But the razing of cities/kingdoms/planets is kind of a well worn fantasy trope as well. It’s more than possible to pull it off without actually addressing the consequences.
And part of how you do it is by divorcing it in some way from petty mortal motivations.
Let me rephrase.
You cannot purposefully stoke a toxic relationship between the players of your two faction game, have the Horde commit literal genocide on yhe Alliance, then essentially tell the Alliance (that is routinely on the receiving side of the Horde’s violence) “thats all the vengeance you’re gonna get”
Your right, burning and razing of cities happens in fantasy. However, more often than not its an out and out villain that is doing the razing, a villain that almost always gets their comeuppance.
Its gonna be really stupid when Blizzard turns around and scapegoats the entire Horde by placing all the blame on Sylvanas’ shoulders.
You can. Well sort of…
You can absolutely have factions in a franchise, where one side does terrible things to the other- destroying entire cities and worlds- and the other never actually gets any equivalent retribution other than destroying a single military base or cutting off the head of the snake. You can do all that and not necessarily stoke toxicity between fans based on the factions. You can keep doing it for decades and people will still accept it.
I’d point to the Star Wars franchise as the most high profile non-Warcraft example. Halo as well.
Now whether or not one is tired of experiencing the same old tropes in genre fiction and finds them stupid is something else entirely…
Star Wars is a great example. Theres two problems however.
The Horde has never, ever been billed as the equivalent of The Empire.
The Empire eventually flat out loses, unambiguously.
Blizzard does not have the spine or writing capability to write themselves out of the corner they are currently in.
Their insistence on going after another ham fisted faction was was a monumental mistake
I’ve never liked the “the Light is just a mindless source of energy” thing. It just takes away the emotional impact of a lot of the story in the past.
When the Light left Arthas for his horrible actions, that was emotional. It represented his fall from heroism and descent into desperate villainy.
When A’dal saved Crusader Bridenbrad, telling us the Light does not abandon its champions. In the best case here it’s A’dal not abandoning his champions now, which guts human-Light culture.
Or when when Tirion called upon the Light for one final blessing, and it pierced through the dark bonds of the Lich King, allowing him to shatter Frostmourne and save Azeroth. That was a pretty triumphant moment that would be pretty dumb if it was just Tirion using yellow magic.
Then there’s the whole aspect that it makes literally every character who believes in the Light as a sentient entity look incredibly stupid.
Uther, Tirion, Anduin, Velen, Faol, Alexandros. Guess they were all imagining things, which really hurts characters who are supposed to be highly convicted.
So yep. There’s my gripes about this new direction.
Unambiguously lose? At the end of Return of the Jedi, Vader killed the Emporer and the rebels destroyed the Death Star. The Empire still ruled the Galaxy. There was still a massive Imperial Fleet. The Senate’s still been dissolved for years now and rule continues to lie in the hands of Imperial governors.
In the old Expanded Universe, the very first novel is about how the Rebels have to team up with the still-very much in power- Imperial navy to prevent the invasion at Bakura. Even after that, the Empire continues to see a succession of warlords and cloned Emporers that plague the New Republic, continue to raze worlds, and continue to pose a threat. And in the end, it’s revealed that the Emporer did all that he did in order to unite the galaxy against an invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong.
They don’t even get that in the retconned Disney timeline. Here, fighting continues for years until a ceasefire is signed, at which point, the Empire’s successor returns in less than a generation in order to violate it and wipe out the entire New Republic government.
They really don’t unambiguously lose in many Star Wars multiplayer games either. In the original MMO, you actually play the Imperials in the wake of the Emporer’s death and continue to fight the rebels. And in TOR, you play a newly formed Sith Empire that’s very quickly taken over/destroyed several worlds, ravaged Couroscant and forced the Reublic to sue for peace. Neither is ultimately defeated.
In any of the Battlefield or RTS Star Wars games where you can play against other players as Imperials, they just as often win.
Yeah, Warcraft has its fair share of blunders- much like the Star Wars franchise- but both are similarly suited in a sort of melodramatic over the top world full of genre cliches and a tendency towards cyclical stories so that the franchise can keep going and maintain the Red vs Blue dynamic.
The Light is good until the plot requires it not to be.
The Horde is evil until the plot requires them not to be.
Ascribing consistent rules to a story that disregards its own lore based on the needs of the plot is intellectually dishonest at worst and a dedication of energy that would be better spent criticizing Blizzard instead at best.
The bottom line is as close as Star Wars csn get to Warcraft the inherent problem isbthat at no point is the Horde billed as The Empire.
Leaving out whether or not they lose The Empire is the villain, full stop. The Horde was not billed as The Villain when I first made a character back in 2004 and for the Horde to suddenly be comparable to The Empire is insulting.
Hell, even in SWTOR they manage to make the freaking Empire not as ludicrously and ineptly cartoonishly villainous.
This is a good point. At the end of the day Blizzard will warp their own lore to fit the narrative they feel like because doing otherwise is just too much work.
I think the comparison are apt as both the Empire and Horde are intentional callouts to your classic “evil kingdoms helmed by a dark Lord.”
The biggest difference and the main story of the Horde being that while most factions of this type tend to be unapologetic ubermensch/fascists (like the Empire), the Horde as a whole has a more complex relationship to it. They eventually reached a point where they now struggle to escape that past, but it’s a fight they’re still making. That’s why in early Vanilla quests, you’re being rather Villainous as a Forsaken, fighting Vol’jin’s best friend in the Echo Isles, and rooting out a Burning Blade conspiracy in Orgrimmar.
That Thrall and others had to struggle to protect the Horde from its own worst instincts because it could just as easily end up like the Horde from WC1 or WC2 seemed a large part of the appeal to me. Actually letting the Horde slip back into that when influences like Thrall are replaced with your more conventional “Evil Warlord” and “Evil Queen” archetypes does show that the Horde is still grappling with this, even after a decade or so.
But I’ve sidetracked the discussion long enough. Back to the Light!
I could not word it this well but yes. It sucks that all of the sudden they sort of retcon everything we knew about it for years to try to fit in some boring story where morals don’t matter.
Not really? They’re evil when the plot needs them to be and then not when they plot needs them to be not. There’s nothing complex about it.
I mean why can’t characters have flaws? I like Jaina because she has flaws and theramoore incident made it more visible. However I can understand the feeling of not trusting the writers, after all the tried to make Maiev a villain for a book that is never mentioned again and Jaina is made flip flop from some angel to the devil that wants to kill the horde even if she has to throw alliance lives in the way.
yeah her and those Scarlets
I think the issue with this is that it is implying the higher powers of the cosmos care for concepts such as good and evil. I think it’s more a matter of it simply is and people who use it are simply good or evil as always.
Good: Argents, Most Pally RPers, most of the OG Paladin groups for each race since surprise surprise, people don’t like generic evil floating about their city usually.
Evil: Lightsworn, Lightbound, Scarlets, Palabros, Kor’kron RPers playing as human or belf male Paladins, that beam of sunlight every god damn morning.
I miss being able to take the lore seriously enough to participate in discussions like this. These days this game’s story is written in the style and manner of Axe Cop and I just don’t got the energy to keep trying to wrangle some kind of narrative I could invest myself in out of Blizzard’s fever dream of a storyline.
The Light isnt 100% good but its like 95%. Whereas the void is like 5% good.
I mean, going to the bathroom at night with light magic is much better than doing so with the void.
One lets you avoid stepping on legos, the other makes you never want to go bathroom again.
Xe’ra was extremely creepy and I’m glad Illidan destroyed her.
I was talking out this theory in Discord jokingly and then realized I sincerely believe it to be 100% true.
“The Light has struck a bargain with the enemy of all.” Words I’ve pondered for some time. I realized what I BELIEVE it means.
Sylvanas is a force of death. She seeks death of all things. She dreams of an empire of death, where everything and everyone is and are immortal, unfeeling, and unstoppable, all under her command. Sylvanas is an embodiment of death, and, seeking to kill everything, certainly an enemy to all.
The night elves are the most fervent, zealous worshipers of Elune on Azeroth. She’s intervened before, when enough was at stake, and yet was absent when Sylvanas, a mere (almost) mortal, led an army of other mortals, to massacre her most devout. She even allowed Sylvanas to defile her slain followers and raise them as undead.
Elune is said to be a force related to, if not an embodiment of, the Light. Did Elune fail to intervene, or did she stay her hand as part of a deal? Also consider that in the novellas, Sylvanas seemed to be expecting Elune’s indirect presence on the battlefield. How would she know the intentions of such an entity? Did the Light quite literally strike a bargain with the enemy of all?