Current lore is quite literally:
Evil Horde Warchief.
Alliance good, so long as we keep Sky Admiral Rogers in her cage (where she belongs) and that Dog on a leash.
Old God shenanigans
and then on to the next expansion. Honestly, I’d like for the stakes to calm down and maybe a focus on lore from minor races like the Gnomes, Goblins, and Fox people.
I’m reminded of the Trekkie who could not understand why Star Trek’s TNG’s episode “Code of Honor” is regarded (correctly in my opinion) as the franchises truly dumpster fire moment while the DS9 episode “Far Beyond The Stars” is considered one of the high water marks of not only the series but the franchise itself. They could not (or were not willing) understand the fundamental differences between an episode that showed the phenomenon of racism in the history of science fiction, and an episode which was simply racist, and not only racist, but racism that had not been seen on the screen since the original King Kong movie.
I mean, I still stand by what I said.
I do not believe that Blizzard should take the Alliance down the route of fascism/racism just so they can be the villain. It’s not original, it’s certainly not creative, it doesn’t create a ‘moral quandry’ where one can look between the lines and see a ‘greater purpose’ to the evil or whether or not it can be justified.
The moment you introduce a fascist/racist character people are just automatically going to hate them and always see them as the bad guy. Not because they have an in-depth story that has caused them to do horrible things, but simply because they’re a fascist/racist.
And on top of that, creating a storyline of that nature would embolden racist/fascists lurking within the WoW community. We don’t need to give them ammo to shoot at PoC and other minority groups that are harassed enough as is.
Alliance is entitled to their hatred of the Horde though.
An evil Alliance leader would be unironically the good guy that Blizzard tries to make us hate but ultimately wont work.
Not that they haven’t done that before. Vancleef being a prime example of a good guy done wrong seeking justice in his own way before the murder hobos kill him.
Both sides have grudges against the other, and not all of them should be just shoved away because the two factions had a little picknick in the Red Queen’s long-neglected backyard.
I don’t think that such a shallow approach needs be taken.
I’d rather the whole hero/villain framework simply be chucked away in favor of antagonist/antagonist.
The seeds are there after all… the Night Elves have not accepted the peace. They aren’t on the Dragon Isles playing kissy face with the Horde. And now Tyrande has had yet another loss.
So far this is the logical place to put this story back to the prover Blue Vs. Red that is the soul of this franchise. With Cross-Faction Guilds running a variety of roles from peacemaker to opportunistic scoundrels looking to profit from both sides.
There is a difference between hating the Horde for what they’ve done and racism.
Compare the two characters, Tyrande Whisperwind and Lord Garithos.
Tyrande Whisperwind hates the Horde for what they did to her home and her people and that is entirely understandable, no one would say about Tyrande that her anger at the Horde is not justified. But she’s not a racist. She doesn’t hate Orcs because they’re Orcs. She doesn’t hate the Forsaken because they’re Forsaken. She hates the Horde because of what they did to her people and her home.
Now look at Garithos. He’s just a racist. Hates Elves because they’re not human, hates Dwarves because they’re not human. He’s not liked by really anyone, even within his own military (the dwarves are rather vocal about their dislike for him when you save them in a mission during Warcraft III). There’s no ‘reason’ for his hatred of non-human races, there’s no justification, he just hates them. He is a character that believes in ‘humanity first’ at the expense of all other non-human races.
The Alliance has fought the Horde multiple times for things they have started.
Garithos’ hatred was illogical racism.
Any new Alliance character that has been alive and involved with the Horde in almost any capacity would have witnessed or talked to people who witnessed Horde’s warcrimes.
So their mistrust and hatred is derived from actions rather than just existence.
BFA even proved Daelin the racist big bad of WC3 to actually have a point. Jaina’s warbringer was vindicating her father’s mistrust of the Horde as wisdom rather than baseless hatred.
Any Alliance warmonger would be ex-victim turned villain because of Horde’s actions.
The only way to make him/her truly evil is to have them also turn on Alliance races who had done him/her no wrong.
And again, since apparently this was missed.
There is a difference between being angry at the horde for what they’ve done and being racist.
I am not saying that no one within the Alliance should be angry at the Horde for what they’ve done. That they shouldn’t hate the Horde for what they’ve done. I am not arguing against that. They should be angry, they have more than enough reasons to be.
What I am arguing against is this idea that the Alliance has to go down the racism/fascism route to be the villain. They don’t. There are plenty of ways for them to be villains without needing to go that way.
Most people that argue for the racist/fascist Alliance are generally arguing that for the virtue of hating the Horde is racist.
Because logically since not every single living person in the Horde is responsible so it should be impossible to hate a group.
Of course this is ridiculous because thats not how people think and its a very naive idealistic way of looking at the world.
By the same token the Horde is extremely racist/fascist because they paint the entire Alliance as this single entity that hates them and won’t tolerate them when thats impossible to say about every single Alliance member.
Anyway the point is both sides are entitled to their prejudices but for those that are suggesting that the Alliance should become racist fascists for hating the Horde as the next villain bat… they would be wrong.
This is not really possible to do unless this new villain also targets Alliance races as well as Horde races.
In short in a way I am not arguing against you.
The idea wouldn’t narratively work whether anyone though it was a good idea or not.
It just would not work.
To be completely honest here, it does kind of imply some level of intense, uncomfortable levels of obsession when you have lore characters like Lor’themar say that the Horde exists because of the Alliance. When he was personally alive during the time that the Alliance was formed to counter the aggression of the Orcs from Draenor, meaning he explicitly knows history and his own life says the opposite.
I don’t think that’s a sensible excuse. Kul Tiras for example was basically reinvented for WoW, they could have chosen any design cues they wanted for it. What did they do? Britain. Again. Same for Gilneas. Hell if they’re so insistent it has to be a European influence they could have at least chosen a different European country.
It would have made way more sense for Kul Tiras for example to be Spanish influenced given the Zandalari are clearly influenced by Aztecs.
I can think of a few reasons why that would have been totally inappropriate.
I’m not sure it’s any more inappropriate than making them British. It’s not as if Britain historically had a spotless record with indigenous American cultures either. They even had a weird backstory where the native Drust try to kick the Kul Tiran settlers off their land and painted it as if the Drust were the bad guys so pretty sure anything goes at that point.
Yeah like Zandalar is heavily West/Central African with strong Caribbean elements (eg Voodoo as a whole) alongside South Amerindian elements (Maya, Inca, Nahua), which was already brutally colonized by the British Empire, whose Regency Period is the main basis of Kul Tiras. The Zandalar accent is based on Xhosa like lmao
So whatever pretense of “inappropriate” would exist with a greater Spanish basis is already met given the reality of British Imperial history in Africa.
Not even gonna check who liked Tamred’s range-less post, but undoubtedly it’s one of the recurring Alliance mains
You literally had all of WoD and Legion for yourself. Draenei are doing fine. Darkspear trolls and Tauren however where never the focus of any major plot.
I actually got my hopes up that the Alliance would go conquistador on Zandalar at one point merely so they would actually do something less-than-morally-stark-white under the rule of His Most Perfect Holiness The Lord Anduin Christ.
What? I just meant that throwing Spanish imagery against Aztec imagery would be probably raise some flags.
And what does that have to do with Alliance mains? I’m confused.
It’s already British Imperial imagery against African and Caribbean imagery so the flags have been red for a very long time
I don’t disagree at all.
Then adding tomatoes to a tomato sauce does not alter the flavor nor the color, merely another layer of texture maintaining an already present flavor and color