An’she is simply one of the two eyes of the Earthmother, as is Mu’sha. They are two parts of the whole, and not at war or rivals. Regardless, the expectation that Blizz would ever invest in Tauren lore, let alone validate it, is a futile expectation. It would be shocking if we even see anything that reasserts that ancestral spirit worship isn’t flawed and wrong in SLs. To think the SUN as a celestial body will be validated as anything more than a celestial body is very unlikely.
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Which tells us literally nothing.
Not true. Many religions can depict the sun and moon at odds with each other.
I refer you back to the Star Trek Episode “Masks.”
As futile as them validating Night Elf Lore. Sense they’re literally entertwined with one another.
They REALLY aren’t. Its more like the Tauren have been made into an accessory race for Malfurion (just as Baine has to Anduin), but their culture and religion are very different from what we do get. They do worship and revere the land and nature, but the Earth Mother as an entity is far more wide reaching an all encompassing. An interconnected organism. The Moon, just as the Sun, is part of that. Their relationship in “using” the land is also very different to the NEs.
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Hasn’t the Earth Mother been soft retconned into just being the World Soul?
Which would actually make Tauren the other playable race with a true deity.
No … not really. it was implied by Baine’s cinematic giving Derek back, but it could just as easily be him referring to the World Soul as merely another part of the whole. And her dying who have serious ramifications for the Earth Mother. Frankly, very little effort of time has been placed into the Tauren for quite a while. Outside of Highmountain, which oddly did not so much focus on their culture … but more their immediate Drogbar problems.
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I think this is a good way of putting it - and it’s again why I disagree with the idea that the Alliance can do whatever they want and still be justified. A Night Elf can get into that mindset, but it doesn’t make them right. The key I think is - we have to demonstrate to the player why that’s true.
So, let me take a crack at it:
Let’s say we revamp Ashenvale and the Barrens. In Ashenvale, I get the big juicy win that I’ve been wanting, albeit in the no-holds barred sort of way. Meanwhile, in the barrens, Horde players through their questing are introduced to an old Warsong clan member. He didn’t drink the demon blood, he barely tolerated Garrosh. He was considered to be more valuable as a farmer than a soldier during the Fourth War, and he has a wife and two grown children. They give various quests, the son and the daughter help you kill quillboar. Both of them seem really eager to be just like their father.
Some of the later barrens quests involve the player having to respond to rumors and distress calls from outlying settlements. The Ashenvale questing that I talked about has concluded, and at night, Sentinel raiding parties are sneaking into the Barrens - avoiding combat with garrisons and well armed troops, and instead, deliberately going after homesteads and villages, often putting them to the torch to make a point. The Warsong Clan, decimated from its previous conflicts, is trying to put a stop to these raids, but they can’t protect their garrisons and stop all border crossings at the same time. They’re also need a proper leader.
One of these quests has you defending a village from one of these raids. That Orc-farmer and his son and daughter are there trying to defend it. You’re successful, but the Orc farmer’s children are both shot by a sentinel with distinctive silver armor - and she retreats from the burning village with some of her huntresses. We learn that this sentinel has been planning and leading many of these attacks.
The farmer returns to his home and informs his wife. He reminds us here that he never wanted any part of this. That he did nothing wrong, that he didn’t do this to them, that he didn’t burn their tree - and we leave him to resentfully weep over his loss.
A few quests later, we see him arrive at the Warsong Garrison, ready to do his part to repel the invaders. He’s involved in a questline where the Silver Sentinel tries a larger raid into the Barrens. This time she’s planning on striking deep to hit the Crossroads per the plans that you find on one of her dead comrades. By now, due to the sentinel practice of targeting whoever appears to be in charge, our farmer leads a pack of worg riders. He, and you mount them and dash across the barren plains at the head of a Warsong war party in a race to stop the sentinel and her huntresses from executing her plan. You do - the fight is an exciting mounted one where you have to dodge arrows, and use a ragtag combination of guns, spears, spells and bows to defeat the huntresses - who begin to scatter in different directions to draw off some of the warsong pursuers. You’re left with the farmer, and the Silver Sentinel. She shoots the farmer’s worg out from under him, and while the farmer lives, this allows her to get away. Nevertheless, you stopped the raid and this is regarded as a great success.
The Farmer, now a Warsong Commander is the one who now leads Warsong Forces in Warsong Gulch. The Silver Sentinel is his Alliance counterpart.
Now, I’m not a writer, so everything may not have come across well, but the general point of this exercise was to make the conflict personal, and to frame the Alliance as the bad guys in it by presenting relatable Horde representatives, and putting them in conflict with less scrupulous Alliance counterparts. The idea was to make it obvious: why would the Orcs continue to fight the Night Elves? I feel that it’s easier to do that from the ground than it would be to try to put things in the scale of a city-burning genocide. This also would support carrying on that conflict in the PVP battleground, presumably with future content involving those characters to give a little bit more background to the battleground.
More to the point - unless I really screwed things up here, I don’t think anyone would look at the story of that farmer and conclude that he or his family deserved what happened to them because they were Orcs, which is the point.
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No, they haven’t.
Droité, you’re better then this.
No, they’re represented by the Sun and Moon. That doesn’t mean they’re literally the sun and the moon. (you’re forgetting that Azeroth has 3 moons, by the way.)
As is to be expected. They are a different culture. Doesn’t make them any less intertwined.
Of course, if the theory is correct that An’she is a manifestation of the Light, it’d would be interesting for humans to learn they’ve been worshipping the Tauren’s god.
Yeah, the kind of have. With how few stories the Tauren actually get, they tend to be over represented by their Reps. And they really only have two semi developed ones. Baine, who has increasingly become little more than an accessory for Anduin as of late. And Hamuul, and I cannot remember the last time Hamuul wasn’t referred to in a “Malfurion’s student” context. So, yeah, they sort of have been made an accessory race to the Alliance. They’re “the Good Horde” plot devices.
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I won’t deny that the Tauren are kind of shallow on story.
But this is disingenuous, or at least hyperbolic. They actually have very little to do with the Alliance as whole. They’re “Alliance adjacent” only because the Tauren really are more similar to the Alliance then they are to the Horde and by that very nature, they tend to align easier to the Alliance.
And this fact really can’t be changed without COMPLETELY rewriting the Tauren into something they never were.
The Fact is, if it wasn’t for Cairne’s bloodoath, the Tauren would of never been at war with the Alliance. Not saying they would of been a part of the Alliance but they most certainly would be at peace with them. And it’s wrong to expect Baine or any Tauren to not try to at least cool the fires at every chance.
But yeah, it’s true the the Tauren (AND the Worgen and the Gnomes and the Dwarves and not to mention the Allied Races…) need better story input. Preferably WITHOUT ties to the other faction or the faction conflict in general.
What the writers should do is write stories with the Race in question being the focal point of the story, without referring to any other race or faction except in passing or as cameo appearances.
Been thinking that what the Writers should do is break into individual “think tanks” associated for each race and start brainstorming stories for that race, without input from the main storywriter and see where it takes them.
They can then take them and make race specific quests and in-world lore from them.
Suuure a “flaw”… especially when they villain batted the Horde so bad them leaders achieving “vengeance” actually looks like Tirion et al achieving “retribution ansd justice” in WotLK.
Nope, as long as the Alliance gets treated as an inmaculate and insuferable Perfectly Good Absolute, then the Horde has no freaking chance of any action suggested against them nor much less exposed as a “villanous flaw”.
Don´t believe me? See narrative treatment done regarding the “torture of Orc mother” in Shadows of the Horde vs. “torture of rando nameless human pirate” in the same novel.
I´ll wait.
Then you agree they can´t continue to interact with each other yes? Cause the Horde -to stay as a distinct product in the WoW brand different from the Alliance- simply can´t become a clone of the blues so all of us play carebear island managed by Anduin & Lackeys.
No Amadis, if the burden of the “morality is base for the narrative ergo it has to become balanced for both factions” is too much for your sensibilities, then the anwser is to literally cut ties between both narratives and finally burying this death horse for good.
The Wrathgate cinematic would love to have a word with you.
We´ve been getting the villain bat (softcore or hardcore depending on the expac) since forever dude. While you guys get more and more one dimensional and “Perfect”.
The actual solution is to divorce the narrative of both factions so they never ever interact again in the next 1000 years in-game, period.
Ofc you´re having it… Baine and Thrall both are nothing but plot devices screaming how awesome the Alliance heroes are and how much we all should love them.
I think I´ll pàss from this kindergarden esque surrealistic narrative.
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I’m not sure what you’re rattling off about exactly. I wasn’t talking about making the Alliance “villainous” as you can see in what you quoted. Characters can have flaws without being villains obviously. And I’d argue that being crazy for revenge is a flaw that doesn’t look good like you tried to paint it. What did Tyrande do on Icecrown? Blow up at everyone around her, almost start a fight between the leaders and jumped into the freaking Maw leaving her people behind. But yeah, that looks like Tyrion.
And I haven’t read “Shadows of the Horde” so unless you want to type out whatever you’re referencing I’ll have to not believe you.
I’ll wait.
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Baine’s comments on the Earth Mother dying feels more like a coincidence than actual validation. It seems like if Tauren had evolved on a world that can sustain life with no titan intervention (and no world soul to encourage it), they could easily have the same beliefs but not have the core of the planet vaguely fit that description.
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Exactly. And this is the actual problem.
You see, for the Horde narrative since forever, their “flaws” directly lead to villainy, and are exposed in game as such (ergo, the retcons that changed Orcs becoming villains thanks to them getting fooled by a demon for Orcs becoming villains cause this path it´s apparently inherent to their biology -say “Hi” to WoD; or Forsaken acting like amoral sociopaths NOT because their souls literally got attached wrongly to their reanimated bodies making impossible for them to experience actual positive emotions but because they were simply idiotic morons who got policed and fooled by a feminazi with a huge chip on her shoulder-). For the Alliance (and this is made evident in your very example) this “flaw” basically amounts as “we act as relatable irl humans that want justice for the massive wrongdoins done upon us” -and pardon me, but that´s no flaw-. Or worse, they become Anduin flavored flaws in which the narrative paints the inherent goodness of the Alliance as the cause they get bothered by thye stupid and evil barbarinas called “Horde”.
Oh certainly they can. Not in WoW though, and especially NOT in regards to broad faction depiction.
She acted like an actually relatable and realistic character -humanized thanks to her pain and her understandable response to it. To put it simple Tyrande´s refusal to “ignore” the crimes actually give way for a path into her growth as a character-. The goodie two shoes holding hands and pretending a henious crime never happened? Those ARE the inhuman surrealistic depiction; the incoherent, one dimensional and non relatable fantasy. Take in mind their cold stance actually makes for a great depiction of an average psycopath / sociopath, who literally cares nothing over children getting burned alive cause “muh selfish impulses” >>>>>>> lives of people.
In the scene when Turalyon and Alleria caught Horde civilians flying from Arathi they take an Orc mother to interrogate her over the presence of a Dark Ranger in the zone. The novel literally depicts Turalyon as the “good cop” who promised literal heaven to the Orc if she just only told him and his wife where the obviously evil Dark Ranger was last seen. And the Orc apparently protected that knowledge for who knows what reasons, then Alleria tries asking nicely but the Orc actually responded with belligerency (yes guy, spitting on people IS a form of physical attack) ergo Alleria simply had to resort to obvious void torture to get the information out of the Orc mother´s brain cause nothing else worked.
And when one as reader looks at the event, the conclussion one reaches is not “Oh, Alliance heroes are capable of actual flaws” but “LUL, stupid Orc asked to get tortured thanks to her ignorance and lack of manners”. The potential “flaw” of Turalyon and Alleria regarding them being willing to act outside of knightly behaviour got literally erased to depict them as SO good they will only act questionable because other people attacks them first -and the writer used a mother to depict this. That´s disgusting, villain batting a mother just because she´s a Horde Orc.
Compare that to Jaina -a well known Pet favorite of the writting team who is usually used as an outstanding example of morality- complaining over Turalyon and Alleria torturing some rando human pirate (in that depiction they indeed didn´t got the benefit of the pirate attacking them first in the narrative).
Why do these two events matter? Cause they´re the classical depiction regarding “Alliance flaw portrayal” in the game. Every time the Alliance acts “flawed” against the Horde the narrative puts a bunch of justifications that excuse the flaws in the first place, almost transforming them into qualities. On the other hand, flaws between Alliance are kept indeed as flaws.
So when you come here proposing “Alliance leaders are vengeance motivated” as a “flaw” I roll my eyes cause we are right there and doing that… and still the Alliance leaders aren´t perceived as “flawed” anywhere by players or the very narrative itself -let´s look at Tyrande again; she´s “wrong” not because her impulses are a flaw but because they contradict Anduin´s generic and unsustainable concept of peace. Look at Genn getting actually rewarded in the narrative from attacking Sylvanas in Stormheim -when he basically took the Tyrande stance and acted upon it and retroactively the narrative JUSTIFIED his violence ffs!!!-.
OMFG… your “suggestion” has been already used, refer to Genn in Stormheim indeed… tell me how that ended up regarding portrayal of Alliance as “flawed” /ROFL
This IS the issue… Alliance “flaws” never matter at all when used in interactions with the Horde; quite the opossite the interaction ends up transforming them into perks and qualities. And some of us are rather tired of this BS; ergo proposals about separating for good the stories for both factions. As long as the Alliance keeps it´s current narrative path of Moral Absolute Righteousness, the Horde will NEVER get free from the toxic “they become genocidal for lul reasons” cycle.
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Don’t forget how the Tauren internal history of being the actual first Druids taught by Cenarius was confirmed to be wrong by the devs and Malfurion was 100% the First Druid.
Also as of right now Azeroth is a Titan World Soul. So the Earthmother being a Titan on par with Eonar is meh.
An’she needs to be developed and a solar “true deity” affirmed on par with Elune over the next two expansions, and they’re already 2 expansions late.
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If they had any intention, and I have little reason to believe they do, they would’ve fleshed out An’she already by now. It’s probably just going to be See, we told you it was Elune all along or some other nonsense
You’d think that but they pulled “Actually Sylvanas was behind Wrathgate all along!” and are beginning to pull “Actually it was the Dreadlords behind everyone and everything all along! They’re not even demons!”
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Look… i would agree with you, for the same reason i sympathize with the horde posters that they didnt ask any of this and i dont want to hate people i dont know over the internet its a waste of energy, ill just say this, we are judging that… justification from the perspective of a third person with the lens of a modern person.
If i put my blue hat on, i feel justified to do anything to them, they struck first and they have done so agan and again and again, we tried peace, it didnt work, for every farmer there are like 100 soldiers ready to march on my land and allies and they are complete monsters and i will never let go of that feeling because its part of my character, the one i interact with this world, is it ok? i dont care all of them deserve the worst and are potential threats.
Ill take it off now, these feelings of hate stem from tribalism and can easly take over higher cognitive functions and lead to toxicity over the fandom which is one of the things i hated so much that the war of thorns happened, whatever blizzard do these feelings wont go away unless the horde is dismantled and my power fantasy reasserted.
But that will never happen so here i am, holding an uncompromising and impossible position because i just want to play wow as i used to before that freaking tree burned.
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That’s very true, i admit i hadn’t even considered that when i wrote up my responses 
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Ye, easy to forget cuz it’s like “what, even Sylvanas’s first person perspective was lying to us? You are really pulling this?”
Blizz plans ahead, but only 2 expansions ahead, at most. With a handful of Break Glass In Case Of Subscriber Hemorrhaging™ boxes (eg Illidan) that allow for sharp turns.
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What’ll always bother me about that is she dies again briefly in Silverpine. Where we don’t see what happens. It would’ve been easy to put it there. But since they’ve since said any questgiver might be a unreliable narrator I get more “We can’t be bothered to remember our own lore” vibes.
And even that burns my biscuits because there are unreliable narrator quests. Like in the Badlands where some old drunks are yammering about how they totally wrecked house when Deathwing turned up and that punk was lucky he didn’t stick around. It really did capture the vibe of being stuck in a conversation at a dive bar.
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