actual damage to their own side by replacing the weak zandalari king with a stronger one. The alliance continue to get denied the opportunity to avenge themselves for the humiliation they suffered at the beginning of the xpac. Sylvanas delivers a final insult by escaping at the end of bfa after having not received any punishment whatsoever for her actions.
- In shadowlands, the alliance is further denied the chance to get at least some small recompense for bfa by not being allowed to kill off sylvanas.
And that’s the end of the faction war. A story of loss and humiliation for the alliance, and a preordained moral and actual win for the horde.
P.S. I don’t want to see any crocodile tears about horde leaders dying off a lot. Any of them that were relevant in the faction war made major gains for the horde. Grom, garrosh, and sylvanas are big examples of this.
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Can you explain what you mean by the horde gaining a moral victory, both in the aftermath of the intro and in BFA overall? Because I don’t see that in the slightest.
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By moral victory I mean they are energized by it. They are either gloating in victory, or gloating in defeat. They outsmart and outfight the alliance with teldrassil. That’s pretty self-explanatory. Siege of lordaeron is basically a strategic retreat. The demands of fairness from a meta perspective mean the horde has to lose something. So they lose undercity, but the horde-favoring devs made sure it made the alliance look bad and the horde look good. Gloating in defeat.
The bfa overall moral victory was them getting away with the wins they got at the start of the xpac. The darkshore patch demonstrated their ability to not suffer a loss for what they did earlier. It was arguably even a gain because they got darkfallen night elves out of it. They got to rub the alliance’s faces in it with that patch. On the alliance’s part, the opening cinematic could fool one into thinking they would get something other than more anger and and a cosmetic out of it, but no.
Of course, no faction can outright win, but the horde comes as close as they can without actually doing so by pushing night elves out of their lands while being allowed to evacuate the undead populace from under city in siege of lordaeron. The only night elves still around are only there so the warsong clan have someone to fight. And now the undead have undercity back, while the night elves’ loss of their lands is confirmed by being forced to relocate elsewhere.
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Oooooh I think you mean morale. I was sitting here trying to think “what was so ethically upright and moral about committing genocide?!”
I still personally disagree but at least the morale aspect would be more subjective, I suppose, depending on whether or not the player actually cares about why they’re participating in a faction war. I just remember being utterly miserable the entire time through, feeling like the game permanently destroyed its spark for me.
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I was using the definition of “perceptual or psychological rather than tangible or practical in nature or effect”. That’s from merriam-webster online. I suppose you can look at as “moral” from the perspective of what’s good to win a war, what’s bad to win a war, that sort of thing.
Edit: Also, I don’t deny that a certain type of horde player felt bad about what happened and how that reflected on their character and the horde. But that’s tangential to the war itself and its outcomes.
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Regardless of how players feel the story doesnt treat the Horde as evil in the wake of Teldrassil. During BFA there barely a mention if it. And in retrospec, they didnt even villainize the main architect.
Players were understandbly upset on both sides for many things bit the characters… not so much.
Well except for Tyrande but she was missing for much of that expansion.
Andiun was trying to avoid war and stop Sylvanas. Not the Horde. Sylvanas.
Saurfang was on a mission to save the Horde and had his jesus moment.
And Jaina and Thrall kind of circled back to WC3 relationship and I am still lost what the point of that was.
Shadowlands happened and it was a disaster by any metric and now we have dragonflight.
Alliance characters get invited to weddings by Horde leaders who served under both Garrosh and Sylvanas. Thats apparently totally ok.
And the Horde and Alliance are working together in a cute little expedition doing cute things.
The story doesnt treat the Horde as monsters, doesnt treat them as mass murderers of the defensless. There is no self reflection, no guilt, no sorrow, no shame. Not that thats an absolute necessity but either you stand against it or you lean into it. An evil Horde led by evil fun characters… but its neither… its like Blizzard is trying to gaslight us and move on without addressing anything.
Night Elves get a new home, Forsaken get their old home and we will NOT talk about how we got here in the first place.
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Alliance players are so desperate to find evidence for Horde bias (which sure as hell doesn’t exist and hasn’t existed in any shape or form ever since maybe WC3) that they’ll point out examples that are actually consequences of ALLIANCE bias lmao
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I would say Cataclysm instead of WC3, there were some incidents and interviews by some very high up people that spoke about their preferences.
Now did that really translate into biases? That is very hard to prove unless we the have internal emails and slack messages of the dev team. But its not as baseless as you think it is.
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P.S. I don’t want to see any crocodile tears about horde leaders dying off a lot. Any of them that were relevant in the faction war made major gains for the horde. Grom, garrosh, and sylvanas are big examples of this.
…? Making major gains for the Horde means exactly what in comparison to losing the characters in the first place? I’d rather avoid a villainbat in the first place if it meant keeping any of the above.
However, that was never realistically going to happen anyway, so it’s a hollow victory. Losing Varian alone probably makes this expansion an overall loss for the alliance. And it’s a double loss because whiny, shaky voice anduin takes his place.
Varian dying makes this a loss for the Alliance in the expansion where neither factions are even the focus of the main story… Huh, I wonder what faction Turalyon and Alleria were a part of in the Second War and what faction they rejoined? Does indeed boggle the mind.
And that’s the end of the faction war. A story of loss and humiliation for the alliance, and a preordained moral and actual win for the horde.
“moral and actual win for the Horde.”
press X to doubt. Villainbats, constant division… Yeah, I’d gladly take what the Alliance suffered if it meant that the Horde would still retain it’s moral integrity and not be constantly dividing at the seams thanks to [Bad Warchief.]
I know this is late, but I don’t care.
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Sad part is, after the hordes second successful genocide. (The Draenei and then the Kaldorei). Any attempts at redeeming the horde is going to seen as a joke to a certain group of people.
I know there are people who don’t like how everyone’s ignoring what happened in BfA and SL during DF, but it really is the safest end route to go in my opinion
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Would you trade them being back for a retconning of all the gains they made in wartime? Say you get a just-before-cata garrosh and sylvanas. And then they don’t win those things or anything equivalent (i.e., southshore, azshara, gilneas, theramore, teldrassil, darkshore, ashenvale). Sound like a fair trade? The horde has them, though!
The reason people like them is because they won the horde land and prestige. And because they pushed the alliance into the dirt time after time. Those gains were permanent. It cost them their lives or place in the horde, but it made them heroes for it. Even today people talk about wanting sylvanas back as warchief. Because she was a successful wartime leader. Same with garrosh.
Legion had conflict between the alliance and horde, which is why I mentioned it. Turalyon and Alleria didn’t play any part in the faction war. Turalyon only become (provisional) leader after the war ended. And was a neutral character in legion anyway. Alleria’s only real purpose in legion was to give the alliance, horde hand-me-down elves, who are about as relevant to the faction war as nightborne, i.e., not much. She played no part in the faction war then, and hasn’t since.
And yes, it’s difficult to overstate how devastating a loss Varian’s death was for the alliance. It’s not just his loss that was so bad. If he had been replaced by literally any other alliance leader but anduin, it wouldn’t have been so bad. At least the horde were given sylvanas as warchief. Imagine if the horde were given baine as a replacement for vol’jin. That’s the situation the alliance was in. Varian was the guy who promised to end the horde if they did something similar to garrosh again. And of course he conveniently dies right before a new horde warchief does just that.
I talked about this above, but by moral I mean the psychological effect it had on the horde’s soldiers to be able to have an actual competent leader at the helm bagging wins for them. And minimizing the damage of the losses. Yes, the methods used were gruesome, but a win is a win. And horde players on the general discussion forums were pretty celebratory back then. For example, right from the very beginning and continuing into the present, there was and is gloating and jokes about the burning.
Those warchiefs may have been bad and done evil things, but horde npcs and players had no problem accepting the land they conquered.
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Would you trade them being back for a retconning of all the gains they made in wartime? Say you get a just-before-cata garrosh and sylvanas. And then they don’t win those things or anything equivalent (i.e., southshore, azshara, gilneas, theramore, teldrassil, darkshore, ashenvale). Sound like a fair trade? The horde has them, though!
The reason people like them is because they won the horde land and prestige. And because they pushed the alliance into the dirt time after time. Those gains were permanent. It cost them their lives or place in the horde, but it made them heroes for it. Even today people talk about wanting sylvanas back as warchief. Because she was a successful wartime leader. Same with garrosh.
Me personally, I would. Can’t speak for others, of course. A just-before Cata means that Garrosh was for the most part largely aggressive against the Scourge (he had often endorsed conflict against the Alliance, but he had yet to bomb Theramore or invade Ashenvale, only doing those things after he had the power to do them thanks to Thrall looking at Grom rather than the hyper-aggressive Garrosh that needed far more mentoring before being put into a position Garrosh himself said he wasn’t ready for as Warchief.) A just-before Cataclysm means that Sylvanas was still in the narrative role that she was best in; the working in the shadows Dark Lady of the Forsaken. I’m sure a competent team could have written her as Warchief well without villainbatting the rest of the faction, but we didn’t get a competent team. We got Afrasiabi’s spite.
Would you trade them being back for a retconning of all the gains they made in wartime? Say you get a just-before-cata garrosh and sylvanas. And then they don’t win those things or anything equivalent (i.e., southshore, azshara, gilneas, theramore, teldrassil, darkshore, ashenvale). Sound like a fair trade? The horde has them, though!
Legion had conflict between the alliance and horde, which is why I mentioned it. Turalyon and Alleria didn’t play any part in the faction war. Turalyon only become (provisional) leader after the war ended. And was a neutral character in legion anyway. Alleria’s only real purpose in legion was to give the alliance, horde hand-me-down elves, who are about as relevant to the faction war as nightborne, i.e., not much. She played no part in the faction war then, and hasn’t since.
And yes, it’s difficult to overstate how devastating a loss Varian’s death was for the alliance. It’s not just his loss that was so bad. If he had been replaced by literally any other alliance leader but anduin, it wouldn’t have been so bad. At least the horde were given sylvanas as warchief. Imagine if the horde were given baine as a replacement for vol’jin. That’s the situation the alliance was in. Varian was the guy who promised to end the horde if they did something similar to garrosh again. And of course he conveniently dies right before a new horde warchief does just that.
Fair enough, though Turalyon did technically take part in the Battle for Stromgarde as one of it’s commanders Alliance-side. And as for Baine replacing Vol’jin? He wouldn’t have been my ideal pick (that’d be Lor’themar, but that’s another topic.) but he would have been leagues better than Sylvanas who they proceeded to use to drag the Horde into a villainbat worse than Garrosh anyway. Baine’s honestly not even that bad if he’s not talking about Anduin 24/7.
I talked about this above, but by moral I mean the psychological effect it had on the horde’s soldiers to be able to have an actual competent leader at the helm bagging wins for them. And minimizing the damage of the losses. Yes, the methods used were gruesome, but a win is a win. And horde players on the general discussion forums were pretty celebratory back then. For example, right from the very beginning and continuing into the present, there was and is gloating and jokes about the burning.
Those warchiefs may have been bad and done evil things, but horde npcs and players had no problem accepting the land they conquered.
I’ll be perfectly real I don’t consider Sylvanas a terribly competent Warchief. Her wins were either temporary (Darkshore), given through the power of plot to make her look good (denying the Alliance Lordaeron through her I.W.I.N. button that is the Forsaken Blight which doesn’t even take out any Alliance leader), her goals for the Horde War Campaign were trashed (The Golden Fleet was taken out in a cinematic thanks to the Alliance War Campaign. The trolls just can’t/don’t check their boats?) and Nathanos mentions that “victory was within the Alliance’s grasp.” post-Dazar’alor. As for the horde players that were and are celebrating the Burning? They don’t grasp what the New Horde is and never will, choosing to play WOW instead of WC2 or just spamming WOD questing. They think it’s the Old Horde, but it was never meant to be.
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WC3 was the first and last time the “heroic monster races fighting for their survival and dignity” inversion trope was done justice. Cataclysm was highly detrimental to the Horde’s narrative integrity overall, regardless of whether most devs played an Orc or a Human back then.
And this right there was I meant in my post. Take some of the most common complaints from Alliance players regarding the way their faction is handled narratively : “The Alliance is ever passive”, “We never get to retaliate hard enough”, “The Horde always gets away with doing evil stuff”, “The Horde is the faction that moves the plot forward while the Alliance can only follow along”, etc. While those are valid gripes and actively damage the enjoyment Alliance players are getting from their faction narratives, they are also the direct consequence of a historically asymmetrical narrative treatment that fundamentally favours the Alliance : the writers never effectively gave up on the “Alliance good Horde bad” dualism.
The Alliance is ever passive and doesn’t get to retaliate (or not hard enough) because the Alliance is good and vengeance is bad—hence Holy Renewal being propped up for the Kaldorei in the wake of SL. The Horde is the faction that moves the plot forward because the Horde is the faction that strikes first because the Horde is bad. The writers consider the Horde cast an inexhaustible source of disposable characters ready to be villain-batted and ultimately killed off for the needs of whatever half-assed expansion plot they may come up with. Out of the 10 expansions, 5 were ultimately about Horde characters being antagonized (be they simply a looming threat or full-on villains actively doing villain stuff), either as a primary or secondary focus—and even some largely neutral expansions like Wrath and Legion had their own little instances of Horde characters doing evil things here and there. Recently, BFA was an absolute carnage in terms of Horde cast.
And actually, this hurts both sides very badly. I’m not denying the Alliance suffers from it a greal deal. Difference being, Alliance fans generally get to keep their characters and not question the very legitimacy of their faction.
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I absolutely would trade all of the “gains” from the two faction wars if it meant the faction keeping its soul, from my PoV. Southshore, Gilneas, Teldrassil, etc. All of it has always been worthless for me. That stuff actively made me feel bad, not hyped. None of those events felt heroic, and when the player’s meant to fulfill a hero fantasy, those considerably weaken that.
The horde that Blizzard likes to pretend exists in-game is one that’s allegedly being unfairly prejudiced against by an oppressive alliance. That narrative’s effectively GONE now; no land reversals or wartime blunders can hope to reverse what I feel the horde’s lost. How am I supposed to imagine the character I play is a good person when I’m inextricably tied to a genocide? I can’t.
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Aside from Daelin the Alliance has only ever been prejudicial because the Horde keeps ATTACKING them. Pretending they are oppressed people is laughable.
The Horde was away the more “gray” faction. Like it or not that is part of why people wanted to play the Horde. Well, you get to be the gray the factions, warts and all.
I think people expected the Horde would be able to do all the evil things they got away with in Vanilla without consequence. Well, they finally got a taste of those consequences.
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I wish I had the enthusiasm you seem to relish in when it comes to being an obnoxious contrarian. I can’t even seem to talk about hypotheticals without you fluttering in to go “WELL ACTUALLY THEY DESERVE IT”, when that was exactly what I was criticizing.
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