I didn’t play WC1 but in the early WC novels this was anything but the case. Stormwind the city was larger than anything in Lordaeron and the idea that anything could overcome it was met with amusement, disbelief and then horror by the northern monarchs, as they learned of the Horde.
It was less restricted and bound by tradition than the other kingdoms, but not backwards. Azeroth was like the US to Lordaeron’s Europe.
The expansion should have been the new character Wetlands death run, change my mind.
But this is an is/ought fallacy. It isn’t addressing the needs of the playerbase so much as it is validating Blizzard’s poor decisions.
The thing is that I doubt that Blizzard will change the course in the first place, so I personally rather have a clear statement regarding this. That’s probably the roleplayer in me speaking, because I have to work with essentially nothing in regards to Stormwind.
Thanks. I doubt however that we will ever get this medieval edge Stormwind or humanity in general back. It’s weird how we can have literal genocide in the game, but nobility doing shady business and hiding behind their title or teenagers being called to arms is seemingly a big no-no.
I see no reason to accept their previous decisions, and I don’t see this as a logical objection. We can have a clear statement that clarifies things in the opposite direction - you’re mixing a descriptive statement with a normative one, so I’m going to have to ask that we concentrate on the latter.
I didnt say it was militarily inferior. I am saying it was backward in a cultural/importance sense. It would be exactly like comparing Europe countries(which for the most part was fairly established) to the US when it was just being founded.
I see many Alliance heroes on Shadowlands but the only Horde ones are standing around in Oribos doing absoloutley nothing. Thrall and Baine are wasted on this expansion.
I knew anything non-human was a pipe dream, so I was hoping for it to be Goldshire-themed. Just a crazy, weird party town where all the Alliance races get drunk and act like idiots. I thought it’d also fit in well with Hearthstone’s more lighthearted atmosphere.
I should have replied to this question earlier, but I think that it’s the wrong question.
Stormwind appears to be the only choice because that’s all that they’ve invested in. They have purposely built the Alliance identity around this one city that not everyone identifies with, and have either neglected or destroyed the alternatives.
There are bigger issues sitting behind this than the choice of location.
Certainly not with Anduin at the helm. But when he’s out of the picture for a while? I could see it. We already got a glimpse with Turalyon and Alleria’s questionable torture methods in Shadows Rising, as well as a look back on Shaw’s history and a Stormwind that wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, where citizens were executed for petty crimes like stealing.
And the House of Nobles was at least mentioned again after a long time, when Genn tells Shaw that they support Turalyon.
They defended oribos…during the invasion of ardenwaeld. 
They were useless like always. Give me some Sylvanas action over their crap any day.
Stormwind really did go downhill after CATA. It’s particularly why i have such a strong dislike of its portrayal in CATA onward. Because Stormwind was already at quite a disadvantage as the main human Kingdom from the start of WoW.
Stormwind had no onscreen role during WC3. The only on screen Stormwind character during WC3 was Gavinrad the Dire. Other than that (And some offscreen characters like Morgan Ladimoore) Stormwind in WoW was totally disconnected to the events of WC3. Even Gilneas was more relevant to WC3 in the sense that they had a Brigade that was part of Jaina’s expedition to Kalimdor. Same with Stromgarde. And as we know, her expedition which was made up of the human survivors founded Theramore which should have been the human capitol if not for gameplay mechanics.
I wish Stormwind had more WC3 references, it still could have worked well if there had at least been more mention of the events prior to WoW. As well as more characters from the fallen human realms to the North. Maybe even enclaves in SW City and other zones part of their territory where those “ethnic” enclaves of the northern kingdoms settled at.
Even without that though, Stormwind still was interesting in Vanilla-WOTLK. The Onyxia and Defias Brotherhood storyline was good. And Varian returning before WOTLK was great.
Coming out of WOTLK would have been the perfect time to expand on them as a Kingdom properly. Especially since they defeated the Scourge. The force that destroyed their sister Kingdom. But instead the situation just got worse from there. Varian essentially did nothing in CATA (ingame anyway) and then i soured on his character going into MOP with all the High King stuff.
I think a great example of this was the Swamp of Sorrows storyline. Where you’re battling against Stonard only to have it end with your commander giving you a “We aren’t Orcs! We’re better than that!” speech. Leaving the enemy base standing in Stormwind’s backyard.
It was always strange like the nobles all agreed to one thing and were not divided in factions. But that’s going for most, if not all factions.
Not gonna get rid of Stonard. Your alliance bias won’t protect you.
No sane individual reads Youtube comments.
Ironforge for a city. Feralas, Felwood, Ashenvale, Duskwood, Its really hard to think up something with a lot of diverse setting or stores that are distictly Alliance due to how badly Blizzard blotched the Cataclysm revamp. Stormwind has never had much personality in WoW, and it was a no-brainer that Blizzard would fail to give it any personality after the revamp as well.
Bonus fun: Nazjatar, Shattrath (both old or new), Suramar.
My problem with the House of Nobles is mostly that their exact role isn’t even known right now. It’s seemingly a big deal to be a part of them, considering that Tiffins family joined as soon as she and Varian got married, but their exact status and power is pretty unknown. Darkshire and Lakeshire for example are both lead by what appears to be mayors. They hold large parts of land according to some older lore…but we also have this one scene were a count is serving Anduin drinks.
Cataclysm was absolutely horrible for Stormwind as it turned two out of their four zones into (used for emphasis here) fu**ing memes. And this damn Rambo-character is STILL following us around. Redridge could have been an awesome story about the Brotherhood of the Horse rebuilding, Westfall about their culture because in older lore Westfall and its population were pretty independent from Stormwind. Could have been interesting how it changed now that Stormwind asserts its dominance a bit more. But, nope here’s Horatio.
God I wish we could have gotten a quest from some other officer, who tells us that his commander is naive in her approach and tasks us to burn down buildings and slaughter the peons. Just give me some edge.
Internal politics really do not exist for any faction unless it becomes plot relevant for some reason.
Edit:
I still think Wrath of the Lich King was the peak. Neither Horde nor Alliance really had a white vest, both sides threw away their soldiers as cannon fodder and in general it was bleak. Stuff like Unit S, Garrosh sending you on a suicide mission etc. The Ulduar-patch-trailer, the Undercity-battle.
I agree. And yet it seems as if they still hold some power and their opinion on things still matters, or they wouldn’t have been mentioned at all.
The current writers are simply unable to write compelling stories about internal politics. Iirc they said they tried and failed to do this in bfa and realised that they were better at writing stories about cosmic threats. Sad.
Yep. Good times
They’re doing well so far! Shadowlands really is great! /s
Although they did it right at least once in Cataclysm in the form of the Southern Barrens, which retained some of the old “edge”-factor and in my opinion remains one of the best written zones in the game. There’s no good or evil in the Barrens, just soldiers and armies doing what is necessary which becomes a circle of violence, revenge and hatred in the later stages.
With Redridge its such a simple story with that. It’s simple yet fits the feel of the Kingdom. Rebuilding a Kingdom’s lost order of knights to fight off Orcs and Gnolls. It pretty much writes itself. Rather than that tank quest at the end, it could have been the player riding with the Brotherhood’s Knights atop your horse charging over Orcs. The Mechanics for that pretty much were already ingame since we had the Argent Tournament stuff previously. Literally could have just had those mechanics for the quest. And of course it could have ended with Stonewatch being taken as their base. Then later on in Questing you could have met back up with them in the Burning Steppes. Maybe have some event or storyline that was based around Lothar’s statue there since he was the former leader.
So do i. The most ridiculous part of it is that if you do the quest on a Horde character, the Horde commander doesn’t even recognize that they “lost” 
He makes some kind of comment that they beat the Alliance back. Absolutely ridiculous on all levels and it just made the Alliance commander look that much more incompetent.