But they sure are LOUD.
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The thing is I quite like the faction conflict.
But it needs to be a perpetual B plot in the form of a Cold War with Flashpoints. Being fought over some relatively isolated region in perpetuity.
Making it the main plot is quite silly as the nature of the game means an inevitable return to the status quo. So nobody can truly win or lose.
And even when the story says somebody won or lost, good luck having the actual in game zone reflect this. Darkshore and Arathi are still unstuck in time warzones. Tirisfal is about the only place that progressed narratively at all and itâs a phasing minefield where youâre liable to time warp through three separate versions of Tirisfal just wandering around.
So I really wouldnât hold my breath for any real substantial update until or if they do a Cata style rework of Azeroth at large. Which is why these things should be confined to off-map instanced zones like Arathi Basin, or specific PvP regions like Wintergrasp, or PvP objectives in regions like Halaa in Nagrand.
Because thereâs really no telling if or when these battlefields will ever be addressed. So maybe donât blow up anything important for game modes nobodyâs goinf to care about in a year or two.
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Truth be told I actually donât mind faction conflict. Itâs just the way they have been writing it as of late which makes my head spin.
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Well they seem incapable of writing nuanced conflict. So one side has to become completely evil, and odds are itâs going to be the Horde because they more red eyes and sharp teeth.
I actually had high hopes for BFA. A conflict over resources seems like fertile ground for a genuinely morally gray story. Both factions could be greedy, paranoid and short sighted. Plus we had NâZoth waiting in the wings who couldâve been using his mind magic to actively throw gasoline on the situation.
Instead though Sylvanas was Captain Warcrime, who was causing as much indiscriminate slaughter as possible because she was in league with the literal devil.
Itâs fine now though she was really sorry about it.
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A lot of discussion has taken place since this thread went live.
I donât feel like reading all 200 posts, so Iâm gonna touch on this.
I think youâre right and wrong at the same time.
Warcraft has absolutely centered around violent conflict. Conflict stemming from racism and violent colonialism and even genocide.
But itâs also been centered around uniting and finding common ground in spite of those conflict listed above.
Thereâs a divide in Warcraft. A schism that exists between WC2 and WC3.
And a lot of problems in WoW can be traced back to this schism.
Particularly problems with the Horde.
The WC2 Horde and the WC3 Horde are entirely different beasts.
Yet the Devs seem to want to embrace both.
So the Horde becomes this strange mixture of âBadass conquerors who raze and slayâ and âRepentant warriors trying to recover their roots and find their place in the world.â
Itâs lead to unsatisfactory storytelling, where the Horde keeps repeating arcs it already had, and the Alliance isnât allowed to react sensibly. (Not to mention the other narrative problems the Alliance has had)
WoW didnât lose itâs way.
It never had a way to start with.
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From what I understand a lot of the writing team was not really on board for the fourth war and how it played out, so there was not much passion going into it. That was also when the harassment and poor workplace quality stuff began to surface. All of that together leads me to think in general the team was in a bad place just organizationally and had been for a long time, and that was always going to bleed into the game.
Dragonflight is our first expansion post internal cleanup, and you can feel how much better they are saying things are for them in the content itself. Everything feels far more carefully constructed story wise.
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My Issue is the Horde leadership followed Sylvanas after Teldrassil.
If they explain themselves and make amends for having done such a thing then there is no issue as far as I am concerned.
Instead Blizzard has completely skipped this crucial step and we are getting wedding parties and other crap that has no place happening.
Honestly I have repeated myself so many times on this single thread on what is needed that I am tired to do it again.
Long answer short.
Have the Blizzard give us dialogues, cinematics or even free novellas that goes over the Hordeâs leadershipâs failure. Why they should be trusted by anyone and why they screwed up so badly.
Insert some other NPCs v NPC interactions where they are tasked to have both sides reconcile their differences and the many, many, many crimes the Horde has repeatedly committed.
Maybe Admiral Rogers wonât be so angry if someone from the Forsaken explains how South Shore got destroyed and apologize for it or even assure her the ones responsible died in BFA and like he is the last to remain is here to say sorry. Idk. Idc how you write it but I just want a little god damn humanity from the Horde besides cartoonish villainy and selfishness. And heck see Rogers/Tyrande/Jaina move the god damn on with their life and build something or stop crying, take bloody vengeance and be done with it.
It is a Blizzard writing issue and it takes the Horde play a role that they have never tried making them play.
Hopefully I was clear this time. Its just frustrating trying to have an honest conversation and people keep making caricatures of what I am not actually saying.
Duuuuuude I was so stoked for BFA.
I remember seeing the cinematic and excitement crashing into me.
The Horde on defensive. Lordaeron under siege. The Alliance finally attacking for once.
The conflict looked interesting. Nuanced even.
I remember thinking Azerite could fix things.
That it would revolutionize warfare, escalation would occur, and BFA would end with Nzothâs release and the factions realizing that their large-scale warfare had become too dangerous.
Forcing the factions to scale back their conflict to smaller skirmishes, lest Azerite escalation blow the planet up.
Then Sylvanas burned a tree and Azerite literally could not have been more irrelevant.
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Thatâs the Horde in a nutshell since Cata tbh. Like, we should have known we were in trouble in BfA when they killed Jin off the way that they did, solely to shoehorn Sylvie into the drivers seat. Its the same exact crap they pulled with Cairneâs death to Garrosh, and the absurdly artificial forcing Thrall to stay away for two full expansions during the Cata/MoP period. Seems sort of a theme to kill off a WC3 Founding Horde leader when theyâre bout to run rampant with some WC1/WC2 Horde funâŠ
Like, the Horde didnât even have things like âMeans, Motive, or Opportunityâ to do anything it did in BfA; and to a lesser extent Cata. And in âA Good Warâ Blizz essentially writes the aggressor without a reason in this conflict, is so weak as an entire Faction they could not possibly hope to defeat the NEs alone if both their leaders were there at the same time; and/or 90 percent of their troops were conveniently away. The convenient Plot Device Ladyâs and Gentleman. Does the thing, so the plot can happen!
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My favorite is during the Expeditions we see that everyone from the Bloodsail Buccaneers to the Cult of the Damned to the Venture Co. and even Elemental Lords have ran off with a not insubstantial amount of Azerite. Which we repeatedly see has a cartoonishly massive force multiplying effect on everything. Just a sprinkle of it can turn a bit of gunpowder into basically C4 plastic explosives.
So a rogueâs gallery made off with bags full of enchanted yellow cake uranium, and nobody at all seems concerned about it.
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They wrote in a convenient kill switch, when Azeroth healed herself, azerite goes inert and is just some red rocks. So that at least must of been real disappointing for everyone who spent so much time collecting it.
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Well I donât want the Horde to remain that way but every time I talk about it here people say thatâs punishing the Horde players 
The Alliance is going to get kicked in the face whether there is a faction conflict or not.
But at least the characters behave in a slightly comprehensible manner is the lowest bar I can ask for.
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Man Iâm glad weâre moving away from borrowed power. First the artifacts crapped out because of Sargerasâs sword, then somebody turned off the Azerite wifi, and now our SL abilities just suddenly stopped working outside it I guess because we fixed Godâs email filter.
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Iâm convinced it was narratively dropped in favor of something else.
Azerite had so much set up going into BFA.
It revolutionized weaponry. Gunpowder, bombs, tanks, all incorporated Azerite to devastating effect.
Just holding a pebble of Azerite was enough to fill you with energy and slight megalomania.
And in the end, all we did with Azerite was make our pants slightly better.
Really, thereâs a lot about BFA that implies there was some massive shift in the story during development.
But thatâs a thread for another time.
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Its the least we could all ask for ⊠but its a low, low bar they fail to overcome.
Nothing beats tbe faction war that is Mists of Pandaria. The Purge of Dalaran is its peak, and still today debated whoâs done wrong and whoâs gonna take the blame for all the drama that happened
Pretty clear by Legion that Jaina and Vareesa did nothing wrong, and that the Blood Elves were the baddies. Which is why Aethasâ part of that story was conveniently âbuggedâ out of the scenario, because it gave him too much nuance. And why he got to get down on his hands and knees and beg for forgiveness to allow the Horde back into Dalaran to help with the Legion threat. Remember, when who should have been the leader of the victims (if not for an admitted bug the Devs never bothered to fix), is the one who apologizes for it ⊠the perpetrators of that event were the oneâs in the right.
Especially when the severity of the âPurgeâ has been wheeled back multiple times.
Ugh.
As much as I do acknowledge the Purge as a decent attempt at a nuanced conflict, it has itâs own issues.
Ironically, I think Camp Turajo is probably the best nuanced conflict they ever did.
Baineâs âlegitimate targetâ nonsense aside, that is.
General Hawthorne acknowledges what he did was bad. And despite his attempt to reduce collateral damage, it still occurred and he seems genuinely upset, even if he considered the attack necessary.
The Horde doesnât care about Hawthorneâs âmercyâ cause innocent Tauren died and itâs a miracle all the children survived (cause there were infants present at this legitimate military target)
So the Horde hunt him down and celebrate the death of the âButcher of Taurajoâ.
All the while the Alliance extremists let Hawthorne die so they could use his death as propaganda to escalate the Barrens conflict.
Itâs pretty insane, and you only really get the full picture of you do both sides of it.
Alliance side doesnât really get into the true horror and scope of the attack.
And the Horde side is ignorant that killing Hawthorne actively makes the Barrenâs conflict worse.
7 Likes
World of Warcraft absolutely should be grimdark.
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So the people who lived and survived Theramore (to the equivalent of a nuke, no less), Hillsbrad, Teldrassil and others should just shrug it off and forget about it, its water under the bridge. The people who lost loved ones to an army of orcs who would destroy and r***, should forget that and be aware that any trigger or ptsd is nothing but bigotry and racism, and so many other examples.
People who support leaving all that behind really dont understand how scars run deep and how hate in this scale simply wont go away. As OP stated, this story is about CONSTANT genocide and racism, and this things take generations if not centuries to fix themselves, not just 3 years and pretend they dont exist in the current context =/
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