And the Horde attacked an Alliance position from behind in Icecrown before that. And there were skirmishes all the way back to Vanilla.
The war started proper in Cata when Garrosh decided he was going to take Kalimdor for the Horde and no more peace talks.
Garrosh was behind the Cata war and Sylvanas was VERY clearly behind the BfA war. Honestly, there is no debating that. It has been made clear many times, in game and by Blizzard interviews. And they had a very clear story reason for both being the case. Garrosh was being setup to walk Grom’s path. It was not remotely subtle even in Wrath. Cata was supposed to be the Horde reconning with their past and rejecting Garrosh path, they even talked about it back in the day. And Sylvanas story makes it clear why they intended her to start a war to finish her arc. NONE of it had anything to do with shoehorning away Alliance fault.
In fact, most of Cata and large parts of MoP it was VERY, VERY clearly the Alliance being an afterthought and just being fit in where they could around a Horde story. The wars being Horde instigated had NOTHING to do with them trying to avoid Alliance fault.
It is honestly a bit frustrating for someone that played the multiple expansions where the Alliance was a punching bag in order to tell a Horde story and now have people say ‘Blizzard was just protecting the Alliance.’
Not going to relitigate the purge, it has been done to death. But I do want to point out:
Your answer is basically: ‘Yah, they called her out for it, but not the way I wanted.’
And later Blizzard had Jaina ousted so the Horde could return to Dalaran.
Varian declared war after the retaking of Undercity, before the assault on ICC.
Both sides attacked each other pretty much at the same time.
And the point isn’t to argue things in the world of the story, but how you’re wrong to say the writers don’t run interference for the Alliance. Varian declared war in Wrath, that gets canceled so the war the follows can be the horde’s fault. Genn Greymane does something he should know would start a war, and that gets whitewashed away.
No, my point is she’s not being punished or called out for committing an atrocity, she gets a talking to about messing up Varian’s negotiation. Not a punishement at all.
And he still didn’t attack the Horde. Clearly peace talks worked because the Horde attacked from the back while they were both supposed to be fighting the Scourge. The Alliance was not acting on any war state.
And it should be noted that that ‘war declaration’ followed an attack by Horde forces on the Alliance.
Word from Blizzard is no. Garrosh started it.
They absolutely don’t. The Alliance got turned into a punching bag over 3 different expacs in order to tell a Horde story.
It started with confronting. Then it moved to, well not the way I wanted. Now it is not punished.
Well, Jaina lost her position in Dalaran over it. So, yes she got punished.
Let me guess, now you are going to move it to ‘not punished enough for you.’
Again. Blizzard used the Alliance as a punching bag and gave the Alliance less content over multiple expansions. All in the service of telling Horde stories. It doesn’t matter if you liked those stories or not. The fact remains Blizzard choose to tell Horde stories at the cost of the Alliance. That is NOT running interference for the Alliance. That is not protecting the Alliance.
One of my favorite little interactions in Wrath was Orgrimmar’s jousting champion discussing Varian’s declaration of war with Paletress. Walking it back just so the Horde’s warmonger could make it instead was truly shameless.
I agree it would be very hard to do in an MMO, if it’s possible.
There’s always going to be people who refuse to accept what’s right. In those cases, the refusal says more about them than what they’re refusing. In the case of a story from a franchise being consumed by the public, as long as the story is good, people will tolerate a lot.
I wasn’t suggesting Kil’jaeden was redeemed, just that he had some capacity for remorse. While he wasn’t the Satan of the Warcraft universe - that would be more Sargeras - he had several traits of the devil, including being a demon. Kil’jaeden was corrupted willingly, he chose to serve Sargeras.
He absolutely did die a villain and evil, I was saying compared to Gul’dan or other villains, he actually showed some remorse, even though it was only toward Velen.
That makes sense. I was speculating. Blizzard needs to be more consistent about power levels. They way things are, they could make a story where a random murloc beats Sargeras with one hand and an Old God with the other and expect us to accept that.
True! I particularly like that middle line; “Lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack.”
Good point, I’ll have to find that data I saw.
Awhile back I used a news media bias website to determine the bias of outlets. The site listed news outlets and put them on a seven-tiered scale for bias ranging from far-left to far-right. For categorization, I grouped “Left-leaning” and “right-leaning” as left-wing and right-wing. Centrist was its own category. Then I counted how many outlets fit the bill. From that I got these results;
The majority of newsletters are centrist.
The majority of news websites are right-wing.
The majority of TV news, newspapers and radio news is left-wing.
I’ll have to do some digging to get the links, this was awhile back.
Do you know the difference between a political group and a racial group?
I played through both sides of the campaign and story. I am guessing the ‘different game’ I played then you was when I played the Alliance campaign.
Cata and MoP were VERY much a Horde story. It was Garrosh going down the Grom route and the Horde rebelling. BfA was a Sylvanas story leading to Shadowlands.
In Cata there were multiple zones that were just cut and paste from old quests or from Horde quests. Thousand needles famously had to be fixed because it was released with the Horde quest text on it. Much of the Alliance content was just straight cut because they spent all their time on the Horde.
Follow the Jade Forest questing and it becomes clear that it was put in after and around what they story boarded for the Horde. Heck, the last patch was entirely Horde story where the Alliance used a robot cat. They even released more specifically Horde scenarios.
And BfA was VERY much Horde story and content done first and Alliance fit in around it. I even remember getting into the beta where the Horde content was basically release ready while the Alliance didn’t even have the main quest chain done and buildings were still floating in Boralas.
I am guessing that was the game you didn’t play. Because ALL three expansions were designed around the Horde story they were telling and the Alliance fit in around it. Which is why so much of it was the Alliance just being a punching bag for the Horde and not driving any of the story.
So, your frustrations with the Horde story are fair. There were a plethora of issues. However, they were NOT a by product of them being protective of the Alliance. Because they just weren’t. The Alliance got pretty bad treatment through all that.
It is important to remember that Demons in WoW are really nothing like biblical demons. They have different origins, different traits, different goals. The same name is used, but that is it. And WoW is far from the only game to do that. As an example, DnD uses demons and devils as separate things from separate planes who actually oppose each other. That is also true of many other properties and even other RL religions. Hindu and Buddhism have demons that are very different. You can’t really compare them. And you can’t really apply the same rules.
And that was in line with his history. He had a small spark of remorse, but he was overall still bad.
Probably should be, and in some places provide more clarity. But, the nature of a soft magic system is that power levels are just whatever the writers need. Having WoW be a hard, or just harder, magic system would be hard though. Given the nature of an MMO with growing player power, lots of different stories, tons of people involved, etc. I think a hard magic system would be near impossible to do without tons of errors.
It can be interesting to see.
When you look into that you should also consider distribution/size.
For example, a hypothetical possible situation: (Hypothetical because I don’t know the actual numbers and just picked a way to present an example.)
You might find more total number of outlets leaning left. But the distribution and scope of the right side are much larger. Meaning more people are actually being reported to by the right.
Then you also have to consider areas. Maybe there is more distribution of one side in most areas. But some areas only have access to the other side.
No she didn’t. I mean, when she admitted she tried to genocide the orcs multiple times they refused to let her step down so they could make her their leader. She only lost her position in Legion when she threw a hissy fit.
Wait, you mean in the expansion where they were fixing the fact that up until that point the Vanilla zones and experience were massively lopsided towards the Alliance in amount of content that they made sure to get the Horde done first, and like what happened to the Horde in Vanilla, they ran out of time doing the Alliance. Oh no.
No.
BFA was an Alliance story with the Horde turned into the villain that must be vanquished. And I note that the only time you can point out how the game is “centered” around the horde is faction conflict expansions, and you neglect that there is alliance related content in those expansions. Unlike many of the cosmic threat expansions like Shadowlands and Legion where the horde is an afterthought if they even appear at all.
You know it is weird seeing an Australian say this… as an Australian myself. None of our news media are truly left wing. Channel Nine had a former Liberal (conservative) MP as its chairman, Channel Seven is owned by a high profile donor to the Liberal party. News Corp is owned by the Murdochs, who started their media empire in Australia. The ABC & SBS suck up to whichever government is in power and even then, with former Sky News hosts like David Speers spreading their think tank poison, the ABC is turning more right wing.
If you want a true independent or left wing news source you have Michael West, a comedian [Jordan Shanks] and a group of teenagers with actual journalistic integrity [6 News Australia].
As for America it is probably the same. Given you have groups like News Corp, Sinclair and other cable news networks that ultimately care about their bottom line then whatever “message” they want to spread.
First, I played Vanilla. I had loremaster on BOTH sides. IF there was an actual discrepancy it was small.
Second, even if it was true that there was a significant difference (again see first point, it wasn’t) reversing it and then some is not a good solution.
And finally, and most importantly: The problem was not Blizzard trying to balance things. Their was less Alliance content because they ran out of time. They story boarded and designed the Horde story first. They worked on Horde content first. Then they went in filling in Alliance after the fact trying to fit them where they could. And when they ran out of time they just cut and pasted old vanilla quest and Horde quests so the Alliance would have something to do. And they just straight up cut a bunch of Alliance content they didn’t have time for. It wasn’t a question of ‘balancing content.’ It was they were telling a Horde story and had to try and fit the Alliance story around it, with less time.
That alone tells you the overarcing story was, by definition, a Horde story.
First, it should be noted that the Horde playing a more villainess role doesn’t exclude if from being a Horde story.
Because every other time it is centered around a 3rd party and BOTH Horde and Alliance are just fit in around that story.
And here you lose ALL credibility. Do you really think that Sylvanas roll in Shadowlands was an “afterthought?”
Outside of the main story (which was dominated by Sylvanas) both factions were mostly irrelevant. Both had some story development, but neither was driving the narrative. Sure, there was night elf story in Ardeanweald. But there was also Tauren history and Troll loa featured heavily. The Forsaken were heavily connected to Maldraxxas and the Jailor. Both factions largely just had little tidbits.
And Legion was dominated by elves that joined the Horde. Not to mention the zone dominated by Tauren. To pretend the Horde was anymore an afterthought than the Alliance in the expac is disingenuous at best.
I think your problem is that you only played or at least only really paid attention to the Horde side. And when you compare 3rd party expacs to Horde dominated expacs like Cata/MoP/BfA it feels like the Horde is more an afterthought. And then you assume the Alliance is not.
Until the patch that added Maurodon the horde had a patch of a few levels in the 40s where they HAD to grind mobs to level up because there were no quest or dungeons available.
Look at the difference between the most epic chain of quests in Vanilla that was the Alliance Onyxia chain vs playing tag with Rexxar and fetch quests.
Alliance had more zones in the leveling chain, that’s just math.
Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms pre cata requirements:
Alliance: 700 quests
Horde: 550 quests
That’s 150 less quests in just one continent.
Kalimdor is 685 for horde, 700 for alliance.
Nope.
a mindless villain to a story that didn’t need to happen and didn’t make sense makes it not a horde story, they’re just a victim to it.
I mean, you’re the one saying Sylvanas is repping the horde here as opposed to someone stuck sitting sadly in Oribos or throwing an axe. As opposed to all the story about Tyrande and Anduin who are still wanted by their faction and haven’t actually left them already.
Even on the continent where 3/4 of the OG horde races were on, they don’t even have the majority. That’s ridiculous lol.
If they actually believed this, the hardcore alliance stans wouldn’t be so angry about the idea of being villain batted if the AU Xe’ra story thread ever continues.
Yeah but in WC3 you knew Thrall was a good guy like 5 seconds in to the first mission. And I guess Arthas was a fair point, but it built him up over time, it wasn’t like he was a good guy paladin in the first mission and an evil DK in the next, you see him go from impatience, to frustration, to anger, to zealotry, to the culling, until finally his fall over the entire campaign. Him returning as a DK and killing his father was not a twist.
Loremaster did not equate to all quests that existed.
And there were ‘neutral’ quests in and around Ratchet that were not part of it, but still heavily leaned Horde story wise.
And if we look at Burning crusade loremaster.
568 for the Alliance
595 for the Horde.
And if we are comparing numbers, we should probably talk about how there was more Blood elf story content in raids and dungeons than Alliance. Etc, etc.
It just doesn’t work to claim they were somehow balancing the scales. They weren’t. And it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway. Or, do you think that since Cata and after the imbalance in Horde favor has been around now longer than Vanilla we need to balance the scales with a new revamp that favors the Alliance that will stick around for another 15-20 years?
The reason the Alliance got things like the cut and paste from Vanilla and Horde stories was because they didn’t have a plan for the Alliance and they ran out of time because they did the Horde first. Because it was a Horde story they were trying to tell.
And that brings us back to:
Cata, MoP, and BfA were all situations of the Horde story created first. Which means they were not ‘shielding the Alliance.’ And we know that because in ALL of those expacs the Alliance got less content, less story, and spent more time as a punching bag. Which clearly shows they were not protecting the Alliance.
Not liking the story doesn’t mean it wasn’t a Horde story.
Again, you have reasons to complain about the Horde stories. There were real problems with them. But they were STILL Horde stories.
And again, we are back to you claiming the wrong reason for them being bad. They were not bad because they were protecting the Alliance. They weren’t. The Alliance got a pretty raw end of the stick as well.
This highlights a clear bias.
You complain that Alliance characters do not get confronted and/or punished for wrong actions. Then Tyrande’s arc in Shadowlands is basically her being bad (revenge obsession), people calling her out for it and doing everything they can to stop her. With her ending up on her knees basically crying while Sylvanas smirks and leaves. Tyrande got called out, confronted and left broken. And you think that is also Alliance favoring. You can’t have it both ways.
Again, I am going to reiterate this point:
You are not wrong to dislike the Horde story in those expacs. I agree there was a lot bad about them.
You are however, wrong to say the bad story aspects were somehow a consequence of them trying to ‘protect the Alliance.’
Also, look at the number of the awesome hidden quests that were in the world, there was a great thread in the old forums for them, Sully Balloo the dwarf corpse under the bridge at the north exit of wetlands that led to a chain that goes up to Magni, the missing diplomat etc etc, They were all alliance, there weren’t any neat hidden horde quests.
Where were the RP scenes in Orgrimmar like how you’d have guards stop by one of the bars and have a conversation, or the kids running around playing.
There hasn’t been that outside of the cata expansion content. And even the Vanilla imbalance was just an artifact of them not knowing how long things would take and realizing they needed to hurry up and release and they couldn’t spend as much time as they did on stuff like Stormwind with the rest of the content.
an Alliance story.
What game did you play? Seriously?
Tyrande’s arc was yes about not letting revenge consume you, but it was not people “calling her out” it was people pulling out all the stops to save her from the fate that she had agreed to and managing to do that.
And Sylvanas slunk off with a snarky comment after coming within moments of having her head popped off. What is it with alliance partisans finding a way to turn a victory into a shameful defeat?