The best option to make who reclaim a foothold? Trolls? Because the Amani and Gurubashi are unlikely to want to move to the sub-arctic to claim and rebuild the dead ruins of the Drakkari. They want their own lands back. They want to protect what they believe should be their borders. And with how the world has developed, doing either through force anymore seems very unlikely.
Honestly, when it comes to the Amani at least … it might be neat to “finagle” a way for them to reclaim and secure the entire Hinterlands. If Magni is to be believed the Old God corruption of Azeroth is apparently on the way out, so the Wildhammer can go home to the Wetlands/Highlands and reclaim Grim Batol. Then we augment the natural borders of the Hinterlands by gifting the prior Scarlet Enclave territories, which creates a sizable, very defensible North South bit of coastal territory connecting ZA and ZM to Jintha’Alor. Its not everything back, but it is enough for stability and growth.
To take the land for frost trolls of course. I refuse to believe that such a big nation perished after we dealt with Scourge. If shatterspear tribe made it after being rounded up and slaughtered by nelves, Then so can arctic nation that actually traveled by the ships during MOP. And I provided a follow-up for Frostmane who also have danger of extermination over them since dwarves also rounded them up. And continuously push them away and exterminate them.
And lastly a Zandalari could use a strategic new big location and considering that Zandalari don’t want for troll heritage to perish - they could make some moves under Talanji. Talanji expressed her desire for Zandalar to become a big player and extend her influence, no? It all looks good on paper.
I really don’t get why you bring Amani into this when I was talking about frost trolls only.
Amani is far more complicated case sadly. And I’d rather not focus on it now as it’s a subject river.
I provided this idea as a fan project to repurpose old assets and provide new content of reestablishing the hub and giving some positive plot.
Similar to establishing new capitol at Hyjal, and content spread over the patches to see how the city is growing.
Was that in the questions and answers? If there was, does this mean that it will be possible to dismiss some of the accusations of (fuzzy wording about lamentation), after all, this is the “Word of God”?
Night elf players are the most entitled player base I have seen so far. My god i hate this is a group i am apart of. Like they will complain about anything and accept nothing. NOTHING SATISFYS THEM. ITS LIKE THIS HUNGERING VOID. where they like to complain and complain and they got spotlight in every expansion. Is it not enough for you people.
The Drakkari are one of two peoples in the history of Warcraft that Blizz has actually seen fit to refer to as “Effectively Extinct”. The other group is the High Elves, in reference to their culture/political group. And it was within BfA that Blizz cemented that reality for them with Speaker Mala’karaz left in Zuldazar. You may find Blizz arbitrary in that decision with how the Shatterspear and Darkspear still somehow linger on. But is the detail they decided to continue with.
EDIT: As for reclamation of Zul’Drak. Genuinely, from all indications its the damage to the environment of that region that caused the ultimate destruction of its people. So, if ever it could be cleansed (which is going to take years or even decades of focused effort by heavy Light and Life Domain practitioners) … it is not going to be the Drakkari that reclaim it. They are gone.
It can be retconned. It was stupid idea to make them go extinct when there were thousands of them on boats in MoP they can make a reasoning that the speaker was misinformed/melodramatic. And the Drakkari were reorganising on remote island after fiasco in MOP. In the end Zandalari were collecting various data in order to help them later recover. (https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/598178204292743178/598178466126364692/frost_trolls2.png - is a Zandalari in regards of Zul’Drak)
Zul’Drak was not in as bad condition as Plaguelands and Plaguelands are recovering just fine.
That argument is moot.
Personally? I think that devs couldn’t be arsed to put Tal’Drak in Zuldazar so they made excuse to not put it there. What a glorious way for troll development - extinct offscreen!
I would love for them to bring back the Drakkari in some form. They were what got me interested in trolls in the first place and inspired me to make this character.
Trolls in general need to be rehabilitated. It used to be that if there was a troll raid, we could at least say that there was a layer of separation, but considering how little attention the playable trolls got, that’s pretty small consolation, particularly when we’re comparing them to these grandiose troll empires that are being taken down almost because they wanted to keep a tradition of there “always being a troll raid”.
Even so, Dazar’Alor was different. The Zandalari being made playable was an invitation for Troll players to bask in what the trolls looked like at the peak of their power - to represent it as a playable race option - and by this point I feel that you could probably roll a Darkspear troll and say “this represents me anyway”. Having the Alliance roll up and raid Dazar’alor, kill Rastakhan, sink the entire fleet, and then leave as a mercy is, in my opinion, the closest thing to Teldrassil that the Horde experienced - and like Teldrassil, it was completely irresponsible to do this, especially given that with the Zandalari, we can effectively fold all of those troll raids in as prologue. In short: Troll fans got screwed.
Thankfully, this also gives us something of a way out. Talanji I know isn’t taking the matter of her father’s death lying down, and she’s still got a pretty decent power base to work from. Ships can be rebuilt, and the Zandalari should have a relatively easy time at this point convincing the various troll tribes around the world that they need to come together under the Horde - and take the fight to the Proudmoores, to Stormwind, and to anyone else trying to dismantle their empires. They can leverage the resources of the Horde - like the Bilgewater Cartel - I could imagine them wanting and needing a strong navy to set up trading posts and to gather resources from areas like Stranglethorn. Why couldn’t there be a partnership? Goblin weapons, Horde training, and Zandalari organization could do wonders.
So let’s see the Amani bury the hatchet with the Horde and concentrate on driving the humans out of the north. Let’s see the Gurubashi give Stormwind a run for its money. Let’s have Zandalari and Iron Horde vessels challenging Alliance supremacy on the seas. Why not rebuild Zul’drak? And why not give Zandalar a chance to seek vengeance for Rastakhan?
All of Cataclysm was a string of losses for the Alliance. Or did you forget the Alliance had Southshore leveled, Anderhol a complete lost and generally many major Alliance cities in disrepair.
Ashenvale was ultimately a victory and Blizzard needs a damn better job of showing Alliance wins, I would point out this extend to the rest of the Alliance as well. Namely it took forever an a day to even confirm Darkshire still exist.
Except this has always been a fatal flaw of her, more so now especially with her whole Night Warrior thing. She never learned to THINK, really think about the consequences of her actions.
The Horde has won as well again 7th Legion(and we have won again some of the Horde’s best Krokron), “crack teams” being destroyed by the players is the norm, not the exception.
Consider it pride on her end. No one could have expect other faction would actually be capable of infiltrating their city. As far as she was concerned the change of them taking the bell was zero.
Or you know, people wanted to be high elves more then they ever wanted to night elves.
Oh please, if the number of the Alliance player decreased the reason would simply because the Horde was allowed to have OP racials for too long that made raiding so much easier on their side/got the casuals to switch because of the raiding pool.
I’m seeing a lot of problems in your post that can simply be replied to by referring you to the is/ought fallacy. So I’m going to do that. Further, your reply to my % change data makes no sense.
That leaves your last comment - which seems to be tacking to a sort of racials supremacy point. To that, I reply with this:
tldr: Tournament servers where minmaxing is prevalent are overwhelmingly Alliance-favored due to strong Alliance racials. Regular servers, however, are Horde favored to the point where the Alliance can’t support a competitive raiding scene. The conclusion: Racials are not a good predictor of how the general population rolls characters. Ion is right: social factors do that.
So it might be worth asking why the Horde has such staying power in relation to the Alliance in the first place - because if imbalanced racials can cause a mass exodus to the Horde, but not back to the Alliance, then there’s something more there. Those social factors I feel are evident in the Classic data, and in the interest study.
To say the Trolls have been historically shafted is an understatement. Dazar’alor being a raid didn’t even register as a surprise to me after punking every other major Troll city on the planet (Twice for most of them!). Hell, it was painfully clear that the place was designed to be a raid before a functional player capital like Boralus was. To top it off, we get told it doesn’t matter directly afterwards when Shaw shuts Saurfang down by bringing up Teldrassil during the Baine rescue. Can’t stop there though! Their afterlife is a dungeon that doesn’t even FOCUS on the Trolls or add to their story for any tribe. That’s some next level disrespect. Now we just need a Caverns of Time dungeon to let us relive the end of the Troll Wars and we can truly have it all.
The Trolls have a very uncertain path forward now. While the stories for the Jungle, Sand, and Forest Trolls can definitely continue and be incorporated into a new Troll Empire, Blizz has said that the Drakkari are done multiple times. Zul says it first in Cata and we get further confirmation from Speaker Malaka’raz in BFA when he states his tribe is all but extinct following the events of MoP. Are there still Ice Troll tribes? Sure, but they aren’t the Drakkari. There doesn’t seem much reason to rebuild Zul’drak from that standpoint outside of giving it to the Frostmane, who would have to abandon their current home to the Dwarves.
The Zandalari narrative can play off trying to reclaim ancestral land for Trollkind and vengeance for Rastakhan, but the big question is would that lead to anything meaningful or just another kick as their uprising is squashed per usual.
Do I want a rebuilt Troll Empire regaining its place in the world? You better believe it! I’d love nothing more than for the Trolls to be shown as the power we were told they once were. But I’m also a realist. The Amani are unlikely to be allowed to reclaim Arathi or the Hinterlands. The Gurubashi will never be allowed to actually secure Stranglethorn, much less threaten Stormwind. Jaina and Genn will never be held accountable or punished for Rastakhan (Heck, Jaina had to be REMINDED why Talanji was upset with peace).
At the moment, the Farakki are the only tribe that could potentially move back into their home without too much conflict. The Amani could be given a concession in the Ghostlands and parts of the Plaguelands, but that still leaves the Revantusk flailing aginst the Wildhammer in the Hinterlands. The Gurubashi and remaining Ice Trolls are just hosed.
TLDR: To get the Troll Empire back on its feet, the Alliance would have to concede two zones at the minimum (Hinterlands and/or Arathi and Stranglethorn). That would never fly.
I don’t really let considerations of what we feel Blizzard may do in the future prevent me from suggesting or advocating ideas - especially if I believe that the writers should be replaced and their way of doing things needs to be kicked the curb. The idea that the trolls are doomed to have their expansion put down is one that I just don’t agree with. They probably shouldn’t be allowed to say, spill into Darkshire, but they can absolutely regain territories and prestige.
For Arathi certainly, I see no issue with the Alliance losing that territory. I really don’t think they should have won it it in the first place. I also don’t see a problem with the trolls increasing their position in the Hinterlands. The Eastern Alliance is in a dominant enough position already, and I think it’s about time that someone challenges them in a more serious way.
Those are not fallacies, you have decided to see the story of WoW in one very narrow light you don’t see how the rest of the story has played out for everyone else.
Yes night elves got hit bad, nearly everyone in does sooner or later. It is the nature of the game.
for the most part the racials are fairly balanced, but this was not the case for years. 2) short of making OP racial for the Alliance there is no incentive to transfer back and a disinsentive at the fact the raiding community of the Alliance is an arguable worse position then it has ever been.
Yes they are. It does not follow that just because things are a certain way that they should remain that, or that just because something happened, it was good that it did. That’s a logical fallacy. Mend it, and we’ll talk.
As to the rest, I literally don’t know what to tell you if you’re not going to engage with the data. No conversation is possible if we’re just going to ignore figures and citations.
The big issue is that the humans and dwarves get trampled to make it happen. The die-hard human fans are still frothing at the mouth in their excitement to have reclaimed Stromgarde. I can’t blame them, because I would be the same way if Zul’gurub was reclaimed for the Gurubashi. It almost seems unfair to rip that away after Blizz already gave it back.
Meanwhile, the Hinterlands are the current home of the Wildhammer. Grim Batol is theoretically free to move back into, but that’s still a solid L for the dwarves if they are forced to leave.
Stranglethorn is easier to justify, but I can hear the outcry of an Azshara/Hillsbrad 2.0 where the Horde is given previously contested zones. I would personally offset that by giving up zones like Felwood and Winterspring to the NE and Draenei (This one hurts. I love that place). However, there’s really nothing there the Horde loses in comparison what the Alliance loses in the Hinterlands or Arathi.
I agree with your offset, especially if it includes Ashenvale, but regarding Human players especially - they just got to trample on everyone else in BFA. The Night Elves got to bear the brunt of the most in-your-face beatdown that Blizzard has ever put onscreen. They lost their whole country so that humans could be motivated, and so that they could further be established as the core of the Alliance. Then they got to romp around the globe being the central figures of the Alliance, and beating the Horde on several fronts - which was put onscreen.
At that point, I’m going to say that they were given too much, and need to give some back to the playable communities who were asked to sacrifice for their enjoyment. I think you can do this without humiliating them or tearing them down, but I do think the current situation is manifestly unfair, and in their favor.
As for the Hinterlands - I said that the trolls could expand their presence, but I disagree that this translates into them destroying Aerie Peak. There is a lot of territory in the Hinterlands, and a lot of room to grow out. But the zone barrier is arbitrary.
I am not saying it and of itself is good but I am not going to put my head in the ignore that this has always been Warcraft story to quote Kosak because it still remains relevant to this day:
“In truth, a historical account of the Warcraft universe reads like a war crimes trial. Empires topple, leaders are corrupted, populations are massacred, entire civilizations fall to ruin (often at their peak of power)… Warcraft is a dark place.”
Except your figures and citations are not accurate. Or more precisely Blizzard has that date and they have thus far have confirmed there is a population imbalance and they don’t know what to do with it.