I think they could stand to do something with the characters they’ve had in the rafters without actually doing anything with them, like Eitrigg and Drek’thar, where he has a ‘passing of the torch’ moment with Rehgar Earthfury or something like that.
Sure, but the Alliance doesn’t have to be racist just so that Horde players can feel good about fighting them. The Alliance have a very long list of terrible things the Horde has done against them, all of which would be enough to take off the silken gloves and go on the offense, with the explicit goal of dismantling the Horde to ensure it can’t hurt the Alliance any further, and as payback for all they have done. They don’t have to be racist to want the Horde gone and done.
No, because there is no need. They can be vengeful and unforgiving, and from that a desire to remove the Horde as a faction. Because frankly, the Alliance haven’t been racist for about 11 years by now, and introducing it now would be ridiculus.
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Racism is kinda the Horde’s shtick, to be honest.
- Orcs attacking humans because they’re human.
- Undead attacking humans because they’re living. (Is that racism or… something else?)
- Blood Elves in Azshara call night elves something like savage tree-dwellers and have some remarks about the Highborne that joined them too, IIRC.
- Characters like Nathanos calling worgen filthy mongrels and wretched dogs. No one on A-side is calling the Forsaken “stinking corpses” or trolls “filthy savages”.
- Mag’har orcs wanting to slaughter all draenei for being draenei, despite having no alignment/communication with the Lightbound.
Danath calls Eitrigg a greenskin. I think Eitrigg responds with a similar barb but I don’t remember. But it’s not really a racial agenda so much as “Stromgarde is his, so he’s going to fight anyone who shows up to stop him”.
Oh wait, there’s that dwarf BFA announcer who tells you he can smell the stink of orcs from a mile away and “I can’t tell if they smell worse dead or alive!”
Still a far cry from calling for genocide but hey y’know whatever, I guess Alliance is the group of bigots and it’s not the chest-thumping machismo maniacs.
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I know clipping this bit out of your OP is going to come off as being rather flippant, but to me, the main issue is that the horde is ALREADY hated for pretty damn understandable and sympathetic reasons. But it’s not done in a way to feel good about pushing against, which is the whole premise of getting invested in whatever nutty faction war premise is coming up next. My interpretation of Baal’s suggestions is to redirect and focus the hate that’s already there into something that already exists in the game.
Ultimately, the game is basically one big hero fantasy. That requires pushing against and triumphing over some sort of injustice. And personally I dislike the faction war stuff to begin with, but if it’s going to HAVE to happen (and I feel strongly that it will, with the way BFA ended alliance-side and also because I imagine the devs would fear ending it for good heralds a sunset moment of WoW’s faction marketability) then I think something like this really is needed. Because otherwise, the motivation is limited to “we have the right to not suffer for the consequences of our actions” and then the problem’s right back where it started.
Obviously I can’t back this statement up but I was told that rank-and-file quest designers largely don’t even read the game’s outside material when they work on quests, because they’re so busy creating in-game stuff that they really don’t have time to dig into arcane material buried in a book somewhere. If they need a reference for a character’s previous behavior, they already have the in-game quest database to look up. And sometimes they don’t even do that. So unfortunately, stuff like Genn’s sudden self-unaware epiphany of “maybe these monsters…are people???” aren’t going to matter in the game unless they’re told from on-high that “this character is suddenly doing X and reason Y is why they’re doing it.”
If the game’s going to continue with a faction war, then the horde player needs to feel good about hating the alliance faction leaders. If it’s meant to end, then they need a reason to start liking them. Instead, the game’s taking the most obnoxious route by having said faction leaders loathe the horde without the horde player having a strong reason to hate them back and make them cameo in quests anyway and holy moly that’s irritating.
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The Alliance being racist does not make sense because it is a multi racial faction. It’s just as racially diverse as the Horde, so if they’re racist it’s not born from them hating other cultures.
If you give them prejudice then you have to acknowledge that said prejudice is born from frequent and repeating acts of violence against them. If that’s the case, you’ve not made villains, you’ve made victims.
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You know on the topic of Garithos, I read what drove him to become racist to the blood elves at least. Doesn’t excuse his behavior but here’s the reason. a small band of orcs broke off from the main invading force and burned his home town to the ground, killing all of its inhabitants in spite of the valorous defense marshaled by its lord. Othmar’s family perished doing their duty, defending the homes and lives of their subjects. He blamed the elves for the loss of his town and family, believing that the elves diverted forces away from the Alliance’s true goal: the defense of humanity alone. After his father’s death, Garithos was awarded his title and continued his service in the armies of Lordaeron
Yes and I suppose the British Empire was a beacon of racial harmony. Or perhaps the Napoleanic French empire? Maybe Habsburg Spain?
Multiple Alliance posters having no idea what racism is in a functional academic setting or how it operates within history, let alone refusing to acknowledge that the Humans are the White Westerners Metaphor Race and the Alliance is majority centered on Western Imperial Metaphors (what with the Roman architecture of Nelves) same way as Tauren are North Amerindigenous Metaphor Race and the Horde are majority the Subaltern/Global South People Metaphors, and what that means and should mean in the narrative is pathetic and really just confirms the problem with yall lmaoooo
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Make the Dark Irons and Worgen the antagonists alliance side. Have them do some morally grey stuff, and be the alliances Bad Guys. Don’t really need to whole Make Alliance Racist Again to have interesting flaws/villains.
And being Irish American(grand parents immigrated here in the late 1800s/early 1900s), I too am all too familiar with the racist tropes associated with being Irish and the hatred directed toward us. But take that as you will. It’s not just a POC problem.
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We really don’t need to go that deep or pretend that WoW has realistic and sophisticated politics. Alliance aesthetically has always been about “pretty”, more humanoid races while the Horde is about “ugly”, animalistic ones.
High key want humans to be the bad guys, tbh. Instead of a dedicated edgy race or a race thatš literally cursed with animalistic traits.
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Humans being the racist bad guys is such a tiring and outdated trope that really does need to die off. It’s not fun nor is it engaging.
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It’s not that complicated. In WC3, the Alliance had layers, and wasn’t just a force of monolithic good. And that made them more interesting. And also believable as a group that could be a threat to the Horde’s existence, that the Alliance could have more Arthas’ and Garithos’ waiting in its command structure.
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Maybe I’m weird but I’d never be interested in a story about having to fight against the worgen. Between the race debuting as the horde’s victims, and pitting the now-unsympathetic monster faction against the sympathetic alliance monster race, it sounds like the complete opposite of an enjoyable storyline from my point of view. Similar issue with trying to tell a story about why I’d somehow want to fight night elves again.
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Well, if blizzard stuck to their guns and didn’t make them Sad Puppies squatting in Stormwind and actually made them the morally grey/dark alliance race it would’ve worked wonderfully. The race has a lot of potential and it will continue to aggravate me how blizzard keeps squandering that potential
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Fair enough, but that just leaves them as a homogenic positive race. I guess at this point it’s too late to change them, in any case, but humans as a race give off an impression of “generic good”. I want humans to be weird in some way.
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And they should be weird and have flaws, I guess I want the humans to hate the horde for their ACTIONS and not just based on how they look. It’s 2021, we can do better than rehashing racist tropes you know?
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But they already do, and rightfully so. Like someone else said before, it doesn’t feel good fighting against humans when they’re efectively right.
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Eh, maybe for you. But if the premise is rotten, I don’t think it matters what’s built on top of that.
The irony isn’t lost on me that the racial theme Blizzard gave you (to your frustration) is freakishly close to the ideal I wanted to play as. In a sense, the suggestion would be asking me to fight against my own preferred character fantasy. But even putting that aside, Blizzard made my character an Axis Powers military commander and if someone’s capable of making a story where that’s sympathetic, then they’d be better off as a defense attorney.
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That’s simply because blizzard refuses to write anything remotely interesting alliance side. If they would stop treating the alliance races as a hive mind and give them actual flaws, it would be nice. Look at the Dark Irons, they were antagonistic since they were introduced in Vanilla, but soon as they joined the alliance, they were neutered and effectively had their teeth kicked out.
Trust me, playing the Morally Righteous/Always Good and Justified side is not fun. I’ve always said the alliance needs some flaws, even fatal ones.
You’re right, I suppose it’s just the optimist in me that thinks the foundation can be repaired and they can do what was promised, we know they’re capable of writing good stories, otherwise we wouldn’t all be playing and discussing it.
Realistically, I know the days when Blizzard actually cared about their own lore is long gone, which saddens me.
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I guess Worgen can be that. I just really hate the idea that it’s the curse that made them edgy and not their mentality as a nation.