We don’t really save anything. We cut our losses until the next conflict.
Yes, if it wasn’t the third or forth attempt to hammer the point home.
Answered the question right there.
I know I’m late, but… This captures my exact feelings. I appreciate these words.
The problem is that the Alliance already “broke the cycle” at the end of MOP. We stopped the Horde warchief and let although they had the Horde at their mercy they decided we had enough of the war.
Then we have BFA happen and again the Horde are the Aggressors. The only new lesson the Alliance could learn in from BFA is that the Horde are the Horde and they never change. The Alliance has been merciful multiple times in the past and it only come back to bite them.
Blizzard has really done a poor job showing the Horde has changed in fact the Horde looks far worse at the end of BFA. They are still full of loyalist that would happily go back to war with the Alliance.
The story feels unresolved and very forced as the Alliance is forced to follow Anduin and his demands for peace. The Horde is left without a warchief and basically made them Alliance lite as if that would resolve anything.
All this will lead to is smaller factions of the Horde striking out at the alliance as they now no longer held in check by a strong leader.
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I honestly hate it how the alliance are always the “reactionary” faction when it comes to faction wars.
For once I want the alliance to start the war, not wait for the horde to do something evil. I feel like BFA would’ve started with the siege of Lordaeron, or at least take Gilneas back.
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Indeed and they’re were multiple reasons for the Alliance to go on the offensive. Blizzard writers just seem to hate writing the Alliance as anything but Pacifists these days.
- You could have Jaina going back to Kul tiras and taking them to war against the Horde.
- You could have had Danath wanting to retake Arathi.
- You could have had Genn wanting to take back Gilneas.
- Turaylon wanting to retake and rebuild Lordearon.
- Alleria and Veressa want to bring the elves back to the Alliance.
- Could have had Anduin living up to his fathers promise to end the Horde if they “fought without honor”.
- The Light forged could want revenge on the Orcs for what they did on Draenor against their relatives.
- Dark irons could want the Azerite stores from the Horde.
- Night elves driving the horde from Ashenvale.
The once stated we were Captain America faction, the lawful good team. Captain America wouldn’t just let Hydra go free after the blew up a city(unless he was evil Cap). Nor would a Lawful good character release a war criminal from prison.
On the Flipside it would give the horde a chance to be on the Defensive and give them a chance to fight as the Underdog again. They thrive in that part of the story and gives them chances to have some good character development they are sorely lacking.
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The point was ‘We can repeat storylines from an expansion six years ago and you can do nothing about it’
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Honestly I didn’t have a problem with the Horde being the aggressors. I thought the War of Thorns, up until the end, was actually pretty good.
Windrunner’s stated reasoning for the invasion is that azerite will without a doubt change the face of technology and thusly warfare in Azeroth. In order to ensure Horde safety for generations we’ve to strike now, occupy Teldrassil and use that as a bargaining chip to secure Kalimdor’s azerite deposits.
That was some legit moral grayness. Obviously preemptive strikes are always morally dubious but the reasoning was solid. ‘All we know for sure is this stuff is going to change the world forever - and we need to do whatever it takes to make sure the Horde has a seat in this new world’.
And then, well BFA happened. Firebombing Teldrassil made no sense until it was retroactively explained Windy’s only goal was a kill count. The Azerite- this resource that’ll change everything forever- also fell completely by the wayside. By the time I was solving Candy Crush puzzles in Snake Atlantis I’d kinda forgot it was a thing. Even the war itself kinda petered out like a disappointing faulty firework.
And the kicker is - that was the plan. Those cinematics aren’t something you can hammer out over a long weekend. They had this Shadowlands end game in mind and BFA seemed to just serve as a contrived misadventure designed only to get the pieces in position at all costs.
Which is a shame since at the start this was threatening to be a legitimately interesting story about fear and greed driving nations to idiotic bloodshed.
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I mean its fine for the Horde to be enjoy being the aggressor as well. Issue lies that they had to severely Nerf the Alliance to make if feasible for the Horde to stand a chance
It just would have been better for the Alliance to be on the offensive as well however to make it seem like an actual war. Anduin’s passiveness basically robbed the Horde of any agency to fight, I mean Anduins intention had never been to stop the Horde only Sylvanas.
True, however it could have been better handled in how they lead up was handled. Even Metzen who penned and developed the first one was surprised with the direction they took it.
Indeed, if they had the Alliance coveting the eastern kingdoms and the Horde coveting Kalimdor and them fighting to take over those continents while maintaining a hold on the other.
However that was never Anduins Intention he only cared about capturing Sylvanas. When that failed he basically gave up any hold on the northern kingdoms except maybe Arathi and that seems to have only been to stop the horde progressing further south.
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I would certainly be up for Alliance aggression. You get glimpses of it in the Cata storyline with humans doing horrifying things in Taurajo. Even the Forsaken are portrayed pretty evenly in Silverpine. From an outside perspective they’ve to look pretty villainous but from their side it comes off as a pretty desperate fight for survival. Alliance NPCs loudly inform you of their intention to retake Lordaeron with armies that will march over your broken bones.
In BFA though we come off as lunatics. Derek Proudmoore comes to mind. Now I assumed hey we drudge this guy up, raise him, let Voss do her social worker of the dead routine then boom we’ve a new Forsaken Admiral with in depth knowledge on how to dismantle the Kul Tiran fleet.
Instead nah just, torture the free will out of him so we can make him a bomb. Stealing the free will of a Forsaken is in Hillsbrad portrayed as the highest crime in Forsaken society. I’m still bewildered ‘The Horde is Nothing!’ turned many Forsaken against Windy instead of ya know, violating the most sacred law of their culture.
But who knows maybe Tyrande will do something violent in or around SL. By design the factions can’t actually be at peace which makes the ‘Stop fighting and work together’ lesson that’s as old as Reign of Chaos just come off really hollow. And probably why a faction war should never be the A plot of any WoW story.
Did you miss the Hillsbrad survivors that were so desperate to avoid being raised as part of the Forsaken war machine that they begged Crowley for his blood, and when they swam to shore were blown apart by cannon fire? What about Sylvanas threatening to kill, reanimate, and enslave Lorna if Darius didn’t surrender?
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The Hillsbrad Humans had years to relocate to Stormwind. Or maybe they at least could’ve tried not utterly posioning the well with their undead cousins by allowing Southshore to be used as a staging ground for many an Alliance Forsaken hunting party.
But they didnt and thusly they got drafted into the Halloween War that was Lordaeron VS Gilneas. Too bad so sad.
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This game was more fun when we felt like red and blue had valid reasons and pvp felt like a good rivalry akin to rival football teams.
It seems poisoned now.
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I’m still getting gun sounds out of my bow? Are gun hunters getting my bow sounds?
I am! On my Hunter. I just figured it was a glitch since it’s a bow mogged to look like a gun.
Ya see, maybe the point of BFA was that we’re all the same, deep down, even ballistic weapons…
… I’m trying to make it seem like this hasn’t gone off the rails is it working?
Classic actually fixes that… guns are guns anb bows are bows again.
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It falls apart when you notice that the “leader” of the alliance is a pacifist at heart.
Basically what WoD was to Legion. I hate it when expansions with interesting concepts and ideas turn out to be filler expansions. Which is a shame because N’zoth was warcrafts secondary antagonist for a long time (Sargeras being the main) and he gets killed off in a filler expansion in the grand scheme of things. I wish BFA actually ended with Azshara succeeding in freeing N’zoth. Then ny’alotha could’ve been an expansion. Ny’alotha has been a concept since Cata with the puzzle box of Yogg-saron. It is a shame considering that other than Cata, BFA is the only expansion to directly involve N’zoth in a major way. Sure Legion had the emerald nightmare, but that was pretty minor in the long term.
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