Indeed and we talk about : “who had it worst”
Yeahh, no, often we use lorearguments to defend our pov about the “victimhood”.
That’s not what this thread is for. If you want to be toxic take it somewhere else.
Not condoning Zahirwrite’s attitude but you did derail the thread. There is a worgen thread that could be reinvigorated if you’re suddenly more motivated to talk about Worgen.
I do apologize for that. But it was just a way to keep the conversation going, since it seemed like it was dying off. Hugs 
Toxic? It’s not toxic, read up on it yourself for the last 2 1/2 days. Than you know, i´m right. Its about the term “Who have it worse”
Go take your BS elsewhere if you’re not going to add to the conversation
that couldve been after legion, however blizzard screwed the pooch.
im just throwing this out there.
If they wanted azeroth could blow up, nozdromu in a final attempt to correct the timeline sacrifices and dissapears forever from the time stream while throwing us back before bfa so we can unscrew everything up.
hmm i dont know i dont think this will make a compelling expansion since its bfa again…
i normally dont like time travel shenanigans since they have to be used properly, else it cheapens death and consequences in the setting however after bfa and teldrassil i no longer care and im out of ideas, the problem is that i spent my time in that sludge of an expansion and ill never get it back, whatever they do it will always stain their game and depending how shadowland ends i may not stick around, if i even get a sniff that the faction war is happening again i think ill stay clear of this game maybe forever.
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This is only my opinion of course but, the faction war was the logical course forward after we defeated the Legion, since they were the last “big bad” from all the way back in WC3. The only constant story line since vanilla has been the antagonism between Reds and Blues. As such, on paper, BfA was a great idea. The execution was …hamfisted let’s say.
With less genocide, nagas, old gods and out of character silliness on both sides of the divide, BfA could have been a fine exploration into the geopolitics of both major factions on Azeroth and a nice way to shake the status quo in several areas.
As a mostly Horde player, the Alliance has always been my favorite “villain” since they have relatable motivations for doing what they do. ( I can’t find myself caring about the Shadowlands story so far. It’s just more “DOOM” on a galactic level that has no chance in hell of happening since that means our story is over and the game ends. ) At least Sargeras had value in that he had been around since the dawn of the game and foiling his plans one last time, while inevitable, actually felt good.
All I’m saying is both factions are the most interesting antagonist each other have. We can relate to one another, our motivations for doing what we do to eachother make sense, usually. WoT made sense militarily speaking, right up to and excluding the burning. None of us have the power to wipe out the other faction and the tug of war (and the stories that could come from it, are endless )
If peace happens on Azeroth and all we have to look for is a new “jailer type” villain every few years, twirling its moustache at us menacingly from its “black fortress of DOOOM”, going “muahahahah” it’s going to get stale quickly… it already is.
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In reply to this - your first two paragraphs, I am going to incorporate the ideas from this post - particularly the Orc/Warsong segments. The thing I want to put my finger on is that doing such moves the focus of defense from responding to a tragedy to that old M.O. that I don’t think either BFA or Cataclysm actually fulfilled: of the Horde fighting for survival - and its intent is to cast that fight in a heroic light. This doesn’t, however, require the exchanging of zones, because the idea is to set players up for participation in the tie-in battleground.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/writing-a-pvp-narrative-post-shadowlands/801368
As for a retcon, we don’t live in a world where that would work. You can’t unring the bell here - you do have to move forward. Retconning BFA will not undo the perception in people’s minds that Night Elves suck every time their faction counterparts come knocking, or that the Horde is evil again. You need new content to refute those views. That new content cannot simply be burying the faction war. However, again, I think you can end things in a better place if you use a following stalemate to deliver those refutory moments - content to balance the scales - and then have the rivalry expressed in actual competitive play.
I understand that you still might not be thrilled about this - but from my perspective, this is like you coming into my home stadium, shutting me out 70-0 (hyperbole, and yes, presentation focused. We’ve all discussed that the underlying lore is much better), and then saying “I’m closing down this sport now - have fun living with the shame forever”. I know that’s not what you want to say, but that’s what I’m staring down when you say that we should put the story to bed and not rouse it again.
Regarding your comment about corporations - I agree that WoW is in danger of being shelved. I however disagree that marginalizing PVP or trying to retire the 27-year old rivalry that’s tied heavily into the franchise’s brand equity is the right move to prevent that. Such would be continuing to needlessly chase vital consumer segments away from the property, which would leave it in the increasingly precarious position of a high-cost operating model trying to chase a shrinking core consumer base in an area where strong competition now exists. Instead, I feel that we need to strategically align PVP-centered aspects of the narrative with competitive gameplay elements in order to deliver an experience that compliments, rather than contradicts, motivating factors to engage in such gameplay elements.
As an aside - I’ve looked at some of your posts before and have picked up on this sort of corporate infallibility argument. Corporations are absolutely fallible. I work in internal audit for one - I see the mental breakdowns every single day. With Blizzard, I think the problem is that they’re being held captive by their marketing department, who want flashy visuals and are trying to import “best practices” from competitors without asking whether it makes sense to rip out the beating heart of an existing property, and shove in some transplanted one. I’ve said this before, but I think these people have lost sight of how to write an MMO in the first place - and instead brought on high-powered “resources” so that they can say that they’re focused on the lore and the story. They’re not appreciating that the story has to start with the understanding that the player is our protagonist - that we have to choose who that protagonist is - that we won’t like it if the game world dictates that our protagonist is a tragic victim or an evil bad guy without our consent - and that the nature of these problems favors scattered and emergent narratives, rather than the one involving all of the obnoxious characters and world-spanning arcs that they love so much.
That’s not a tactical error, it’s a strategic one.
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You are entitled to feel that we are the villains, i too felt like that but in a healthy rivalry sense, i no longer feel that way.
Many horde players dont share your sentiment, before and after the wot, the ones that do look completely ridiculous and whiney mentioning taurajo and dalaran as their main grievances while the amount of war crimes, destruction and agression against us is higher, this is a REAL problem of not giving the horde enough ammunition to feel antagonistic against us and us not being able to fight back without the kiddy gloves, that is also a turn off to other horde posters, they dont feel we threaten them enough and i agree this should be a healthy rivalry not the toxic fiasco that became after bfa, so i disagree when the faction war is front and center nothing good ever happens since we cant fight the horde to their complete extinction or die trying so i dont find it very interesting.
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I do want to reply to this separately.
I myself am irked when I try to hold a discussion about Night Elf issues and am immediately met with posters saying “well, yeah, but what about this!”. It’s easy for me to see that as whataboutism, and reply that while I agree that those are valid issues, and that we should talk about them, this thread wasn’t the intended place to do that.
However, a lot of these issues are linked, and Micah’s comments do provide us with an example of such.
I was pretty irked, for example, to learn that in the War of the Thorns, Blizzard was bending over backwards to deprive the Night Elves of their allies. The Draenei were nowhere to be seen, the Worgen were shuttled out of the city instead of jumping in the fight. Those beautiful beautiful Stonetalon gnomes? I guess they long-ago went home. Looking at Elegy/A Good War, the strict lore tells us that the Horde nearly failed three times. What IF Tyrande returned? What IF instead of shuttling civilians out, Stormwind used those portals to shuttle soldiers (or just Jaina) in? Past all of the logistical bullcrap and the introduction of handwavey magic to birth super long-range nuclear catapults - the fact that they benched all of our friends is probably the more obvious “what?” moment.
But, Micah did help me here to understand that this is a problem from her perspective too. The Worgen are being chased from their home again? The Draenei are going to sit back and sip a slurpee while the Orcs rampage across someone else’s home? This could have been a chance for them to step up and shine. I could see the leader of the Worgen in Darnassus being asked to evacuate and saying “No, we are not running anymore. Tell me where they are and I will rip them apart personally.” It would have been very easy to stand up a coalition of “We are not putting up with your garbage anymore” to push the Horde back. Instead they got benched.
… and yeah, that robs the Worgen of otherwise great story potential, in a way that would have made this whole situation a lot less toxic to grapple with. So, I may not completely get it, but I think I’m closer to understanding.
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You saw the word villain and flew off the handle it seems. I even put it in quotes thinking it would rob it of its edge. Fine it’s my fault… I should have used antagonist. shrug
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i even agreed with you that i felt once the same way so i understand where you’re coming from, however part of the horde has serious problems when the time comes to antagonize us, specially because godking anduin doenst make a compelling antagonist currently.
Thanks hun for understanding, and I think that’s the issue many don’t acknowledge or even realize is a problem. And it’s why I often bring up the worgen in Kaldorei topics. What affects one race, affects the other since they are such close allies and you can’t really ignore the problems both face from the terrible narrative blizz has made concerning both races.
I suppose I’m also annoyed that people repeatedly tell me and others to stop bringing up the isssues we have with the story. There is a minority that only want the kaldorei to be the victims of BfA and it’s simply not true.
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Yes, the blues have been written as generally passive for a while. I wonder if it’s not an artifact of trying so hard to make the Horde bad. With the exception of Genn’s assault in Stormheim.
But regardless, discussion for another thread. I don’t want to start a parallel topic inside this one. My original response to your post up there was just to mention that I still believe both factions each other’s best and most engaging content, When done well and with consideration to both parties of players. Definitely not as a prop for shock value, which they all but admitted themselves when they said they wanted their own “red wedding”.
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Just popping back in to bring up the real issue with the current writing style: “The story we want to tell.”
By all logic, the Worgen and Draenei SHOULD have wanted to help in the Ashenvale/Darkshore defensive. But this was about the Night Elves, so we can’t have them. The Vindicaar COULD have either stalled or neutralized the entire Horde offensive. But the Tree had to burn. Stormwind COULD have portaled troops to assist (Or Jaina lol), but the Horde had to ‘win’. Why wasn’t the Horde given an actual justification for the overall war? Because the Rebellion was gonna happen later anyways. Just play along!
Blizzard often ignores things in the name of this ‘vision’ they have, which simply peeves people. Vol’jin’s death acting only as a catalyst for Sylvanas’s ascension to Warchief follows the same logic, which cost the Trolls their singular representative. In an attempt to avoid that same backlash with the Forsaken, they instead just shoehorned in someone with no questions asked who is acting as a temp until they get around to working on Calia. Why? Because the Troll and Forsaken racial leaders were NOT part of the story Blizz wanted to tell at the moment.
I get the feeling many other racial sticking points, such as Gnomeregan, fall into this trap as well. There are all these great racial stories for nearly everyone that should have been answered or at least worked on, but didn’t fit Blizz’s vision or schedule. Which is a shame, because this is what heritage armor questlines SHOULD have focused on. They have this entire world to work with and it’s such a shame that they ignore so much of it, especially the places we care about.
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Couldn’t agree with you more - and I would add on that I think this is a problem with the post-wrath style of storytelling that has increasingly moved away from presenting a vibrant, expansive world with different cultures and people in it - one that knew to respect the playable races and the motivations of their fans - in favor of one that’s constructed to serve a traditional, overall “world” narrative.
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I’m amused by the mental image of someone in Stormwind going “get ready everyone, the first wave of refugees from Darnassus are arriving!” and out pours an entire population of werewolves into the streets and noooobody has a problem with that.
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Their first reaction should’ve been Aren’t these the same dudes that converted most of Gilneas into worgen? 
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Absolutely. I would argue Wrath is when we started to see the story shift from a more exploration and world building focus to a more character-driven focus. However, it was Cata when they just kicked the ball down the hill and went all in on that style.
The racial stories began to tie directly to their ‘main character’ and all racial progression would need to involve them. Killing Garrosh wasn’t an Orc story, it was a Thrall story. Argus wasn’t a Draenei story, it was Velen/Turalyon/Illidan story. Vol’jin’s death wasn’t a Horde story, it was Sylvanas’s story. In that same vein the fall of Teldrassil isn’t a Night Elf story, it’s Tyrande’s story.
We get these small glimpses of racial perspectives through other NPC’s every now and then, but little else. Credit where it is due though, having NPC’s talking about current events in the capitols like they did at the end of BFA was certainly a step in the right direction.
EDIT: I also do think Blizz has begun recognizing a level of racial pride in its fanbase. It’s fairly natural to become attached to your characters after all. I believe this is what the heritage armor quests are supposed to be tapping into, but with the exception of the Blood Elf one they seem to have fallen flat as they focus on… really irrelevant things with the Tauren one going as far as to shamelessly tease Shadowlands. Hopefully they continue to develop these going forward.
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Alright I think this is worthy for a good discussion.
I do understand the feeling of being attacked for liking something different in warcraft as Blizzard is now too much into humans that ever before. However I think Cataclysm is barely something to complain for Nelves, did they lost two outpost? Indeed but later on they got it back lore-wise with Tyrande going god mode in that wolfheart novel, you can even call a situation as a “hurrah” for them, which objectively it’s a victory against a hateful foe rather than kill their own kin which is 90% of the stories for the other races, a low bar I know
Once in a lifetime vs Legion(twice), BFA and SL and since you mention gnomes, this still says a lot about the focus is being given to Nelves compared to other alliance races. I know that attention can be horrible sometimes but a lot of times is also about to show off the power of the Nelves like taking by their own Darkshore with a cinematic and Tyrande being show at everywhere since bfa which still more than a lot of races even got
Hmmm
Everyone have a right to voice their disconform including nelves fans and nobody is against that, just we’re tired of hearing the same thing being repeated at every thread about “We suffered most than anyone” or “your pixels sucks ours only matter” which just rub everyone on the worst possible form
Understandable but just now put yourself on the shoes of everyone else that has been dealing with this for years and yet they never went to this toxic level where literally there was for months a thread about “exterminate the horde” or “Alliance sucks because can’t help us and nerf us”
I know the Nelf fandom is bigger and makes toxicity most visible displayed but seriously, not a single fandom from the other races did something like this and let’s be real, this bad RP was brought by the nelves players themselves as many took the wrong path to show their discomfort
I don’t want to be that guy but some of the stuff that is asked by people like Elasana aren’t going to happen and I know it sounds very ill spirited but Hyjal is a good enough home for elves and still keep a fully functioning army and their characters, given some years and people will even wonder “was a truly genocide? I see nelves can fill a lot of armies and have a new city with their main characters still alive”
I agree on this sentiment and to be fair Blizzard once said that suffering is their prefered drama and only storyline they know to write or care(going to leave the link later)
Good for you and perhaps it’s time to pass page and get invested in another IP, every fantasy one(especially one with outgoing series) will have their high and lows and will do better for your sanity
Nah, I still see her posting here with her alt accounts or in reddit wow
Nice
Wish you luck on that
Oh boy, the plot THICCENS
Huh
What a place you ended up
Again everyone felt like trash for this arc where blizzard made us go into a horrible rail telling us we’re trash for liking this game and everyone has put a shoulder for anyone up for a nice talk, as long you don’t behave toxically like many unsavory characters lurking in this section and in general.
What we need it stop the continous cycle of attacking and barking the wrong tree and ultimately take it to the writers by either not buying and paying a sub and just enjoy the social relantionship we did from afar(Discord, maybe steam or other social media place) if we want to stuff to change.
Also not fall into heated debates as Danuser said “we believe we did a good job if we made our players feel emotions” aka if they show forum activity and people talking on the red about their crappy storyline regarddles of how awful it is, then the management consider the game and story a success.
You wrote quite a dairy, I don’t share many of your opinions but I respect them
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