You’re going back to the Turtle to kiss and makeup with the Blue Pandas and you’re gonna like it.
There is no Blue or Red, there is only Anduin.
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Okay but the Pandaren have been significantly more neutral since the end of Mists than they were at the start of it, Ji and Aysa basically bail on the war during Mists, this is not remotely comparable to other races’ factionbraining
They were dating by the end of mists.
Neither is Vanessa “Alliance”. I would also point out that Yrel is as Alliance as possible/or at least truly Alliance tangent. Exhibit A:
“Another triumph for the Alliance”
“My people owe the Alliance a great debt. Today I will repay it.”
“Without the Alliance the draenei would have been slaghter by the Iron Horde. I can never thank you enough.”
“For the Alliance”.
Like Bolvar is not even human and at this point not even directly aligned with Stormwind.
The humans have had like 7/8 and a half(depending on if you count Theramore as a kingdom/your feelings on the Arathi) not to mention part of all the rts.
I mean it just means these people are not as versed in Draenei lore. Again I posted the Draenei heritage armor quest for a reason. The draenei have their own bunch of personalities people have interacted with over the years.
So? That doesn’t change that the questlines should be about the merits of the Huojin or Tushui philosophies as those are meant to define the worldview of the pandaren player character.
The Horde and Alliance exist for reasons beyond opposing each other.
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Marketing?
Democracy in a fantasy setting.
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It is genuinly wild that people play the faction mmo, and don’t want half the playerbase to get content, like you can say “hey i want to see this character get content” but the moment you say “i want more characters from this group to get content” suddenly its bad even though both sentences mean the same thing
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I am pretty sure a council is more characters than a warchief.
Also saying that the neutral race is going to have a neutral heritage quest is not wanting one side to not have content unless you have issues reading or the faction system did a number on your judgement.
No its more of a general statement on how braindead all the neutral craft enjoyers are
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But we could have a Pandaren heritage quest with or without a warchief.
I don’t think the Horde’s system of government has any effect at all on which characters get screentime/development. It’s all about whether anyone on the writing team has the will or excitement to give any individual character something to do.
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It doesn’t the writers decide who they want to write based on just who they want to write.
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I know right?
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The horde council will unanimously agree with any evil ideology the very moment blizzard wants the horde to do evil.
Removing our iconic warchief did nothing but harm faction identity and popularity.
Now instead of “Lorthemar, who?” It is “Horde, who?”
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This. Unironically, this. Removing the Warchief position was an objectively bad decision, the Horde Council means nothing if Blizzard wants to give the faction another villainbat.
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The warchief position was an unfortunate casualty to doing the Garrosh plot twice. Something had to save the Horde’s credibility after that. The faction leaders acting as checks on their chosen warchief’s power would have been my choice, but I kind of agree with Mevanou in that as the faction has expanded beyond Kalimdor, a clan chieftain assigned automatic sovereignty over nations as disparate, diffuse, and powerful as Zandalar or Suramar or whatever has stopped making sense.
Those specific examples spring to mind because Talanji refused to subordinate herself to such an arrangement, and the freedom to uphold Suramar’s independence was what attracted Thalyssra to the Horde over the Alliance, which, while amusing meta commentary on human potential, was a bit of a questionable observation in-universe.
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Oh…where to start.
Lorewise it appears to be as a member of the Horde (if your playable), you get a seat. We have not seen the status of the Dracthyr yet, and Earthen presumably would not get one as they did not formally join as a group.
This one, I will give you in that I agree that NPC races should be included. Realistically, lorewise, they should be included- this is just a product of Blizz not historically giving any attention to NPC races past their zone(s), but that seems to be changing- so here is to hoping!
There is no point in overthinking it. It is one vote per nation state that has a seat. It is to make sure everyone has a voice, the population doesn’t matter- this isn’t real life politics.
Simple answer is that there would be a council vote. In the past, it would’ve likely led to civil war. But the council as it stands probably would hash it out more peacefully with the withdrawing party.
They’d be respected as a leader of the Horde. That doesn’t mean Thalyssra can go demand what happens in Thunder Bluff. That would require a council vote.
But for generic Horde matters, they have overall power, like as you mention in Orgrimmar. If there is a contradiction, that is a matter for the council. But if there was a matter big enough for it to cause issues with a contradiction, it wouldn’t have been decided by a lone member anyhow.
In short: They can and do.
We see that for the Highmountain and Mag’har who have generic representatives in Shadow’s Rising, and the author actually explains that this is how it works because the actual councilor will not always be in Orgrimmar.
We see this more prominently with Talanji- she sends Apari as her delegate to Orgrimmar to speak in her stead.
As explained in Shadow’s Rising, a simple majority is all that is required for decisions. Thrall notes he would prefer to have unanimous decisions though. And yeah- realistically political cliches are going to form over time and whatnot, but WoW does not delve into politics.
Likely daily, there are constant decisions to decide- they are the LEADERS, not just occasionally gathering to decide major decisions. Though most days it will be nothing major. Odds are for most of the time it is the delegates- and the leaders who live in Orgrimmar like Firepaw, Rokhan and Thrall.
That is just…not how it works. Firstly, the Pandaren have been in the Horde for quite a long time now- they have lives, families and friends. We even see how passionately Firepaw is about the Horde in Shadow’s Rising. It is his home now.
It really doesn’t go against their philosophy. The council says yes or no, just as the warchief said yes or no.
TLDR; Most of these issues are superficial, and there is nothing wrong with the council.
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Aesthetics, vibe, fantasy are important parts of a game. It is a disservice to remove and dilute these things in pursuit of a bland outcome. The moment they pushed The Horde Council forward, everyone knew we were going to get a bunch of do-nothings with no tension and no reason to tune in. Lo and behold, we’re three expansions deep and they’ve sat around doing nothing with no tension and no reason to care.
But hey, we get Lor’Themar and Thalyssra shopping around for honeymoon spots! Yay.
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This isn’t exactly exclusive to the Horde, to be fair. Tess Greymane has officially become the leader of the Worgen. You know, Tess? That princess who looks kind of like Vanessa VanCleef, but not really, but they’re both rogues that dual-wield and are both a bit sassy so everyone confuses them for each other?
Yeah, well she’s sitting on her newly-restored porcelain throne doing a mighty year-long push at this rate, and you can tell she’s still going to be pushing for at least another expansion after this one. I still see you, Worgen mains. Even if Blizzard couldn’t care less about the characters important to you. Spooky folk stick together.
But the reality is, Blizzard doesn’t do democracy.
Democracy is hard to write, and even harder to portray. That’s like, two—three, wait no five—eight characters all meant to be in the same scene together talking to one another. That’s a lot of different opinions to write, all of them meant to be different and nuanced and interacting with multiple other personalities at once!
Can you imagine having to pretend to be multiple people discussing a topic, write it all down, and then hire voice actors to say it all in the proper tone? What an expensive conversation that’s better left just being one person in the room saying something, while everyone else silently listens and then nods at the end. See? One voice actor and less animations, and less fictional opinions that need to be conceptualized and detailed.
So Blizzard really loves Councils, but also hates them. Loves them because putting everyone’s favorite characters at the table makes people happy and there’s less complaining! But, hates them because that multiplies the amount of work that has to be done any time you want to include them. So how does Blizzard solve this conundrum?
Easy, you have lots of Councils, but you don’t have them do anything.
The Alliance Leadership used to come together to listen to Varian pontificate about the latest expansion threat. Sometimes Velen or Tyrande would speak up, but mostly it was just to confirm what Varian already planned on doing.
The Dwarven Senate of Ironforge literally was never portrayed, ever. We’re just told it exists. Then Varian demanded the Dwarves stop having intrigue and politics and created the Council of Three Hammers. What have they done since then? Well that took place back before Mists of Pandara, and six expansions later, we’re finally spending time with Moira and even got a single quest with Kurdran Wildhammer, a former member of the Council.
The Council of Six, of Dalaran. Most prominent member is Khadgar. The rest probably had a little more of their personalities shown in the Mage Order Hall in Legion—I dunno, I’ve never rolled a mage. This Council wasn’t even relevant during one of Dalaran’s biggest intrigue plots… the Purge. Nope, Jaina just superseded the Council and despite their city breaking out into outright violence they just kinda shrugged and Khadgar took over. You can tell how important the Council of Six is by virtue of one of their “literally who?” members returning for a single questline just to be revealed as the Antagonist in disguise the whole time. We were all very, very shocked.
The Desolate Council. The Forsaken’s Dn’D adventuring party turned Government. Despite Blizzard’s writers clearly wanting to crown Calia, she now shares the spotlight with the likes of Lillian Voss, a magical rogue, Belmont, a non-magical rogue, Velonara our new Sylvanas stand-in without the ulterior motives, and Faranell the kooky Alchemist. After Calia’s disastrous reception, we now have Lillian basically becoming the face and voice of the Council and Forsaken as a whole, despite the fact Blizzard would never put her stitched-together face on a single piece of promotional art. So far aside from the heritage questline, we mostly just see the gal-pals Lillian and Calia with the other three just silently hanging out nearby if they’re all in the same area.
And finally, the Horde Council, also known as Baine’s tenure as Warchief. So far, this group pretty much only exists in Warcraft literature, as we only ever see Baine speaking on behalf of the Council in the game, with Thrall apparently needing Jaina to drop him off in Orgrimmar so he could ask Baine and the rest of the Horde to come visit the new island.
If you really want to laugh at the Horde Council, it’s best portrayal was before it was even a thing, during Sylvanas’s reign as Warchief. All the Horde leadership, seated around a great feasting table, rubbing elbows and and cheering the victorious dead, with Baine even getting to make a toast. Yeah, that’s what everyone’s thinking of when they think of the Horde Council —and— Gallywix, Sylvanas, Nathanos, and Saurfang aren’t even on it anymore.
So yes, the Horde Council is a joke. But so is every Council depicted in the game. This is one of those few issues where I don’t lean red or blue on it, because there are no well-written depictions of the Theme or Subject for us to even compare to.
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Blizz did because of the corner they were painted in. They talked over and over that they were “making the Horde look at themselves”. At some point they either had to admit that was hooey, or they had to do something so they could pretend that the Horde had, indeed, looked at themselves.
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You’re right that there are gaps in our knowledge of the workings of the council.
Unfortunately, I cannot bring myself to wish to have any of those questions answered, because they all bore me to tears. Just speaking for myself here.
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