The new assassin's creed trailer is a good representation of alliance and horde

Lore Story Forum
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Even one is too many.

:expressionless:

Not the Elves, Tauren, Trolls, Goblins, Forsaken, Pandaren, or AU Orc’s but the Orc’s are responsible for that. They haven’t changed. They never pass up an opportunity to shed blood on a mass level. They relish in it.

You’re not wrong. I try to keep the stupid writing out of meta discussions like this but I see your point. They stated this game the humans trying to save there home from the invading demon orcs. The humans are usually portrayed as the saviors or on the side of good and the orcs as blood thirsty killers. They haven’t entirely moved away from that concept and even when they do its not long before a Garrosh shows up to revert the orcs back to what they were in W1 and the rest of the horde just follows along.

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We’re still on the same topic. The “new” Horde is still the same Horde from back in the day. It shared some members, and it follows the “old” Horde’s traditions of warmongering, murdering civilians, and genocide.

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A big part of this, I think, has been the presentation of the Horde and the people that are apart of it hasn’t been great. Ditto goes for the Alliance, but in different ways, and in those avenues creates a narrative that makes the Alliance more morally dependable.

Battle For Azeroth completely failed in what it set out to do: Make an interesting narrative with the tensions between the Alliance and the Horde. Instead, they took another storyline from the setout, to make the Horde villainous but also say “Don’t worry, it wasn’t their fault”.

Pretty much as Xamantul said, the presentation of the different members of each group ends up making a racist narrative whether they want to face it or not.

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(Commentary): Meanwhile on the Horde, Sylvanas raises her own fallen into mindless undead without a second thought, and sends fleets of soldiers to their deaths, right into Azshara’s trap.

(Commentary): This isn’t really anything the Horde doesn’t do though. The Horde has plenty of spirituality to it, and the Alliance doesn’t look down on the Horde for not following Elune or the Light.

(Commentary): We’ve seen the Horde playing with their captives too. Remember the Siege of Orgrimmar where refugees from Theramore were forced to fight one another to the death or see their children tortured and killed?

(Commentary): Meanwhile the Horde has scarred the world, several times! Theramore Isle is an arcane irradiated wasteland! Southshore, Capital City, Gilneas, are all blighted holes that won’t be usable for hundreds of years, if that! The Orcs destroyed their own planet, and the Goblins pollute so badly that the river between Durotar and the Barrens can’t be used for drinking water anymore! That’s to say nothing of literally terraforming Azshara into a Horde symbol.

(Commentary): Meanwhile the Horde is an unstoppable juggernaut that even the combined forces of the entire Alliance, and the Horde’s rebellion of the month, barely stand a chance of stopping.

(Sarcasm): Suuuuuure they are…

(Observation): The Horde destroys their lands.

(Commentary): How is this an example of caring about their lands? The Frostwolves slaughtered unarmed dwarven archaeologists and started a war with Ironforge. They turned the Alterac Valley into a warzone because they couldn’t keep the Lok’tar Ogar in their pants.

(Commentary): Again, it doesn’t amount to much when the entirety of the Alliance and whatever percentage of the Horde is rebelling that month, even when teamed up, barely stand a chance against the remainder of the Horde.

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No, they didn’t. It wasn’t a barren wasteland when they settled there.

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Almost forgot that Durotar was relatively okay and had oasis’ until a certain Kul Tiran Admiral came by.

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Now, if there were every any internal conflict in the Alliance - even just at the level of lodging formal complaints with each other and nothing further - it’d be fun to see night elves finding this out and being annoyed with humans (or even just Daelin supporters) for causing the resource shortage that made the orcs keep invading Ashenvale.

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The Frostwolves settled in Alterac Valley after leaving/being exiled from the Old Horde, at the time it seemed no one was there. They were there for years with no issues, then the Dwarves came and started digging. The Frostwolves saw this as a threat to them and their new home and attacked. The fight there happened because instead of recognizing someone had settled in a, previously uninhabited, valley the Dwarves decided to try and force them out.

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“Look there’s some relics here, lets find more”

“Oh no there’s Dwarves in the valley lets kill them”
“Hey why are they trying to force us out?”

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From WoWpedia:

Long ago, the warlock Gul’dan exiled a clan of orcs called the Frostwolves to a valley hidden deep in the heart of the Alterac Mountains. The Frostwolf Clan eked out a living until Thrall triumphantly united many of Azeroth’s orcs. The Frostwolves, however, chose to remain in the valley rather than joining Thrall in Orgrimmar – and their relative peace has since been challenged by the arrival of the dwarven Stormpike Expedition. The Stormpike Expedition’s desire to mine and plumb the underexplored caves for relics has invited conflict with the Frostwolf Clan, but opinions are divided on who struck first. Were the dwarves who arrived in the valley peaceful explorers who were massacred by the orcs, or did they plan to poach and conquer? [1]

Hmm, looks like there could be some question on who struck first. Though I will say that later on it says that the Dwarves did feel they were attacked by the Frostwolves without provocation. Note it says felt, not for sure one way or the other. It is a fools errand to try and place the blame fully on one side or the other.

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Decided to force them out

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(Commentary): So, the Frostwolves, who were aware of relative peace with the Alliance (Drek’thar was in the Founding of Orgrimmar campaign and was back in Alterac after), decided that dwarves digging in their valley needed to die, and this is the dwarves fault? The Dwarves didn’t know the Frostwolves were there! The Frostwolves chose to attack rather than pursue a diplomatic course of action.

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Yet when the Frostwolves attacked, if they were the first ones to strike, as would anyone who found strangers in their lands, the Dwarves decided to go imperialistic instead of working out some kind of agreement with the Frostwolves. In essence, Alterac Vally could be nothing more then a reverse ashenvale.

The Orcs did not know the Night Elves were in Ashenvale when they were first sent there for lumber, just as the Dwarves did not know the Frostwolves were in Alterac Valley when they started digging. In both cases the initial response by the defenders was stupid, but that does not mean the ones attacked have to increase the stupidity by replying with force.

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For a more on-topic post:

I think this trailer and the arguments quoted in the OP were a good representation of how the average Alliance thought of those spooky Horde boogeymen. While I don’t think the video is a good representation of what the Alliance is (because there’s really not much detail on the faction used in this argument to represent the Alliance, other than being set up as the villain for the underdog protagonists), I think it does a good job at portraying what the Horde was meant to be.

The reason I really hate what BfA did to the story, however, was that it absolutely did not show these good-guy Horde themes, instead doubling down on all the evil ones.

  • “The (Horde) is heartless.”

Well, they did burn down Teldrassil and the civilians inside. But they didn’t plan for it, it was an unexpected order from Sylvanas that even Nathanos hesitated when hearing! (but then carried out anyway.) And there was that one orc child who said he felt bad about it!

…And nothing anywhere else to show any opposition. Good job, Blizzard.

So, players can read into that void however they wish: people who want the Horde to not be what-Blizzard-chose-to-describe-as-genocidal monsters can draw on other Horde themes to say “Well, they must be keeping their heads down because they know the Alliance is coming”, while people who feel that the Horde is violent can look at the army cheering at hearing they’re invading night elf territory and say “They either supported the Burning and/or don’t care enough to speak out about burning civilians alive.”

  • “The (Horde) are (Light)less.”

Shaw expressed surprise at seeing a troll paladin, and Trollbane is dismayed to see a Horde paladin fighting in Arathi!

So yeah, take that! says the blood-offering Elune worshippers, the shamanic Wildhammer, the Lightforged standing peaceably next to a void elf sprouting tentacles, all a big happy family.

So, once again, the player can fill in the details to conclude that either the Alliance does look down on the Horde for being Lightless and just ignores the non-Light members of their own faction, or conclude that the Alliance really doesn’t look down on differing spiritual beliefs.

  • “The (Horde) murders and kills blindly.”

Don’t worry, Blizzard is here to clear up any misconceptions!

Yeah, Sylvanas knew there were only innocents on that tree, so she wasn’t killing them blindly! And Saurfang could hear the screaming civilians from the shore. And not a peep was mentioned from any of the other Horde soldiers. (Again, players are left to personally fill in whether they think there was a negative reaction or not.)

And earlier, those Kor’kron forcing Theramore civilians to fight to the death on pain of having their children murdered? Also not done blindly! Brenadam? Also done purposefully! So no blind killing here!

Gee, thanks Blizzard. Good on you to remove any ambiguity.

Can you remove the ambiguity that the Horde felt and reacted badly to having burned fleeing civilians alive, too? No? Still leaving it blank, then tossing in a “Sylvanas has the support of the people” two patches of silence later? Well that’s just great.

  • “The (Horde) scours the lands of (the Alliance), which they’ll never defend or love.”

One the one hand, we have Theramore Crater, the husk of Teldrassil, the sludgified remains of Southshore and the body harvesting farm at the Sludge Fields… but the orcs wanted Ashenvale lumber and defended their holdings there (until MoPs treaty, then took it back, and are now in Schroedinger’s Ashenvale where they’re either holding it, killed, or left for treaty negotiations once again until Blizzard tweets an answer either way), and the Forsaken were the people of Lordaeron and therefore it’s easy to conclude they’re caring for the land they retook.

Basically, there’s a whole lot of old lore stubs that easily could explain several of the Horde’s actions… Blizzard just never chose to show them, and instead doubled - er, tripled, maybe quadrupled? - down on showing, in great detail, just how much the Horde did slaughter soldiers and civilians indiscriminately and leave lasting scars on the land.

…Again. Because apparently MoP wasn’t bad enough the first time. So suddenly the Horde apparently forgets all the hard-fought lessons they learned under Garrosh just so that the story can explore a new evil Warchief! (And then quickly shuffle the faction conflict under the rug instead of concluding it, because all they really wanted was to get to Shadowlands.)

BfA was a horrible mess which tossed aside and stomped on years of lore because it wanted another rampaging Horde plot. And in doing so, it has cut through the last threads holding the older, nuanced Alliance/Horde dynamic together.

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  1. those lands belong to the Alliance, the Horde decided to squat on it.
  2. The Frostwolves could have made an aggrement first instead of attacking the dwarves first. Don’t put the blame on the party that was first aggrieved.

Depends, if the attack was as brutal as the dwarves claim then you may no choice but actually respond in kind, otherwise the Horde would see this as a sign of weakness and keep attacking with such impunity.

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whistles nonchalantly while backing into a bush and Shadowmelding

Really, though, I think the Frostwolves vs Stormpike was a decent morally gray setup for conflict where both sides could feel justified in their actions.

My complaint with BfA is that it’s made things so horribly black and white when the sides should have been more balanced. (And that, on top of everything else, Blizzard chose to toss the descriptor of genocide into the pot, because we really, really don’t need that heavy a concept tied around a playable faction’s neck.)

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(Observation): Interestingly, the dwarves had some justification for this. When Thrall left for Kalimdor, the only Orcs left behind, were evil Orcs still loyal to the Burning Legion. Arthas cuts down several clans in both the Alliance and Undead campaigns. Now, put yourself in the feet of the Dwarves. You’re exploring a land long since abandoned, in a region where the only known Orcs are those who don’t have a peace with the Alliance, and who like to kill for their demon masters. These Orcs attack you, unprovoked. What is the logical conclusion?

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the initial response by the defenders was stupid, but that does not mean the ones attacked have to increase the stupidity by replying with force.

Agreed, as we all know when someone attacks you you’re an idiot for responding. Why couldn’t they have just let pearl harbour happen and have bygones be bygones?

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It seems even some Alliance disagree with that:

The Alliance Brigadier Generals believe that the Horde was quite right when they said that Alterac Valley is Frostwolf Territory, it was never Ironforge territory.

Hmm, was there not another situation where someone tried such yet were rebuffed? ah yes, Bael Modan, The Tauren who lived on that land tried to talk with the dwarves there yet the dwarves responded by attacking the Tauren.

Nothing but conjecture, these are the Frostwolves we are talking about after all. It is very possible that if the Dwarves had sent a messinger, under a flag of truce, they could have worked something out

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so… the alliance doesn’t defend their lands or not love them?
can you explain why do you think this way? or maybe i am not understanding correctly.

because i would really like to know.