The Gilneans were always a Our people first until BfA when they made Genn an Anduin bootlicker. And edgy is a relative term, I don’t want them to edgy, I want them to be Dark and Vicious. I consider the Illidari and player DKs to have a monopoly on the edgyness.
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The problem has become that the discrimination has become more and more justified as time went on especially however with MoP and especially BfA, as the overall writing continued to villain bat the Horde and in turn prove people like Daelin Proudmoore, who was initially written as to be in the wrong. That was the whole idea about his arc in Warcraft 3.
I’ve started to dislike this description, because it has become such a ‘meme’ in Warcraft especially. Personally, I just want characters to start acting like characters instead of one-dimensional-MacGuffins solely existing to drive the plot into a certain way.
Funnily, enough I think Daelin Proudmoore is again a good example for this. He was a loving family father who deeply cared about his daughter and sons, yet at the same time he would go to every length imaginable to wipe out the orcs from Azeroth. And yet again he had plenty of reasons for this. You could sympathize with him, you could understand his motivations. Doesn’t mean that you had to like him, but you were able to understand him.
This is missing in Warcraft in general and it’s not only an Alliance-problem. I mean hell: Anduin punched Wrathion (and he himself admitted that he probably deserved that)…a completely fine human reaction. Only two minutes later it was implied a freaking old god made him do it. Sure…why should a character show a completely human thing like emotions?
Essentially, the characters are too flat and assigning any race or leader a certain type of morality wouldn’t make it better…but it would simply be more of the same.
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I can’t recall the specific instances but I recently played BFA for the first time and I recall both of these things happening in the main questing through the three kul’tiras zones. Especially with regards to the Forsaken, the Alliance lets loose - you may not have noticed because the story tends to portray those moments as cool or badass. I remember laughing about it and posting the lines to discord as I was playing, if I can find them again I’ll post them here, but 100% this happens.
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Yeah, that’s an issue with the writing team’s decision to continuously justify, downplay, or dismiss the flaws of the Alliance from earlier times. For the bigotry to be a flaw, you have to actually keep it a flaw. Not try to justify it in universe.
Because back in Vanilla, Tiragarde Keep, Northwatch, and Theramore and their continued harassment of the Horde in its own backyard -thanks to Proudmoore and his hawkish/racist allies in the Alliance- were clearly framed as the powder keg that was gong to start the next Horde/Alliance war.
But they threw that out the window with Cataclysm and beyond, and it all became about Horde aggression.
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Hmm … I’ve been trying to think of the most concise way to answer this, and I think I’ve finally found it. Its not about “Wanting to be Hated”, its about “Wanting to have valid reasons to Hate”.
Ever since Cata, there seems to have been this general theme that while the Horde has to be antagonistic towards the Alliance; the Alliance can not (in tangible ways) be antagonistic against the Horde. Yet, because of the increasingly flawless, pure nature of the Alliance … Blizz seems less and less worried about giving the flawed, unpure Horde reasons for that antagonism. In part, because for that aggression to be justified or validated in any way … the Alliance would have had to do something to have earned it in some way. And that doesn’t gel with that artificially pure identity of the Alliance. They can’t give us reasons to hate them.
While I hate the Faction Conflict, while it exists … because the Alilance can’t be allowed to do anything to earn or justify the Horde’s Ire … the Horde’s Ire is thus not earned or justified. Yet, time and time again, we are expected to act despite that lack of validity or justification. Because the Alliance (who have many validated and justifed reasons to hate the people of the Horde) simply can’t. Beyond that though, I do just find the Alliance in their current “purity test” iteration insufferably artificial, boring, and inhuman.
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I didn’t say “the Alliance.” I said characters. I want both sides to be as mixed as real-life nations are, with good people and bad people and people who are in between, so that you can’t slap the entire faction with one single label.
Sort of, though I’d prefer more characters whose animosity toward the Horde wasn’t built on desire for revenge. I’d like a few who are just racist, or out to use the war for their own self-serving ends (glory, profit, politics). And I’d also like some Horde characters who want revenge on the Alliance, to balance out the Rogerses.
I think that’s one reason Horde players latched onto Genn as an enemy. Because even if he had the whole revenge thing going, he wasn’t a stainless victim; back in the day, he arguably kind of deserved what happened to him, and he also was partly responsible for the plight of the Forsaken. I think the story lost a lot of realism and richness when those aspects of his character were swept under the rug and forgotten in favor of “my son 
” and I’d like to have more of that kind of storytelling and characterization in WoW again.
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We could always use the religion angle, it works with the lawful alliance schtick so its not ooc however i dont know how that will work with that desire for revenge we cant just swipe it under the rug which is why im of the mind that we need a timetraveling expansion to unmake bfa starting with the burning im tired of pushing forward and not getting any catharsis we might as well just unmake the mess they made.
“i don’t think there will be a return journey mr frodo”
I don’t mind if there are some “My-family-died-at-Southshore!” Rogerses out there, as long as (1) that’s not the only motivation ever given to Alliance characters and (2) it’s balanced by some equivalents in the Horde. Gann Stonespire used to be an example of the latter, but of course he’s dead now, and also, he was a much more minor character than Rogers, since he never became a high-ranking leader of Horde armies.
I agree that it’s too late for Genn. They’d have to bring in new characters to get that kind of nuance in the story again. Assuming anyone in the current writing staff is even capable of/interested in doing it.
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Oh no doubt that racism exists within the Horde.
There’s definitely negative perceptions of Horde races in the Alliance experience too, though. It’s just not framed these days as a biased/bad/incorrect thing. It’s just more often treated as a matter of fact “neutral” view.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Vol%27jin_of_the_Darkspear_(Alliance)
Is this an Alliance character being biased, or does the Darkspear camp really just stink? Does Vol’jin really have a bad grasp of common, or does the Alliance character just assume he doesn’t? Is the Alliance character biased against trolls, or does Vol’jin’s breath really reek and is his smile really savage?
Or more recently in BfA…
https://wow.gamepedia.com/I_Take_No_Pleasure_In_This
Does the artificial grass of Gallywix’s pleasure palace really ruin what’s otherwise a pleasant patch of nature? Is the pool really filthy? Do goblins actually just throw their trash in the water? Are goblins actually starving in the face of such excesses? Is it excess? Or are these all simply examples of Magister Umbric being a jerk when it comes to Goblins?
The opening intros of the various races in both Vanilla and Cata make explicit mention of the “Savage Horde”, the “Merciless Horde”, “Garrosh’s reckless leadership”, the “primitive races of the Horde”, “savage orcs”, and “vicious trolls” renowned for their “cruelty and dark mysticism” as well as being “barbarous and superstitious”.
Is the narrator engaging in anti-Horde propaganda, or just telling it like it is?
Edit: I point this out because this is kind of how racist ideas persists in real life. Not by standing out as being obviously biased and intentionally demonizing. Rather, they masquerade as matter-of-fact “truths” that go largely unexamined/uncriticized d to the point where they’re just tacitly accepted as “the way things are”.
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To be honest, I feel we need to just remove revenge from the picture.
It’ll never actually happen, nor do I believe it should. Nobody wants to play a story where they are being kicked in the nuts, so they really shouldn’t keep poking at that. (Yes, this does mean people need to get over things. Night elf players need to get over Teldrassil. Orc players need to get over the internment camps. So on and so forth), and start developing this faction conflict as an actual conflict between factions and not individual races.
A good while ago, before BFA BfA’d I thought a very good none-villain bat story of the Alliance aggression against the Horde would have been Anduin for example deciding that world peace is possible, as long as the Horde is made to join the Alliance, by force if necessary, with Sylvanas’ response being “well obviously nuts to that.” This way it’s also framed not as a war or a conflict of individual races being angry, but the faction as a whole which would help narrow the conflict down to make it simpler to write and less prone to go crazy.
This was just an idea, but both would be logical, understandable for the characters at the forefront, and would not require a villain bat. Both sides would have a reason to continue fighting for what they believe is a peace. That’s what WoW needs more of, something like that.
Instead of this rather inane villain batting which is like their only method of causing conflict at this point.
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id wager orgrimmar still hasnt got a decent sewer system, i bet even the zandalar got it before it was cool.
Got curious and looked it up, and apparently water-flushable toilets have been around in some fashion since at least 3,100 BC, or so says the Wikipedia article.
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But Genn was put into the game to side with the Horde, in Nazjatar. He even went so far as to basically be warrior-flirting with Lor’themar as players on both sides quested with both of them side by side.
I think Ion and anyone else who pushes the faction conflict as a central pillar of WoW is mistaken to do so and the game really should move on from it, not be humored with pessimism of “Well if it’s going to be bad any way…”
I mean, posters don’t follow that mindset even here, where people are quick to jump on “Yeah, but Garithos and Daelin reflect the entire Alliance” rather than treating them as individual characters that did no represent the stances of other Alliance characters.
To be fair, when I saw Anduin standing in the cinematic with his spooky lion helmet all intimidating like I thought that was where things were going, too. But then Anduin took him helmet off and was the same bleeding heart healer he always was.
IIRC when playing a Horde race through the first 10 levels of the new intro the Alliance is referred to “imperialistic”. So there, make the Alliance the British Empire. It’s the total package and includes without actually spelling them: racism, colonialism, exploitation of the natives and natural resources, etc…
Now I’m not saying to actually turn the alliance into this, just show it to Horde players through their journey to max level. ( Just as Alliance players are shown the savage and bloodthirsty Horde side through the same journey ). Bad sides are part of any and all powerful faction but are not necessarily their defining trait. As an outsider looking in though, it may be all you see given your particular circumstances.
So now both factions have valid reasons to dislike each other and when they do come together to fight a common enemy, there is an emotional cost and the circumstances are given even more weight.
Be careful when wishing the factions to be done away with. If recent writing is to be an indicator, your faction and your race may lose its identity with it. In some cases there is already precious little left to lose.
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The alliance are already interesting. You just have to open your eyes and look.
I’m not sure if this has already been stated, but I feel like there’s some confusion on the part of the OP here, no offense intended.
First, the statement that “The Alliance used to be racist,” is, admittedly, a generalization. Specifically, the Alliance’s racist past refers primarily to the original Alliance of Lordaeron, which was 90% human—the only three major racial leaders who weren’t included:
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Magni Bronzebeard, dwarven king of Khaz Modan
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Gelbin Mekkatorque, gnomish High Tinker of Gnomeragan
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Anasterian Sunstrider, king of the high elves of Quel’thalas
Of these, pretty much only Anasterian and the Quel’dorei were ever in direct contact with humanity (as seen with Kael’thas being on the Kirin Tor’s Council of Seven), largely due to geography.
In addition to this, you had leaders like Genn Greymane going so far as to refer to the Quel’dorei as “demi humans” (Lord of His Pack), the whole system of orc internment camps, Turalyon rationalizing that the orcs are enemies of life, therefore it’s acceptable to use the Light to kill them, and of course the infamous episodes of Garithos (“vainglorious elves”) and Daelin Proudmoore (“death to the blackbloods!”)
We only ever see three different humans—Taretha Foxton, Tirion Fordring, and Jaina Proudmoore—defying this prejudice at the height of the original Alliance’s power.
Sure, we Kaldorei had some elements of xenophobia even as recent as the Third War, but nothing remotely approaching the sense of purely human supremacy that was true of the Alliance of Lordaeron. And I feel like that would be an avenue worth revisiting going forward, the specifically human racism, especially considering that both Turalyon and Genn Greymane were members of the Alliance the first time around.
It would add an interesting new development to the tension that had already been created in BfA with Anduin’s refusal to aid Tyrande in retaking Darkshore. It would also force the other Alliance leaders (Moira, Falstad, and Muradin, Velen, even Alleria) to reconsider their positions, as well, especially considering Velen has just recently had a firsthand example of a being of Light attempting to force its will upon someone.
The Alliance definitely needs to have some in-faction tension like what we saw with the Horde during BfA, and the potential of it going back to its (very much racist) previous incarnation is a pretty good narrative technique of doing that.
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I’m not sure if the Alliance need to be more racist. If anything because I really don’t think the Blue Team would be doing itself any favors by being even more welcoming to those sorts.
But some flaws would be nice. Seriously coming back to WoW in Legion the only outright bad thing I’ve seen the Alliance do was in Shadows Rising. Everything else was either retroactively justified or could be taken as “well we’re at war what do you want from them?”.
The lack of any moral grayness is what honestly makes me struggle to stay invested in the Alliance story. I’ve mentioned before I loved Kul Tiras because for the first time I felt the game was actually challenging my moral fiber. Like we gotta help these villagers even though they’re backwoods lunatics who’s idea of a fair trial is trying to drown or immolate a woman.
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See, the thing about the original Alliance of Lordaeron being racist, though, is that they weren’t just being racist for the sake of being racist. There was actual nuance; they had just fought a war to save their world from what was effectively a race of alien invaders (orcs) and had no actual frame of reference for the orcs behaving in any other manner.
If we were to suddenly get Yrel and the Army of Light from AU Draenor coming to Azeroth while the players, Anduin, Jaina, Taelia, Baine, Thrall, and Calia are all away in the Shadowlands, it would actually be an ideal way to go back to that.
The Alliance has no frame of reference for what Yrel did back on Draenor; that experience is purely Horde—that’s potential for miscommunication. Thrall or Eitrigg tries to warn the Alliance, specifically Turalyon, about what they’ve let in, and the response would predictably be, “Why should we trust you? We serve the Light!”
I’m not necessarily saying the Alliance (or rather, the core Alliance of humans like Anduin and Turalyon) needs to be one-dimensionally racist, but they do need the sort of complex nuance that we saw back in the Warcraft II - Warcraft III era, in which they acted in increasingly-racist ways while under the delusion that they were doing the right thing.
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I mean, despite Alleria walking around the Vindicaar yelling about how horrible she thought the Horde was, Turalyon himself was pretty welcoming to everyone.
I wouldn’t call that siding with the horde, not really. It’s just a classic “grit your teeth and truce with your enemy for a split second” trope, although I didn’t like it because if that was the intent, it failed for me because I just felt like the villain that the heroes had to tolerate, instead of it being an even-handed thing. Thanks for that, BFA.
it also bugged me how the zone used the aesthetically un-horde-like elves to try to push the horde’s reasonable side. I know the point was because the zone was Nazjatar but when you use the two races that alliance players largely wanted on their side to begin with, I felt like my character didn’t really belong.
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