Because he still believes in attempting peace. As for Saurfang, while he himself participated in attrocities he still did the right thing in the end and help end the war just before Sylvanad could complete whatever she wanted to do/in time for us to deal with N’zoth.
So he DOES trust them.
Thanks for confirming that.
You can attempt peace WITHOUT fully trusting someone.
Wrong you can’t.
And the Horde has ZERO incentive to adhere to the agreement.
Afterall what is the repercussion if they don’t?
Are their people faced with extinction? Nope.
Are they in danger of losing their lands? Nope. Instead they actually gain some.
The Horde has nothing to fear because they face no repercussion.
A war to the Horde is a net positive that they can only gain from.
Is it any wonder they keep doing it?
Just as the horde are doomed to be #savage jerks who change leaders and commit atrocities, the alliance are doomed to be the white knight faction that won’t consider even a morally gray approach to fighting the horde.
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Unfortunately, most of the moderate suggestions I’ve seen tend to get ignored in favor of posters arguing with the easy target hardliners.
But, in terms of what I’d like to see to patch things up:
- Faction ambassadors at the other faction’s embassies. Have them have scripted conversations, which get updated each patch, to show what the sore spots are in faction negotiations, what they can agree on, and what they can’t. Mostly, they’d serve as a constant update to show that this plot thread hasn’t been forgotten and swept under the rug, even if it won’t be resolved instantly. They could steal common arguments from the forums to bicker about in-game easily enough.
- Night elves retake Ashenvale from Sylvanas loyalists in a playable scenario. Show off everything that’s cool about night elves, every neat unit and special effect from the Warfront, plus major Draenei and worgen support, and some appearances from other allies as well. Show them winning and winning big, with no ifs, ands, or buts. (Horde players won’t have to see/play through this scenario, and can get a Horde-focused questline somewhere else instead.) As part of this, reveal that the Horde/ex-Horde slain in the scenario were the ones who were eager to invade and unapologetic about the Burning, so they’re crossed off the revenge list.
- Have the Horde ambassadors tell/show the Alliance that the Horde is rounding up Sylvanas loyalists. Have the Horde turn over at least one character who’s confirmed (by SI:7 or so, not just taking the Horde’s word, and also giving some more successes to Alliance spy agencies to counter their Worf effect) to be someone who participated in the Burning. (I’d prefer a point of contention in A/H negotiations to be that the Horde won’t turn over all the perpetrators, however, choosing to deal with Sylvanas loyalists internally rather than submit to the Alliance. But at least one should be turned over.) Show to the Alliance player how the Horde is different rather than saying they’re different but showing no differences.
- Show that the Alliance isn’t toothless. The debates over which faction is stronger show what POVs players can have, so I’d like to see something cacnon confirming that each side could still savage the other if the war continued. (I think the Horde player should see this, but presented with the tone of “these guys are no pushovers, this is serious and maybe deadly” rather than “oh noes big bad Jaina can one-shot us all! Ok, moment over, go squish Alliance punies again.”)
- Let Rogers be a villain to the Horde. If Blizz wants to keep the faction divide, then the Horde needs an antagonistic Alliance character that they can resent without being prodded to feel guilty, but I think Jaina has too much history to turn into a full villain, and I think turning Tyrande into one would be terrible after Teldrassil - she at least needs to get some big successes for the night elves to build up their pride again before she can be tolerably be made into a villain and bumped off. They can be frosty with the Horde, but shouldn’t be full villains. Rogers, however, would fit the role to a T. (I’m fine with the Alliance having Garithos-style figures for the Horde player to unreservedly loathe, I just don’t think faction leaders should be turned into those kinds of caricatures. On either side.)
- Rebuild a capital city for the night elves and Forsaken - as the faction capitals for the expac after Shadowlands, so that they can be a major feature and take up a lot of narrative time and care. Let the player interact with a whole host of named faction NPCs, and quest to help the rebuilding process. Show how these societies are recovering and building themselves anew. (I like Stratholme for the Forsaken, and while I’d love a spot in Ashenvale for the night elves, that’s probably impossible, so maybe Hyjal or Nighthaven or even Auberdine or Lor’danel for another port city.) Additionally, I’d seed in a few minor story quests throughout Shadowlands showing night elf and Forsaken characters searching out and picking the spot to rebuild, maybe a situation where the player can periodically turn in current-expac resources as part of the rebuilding effort, like the Warfront contribution phase - just to keep the topic alive even when it can’t be in focus yet.
- Let the Horde visibly participate in neutral world-saving events in a major way. All too often, they get sidelined in neutral events while Alliance-themed groups are made neutral and take center stage, which I think is a big negative for both factions. This makes it seem, especially to Alliance players, that the Horde only participate in stories when it’s about murdering Alliance. Make Argent camps using recolored Orc buildings (instead of just a few orc NPCs in Human buildings), have Argent apothecaries on loan from the Forsaken and who don’t have a malicious ulterior motive, have some plains-themed Cenarion Circle camps with Tauren buildings and doodads, etc. Show that the Horde are an equal half of neutral organizations instead of a few NPCs shoehorned in. (And actually make neutral factions feel neutral, instead of Horde feeling they’re shoved into Alliance groups while Alliance feel like they’ve had major pieces flensed out of the Alliance to give to the Horde.)
I’ll probably think of some more points later, and this doesn’t solve everything, but I think this would salve over the worst of the current story’s festering wounds.
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Well, yes, that’s the core issue of Blizzard writing the factions. It’s just that I really don’t think a change of roles would solve the problem. Much less that Alliance players would enjoy it.
It’s also worth noting that back then, the Alliance and Alliance adjacent institutions had their fair share of jerks too. The world was on the brink of war because of Admiral Proudmoore’s single minded drive to destroy Orgrimmar and the new Horde. There was political corruption among the nobles of Stormwind. The Dwarven clans engaged in political intrigues. The Scarlet Crusade was still a thing.
At some point, not only did the Horde get darker, the Alliance got lighter. Nobody in the Alliance can do anything shady anymore, and if they do, the narrative bends over backwards explaining how they’re 100% justified. Dark Irons and Void Elves, formerly considered evil, join and all the bad stuff they’ve done is kind of just dismissed. The Alliance itself is apparently a perfect system, without internal conflict, and any threat to this perfect peaceful order or its very existence can only come if some external force.
So in order to ensure we have an actual story, we require a never ending parade of end of the world scenarios or wars propagated by non-Alliance parties. Because for various reasons, it’s been decided the Alliance can’t drive conflicts anymore.
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I am going to wait and see how “moderate Horde” players respond to it. Which honestly you are better off making a thread on its own.
I can’t and won’t comment on your post because I don’t want to derail it.
But I will say seeing Horde humanized and impact my narrative positively in a noticeable way irks me somehow.
It just feels wrong. It doesn’t fit what I have seen and experienced so far.
I can understand that. It does feel like Blizz made the Horde dig themselves down such a deep hole with the Burning that it feels cheap to suddenly pull them out of it with nary a dirtstain… but I don’t think the Horde players, so many of whom didn’t want to go along with that story in the first place, should have it hanging around their individual neck forever.
I think any solution is going to feel bad in some way, but I think almost any solution is better that the current one where everything is swept under the rug for the sake of status quo. I’d prefer something that both the Horde and Alliance player can, if not like, then at least not vehemently hate.
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The Horde had already been humanized way back in Warcaft 3 and Classic. Their current narrative f###-ups, which started in Cata, is a regression.
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Whatever happened in WC3 to me is an oddity because in the end Daelin was right and Jaina finally realized it by BFA.
Because after several expansions of being the punching bag, narrative direction would go to forgiving the horde again, everything will be solved without retaliation and that would feel like a cheap cop out since most of our loses wouldnt have happened if they would have revolted the second their warchief started to do shady stuff, it looks hypocritic at best, like, thinking that the horde will help saving the souls of night elves from the maw, theyre still dead because of a bad zug zug, as a political entity its their fault theyre on super hell on the first place so i dont even want to see them near those souls, it will happen anyway because blizz.
What you ask on your second parragraph is a compromise, sadly there is no solution for this, there is no space for debate and there can be no compromise this time, the well is poisoned, as a political entity theyre irredemable, forgive and forget? we tried and what happened? Teldrassil.
i may be unreasonable but frankly speaking i can no longer be an alliance fan without being this unreasonable, else ill just stop being a fan and stop playing althogether, i am aware that there are some horde fans that are displeased with the overreacing narrative which is why im cautious not to denounce or try to hammer down my personal opinions on them, nothing will change arguing with them anyways. I am ALSO aware so many horde were displeased to help saurfang that they had to add a loyalist option, relishing on the chance to massacre alliance members, which helps to validate my and pheandra’s assumptions.
Blizzard dug this hole and i can only provide my displeasure on the direction they are trying to steer the narrative, knowing they cant please everybody i believe they will continue to do whatever seems more profitable screwing the lore in the process and i will continue to believe this will happen until i see otherwise.
Luckly for me torghast looks neat, ill scrutinize SL before buying it tho, not getting burned next expansion too.
No thank you evil. I’ve tried, I’ve seen others try, but any attempt to engage you in an actual discussion that has an end result of anything but “eliminate every single orc, troll, tauren, forsaken, blood elf, etc” gets brushed off and crapped on.
I’ll not engage or attempt to engage you in actual discussion. I have better things to waste my time on. I could level archeology from scratch, for example.
Y’know what angered me the most about Cataclysm? When they removed all the original quests surrounding Stockades and replaced them with nothing substantial.
It’s a small thing, but that quest chain? Where you can trace it from Westfall questing, into Deadmined, to Redridge, into Stockades, then the keep itself, and so on? It was engaging. It showed corruption, but also showed people fighting it. It had depth. I’ll never forget hiding in the bushes in the keep’s garden thinger, spying on a nobleman working with… A Defias I think? Spying on their conversation for SI:7 was great stuff.
It was replaced by a single guard inside Stockades, sending you to kill Hogger (or did you?). I really feel like this could be a summary of the change in priorities in the development team’s storytelling abilities.
Sure, we could have a storyline that begins in a starter zone, takes you through two dungeons, three zones, across the ocean to another zone, and ultimately hints at connections all the way to a raid boss dragon corrupting the kingdom… But it’s be just easier to put a dude near a dungeon entrance to ask you to kill a joke boss. While we’re at it, let’s replace that first storyline with pop culture jokes about a show people will forget five years later. Subtlety and long-term storytelling is too much when you can just explain things quick and wrap them up in a cinematic.
Meh. I miss moral ambiguity and being able to speculate on things and connections. Not a fan of playing black hats vs white hats.
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I don’t mean me. But Aviala, in case you haven’t noticed I am trying to stay out of it for once and see what you “moderates” come up with.
But I see that you are not interested in that. You just want to fight more. Otherwise why reply to me rather than Aviala who spent so much time typing out all her ideas?
You are proving my point that Horde players are not interested in a resolution depite their conciliatory words about understanding the other side or whatever.
She was talking to you, Phae. I was letting you know why us “moderate Horde” players might not be as interested in biting at your baited hooks with lines like this:
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And the Star Wars Sequels make the victories and trials of the heroes of original trilogy look pointless. But that doesn’t change the fact that the original trilogy are great movies, and the sequels are garbage, aside from the visuals.
BFA has great visuals too.
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For the third and last time.
You moderate Horde/Alliance players try and attempt at a compromise and lets see what you moderates come up with when you accuse people like me as trolling and ruining the conversation.
Several times now I have tried to push you towards a more constructive discussion. NOT WITH ME! But with another poster but you refuse to do it.
Its incredible.
I tried in another thread.. I even asked for input and altered it.
You and other Alliance players dismissed it. Your criticism was that the Horde was presented as anything other than monsters deserving of their destruction. On the other side, I was criticized because it showed Alliance characters doing things that they didn’t consider entirely heroic.
It really is an impossible needle to thread because we’re honestly talking about the disparate desires of dozens of people here on the forums and thousands/millions of the greater audience.
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Oh really?
Seems more like trolling.
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