It was alright the first time, they gave both factions a decent stake in it and Dalaran was more or less justified in playing the middle (it was one of the founding Alliance kingdoms, but also had a thousand-year-old alliance with the now Horde-aligned Silvermoon to juggle). The short stories that touched on the politics of this were also good.
When it comes to Dalaran I couldn’t give two figs whether it makes sense for it to be neutral or not. After Wrath, the place just invokes so much pleasant nostalgia that when Legion was announced Dalaran returning was the thing I was most excited for.
It’d have been cool for the Horde to get their own magical floating city but I also didn’t mind because Dal is probably my favorite city in the game. The music and atmosphere are just top notch.
Yeah I would have rather have seen alliance and Horde strongholds established on a few of the islands outlying the broken isles… would have felt more like we were at war with the legion than going to the floating city in the sky… it needs to re park it’s self in the crater where it came from.
The first time was not a problem for me. It made sense for a hub to be used by both factions to fight the Scourge.
The second time around for Legion? Heck no. The Horde should have had their own hub. As a Blood Elf player, it was a bitter pill to swallow to have to return to Dalaran. That we got no resolution regarding those thrown into the Violet Hold just made it worse.
I wonder if they should have made the Sunreavers, and some of the Forsaken that were mages create their own city or opposition faction the the Kirin Tor?
I would have loved this, but the amount of work involved (modeling, coding, etc) would have probably been prohibitive. The Sunreavers using the Blood Elf architecture to create the city would have been lovely.
Of course, certain people would have screamed bloody murder about having to use an Elf city as a hub.
I think it made sense in wrath. In Legion it was just nostalgia bait that threw out a lot of plot development to show-horn it into the plot.
Realistically our order halls should have been the neutral hubs for Legion, but that would have meant making 10 hubs instead of just updating the one from wrath.
While I would have liked a separate Horde and Alliance hub for Legion, given what we had coming off of WoD (Ashran) I can see where Dalaran was thenmorw attractive option.
One of the central themes of the game is uniting against the bigger threat and so Dalaran uniting with both the Alliance and Horde against Malygos and Arthas made perfect sense. Legion however is where it gets odd because at that point the Horde has been violently expelled from the city and while Khadgar makes a good point about uniting both the strength of the Alliance and Horde to defeat the Burning Legion, it is never explained as why the Horde would want to go back.
As a matter of fact some of the NPCs in the Horde side Legion-Dalaran were those who we rescue during the Purge of Dalaran. There is no explanation as to why these specific individuals like the innkeeper decided to return to the city after they had to be rescued from it.
I think it would been more interesting to simply have Ambassadors in the faction city to show that were all working together against the Legion but neither side exactly trusted each other. Like the Alliance would have Dalaran and the Horde say repurposed Naxxramas.
The Alliance believes that the Horde intentionally abandoned them to die and the Horde would see that as the Alliance looking for any excuse to hate them. In hindsight this would have been the perfect way to seed future faction war stories, since it paints idea of the Alliance seeking vengeance and the Horde giving up on peace and committing to war.
First time was fine, it was a neutral city in a neutral expansion.
Then they had Dalaran attack the Horde in Cata/MoP. Most of my Horde friends said they would rather blow it out of the sky than have to go there again.
Dalaran is a prime example of the Human Potential meme.
Elves and Draenei have thousands-of-years long lifespans, the Horde now has both Silvermoon City and Suramar, and the Horde has the Forsaken who most likely have fallen magi of the Kirin Tor…
And yet Dalaran swallows up all the story when it comes to mages and magic. Why should any mage on the Horde side ever want or need to go to Dalaran?
Not only that, why would any member of the Horde trust Dalaran after Jaina and Vereesa conducted a racial purge instead of locatin’ the one Sunreaver who decided he liked Garrosh.
At this point, I would prefer if Khadgar just stays in Karazan as a pseudo-Guardian to be pulled out whenever Blizzard needs a neutral hero. Dalaran effectively becomes an Alliance city, and the Horde forms its own magic organization in either Silvermoon or Suramar.
Absolutely not.
Dalaran became alliance in mop.
i though at the time that it was a fair trade, losing theramore for a more iconic alliance city.
But then legion came in and it was bizzare not only that the council of six decided to let the horde back in (The same council that never punished jaina for the purge meaning that they agreed with her)
but also seeing aethas beg to go back to the city that was responsible for the deaths of his people twice and this time he given to them a national treasure to be accepted again.
Not even speaking about the statue of rhonin, the leader of dalaran that died at the hands of the horde saving an alliance character.
and we got horde walking the city like nothing happened, yep, totally innocents.
And now? their neutrality in a war versus the horde
my suggestion would be that they give the horde their own city with their own characters, and it would help if it is a city that didn’t tried to murder them.
but we all know that blizzard did it to reduce cost of development, is more easy to create shared content.
Correct me if I am wrong but didn’t Blizzard try making a Horde hub in Wrath but dropped it due to development and budgeting? Or am I getting it mixed up with crystalsong forest, and Silverwing Covenant leading to nowhere or something? I don’t have any sources, only heard of those stories.