The only real issue i see here is most alliance victories kind of feel like screw ups. They are victories without a doubt but they always have as but or an in fact attached.
Lorderon was a victory but sylvanas had it nearly fully evacuated and turned it into a trap the teap failed but the point is she was the one that blew it up. I wish the alliance destiryed it in anger after sylvanas ran because her plans failed
Battle of troll city again alliance victory but it pushes thd zandalari into the horde. Not yhat much to changr here actully helps the story of why those trolls stay.
War campaign we blow up the zandalari fleet and hsve ours big snd buffed but that was all part of two or three peoples plsns and it was all lost. A loss for everyone in truth.
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Or old tried-and-true ideas. You know. The WC3 Honorable Horde that Thrall built with Cairne and Vol’jin.
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The “victories” the Horde wins are framed as great tragedies, and only occur in the context of their current warchief being an eventual villain to both sides, though. The Burning of Teldrassil, the scourging of Undercity were both tragedies. The silver lining of this expansion will be that after being forced to take down yet another Warchief, your character won’t be tried for any complicity.
Not that Alliance experience is all sunshine and rainbows, but they at least can argue moral superiority and rest in the knowledge that everything they’re doing is in the right and that Sylvanas will be defeated in the end.
And this is again, conveniently forgetting the previous expansion, where the Alliance enjoyed pretty much nothing but one success after another, culminating in the defeat of what’s been played up as the biggest enemy in the whole Warcraft franchise. A whole expansion of winning without once ever having to kill their own characters in a raid or having to question their role as the most righteous and heroic. An expansion where the Alliance is so righteous and heroic that even a Na’aru comes across as a jerk compared to them.
EDIT: Which is not to say I think that Blizzard really likes either the Horde or Alliance better and wants to punish one/reward the other. I think they’re just coming at it like people writing some cheesy fantasy war drama. The Alliance/Rebellion/Federation gets its moments to shine as the general “hero” of the story while Horde/Empire/Klingons generally gets to be the “anti-heroes” at best and “villains” at worse. The Horde gets to burn Teldrassil. The Empire gets to blow up Alderaan. The Klingons get to try to blow up planets with Hydro Bombs. But we all know they aren’t going to win and they’re just being a foil for the blue side, who gets to kill their leadership and save the world without ever geting their hands dirty. Sure the red can be interesting to explore because it lets you get away from the usual hero narrative, but even that viewpoint still recognizes the hero narrative as the normative default.
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I am at the point where emotional gut punches just don’t cut it anymore because the pay off is never there.
Southshore gets plagued in Cata. Basically, nobody Alliance side even acknowledges that it happened, and then in MoP, Rogers blames it on the Orcs.
Gilneas gets plagued in Cata, and the Worgen are left to rot in a tree for a few expansions until their tree gets burned down.
Theramore gets blown to heck, and the blame gets all put on Garrosh and is resolved with a finger wag.
And now Teldrassil, where for now at least, it seems like the Darkshore War Front is all that will come of it because “Tyrande got her vengeance”.
The reality is that Blizzard can’t write good endings to these things - arguably good endings to these things are impossible in a two faction game. So in my view, they should stop trying. Frankly, I will take meaningless skirmishes and encounters written in such a way that both sides can feel good about it, rather than what we have been getting.
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Yeah, it’s not like Horde “victories” don’t come with fine print either, usually in the form of war crimes lol. It’s not like the story is patting us on the back for Teldrassil. Hell, 7-8 years later we’re still being shamed for Theramore to provide Jaina with storylines.
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The horde are not only the leaders, a few examples are darkspear doesn’t developed a new leader and the forsaken since wrath haven’t a new goal.
I never meant to imply good leaders. I meant to imply a good story. The WC3 Horde was a good story. It was a story of a people fallen to disgrace, clawing their way out of a dark past, while being pushed back down every other minute by the Alliance.
You can take the Alliance out of it and easily work on an honorable Horde story. It shouldn’t be hard. It honestly shouldn’t. I don’t know why it’s hard, when it doesn’t need to be. Even the Forsaken can go from Scourge 2.0 to the somber keepers of the wisdom gleaned from beyond the grave, caretakers of the dead and dying. Imagine if the Royal Apothecary Society used it’s knowledge to heal and tend to the Horde’s soldiers and, in worse case scenarios, provide them a painless passing to the Shadowlands?
This stuff practically writes itself.
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The Alliance could wipe the Horde out based on their characters alone. If the BFL showed us anything it’s that Jaina single-handedly made the Alliance army moot. The Alliance just have too many powerhouses on their side. The only characters on the Horde I see comparing with the likes of Jaina, Alleria, Malfurion etc… are Rommath and Thalyssra, but neither of which have ever done anything worth noting in-game.
Thrall has no powers
Rexxar is a hunter
Saurfang is just a warrior - an old one to boot
Cairne is just a warrior
Rok’han is a sneaky boi useful for infiltration / gathering intel
Lor’Themar / Halduron are just rangers with no powerful death magic like Sylvanas
Gallywix has money? Maybe? He doesn’t exactly pay people.
Ji Firepaw isn’t even on Taran Zhu’s level
Geya’Rah is just a warrior
Mayla does nothing / Lesan has eagles
So that leaves us with Rommath / Thalyssra / Sylvanas / Talanji as the only modicum of power in the Horde.
Anduin is a god mode priest
Dwarven council does nothing
Mekkatorque is stupid smart and apparently can’t die
Tyrande is the 10,000 year old avatar of Elune
Malfurion is a 10,000 year old virtual demi-god
Velen is also a god mode priest but over 30,000 years old
Genn is crafty, but still just a warrior
Aysa is probably just as weak as Ji
Alleria is a deus-ex like Jaina
Turalyon is supposedly a god-tier paladin on Uther levels, but he has the Vindicaar
Uh the Dark Iron have mole machines? idfk
Then there’s Jaina - deus ex / Thrall-replacement golden child of human potential
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The thing with trying to compare characters of varying powers is that a lot of it is subjective to the events and environments in which they face off. As an example, Malfurion may be a 10,000 year old Archdruid who’s powers surpassed that of Ysera even before she was de-powered (Stormrage novel I believe), but he still got taken down by an axe in the back.
Sylvanas is the Banshee Queen, with uncommonly powerful death magic she uses sparingly, and yet even she can die from a bullet to the head.
Velen may be 30,000+ years old, but he hasn’t been anywhere near as precise in his prophesies as Zul was.
Jaina was a prodigy taught by Archmage Antonidas, mentored by the former Guardian, Aegwynn, and has a staff imbued with the power of a Titan Watcher. Even she doesn’t care to try and bring down too much attention on the Baine Rescue party despite all that power.
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The military diferencie between horde and alliance is abysmal at the point the horde is impossible to think they can win this war, expansión had a terrible plot.
Remember when the alliance tried to kill Sylvanas and destroy the forsaken fleet with only 1 airship?
Or the vindicar and army of light technology?
I remember but Blizzard writers not.
I’m not saying they’re all immune to short-comings or even death. Hell even Goku was killed by a common ray-gun to the chest when he was caught off guard.
I’m saying the Horde really doesn’t have anything to stand in the way of that power. If the Alliance truly wanted to, they could just sweep the Horde out of existence in an instant with little-to-no planning. If you don’t give Sylvanas time to make a plan, then you already won. The Alliance leadership hasn’t realized it yet, but that’s why Sylvanas beats them in most skirmishes. Stop giving her prep time.
Jaina created the mass-teleport spell to move armies around. If that’s not prime for hit-and-run tactics I don’t know what is. Alleria can literally do the same thing with her void portals without having to worry about arcane warding blocking her powers.
I guess that’s what you get for letting a 12 year old run your military.
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Except they do. Again, Malfurion took an axe to the back. Out of the War of Thorns completely from that.
These characters have great powers, but using them comes with costs and risks. Malfurion can’t just fly over Orgrimmar as an eagle, drop a seed, and grow a new World Tree that crushes all of Orgrimmar’s inhabitants into a bloody pulp to use as mulch for said new World Tree. Jaina can’t whip up Tidal Waves out of nothing.
The Alliance has more characters with fantastical magical powers, this is true and undeniable, but that doesn’t mean the war is won by any stretch of the imagination.
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According to lore druids steal life from elsewhere to use their powers. So I’ll give you that.
Orgrimmar is easy for Jaina. She almost flooded it once before. Thrall ain’t there to stop her this time.
Except they can win by the stretch of their imagination. See the Flying Proudmoore in at the end of the BFL. See a frost nova negating the blight. See literally any of Mekkatorque’s inventions. Impenetrable Titan plating on his mech? Really Blizz? REALLY?
And the belves have a font of infinite power to mass produce mana bombs to reduce Stormwind or any city to arcane dust. The Forsaken have mass produced blight and used it to great effect many times, and raise the Alliance’s dead to bolster the ranks of the Horde. Horde Shamans helped enchant the fires that burned down Teldrassil.
This whole point that the Alliance has more major lore figures with powers doesn’t amount to anything. They’re not gods. Not even the one who has become the living avatar of a goddess. They can’t just snap their fingers and win.
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Where? I was under the impression she didn’t bring any druid or shaman because they would not be okay with this battle.
Elegy, if I recall correctly.
Fair enough. I’ll look into it later.
Druids were sent to Silithus but Shamans did help with the flames. Idk if it’s stated in Elegy but it’s definitely in A Good War.
I found something in Elegy as well.
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/story/short-story/elegy#tab=5
“The arcane-touched payloads crashed into the branches of Teldrassil, each bough the size of an ordinary tree itself. The fire caught quickly. Shaman in Darkshore conjured winds to amplify the flames. Sparks danced like vicious imps from bough to bough, leaving crackling crimson and orange in their wake.”
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Excellent. Thank you for the clarification, bois and / or girls.
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