I try to do the same but there are moments when the writing touches the deep end and it needs to be addresed and voiced in both feedbacks and discussion since this is often the best way to let word reach the ears of the people inside the company (Metzen for example really knows all the hate about his Green Jesus storyline)
Indeed, this whole concept is their main achilles’ heel as they can’t decided the role of the factions outside of pushing certain plots while alienating their playerbase in the process. Seriously they need to take the message they can’t have the cake and eat it (Like having the Alliance genocide Troll populations while being somehow being portrayed as the shinnest and purest thing in the universe or the way they portray the Horde fighting style)
All of this could be avoided if they really commited to their world instead of just copy paste the plot of the current thrending tv show/videogame like they did back in Warcraft 3 (their best and only try so far in all these years)
This also show how they treat every expansion as it was a slice of life episode where the development of the previous arc is just forgotten in order to move forward one they consider “cool and better” which is insulting just like the new trilogy of SW is.
Honestly I think once the upper management gets their power taken away, things could move to a better position since in the questing you can still see some people trying to give some glimpses beyond the main narrative(Nelf being angry to their human allies, Troll parents spending time with their childs in an inn in Zuldazar, etc)
I won’t defend the actions of the horde this xpac, but I also won’t act like it’s what I chose to do, I play the game Blizzard writes, I have no input on that writing regardless of what I say on these forums (something a lot of posters need to realize). I’m not going to stop playing a faction I’ve played for 15 years because the writing has gone down the toilet.
Stop trying to punish horde players for playing a game.
you need to stop like anyone one is trying to punish you no one is not even blizzard. The problem is horde players whitewashing the actions of characters in there faction.
Why has not one Horde mentioned that even in the War of Thorns, we were saving civilians? Why hasn’t one Horde mentioned that Lord of the Clans canonizes that the Frostwolves were in Alterac Valley before the dwarves?
Comparing us to Sylvanas is about as fair as comparing you to Fandral Staghelm.
A bit late response, but this illustrates my annoyance with BfA: This is never mentioned for the Forsaken. The players can extrapolate this reasoning for them to care about Stromgarde, but Blizzard does nothing with it.
The reasons are sitting right there, perfectly ready and usable, and Blizzard ignores them in favor of writing a few extra chapters of Horde forces killing Alliance civilians with no or flimsy justifications.
How was this meant to resolve the Horde’s identity, as the writers said they were hoping to do because they didn’t feel MoP succeeded?
Brennadam is ultra meta for my case. It’s Blizzard showing the Alliance what they want, which doesn’t match up with anything the Horde player actually does (outside of, admittedly, Forsaken quests.)
Brennadam was someone at Blizzard snorting some very heavy crank and then coming up with something that said “Horde vs. Alliance”. Originally it was quillboar who sack the town, which shows since the quests directly after Brennadam is fighting quillboar in their kralls. The change was so terrible and so lazily done that you’d expect it from one of these little niche programmers who make cheap mobile games.
I do want to this referenced or concluded in some way - because there’s so much story weirdness and uncertainty around it.
The Horde player could choose to spare civilians in Astranaar… but they’re all dead when the Alliance player arrives.
The Horde player explicitly questions and releases civilians in Lor’danel… but they’re MIA Alliance-side.
The Horde has night elf captives mentioned in their short story… and they’re never mentioned one way or another after that.
So what on Azeroth happened to them? It’s like the Sunreavers in the Violet Hold all over again - not knowing just how vicious the attack was because we don’t know how many were nonlethally taken prisoner, how well they were treated as prisoners, and how or whether they were released or not.
If nothing else, these prisoners would have been a perfect way to soften faction tensions at the end of the war - Have the Horde turn over any remaining night elf prisoners, (or even return them to their homes depending on what the story does with Ashenvale) and have those prisoners tell the Alliance about how they were treated decently and/or that some Horde members saved them from Sylvanas wanting to execute them all.
Plus the Forsaken kind of direly need new leaders. The Black Bride is a blank slate. She easily could be Stromgardi. Perhaps she was a promising young lieutenant to Danath Trollbane once. Have some student master banter with the commander chatter.
Instead though we got Natty Blight and one of the Unelves growling at stuff. And Etrigg and Danath sounding more like they’re feuding over who gets to hold the remote in the retirement home.
The one that got turned into a goblin depot before it hit live? Not sure if that’s canon, and if it isn’t, that turned into another big yikes if Blizzard has the Horde execute the prisoners the Horde player was supposed to let free.
Or the soldiers who were being used as target practice further south at the beginning of the Night Warrior scenario? Because they’re not the civilians from Lor’danel.
Is that confirmed or just logical inference? Because that was what the situation seems to be, but I’m not sure it was officially said to be so.
you need to redo the zone, the death camp is still there, the forsaken are still killing captives, and they are still using nelf slave labor, none of that was removed.
Ugh. I guess most of my annoyance is that everything here is portrayed to the Alliance player as if the entire Horde is responsible, and that portrayal is never questioned and even repeatedly reinforced - Even at the point where the story switches to wanting the Alliance player to back peace, this part of the player Horde’s (varying levels of) innocence is never revealed.
Imagine if this expansion didn’t have a truncated ending rushing into Shadowlands, and part of the peace negotiations actually explained this stuff to each side instead of leaving them ignorant unless they played through the opposing faction quests.
And if you go there when it’s Horde controlled you see no such thing. It’s a Goblin mine being sabotaged by worgen you kill for a WQ.
This is what I’m talking about. They apparently didn’t trust the player to get Windrunner was bad news, and kept having the Horde do more depraved stuff whenever the Horde PCs aren’t supposed to be around. Brennadam for example you never see or hear of. Not a line of dialogue about it.
With N’Zoth turning up and him playing with mortal perception being a big theme - I kinda figure at some point these drastically different points of view were going to factor into the story. But instead of that we got a hastily redone fall of Mordor cutscene after Wrathion fought a Star Fox 64 boss.
This whole thing is just embarrassing. I don’t know what went wrong here, but something clearly did, and I wouldn’t want my name attached to the project if this was my work.
