I hear you. Part of me was hoping I would have the option to start screaming in old-god-speak during the Azshara fight and join her lmao.
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My point of view is that the game’s going to assume I was part of it whether I did the quests or not, because its temporary nature in the game was only meant to be a hook to keep people interested. My character’s going to be part of it whether I want it to or not, so I may as well see the content that’s presented. The game’s storytelling has been super linear ever since the higher-level Cataclysm zones. And like I wrote in your thread you linked, your horde characters will be responsible for it too as soon as you pass the Legion level cap because otherwise the story just stops working right.
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Honestly, this is what made me like the Night Elves in the first place. From Classic to Wrath of the Lich King, I was frankly uninterested towards the Night Elves. But the the Catalcysm revamp of Kalimdor was really sad starting from Darkshore, but then it’s all about kicking tail and taking names and winning everything back.
And then War of the Thorns and the Burning of Teldrassil undid all of that.
So this?
I do not see this as the grass is greener situation you see it as.
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Humans aren’t the Issue with the story, Its the just the fact the Alliance is being led by Anduin who its the biggest pacifist in the game that is more concerned about the Horde than the Alliance.
Jaina would have been fine however they turned her pacifist as well making her love the Horde against all reasonable thinking.
The Alliance constantly gets hammered by the narrative that we need to ally with the Horde rather than fight them. We need a story that say that we have had enough of being pushed around the Horde needs to be ended.
Once we have that we can have the Horde actually needing to fight back to protect themselves from being killed or imprisoned.
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Agreed.
That’s the big worry/annoyance of this happening in the faction war: We’ve already gotten our butts kicked, got our faces rubbed in just how much suffering our failure in defense caused, and then a handful of technical victories on paper were delivered as ‘revenge’. I don’t want the Horde player to suffer because of it, but I sure as fel want to feel like I got something done successfully for all those faceless NPCs who died on my character’s watch.
As many other posters have said, Blizzard has a bad track record of both building back up the things it destroys, and of coming up with interesting ideas for the Alliance. So we’re all agitating for a result, because we fear that without it, the night elves will be squatting as refugees in that pumpkin patch for the rest of the game, or at least until Elune turns out to be evil or something and becomes a raid boss. (And the raid will still be led by a human character.)
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Horde literally quest with Malfurion on Mount Hyjal without getting any flak if they did Horde questing through lower level Kalimdor in Garrosh’s name before that. And after Siege of Orgrimmar Horde even get to quest with Tyrande in Val’sharah as if they hadn’t tried to take the Night Elves’ land.
I’m pretty sure even after the War of the Thorns, the Horde players won’t actually be held accountable for it, one way or another, but most likely that way simply being the whole thing glossed over as it was above.
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Eh, I don’t think the Night Elves are done yet. They may get a good swing in that connects satisfactorily. But I can be an optimist.
I will admit some of that line is inspired by frustration with that poster. I don’t think it’s greener, just that we have different types of grass problems. But it also notes how so far there doesn’t seem to be anything where the horde has lost where some people are satisfied with how they lost. I think a part of that is we lose things that are just sort of present. Like say it wouldn’t be a major loss for night elves if the little camp (and just the shacks, not the people) that the druid from Wailing Caverns set up in the Barrens got wiped out. There’s not really anything important to them, so it doesn’t really matter.
Tyrande’s dialogue toward the horde player in Val’sharah was actually much harsher in the beta, but complaints got it changed.
In a vacuum, I don’t think your idea of allowing a horde player to “atone” would be a bad thing. But what Blizzard made the horde do was so far over the line that I’d think even the possibility of trying to atone would be insulting to the story, and probably night elf fans too.
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Well, I am a pessimist at heart, so someone has to be the opposite balance.
I do agree with your general premise, at least, not so much that the Horde have lost much, but just that they’ve never really had anything to lose at all to begin with.
I do hear this - especially from other Night Elf fans - but I think it’s better than nothing and Blizzard just ignoring it so Thrall and Jaina can be best friends again.
And I feel like the Horde needs to take the right punch from the Alliance or elsewhere to start ours off. Right now we’re the henchmen to the villain, it doesn’t work to come back from a justified (well, for your side, we didn’t ask for this) beating. Like if it’s the alliance, fine beat us bloody, but I don’t want to have blizzard pull out the usually questionable horde tactics like superweapons.
Just let us have a stand up fight we lose, but last long enough that while it doesn’t cripple the alliance, we put out enough hurt to buy us time to get somewhere to hole up and recover. Alliance COULD wipe us out still, but it would cost them too much to do. Otherwise, black empire rises, let us get trashed like the rest of the world and let us live up to what I hoped the BFA opening cinematic would mean.
What really makes me mad is that I -liked- this plot.
I liked the story of the two feuding powers who hated each other, who had constant back-and-forth skirmishes, land claims and counterclaims, historical and current injuries they’d constantly bring up and demand a reckoning for… but at the end of the day, they’d have to grit their teeth and work together to fend off an even worse enemy.
But the War of Thorns upset that balance. No, it took that balance, broke it in tiny pieces, dragged them through the mud, doused them in gasoline, and set them on fire. Well, worse than that, but I don’t want to use that kind of language even if the filter let me.
The Scourge, the Legion, they were never shown as successful in killing defenseless screaming Alliance civilians as the Horde now is.
How can we go back to peace in just a patch? And this was after forgiving Theramore and its dead refugees, after going through one plot of helping the Horde find itself and ceding territory in a horribly-written, shoehorned Alliance ending. Once was difficult, twice - with so many of the very same characters present and silent - is just pathetic storytelling.
It could have been an interesting, multi-faceted plot where neither faction was entirely in the wrong for fighting the other. But it isn’t. It’s a mess of mangled characterization, big injuries with little later payoff, glaring examples of stupidity on one side and pants-on-head villainy from the other, and victories that still manage to feel like losses for both sides.
I want this faction war story gone. It does nothing good for either faction’s players.
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And? The Horde sees countless soldiers die, killed both by the Alliance and the Banshee Queen.
The Alliance, and more often notably paladins, always rant about how Lordaeron is their holy land, how the Forsaken own nothing and deserve nothing. Regardless of how it came to pass, the Forsaken were driven out of their land, which the Alliance holds as holy.
Yeah.
Also I’m confused why everyone is downplaying the loss of the most legendary Troll in all of Warcraft history. Rastakhan had been played up since Vanilla, if not before.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
A whole great many of us, myself included, did the WoT quest chain to see who was lying on story forum about it.
Yes.
I can’t remember the last time the Horde was a hero in anyone’s story.
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Neither likely as remotely close to as many Horde soldiers dying to the Alliance and Sylvanas combined as Night Elf civilians died on Teldrassil. Even when Blizzard doesn’t do numbers, they did put that story emphasis in place for Teldrassil while they have not for Horde deaths.
Because he was just one person. His one death is negligible story wise compared to all the Night Elves that died at Teldrassil, as some people have tried to count them as the same tally. He also had no connection to the War of the Thorns nor the burning of Teldrassil, so his death brings no justice to either.
That’s what youtube is for.
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So what? I guarantee you that being betrayed by your own faction is more damaging to morale than being killed by your enemy.
You lost a bunch of nameless npcs. We lost a hero – something the Horde loses every expansion, and very, very, very, very, very, very rarely gets new ones of. The Alliance always get a new hero to replace a dead one.
You aren’t arbiter of that.
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Blame Blizzard.
Alliance players wanted revenge for Teldrassil. How was killing Rastakan, who wasn’t even INVOLVED in Teldrassil, revenge for Teldrassil? How was attacking Dazar’alor revenge for Teldrassil? It was barely fighting the Horde. Only a few weeks before the raid opened did you have Zandalari aiding the Horde’s assaults on Kul Tiras.
And don’t forget, that whole mess could only come about because a Suicide army composed of three races that should be bordering on extinct and 3 staple races, went and sacrificed themselves to make it possible.
And after all of that, rather than committing to the whole mess, Jaina and Anduin back off to, ‘Give the Zandalari time to mourn.’
Why is Rastakan’s death downplayed? Because it made no narrative sense. That, and his replacement had already been pushed into the spotlight.
It’s wrong. Rastakan should’ve been the leader of the Zandalari. This is the same nonsense they pulled with Blood Elves. Destroying high-profile racial leaders for stupid reasons is bad. The Blood Elves are nothing without Kael’thas, and the Zandalari story suffers horribly for the lack of Rastakan. Both figures were powerful leaders who could have driven the Horde’s story in their own way.
I suppose the best that can be said is that at least Rastakan didn’t go out like Cairne.
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I agree with the second part of this sentence, but not the first. I do think Sylvanas is setting up a future expansion, but I don’t think BfA is really “her story.” She’s barely even in it! She’s being used to put the pieces in place for whatever is coming next, just like all the other characters.
(Back to lurking.)
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Remember folks. Don’t feed the trolls. Or orcs, in this case.
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I think this expansion’s story was written from the conclusion backwards, and Sylvanas will have a lot to do with the conclusion. The BfA story is full of gaps where there needed to be a story but none exist, such as how Talanji and Zul were caught and thrown in the Stockades, and how the Horde reacted to Teldrassil before Baine decided to return Jaina’s brother.
This patch especially feels rushed, based on the lack of a real intro to the initial cutscene explaining why everyone is there, and the lack of an explanation (or lack of characters’ reaction if the explanation is meant to come later) to Ashvane being with the naga.
I think these gaps make sense if the plot was developed from the end backwards, and these gaps were the sections that the writers didn’t get to in time and so were just skipped or papered over.
Hopefully this means the next expansion is already being planned/written so it won’t have the same gaping unaddressed plot holes, but I don’t have many reserves of hope left.
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Undead Night Elves say hello.
If all you want to do is complain about your problems and disregard anyone else’s problems then you’re just opening yourself up to people not paying any attention to your problems, either.
Go to Teldrassil - yes, you can still go there with the Bronze Dragon NPC - and you’ll find lots of NPCs with names.
Rastakhan got replaced as well. Bwomsamdi literally calls Rastakhan out for no longer being a worthwhile ruler, even less so a hero, and leaves Rastakhan for dead in favor of Talanji.
Caine got replaced with Baine. Thrall’s back, and Saurfang is more of a character than ever. Vol’jin’s back, and Rokhan has been getting plenty of screen time even if Blizzard has very oddly not simply declared Rokhan the new Darkspear leader.
You literally have replacements for everyone you lost, same as the Alliance get.
This is such a pointless statement. No, I cannot tell you how to absorb your fictional content. You are your own arbiter of that. And if you played out content you didn’t enjoy just to verify that it was as awful as people were saying it is, all you are is the arbiter of your own misery.
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