I’d also agree that the Horde’s War Campaign felt hollow because the players knew their efforts were negated offscreen by the Alliance.
Even the secondary gains like Valentine and Zelling are gone. At least they’ve got Captain Stone and an explanation for Voss to be part of the Forsaken, I suppose.
Though now, with the destruction of Kul Tiras’ fleet, the Alliance War Campaign has also been negated, while the non-Alliance character who caused it also destroyed Horde ships and made their players feel bad too! Now everyone can sit and gripe together, right?
On this topic, I was trying to think of what War-Campaign-scale goals exist that the faction or player would feel strongly about, and started wondering about what happened to the night elves taken prisoner during the War of Thorns - breaking them out could be a gripping story goal, I think.
Of course, those prisoners haven’t been mentioned since shortly after they were captured - just existing to scream and cry over Teldrassil’s destruction and then disappear into the lore black hole. Sorta like the Sunreaver prisoners from the Purge. Did they ever get returned? Has the story touched on what happened to them, or are they still hovering in narrative limbo?
Imprisoned populations tend to just get forgotten in this story far too often.
I think a scenario where the Alliance player and someone like Tyrande is breaking out Night Elves in Horde concentration camps would be much more meaningful than a McGuffin created solely for the 15 minutes of fame moment.
However such a scenario would probably really depress the Horde player as once again they are following the path of 1939 Germany. And I doubt it would be really forgivable if we are supposed to have the factions forgive each other again.
I do think that rescuing them would be better for the story than ignoring them and leaving it in a weird situation where the players don’t know if they were released, treated well, treated poorly, or all killed and raised (willingly! ™ ) into Sylvanas’ service. (I suppose all those undead night elves had to come from somewhere, and now that I thought this, I can’t unthink it. Ugh.)
Like so much of the war, though, any actual evildoing could be neatly placed on Sylvanas’ followers - or even have the Horde rebels and/or player aid in breaking out these imprisoned civilians, though I hope the player would also get a secondary 100% Horde-focused objective too.
Yes I agree the story really needs these clarifications.
They could have done it in various ways where both factions have two sides to the same scenario.
Horde player can pose as one of the guards and free the prisoners rather than confronting the Night Elf raids.
Alliance player can free the NEs but finds out their captors were not sadistic or cruel and treated them well. Alliance player gets to choose to let them live or kill them too.
This is what it means to be in a morally grey war and I really do think Alliance needs to bloody their hands too because I have literally no incentive to hate them on my Horde characters.
But, how do you differentiate that line? I feel like people really do not understand just how much of a tightrope holding the Horde accountable for what Blizz forced them to do really is.
This is especially problematic because I am more or less convinced at this point that BfA is Sylvie’s story; as whatever she happens to be doing will lead us directly into A future expansion. As a result, HER story is coming at the expense of everything (the Alliance; the Horde; and even Azshara). Its why Horde characters like Baine and Lorth sat on their hands for so long (or why the Alliance is pulling their punches) because HER story demanded that they do so.
Like, look at the NEs for example. Yes, on a STORY level they lost an immense amount; but on a META level they’ve lost very little. The worst they’ve lost in terms of characters is a pair of C-Rank NEs for goodness sake. So … the ideal punishment for the Horde then should theoretically follow the same suit, shouldn’t it? Hurt the FACTION on a story level (in universe), but leave them be as much as possible on a META level (especially regarding character loss).
The issue is presentation. So whatever is done it has to be presented as such.
Blizzard has shot themselves in the foot each time.
They could have given the the Night Elves a really great win in Darkshore. They could have really stuck it to the Horde and no one would have felt bad about it.
Instead we got another half baked response by Alliance character that feels incredibly wanting compared to what was done to them.
I believe it is exactly lines like this:
That are the cause of this kind of story telling when it comes to the Horde and its own reckoning.
And yet … punishing an entire faction … as much as I pity the NE fans, as a Horde fan … its hard not to notice we’re never allowed wins that we can be proud of. Cata? NOPE! MoP? Hell no! WoD? What MU Horde, you mean Thrall? Legion? Hell, what Horde in general? Now we’re full circle with BfA. We are portrayed as a weak, pathetic, group of bi-polar monsters that are inherently unstable (and have to be bailed out and spared by the Alliance demi-gods that walk this world).
Its sickening. Its essentially telling me the Horde player … “You picked the wrong faction, sorry.” The Alliance power-fantasy must be enhanced and maintained at all times, the Horde Fantasy must be shattered into a million peaces and NEVER repaired (because that would take work and portray Orcs as anything other than genocidal monsters; and we can’t have that … better make an ENTIRE AU filled with EVIL ORCS designed to avoid having to actually rebuild the Horde after MoP instead).
People keep claiming that they need some satisfaction for the Alliance and Kaldorei in this ending; for all they were put through. But does ANYONE see even a single avenue for ANY satisfaction to be given to the Horde Faction and Playerbase? Hell, we went from being broken in MoP; to being oddly absent in WoD (it was ALL Thrall’s AU Family Time); to being completely absent in Legion; to getting shattered again in BfA. Hey BLIZZ when the hell is it time to rebuild what you keep breaking?! When is the Horde EVER allowed victories you actually want us to not feel ashamed of?!
The reason why you will never be able to experience being the good guy is because the Horde has never had any suffering.
They have zero justification. Only when they endure pain do they have a just cause.
So the punishment you seem to fear is exactly the type of reckoning you need to push your own narrative in a more sympathetic light.
It would be infinitely worse if once again we are forgiven for literally no reason besides the cartoonish goodness of Alliance characters.
We don’t see suffering because we’re being written to be the bad guys in the story of the Alliance heroes. That’s why they threw in the you’ll fail to save all the civilians quest in WoT and then handwaved away any forsaken civilians in UC and Brill. It’s why an active military fortification where an invasion was based out of was an atrocity when it was destroyed but a small hunter’s camp that turned into a defensive position against quillboars was a valid military target worth less than zero tears.
Horde is not allowed to have justification, we are told all our pain is deserved no matter how it happened.
The problem is the presentation.
The Horde is not presented to have actually lost something each time the Horde “lost” something they also gained something or did it on their own terms.
So even though, you may feel like it is a complete loss it really isn’t one. That is the issue right now. The Horde needs to suffer as the Alliance has to have any semblance of a reason to also appear just as justified as the Alliance player when they demand “Why should we join them?!” rather than “Can you please forgive us? We are super sorry.”
Because right now we might as well start broadcasting this for the Alliance.
TBH … I’m OK with Sylvie taking the lions share of the Blame for this crap, because she should. Not just on a story level (because I am ABSOLUTELY certain that her reasons for wanting this war so badly weren’t for the Horde; they were in pursuit of her true objectives); but also on Meta level.
BfA is Sylvie’s story. Its part of the reason the Alliance gets to be handicapped and pull their punches true; but its also absolutely the reason SO MANY Horde characters were forced to sit on their hands for so long before moving against her after Teldrassil. The Horde is merely a tool (in narrative and meta) to futher Sylvie’s nonsense goals, and damned if I didn’t know in Legion that sort of BS would happen when they killed Jin by trash-mob.
Yeah … nothing like being told constantly that “You picked the wrong faction”. Nothing like being a footnote in any story that needs a REAL Hero to led the charge. To constantly be portrayed as weak, unstable, and ineffectual … and be shattered over and over again by Blizzard (who would rather create an entirely new universe of EVIL HORDE than try even slightly to repair some of the catastrophic damage they’ve caused). In fact, instead they got board and just killed off that chance of recover for another round of villain batting (hell, Varian goes down soloing a Fel Reaver … Jin gets ganked by Trash-Mob #472).
Nothing like being forced to be the aggressors in a War we are CONSTANTLY told we could NEVER hope to win; against another faction who’s power fantasy is so absurd that it doesn’t even exist in the same genre of Fantasy as yours. To be told over and over again there isn’t a single Horde victory in the last 8 years of gameplay that we aren’t supposed to feel ashamed of (unless we’re standing in the shadows of the real heroes the Alliance). Certainly … Horde Bias is real (hey Alliance players, if YOU WANT THIS CRAP, TAKE IT! Too bad Teldrassil has ensured you will ALWAYS keep the moral high-ground no matter what you do now).
No.
The Horde needs to be respected as the Alliance was for there to be any semblence of equality.
The Alliance story is not great, and it’s been pretty harsh. But it’s a heroic story, to go with the story that I can think of the fastest, Teldrassil got blown up like Alderaan. There was no good reason for it to happen other than to show that the Empire was just plain bad and to make it that much more satisfying when the Rebels blew up the Death Star.
That’s what we were made to do, we blew up the stupid tree for no reason. Then we lost a battle that had no stakes for us other than the location. Because maybe that would make the alliance feel a little not good if their battle caught some civilians in it, so we’ll handwave them to safety!
Horde needs to be treated as the heroes in their own story to be able to have an equivalent loss. We need to be able to feel wronged by what we lost. We need to be able to point to innocent lives lost and have them seen as that, not waved away with a stupid excuse.
No … I’ve read it. But I have yet to see an explination of how exactly you intend to make the Horde faction suffer; without further punishing the Horde playerbase? Take a capital or two for all I care … but will that be enough? Probably not. What do you envision Horde punishment look like Zog?
How are you going to achieve this when as you said we are currently at here?
Obviously the only solution going forward is to have the Horde lose something significant as a way of setting up something heroic for them.
Because right now this whole Baine scenario is a spectacular failure because of Blizzard does not want to punish the Horde too much as Droite seems to advocate for.
There is no way that we would feel sympathetic to the Empire if we are not allowed an opportunity to see anything to feel sympathetic towards. Everything that the Empire gets put through would just be another justified retaliation.
And that is exactly the problem that causes you to have the story you hate so much. If you don’t like the current story and want to be a more heroic faction/race/character you have to be put through the same suffering as the Alliance.
Or at least let Blizzard present it that way. Your exact problems is these semi-wins because Blizzard is scared to punish you like they do Alliance.
Some sort of Alliance retaliation that goes way too far and hits people that are innocent.
I guess to Blizzard that would be Battle for Dazaralor when Saurfang comments on the Zandalari King’s death but it is laughable in comparison to what the Horde did.
Teldrassil has all but guaranteed that the Alliance perpetually holds the Moral High ground; it doesn’t matter what atrocities they commit from now on.
The Horde has been portrayed as unstable genocidal monsters, and the Alliance quite literally could get away with justifiably wiping out every single Horde race down to the last child (and people could still excuse it). Even the Alliance betraying the rebels (and reinforcing Sylvie’s narrative that the Alliance is invested in a War of Extermination against the Horde) would be seen as righteous judgement on the faction lovingly compared to the Legion by one of our OWN AR reps.
Well that’s the problem. So far, Horde has lost just as much if not more than Alliance. We’ve certainly lost more characters, and hard for us to lose more cities since we don’t really have many to lose. But they never count.
Because the Horde is not treated equally in the narrative. The narrative seems to go out of its way to excuse the Alliance’s actions as justified or that the horde deserved it. So they don’t count as losses. Because so many times if they were treated as nasty losses it would mean that the Alliance would have been responsible for those losses.
I really hope you mean wrongfully excuse it, because Alliance or even Horde players saying it is OK have clearly not learned of all the awful things real people have done over the course of history. Humans are clearly not inherently evil, and do not deserve to be killed to the last child. The Alliance gets idealized leadership. The Horde gets evil leadership or leadership too afraid or unwilling to rebel until some contrived moment.