What made you want to start out as horde, then? Following friends?
(I’m not trying to lead this to anything; I’m just curious)
I mean, I think it is a fair point. Should you be allowed to do bad things in a game without facing consequences?
I would say depending on the game, yes. And that’s why I gave those experiences. Off-hand that’s what comes to mind. Hunting people (Murlocs) for food. Dragon Steaks being taught in Stormwind. Collecting parts from people (like Troll Tusks) as trophies. Testing biological weapons on people (Blight on Vrykul). Killing downed Horde soldiers in Kul Tiras. Crushing harpy eggs in Legion. Even just like killing people with a bunch of fire as a mage seems questionable. I’m not saying the Alliance is evil for these things, but I think these are bad things my character has done. Can you really look at these and call them good?
I don’t really feel there needs to be hardcore consequences to them, though. Because Warcraft isn’t a deep dive into morality or realism. Just a silly, semi-cartoony game that sometimes ventures into a few lessons.
In that spirit, it doesn’t matter if it is Alliance or Horde. And that’s why I even established I’m speaking as an Alliance player. Because whatever side, I think it isn’t necessary for (using your word) consequences to be enforced over everything.
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Well that was also two decades ago and I was a different person, so my memory isn’t completely clear. Leveling was slower so I was leveling an Alliance character and a Horde character roughly in tandem. The Horde did have that rebellious appeal that I was talking about but as I progressed it started to feel hollow.
I didn’t want to destroy things, I wanted to build things. I didn’t want to hurt people for no reason, I wanted to protect people who couldn’t protect themselves. The Horde over time became progressively clearer in that it was too combat focused. Regardless of whether or not one could consider it justified, it was still fundamentally about destroying, not creating. Hurting, not healing. Attacking for its own sake rather than to protect the weak (since the Horde has always had a streak of "everyone in the Horde is a badass, no weaklings around here!)
This was applicable everywhere but it was supercharged when I decided to roll an undead. People have told me before that they liked the Horde/the Forsaken because they connected with the sense of being an outcast or a loner, but the Horde and especially the Forsaken did not come off to me like that. They came off to me, even while I was playing them, as bullies. People who reveled in looking for fights and on picking on people incapable of defending themselves or fighting back.
The Kalimdor Horde was a bit troubling in that regard (if everyone in the Horde is super-awesome fighters, why do they need me?) but the Forsaken disgusted me on a personal level. They were the quintessential bullies. Under no circumstances were they ever fighting anyone who could properly fight back, and they were taking advantage of circumstances where they held all the power to hurt people even more.
As someone who was a victim of bullying, sometimes severe bullying, in my youth, this triggered something primal in me. I would never under any circumstances find victimizing others that way to be satisfying, even in a video game. I didn’t want to be the bully, I wanted to be the guy who steps between the bully and their victim, and stares them down.
Maybe this is why I have such a huge complex about Hillsbrad in particular given that questing in that area as Horde ended up being so formative for me as a WoW player, but that is the sort of thing that keeps me coming back to the Alliance. I’m not going to be the kind of people the Forsaken were/are. I’m going to be the kind of person who stops people like them, be they Horde or Scourge or Legion or whoever.
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Fair enough. Thanks for answering.
No problem.
It’s probably why I’m one of the few people who was surprised by the Forsaken’s conduct throughout the rest of WoW. It pretty much never deviated from exactly what I expected based on my first impressions of them.
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You are mistaken. Making the viewer/players sad is sometimes necessary for the story to progress and be entertaining.
Like a tragic character death to get you invested in the character’s drive for vengeance or justice.
Its naive to think you are supposed to get ceaseless positive joy from the story
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I specifically addressed this several times.
I never asked for unceasing joy. Nothing more than a bad strawman.
These a difference between effectively making enjoyable art and a different emotional state versus just bludgeoningly wanting someone to feel bad.
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If it’s an ineffective bludgeon then why do so many posters clearly feel bad?
When I say ineffective I meant crude. Could have phrased it differently.
There’s a difference between crude and precise evocation of emotion.
It could be argued it isn’t effective because I don’t think Blizzard wants Horde players to continually feel bad.
I doubt they want Alliance playerz to feel bad about what I listed as well.
To me, it’s the difference between something like Ysera’s death cinematic and the game making you feel bad for main plot quests that don’t give you another option without effectively freezing the game’s story progression.
The former is an in-universe sad, the latter causes meta bitterness.
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The problem I have with this line of reasoning is that Warcraft has never been an RPG where the player has any significant amount of agency in terms of the story. In Warcraft 3 you couldn’t just not do the Scourge campaign because that would freeze the game’s story progression as well, but I’m not sure people were complaining about that at the time.
It’s true that an MMO is different, but the same principle still applies; you would never see how Hillsbrad ended unless you culled those farmers, and you would never see how Ashenvale ended if you didn’t kill those Night Elves.
I’m not sure why it has become a problem now when it wasn’t a problem then. The best I can think of is that back then Alliance players had no faction pride and never stuck up for themselves on the forums.
I’d say there was a lot more conflict ambiguity when you were coming off stuff like Daelin and Garithos in recent history. The Scarlet Crusade. The Horde had more reason to feel justified in ‘yeah, we’re kinda defending ourselves’.
It wasn’t just WC3 but a lot of Vanilla, Burning Crusade, and Wrath that still tried to sell it some.
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You had some leveling agency for a while, at least. If I recall correctly (it’s been ages), I remember drifting away from both Hillsbrad and Ashenvale because I didn’t feel right being there, and cleaning out the Barrens before heading to Thousand Needles instead. But I also predominantly leveled through dungeons.
But for something like MoP, I couldn’t even enter the content without it being under the premise of fighting the alliance. And you already know going in that they’re not going to be the bad guys of the expansion so it’s like…why.
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A lot of these attempts to sell it still felt cheap given the sorts of stuff we saw the Horde (especially the Forsaken) doing in Vanilla.
Maybe you could quest around all of it but that just seems like trying to ignore it. It doesn’t change the fact that it happened and should probably have been considered a sign of what the Horde was.
And even if we’re only going to consider everything that happened after Cata/MoP we’re still talking about developments that occurred 8 years ago.
I’ve been leveling a Blood Elf in Classic TBC. Having leveled a Night Elf in Classic. I don’t really get a feeling anywhere close to being as bad as Garrosh era.
I’m mostly collecting supplies or killing monsters. I’ll write-up my impression leveling path when I get home.
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The only truly iffy stuff was Hillsbrad peasant killing, otherwise it’s like “kill these Night Elves setting up military camps in your land”.
Fighting over lumber was at least in an actual grey area, and in a time rather loose with storytelling (as Night Elves joining the Alliance just sort of happened off screen). If we don’t use modern war morality in our high fantasy war themed game then fighting to use someone else’s trees when you don’t have good access to lumber otherwise is actually better than what a lot of real life cultures have done in comparison, even today.
One of the larger changes made in WoW was the progression from Wrath to Cata to MoP where Blizzard’s tech improved and they were able to have way more RP scenes and full fledged in-game cinematics, with phasing to make sure that you were more immersed and personally invested.
This probably contributed to the story’s gravity being felt more acutely to players. In Vanilla it was almost entirely quest text. If an actual RP event happened it was considered a big deal and people would drop what they were doing to go watch.
That combined with the narrative becoming more player focused (the player is treated as a participant in the story rather than an audience) may have contributed to Horde players feeling more “shamed” even though on paper they weren’t really doing much that was all that different from what they were doing in Vanilla.
Even their expansion cinematics changed. Vanilla and BC’s cinematics were basically just montages of the new content. WotLK went full on story cinematic. Cataclysm was more of a montage, but ever since then each expansion cinematic has been a story-heavy cutscene, possibly in large part to the fact that the WotLK cinematic is still widely regarded as the best expansion cinematic Blizzard has ever done.
Some fair points.
So I’d probably peg it on:
More Alliance/Alliance race villains near that era.
General worsening of the Horde as far as number of bad actions committed.
A storyline that involved faction conflict a lot less until Cataclysm which both revamped most of the old zones to involve it and it coming up in future storylines a lot.
Increase in technology that involved more dynamic scenes.
But this has been my TBC impression so far.
Eversong & Ghostlands: I’m mostly solving magical accidents, killing animals, fighting Amani, dealing with Scourge, and a very tiny bit of Alliance dudes.
Barrens: Again, I’m mostly just dealing with beast-men or animals. Harpies, Bristleboar, Venture Company, Zebras, etc. There were a few quests to attack Northwatch.
Stonetalon: Mostly fighting Grimtotem, some Venture Company, Elementals and Harpies. I deal with some Dryads, Treants, and maybe Night Elves in Stonetalon Peak but it was for ingredients for something. Didn’t really feel very ‘faction conflict’.
Thousand Needles: This feels almost entirely Centaur, gathering supplies, killing animals.
Hillsbrad & Alterac: I’m killing, surprise, a lot of animals again. Some Centaur and Ogres as well. I remember killing people in Hillsbrad Fields but I didn’t really read the quest why. I only remember the Hecular one from other reading being that he was lynched. Oh, and attacking Dun Garok for some sword.
Stranglethorn: Mostly Troll and animal killing.
Desolace: Mostly Centaur fighting. Also some Scourge / Orcs / Naga.
I’m only 38 and am probably forgetting some stuff. But if we compare this to Cataclysm almost every zone involved more faction conflict as well in a greater degree.
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The attacks on Hillsbrad Fields weren’t given a reason. When you arrive, the Forsaken are in the middle of a campaign against Hillsbrad Fields and the surrounding areas to seize resources such as mines from the Alliance. They just assume you’re participating and give you a series of quests to participate. I think that the closest any of them come to explaining why they’re there is because they want to “cull the human infestation.”
You get a quest line to raise Helcular and sic him on Southshore, but Helcular was killed because he was a member of the Cult of the Damned and Kel’thuzad’s majordomo. He was in the middle of trying to ascend into a Lich but his ritual was interrupted by a mob that killed him. This wasn’t context added later, I’m pretty sure that the quest givers knew this and just didn’t care.
But aside from that, you’re right. Most people probably don’t remember much of Vanilla questing because most of Vanilla questing was really, really boring by today’s standards.
I don’t think this was ever established?
I was always under the impression it was just from wanting to become a Lich. His Apprentice is a member of the Forsaken. Which, you’re free to view that as reasonable or not in killing someone.
Eh, I guess. I’m not reading a ton if only because I know I’ve done it all before. I don’t really find modern questing to be more exciting. But I also feel so burnt out on WoW’s story in general. When I was younger I read basically all the quests I did going into the TBC zones.
Not really something that really gets me going anymore.