This is the crux of the issue. Horde players and Alliance players have different stakes in different things. If you.read through the whole thread, Kyalin addresses that point.
You’re wasting your energy getting your info from bad actors.
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Yeah, the storyline and lack of morality aside, it doesn’t seem like a strong horde moment anyway. I thought it was barely a military victory and an extremely Pyrrhic one at that, given that a night elven civilian militia effectively fought off…what, 5 horde races at once that were attempting a blitzkrieg? The inverse would be like having horde peons halt a combined alliance offensive that were all condensed into a single zone. It sounds absurd.
But absurdity was BFA’s M.O. anyway so meh.
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That town was off putting alliance side because it makes so little sense for them to being doing that after they just burnt down a tree full of innocents
I’m like you though, I’m dumbfounded where this supposedly powerful horde was during WoT or BfA in general.
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Well then she can’t claim that Horde got a W when Hordeposters don’t feel like they did. She keeps talking about how the Horde was shown to be powerful, but when people who actually care about the factions development disagree, is it a fair statement?
Again, I am biased, but I got such a “dumb stormtroopers” vibe from horde mobs when doing the Brennadam quests.
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Me too. It was one of those Really dude? moments
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Again you didn’t enjoy it and thats fair to say. But it doesn’t magically make it not a massive win over the Night Elves. The Horde was shown to be powerful just you didn’t enjoy the show anymore than we did.
That’s why the OP has been advocating that both sides get the fixes they need to make their half of the game enjoyable again.
Because I base all my opinions of the War of Thorns on the short stories, I’d say there. A Good War showed (imo) a very successful Horde successfully tricking the Alliance to weaken their stomach and then tearing through Ashenvale as quickly as possible.
But those short stories also showed a very successful night elf push back where they knew they were going to lose but still forced the Horde to bleed all the way to Teldrassil.
But people ignore these because they took place in a book, regardless of how well they did given the circumstances the night elves still lost and therefore the entire thing was just them getting bent, and despite their successful invasion, because it ended with the Burning and the nice swing of the villain bat the entire thing becomes pointless because the Horde was just complicit in an atrocity, again.
But then BfA proper came out and the Horde just spent every patch getting rekt’d so I yeah if you haven’t read the short stories I don’t know what you could possibly be looking at.
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It wasn’t even a massive win tho! The tree ruined the original plan and they lost UC because of it.
They won the battle, I give you that, but it wasn’t effortless and it wasn’t shown to even be a good thing for the Horde in the end.
P.S. yes, I am in favor of both sides getting something nice. I’m just arguing that “powerful horde on-screen” isn’t an objective fact.
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I don’t know how any reasonable person can look at the horde in game and go Yeah, that was such a fist pumping powerful win for the horde. Both sides do deserve something nice, just not at the expense of the other side as we seen suggested several times over these last 2+ yrs.
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When?
When they planned the WoT and talked about how they couldn’t win if both Night Elf leaders were present?
When they killed civilians and city guards?
When they ran head first into wisp walls?
When they were stalled several times by those same civilians and city guards?
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It’s also funny because those same people saying the WoT was such a “massive win” for the Horde turn around and say that the SoL wasn’t a win for the Alliance.
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Until there is a schism in the Cenarion Circle along faction lines, Mafurion will be stuck with that fate. Unless he resigns as Archdruid and then someone else will be put in the same part time neutral position. Unless that person is like, an Arakkoa or a Murloc. 
( Or the Horde gets some kind of equivalent. Which would be necessary as the story would otherwise likely default them to “also druids… but evil” )
Back to the point of this topic.
No.
Alliance characters are already WAY ahead of ANYTHING the Horde currently has. The moment you power up Tyrande further that scale will tip even further in favor of Alliance. Then to arbitrarily hold it back will just upset Night Elf and by extension Alliance fans. This is how the writers operate, give the Alliance the more powerful characters that aren’t allowed to die but make them incredibly inept or flat out stupid.
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Welcome to a two faction game where no one is ever truely allowed to win. This is the reason I despise the faction war being front and center, it worked better when it was just a background thing to justify tensions between horde and alliance
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I’m going to respond to you because the others appear to be reading from a stock-answer script, are failing to address already known answers to their concerns (including those that exist already in this thread), and are generally being unreasonable.
There are three moments in Elegy and a Good War that show the skeleton force, a force that was outnumbered eight to one - nearly pushing back the Horde offensive.
The first is at the Farfallen River, where we see the Night Elves “Hindenburging” the Horde every time they try to cross the river. For the Horde this is a mass casualty event that only ends because of Sylvanas’s direct intervention.
This event was not depicted in a questline, in official art, or in a cinematic.
The second is Astraanar, where the Night Elves successfully trap the Horde on an island and summarily begin to slaughter them. Delaryn is noted as assuming that this was the functional end of the Horde offensive. She’d be enjoying wine with her (unknown to her: dead) druidic mate when this was all over. Sylvanas’s personal intervention ended that too.
This event was not depicted in a questline or in a cinematic. The one piece of official art surrounding it is from the novel itself, showing Malfurion advancing on Saurfang. The elements that I just described however, were not depicted.
The third was the wisp wall between Ashenvale and Darkshore - and it wasn’t just the wisp wall. Night Elf ships were off of the coast, equipped with cannons. They were bombarding the Horde formations, and the army was getting close to being able to land.
The quests depicted the wisp wall, they did depict a foolhardy battalion of Orcs charging through it to establish why it was a concern and what it could do - but they did not depict the ships, nor did they convey Saurfang’s expectation that this development could be the end of their offensive.
What DID the quests, the art, and the cinematics depict? They mostly depicted Darkshore, which is well after the Horde broke through the Night Elves’ lines of defense and when the Night Elves’ defense was crumbling. In short, they picked the worst possible moment in the campaign for the Night Elves, and showered that moment in questing content, in officially commissioned art, and two cinematics.
I understand that you derive your understanding from the novellas, but most people who engage with the franchise don’t know what you and I know. They don’t read those. Further, among those who do read those - that information does not typically survive the process of cognitive dissonance that arises when visuals contradict the text. As Lindsay Ellis once put it: “Framing and Aesthetics supersede the rest of the text. Always. Always. Always.”
The event was framed as a tragedy, it being a tragedy because the big evil Horde (and we’ll get to that) was crushing the poor defenseless Night Elves. That’s what Blizzard wanted to convey. That was the point of all that commissioned art. That’s why Warbringers: Sylvanas doesn’t concentrate on the stiff defense that Delaryn Summermoon threw up in response to an attack that she had no hope of defeating. It instead focuses on her last moments, her despair, and her disbelief that anyone would exhibit the level of hatred that she calls out in the cinematic.
I appreciate that this is not how most Horde fans wanted to defeat their faction rival, but they successfully turned an entire playable race into their victims. That is a definitive, undeniable win, even if it is not a fistpumping moment. Further, once again, Blizzard mostly hid the pyrrhic elements of it - most people didn’t see them, and again, for those that did, they largely did not survive the process of cognitive dissonance.
Do I agree that something needs to be done about the Horde’s relatedness issues? Yes. They never should have been slotted into the role of the expansion villain, but when we go to address what has to be done for the Night Elves, to establish them as a threat again within the context of the faction rivalry, the fact that the Horde feels bad about its crushing victory of them does not matter. What does matter is that the Night Elves feel extremely weak, and feel as though they don’t have a place in this rivalry. That is what I am aiming to change.
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Like I said, I personally don’t even consider the in game events. They aren’t in game anymore, and were told far better in the novellas anyway.
And because of that, I again state that because the night elves lost (which was the forgone conclusion), it leads to the whole, not actually taking into consideration what they did accomplish and instead just paint the entire thing as them being the victims woe is us.
Don’t get me wrong, they were the victims here. No doubt about that. They were invaded and lost after all. And you do have a point of the night elves constantly getting worfed. They get worfed a lot, and often.
But in this case, they showed that despite being on the backfoot hard, they were not weak victims to be trifled with. If they were going to reach Teldrassil, the Horde would have to do so on a pile of their own corpses. This to me is far better than just arbitarily filling Tyrande with Goddess Juice and then just saying “I’m the gun, be nice or else.”
If the night elves need to be established as a threat in this rivalry, they have to do so the same way the Forsaken would have to do so; as part of the overall Alliance. They can’t just be the single strongest force on Kalimdor.
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Most of your post I feel I have addressed already. I do want to answer your last paragraph, however.
As I have stated previously - I don’t believe that the Night Elves should just have their way with the Horde. I feel that their redemptive content should end at Ashenvale’s natural borders. They should not be able to keep territory in Azshara, the Barrens, or the Stonetalon Mountains - there are strong geopolitical barriers there, and the Western Horde needs to give off the impression that they’re capable of holding those borders.
What I don’t feel I’ve conveyed well enough is that I’m also fine with the Night Elves receiving help. I hold what I call a “four pole” model - one that establishes the two factions as being comprised of the four subfactions that we inherited from Warcraft 3. I believe that these “poles” are not to be removed. That is to say - the Forsaken and their Allies should have a strong position in Lordaeron. The NIght Elves and their Allies should have a strong position in Northern Kalimdor. The Orcs and their Allies should have a strong position in central and Southern Kalimdor. The Humans and their Allies should have a strong position in the southern EK, and parts of the central. These poles may conflict - and that is where we should have content around battlegrounds - but I think we’re getting into bad territory for the faction rivalry when we start removing them. But that is what BFA attempted, initially, to do.
As for the Night Elves allies’, they should be able to count on the Draenei and the Worgen to assist in holding up their “pole”, and a pushback opens the door for more content for those playable races as well. They should have also been involved in the War of the Thorns, frankly, but we can at least correct that issue here.
That being said - and this is somewhat of a tangent - yes, I do feel somewhat uncomfortable lumping the Worgen in on that. Worgen players are rightfully pissed off that Blizzard introduced and summarily abandoned them. I can’t say that they should be satisfied with being made to fight for territory on the opposite continent from the one that they were told to invest in. So it’s possible that we may have to pull the Worgen back, and set them against the Forsaken - which, yes, would involve the Forsaken and the Blood Elves holding back the Eastern Alliance, and the Worgen. I believe they should be capable of doing that, just as I believe the Night Elves and Draenei should be able to hold down their position in Kalimdor.
Edit: @ Micah - I get that you probably don’t like me, but I would appreciate your thoughts regarding Worgen. The few instances that I’ve been able to read about your take on what should be done with them were interesting to me. I want to see if I have described your position correctly, or if I’m wrong in asserting that you probably wouldn’t be happy with being asked to fight for Kalimdor.
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I like you as a person, I just disagree very strongly with some of your opinions. Please don’t take what I say as a personal attack on you, and I apologize if it sometimes come off that way.
As for the worgen fighting for Kalimdor? They been staunch allies of the kaldorei for years now and I said this numerous times already, the worgen should help the kaldorei defend the lands they own while also looking for home to call their own since most seem to have given up any notion of wanting to take back gilneas( since gilneas has been stated to have abandoned by this point lore wise).
My issue with the whole WoT though boils down to this, everyone forgets the worgen were victims just as much as the kaldorei were, but we worgen players don’t get to have any satisfactory revenge for loosing TWO homes to sylvanas. And again I apologize if I come off more hostile than intended. It’s just been 10+ yrs of worgen issues being ignored or brushed off.
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No worries, Micah - and I’m glad to see that we do have some common ground. I also hear you on your problems being unresolved for ten years because I see myself very much as being in a similar place. For me, the problems of the Kaldorei appearing weak while their strength was largely hidden began in Cataclysm - and they intensified just as they did in your case.
Regarding Worgen though - how do you feel that the Worgen should be presented - in helping the Kaldorei defend those territories - without making it look like the Worgen are in some way subservient to them? My understanding is that this also is a sore spot among worgen fans. Further, what about Gilneas? Should they make a bid for reoccupying it?
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Ok, really?
You literally are dismissing massive portions of the canon because it occurred in quest text or novels and therefore does not count from your perspective. And apparently, according to you, anyone who does not share that same perspective (because they are looking at the whole picture instead of just a portion like yourself) they are being unreasonable?
How is it that a perspective which accounts for more of the story/canon holds less weight?
That, to me, is more unreasonable.
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