You vastly overestimate the amount of people who play for the story. 90+% of the raiding community is on Horde side, the Alliance is trailing behind massively. If there’s one thing the Horde can’t complain, it is it’s playerbase pool and how Blizzard has catered to them gameplay-wise.
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I have tinfoil hat theory that all the bull that’s been happening to the Horde is intentional - to fix the faction imbalance and make people switch to Ally. All the dead lore characters? The horribly designed faction hub? All intentional.
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So, two things here.
First, I think you’re conflating “top raiding guilds” with “the entire raiding community”. Raiding guilds exist on the Alliance, and there are definitely raiding-focused Alliance guilds all over the place. Blue Team is trailing behind in the world first races, but they aren’t so drastically behind in population as you suggest.
Second, we have actual evidence of significant drop-offs due to story. MoP saw staggering numbers of players quitting the game from both faction, and the most common reason wasn’t raiding. ToT was very well received, but the sub losses remained. In fact, raiding tends to be an area Blizzard gets right more often than wrong, but up until they stopped publishing numbers, losses were a constant.
I’d wager bad storytelling or story decisions are just as responsible, if not moreso, than anything else.
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Really doesn’t make sense when Blizzard is aware that the faction imbalance is for high end content and most of those really don’t care about lore, but just being where the good players are at so they can have better shots at completing high end stuff.
I am joking. Tbh I think they should just let factions raid together already. Give everyone the ability to speak common, it’s lore-accurate. And if anyone wants to rp Human McPaladin the orc slayer, they still can, WPvP would still be there.
I can only speak from personal experience regarding this. But since Legion, I’ve had 2 guilds fall apart and crumble, because they couldn’t recruit enough people Alliance side to support Mythic Raiding, there just wasn’t enough applicants in our Server group.
In both instances, the members that stayed together but switched the Horde have had successful raiding guilds because the applicant pool is damn near limitless in comparison.
So, it might not be dramatically behind like you said, but from personal experience tell me, I continue to play this Alliance character to my own detriment if I wanted to do any kind of high end organized content.
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It has a domino effect. It is way, way easier to find a decent raiding / mythic + guild on Horde side than it is on Alliance side. That’s irrelevant for this forum however, I just wanted to point out that saying the current story will push away from the Horde in massive numbers is a silly thing to say.
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Yeah, I agree that Blizz treating the Horde as their guilt-bag won’t cause people to switch from Red to Blue. I mean, I don’t do anything remotely competitive, yet here I am, still on Team Horde.
But as the sub numbers suggest, the story beats can and have caused people to choose other games rather than stay around just to raid. We saw it back when Blizzard wasn’t afraid to show their sub number drops. Anecdotally, all of my old timey friends from Hordeside who quit didn’t do so out of anything raid related. It was the story, the game that exists outside of your weekly lock-out.
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Just as many Alliance players quit. Really need to stop the victim complex as if the Horde are the only ones that have it bad here, most Alliance players are pretty frustrated with the story as well, for different reasons.
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… Wow. That’s an interesting takeaway. Here I thought we were going to be civil, but okay.
So to start, I’m not saying only Horde quit over bad storytelling. You’re choosing to interpret it that way to justify your own need to feel victimized. Both sides got the crap end of the stick, and the only people denying it are the ones trying to feel especially targeted.
Now, had this all started off as a discussion about why it sucks to be Alliance? I’d’ve been just as antagonistic defending y’all. Because it sure does suck being the narrative equivalent of the nerdy awkward kid in a high school full of bullies (the Horde in this case are the bullies) ripped straight out of some B-movie. I’d’ve 100% been behind that stopping. My post history shows this. I hate that crap as much as I hate the crap spewed on to the Horde.
But it didn’t start as that. It started as someone saying the Horde should just take more crap, because Tyrande needs it. She just needs to abuse us, or else she’ll go full sociopath. Which, I mean, she wouldn’t, but okay. So if it seems like I’m “playing the victim” when I’m talking about what a bad idea that is? Well, frankly, that’s also on you. Because just as you’re not obligated to refuse to stand against bad narrative decisions affecting your faction, I’m not obligated to cater to some small group of Alliance players who need my side diminished to fulfill their own power fantasies.
In short; no u
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the alliance wanted the burning to happen so they could have a purpose in life.
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Sorry if that sounded harsh but this forum is chock full of Horde players victimizing themselves worse than Night Elf posters at the peak of the Teldrassil Saga. Wasn’t my intention.
Narratively it would be weird if the Horde had 0 consequences for what they pulled in BfA. I get that it sucks for players but Blizzard made their bed with their trainwreck of a story so now they get to lie in it. The opposite would immensely suck for the Alliance, but I guess we’re used to it. (See : Alliance “winning” SoO having 0 impact on anything).
I think most Alliance players just want some kind of retribution, something that we never get because “vengeance bad” yet the Horde always gets away with saying “I’m sorry, pwease let’s be friends” after committing genocide for the 37th time. Obviously that’s not going to happen and frankly Tyrande being pissed at Horde players is extremely minor and wouldn’t make any sense if she wasn’t.
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And as myself and others have started on and on again, there’s a simple solution; Vol’jin story for Horde, Tyrande story for Alliance. Hell, nothing about either one has felt particularly “Night Fae” oriented thus far.
And while I’m sure it feels minor and insignificant to you, because you don’t have to deal with it, it sure does bother some of us. Because it’s Tyrande now. It’ll be other Alliance characters when we work with them, except for Malfurion for no reason at all. Unless it’s Malf, if we work with an Alliance-centric character, it’s yet another reminder that we suck and it sucks that we spread our suck to others.
And yet when Malfurion wants the help of a cute-as-heck blood elf hunter? Not a single cross word from him. He likes me. Pretty sure he’s looking for a blonde side-piece, given he never mentioned what my side was doing in northern Darkshore and all of Ashenvale and Stonetalon when he wanted my help in Hyjal. He also conveniently forgot about everything after that when he saw my big green eyes in Val’sharah. Theramore? Old news, not interested, hey wanna mount up and ride me (In the G-rated sense, but I see where you’re going with this Malf) and sneak off to a secluded grove? Don’t tell Tyrande, she’ll be mad at you later if this gets out.
… None of that’s relevant to the point at hand really, just felt like talking about how Malfurion really doesn’t seem to give a crap about what the Horde did ever.
Ahem.
Anyway.
Without choosing to punish one player faction for the sins of the devs, the best way to handle the issues between the factions is in a book. Preferably one written by a talented writer. Because it all needs to be addressed, reparations need to be made. But making half the playerbase pay those reparations is just petty bullcrap from a small subsection of players who take this HvA crap way too seriously IRL.
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Then, and I don’t entirely mean to be a dick, but why are you on a forum for lore discussions?
Meh, it’s a fair question and I probably deserve it anyway. Habit, some venting, and I don’t mind the non-faction-related stuff too much. Other reasons too that probably aren’t appropriate to share. However pathetic you probably think I am, I could easily double it.
Edit: That last line came out weird. I didn’t mean to say I think of you that way.
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You can always tell when Treng is losing an argument when he stops arguing and starts posting argument fallacy youtube videos that he, himself, doesn’t entirely understand, or has any ability to recognize.
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Well… Ysera was the Dragon in the room and Tyrande two expansions prior, had been the lead figure in killing her after Xavius had corrupted her with the Tears of Elune, so it’s not like there’s no reason for her to be thinking along that line.
That particular ship sailed long ago. Tyrande’s always had a shrew in her that she lets out if things even go slightly south on her.
She’s terrible at management. She let Maiev’s Wardens get so distant from her that she had to kill them all to release Illidan. (Fortunately Maiev has this skill of getting replacements every time a major lore figure like Tyrande or Ilidan kills her current batch off.)
After all, there’s a poor raptor out there in the world, cursed thousands of years ago by Tyrande to be an immortal skeleton until it apologises for some insult it made! (Skeletal Raptor mount obtained by archeology, read the texts on your mounts in the mount panel sometime there are real doozies in there.)
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When does the Horde ever get retribution?
Genn got off scott free for Stormheim
Jaina got off scott free for Taraujo and Dalaran
And we’ve had to work with both of them to some degree since, with zero ability to call them out on anything they’ve done.
Why do Alliance posters they deserve more on this at the horde player’s expense, when they’ve gotten far more than the horde has ever had for any time they’ve been wronged?
Hard to call out someone on something when your faction is guilty of crimes objectively 1000 times worse, huh?
Also unironically doing the “But muh Taurajo” meme. Lol. The plaguing of Southshore in the very same expansion was ten times worse than Taurajo.
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