I think most of the Loa are actually Wild Gods themselves. I know Bwonsamdi isn’t, but I think the rest of the Loa are just Wild Gods the Trolls have adopted as deities.
I agree that the Horde should get their own chance at being nature guardians. I mean, between the Tauren, and the various Trolls, you have plenty of druids and shaman of your own. And its not like all Alliance races are as nature-friendly as the Night Elves. I just don’t want it to build up to some sort of false equivalency, where Blizzard implies that corrupting dinosaurs is as bad as literal genocide. But it didn’t feel like they were doing that when I played through the invasion.
Yeah, Blizz kinda screwed things hard for the Horde by blatantly making Teldrassil genocide. The only way to make an Alliance equivalent travesty is to have them another genocide. That’s clearly not the route they want to go though if Jaina deciding to let the Zandalari mourn Rastakhan instead of jumping forward and slaughtering them is any indication. Which is the thing I’m not pleased about, tbh. Alliance is just phrased as the “moral side” yet again.
Blizz needs to actually make the Alliance morally ambiguous too so that Horde side also has a good reason for wanting to fight. Presently the main story is just the Alliance getting justice for Teldrassil and going on a heroic crusade to put down Sylvanas. Meanwhile, we Hordie are either a) dragging our heels to do stuff just to advance or b) playing as evil characters.
The problem is that Blizz is apparently okay with scolding Horde players for the suffering they cause in the course of questing. When they fail to do the same to the Alliance - that is, to let them know what they’re doing is shady - it feels like an unfair double standard where only the Horde has to question themselves and feel guilt. Umbric’s quest is quite annoying to me for that reason.
I mean, the implication that it’s shady is in the text, when Umbric talks about how we will take advantage of Zandalari attitudes towards their dead. However, as most players probably won’t bother to ask Umbric about the ritual in the first place, they probably won’t really think about the implications too much. I definitely see how playing Horde could be exhausting, with how much the narrative lingers upon things like Teldrassil. The problem is, something as dramatic and terrible as Teldrassil probably deserves that level of reflection. I guess this just comes back to Blizzard’s original mistake of having Sylvanas burn Teldrassil in cold blood. That sort of destroyed any sense of moral proportionality or equivalency.
Even if it’s a small thing, I feel like Blizz should be equally in your face with Alliance doing shady things as they do with Horde. No, it won’t ever be equivalent to Teldrassil, but it should at least be presented very clearly for what it is. Not something that’s easily blown off. Shady Horde dealings in my experience were always clearly shady even ignoring Teldrassil.
So, this is the story forum. Thus, people are focusing on the story, and one can assume people who post here care deeply about the narrative. This thread is about a specific story issue; specifically, whether the story offers an understandable character motivation for those who choose to play as Horde.
Coming in here and saying, in effect, “Stop complaining. Warmode is fun!” is not relevant. I mean, I’m glad you are having fun, but that has nothing to do with what we were discussing. In other words, you are just derailing the thread.
If you have a point to make about the actual story, then we’d love to hear it.
This is pretty solid proof that you haven’t read my message, as I was responding to someone calling the enjoyability of the game (the fact that it requires a subscription was also mentioned) into question, story forum or not, I shared why I thought the game was enjoyable. There was plenty that had to do with the story in my messages.
The point is:
Atrocity is nothing new to WoW (we are called murder hobos for a reason.)
It hasn’t kept us from having a great time in the past.
Why let it do so now?
I don’t see you quoting anybody in your original post coming into this thread?
Aside from that, yes gameplay > story in the grand scheme of things, especially so for an MMO. However that doesn’t negate the community of people who might prefer story >= gameplay where this forum supposedly consists of said minority community. Just because people have the tendency to move on from developments they don’t like doesn’t mean they should just sit down and take it without voicing their opinion. You mentioned killing Kael off as an example of bad narrative developments; there still exists people here to this day that decry that example and wish Kael to still be alive.
I don’t think anyone here would deny that the gameplay overall is more important than the story. Regardless, a lot of us either still place a lot of our value in the story, or think it is more enjoyable to discuss and chat about than the gameplay.
For me, the story and the gameplay are roughly equal. If the story was amazing I would be able to deal with weaker gameplay, and if the gameplay was amazing I would be able to stand a poor story.
Yeah, I’m in the same place, really. I play both sides, and I love Princess Talanji and the Zandalar stuff. What I can’t stand is that I’m doing it in service to a war chief I loathe, who does loathesome things, and I have a hard time forgetting that. And I SUPER hate doing the stuff for Nathanos for the same reason.
The other thing is that Boralus is a billion times better designed for getting around in, but that’s not really story related.
So i recently saw a post in mmo where the horde literally kills a healer in a hospital of boralus during the horde incursion.
once you kill her “please… the people here… need…healing… As do you…”
i guess that is a valid military target iamrite? https://i.imgur.com/Ik1aGpI.jpg
copied from mmo champion. Another glorious honorful victory for mistaken underdog honorable noble savage morally grey faction! I even got praised by our Light-loving paladin lady that turned from her evil ways back in TBC.
It’s not like the Alliance doesn’t get criticism about fighting the horde, it’s just in lawful stupid ways. It’s wrong to press the attack against the zandalari, it’s wrong to weaponize Azerite against the horde, and MoP had Alliance characters be scolded left and right.
My point is more that the Horde is made to feel like the bad guy just for doing their quests like in the Boralus hospital example cited above. Why don’t Zandalari NPCs die with “Please don’t… not the children…” on their lips?
EDIT: I just did this quest, too. The healer is of course a Pandaren for maximum feelsbadman.
That’s dumb as hell. We thought things like Stormsong was completely overboard but nope, the Alliance can definitely take more and more and more and more and more. There should be no sentiment and sparing anyone, they should be spared because of unexpected circumstance not because of the goodness in their hearts. I hope that will change for you guys in the future.
As a follow-up to this, the Saurfang subplot is probably the best example of something that works well in a movie or novel but has serious problems in a game.
The first bit of conflict between Saurfang and Sylvanas was in a cutscene, as was his capture by the Alliance, since the Horde PC wasn’t present for it (although the Alliance PC may have been).
Then they had to stuff a random encounter with Saurfang into the Stormwind extraction scenario. In order for us to know what he was thinking, he had to criticize the Horde PC for something we had no choice about (staying with the Horde), because they weren’t ready to give us the opportunity to join him just yet.
Saurfang’s “escape” was then handled through another cutscene because there is no reason for the PC of either side to be present. The Alliance PC would have to be railroaded into agreeing with Anduin’s decision, and the Horde PC is nowhere in the area at the time.
Sylvanas sends the Horde PC to look for Saurfang, and we uncover the traces of proof that he had help in escaping. Good! Solid PC involvement in the story!
But I don’t think I need to go over the mess caused by the next stage, where the Dark Ranger attempts to kill Saurfang and he gets away. It would have been less problematic for the players as a cutscene. But they probably realized that the PC is barely involved in the whole storyline as it is, so they tried to make us part of it, and we all know how badly that turned out. Even the fix of giving us a choice about how to react is clunky, and I think part of the reason is because that plotline up to now has not really been anything that directly affects the PC.
TL;DR: The Saurfang plotline plays out just fine without PC involvement, and when they try to get the PC involved, it gets awkward.
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")