Yes. Yes they were. Just because they weren’t entirely evil doesn’t mean they weren’t dark.
Nothing except… isn’t an actual argument. That means it wasn’t nothing. The Horde were still aggressively pushing into Night Elven lands which incited WSG. There were dissidents in the novels pushing for war even while Thrall was in charge due to a cycle of hatred.
Still waiting on a source regarding this claim.
The majority of them were 100% there and that’s all that matters. These arguments are utter dogwater.
Holy over-simplification batman! It’s like the fact you can’t see anything other than edginess and cringebait and want all the factions to be a largely homogenous boring mess for boring stupid reasons because you lack the imagination to think of anything that pushes the envelope on “parity”.
Because they do a good job of disguising or hiding their villainy, and because of the more sympathetic members of the faction tugging at the heartstrings of the other side.
No, we didn;t have this argument in-house. There was an executive decision made.
Yes, that’s how you have a nuanced diverse Horde. It’s not a bad thing just because you think it is.
That was because the demon blood rendered the orcs slaves. Orc warlocks have always been a thing in WoW for a reason, and If other factions were to be portrayed using fel magics or even fel blood without it rendering them slaves, there would be nothing wrong with that regardless of the WC3 narrative.
Says you. Your opinions are not fact.
The Garrosh arch and by extension the WoD arc proved that Orcs are capable of going bad even without demon blood.
… Because they don’t necessarily have the exact same plan or intent?? Not to mention plan and intent are not always important in diplomatic relations. Sometimes circumstances complicate things. What even is this question? Moreover, in this hypothetical, one of the two forces would not be quite as traditionally virtuous as the other, on top of the two having ideological differences and REALLY bad blood between them that wouldn’t go away in just a few decades.
Lmfao SO in other words, you are admitting their claim is invalid, and admit the truth that the current dynamic is milquetoast and boring. It’s just you don’t mind boring writing and boring, homogenous characterizations of the two factions. Making you the kind of person that I don’t care about the opinion of.
Also, you’re assuming sane minds will always be able to broker peace. That the other faction will always be willing to hear them out. More over, you assume there will always be enough “sane” individuals to be able to make a difference.
You’re assuming I am just talking about fringe groups. Things and people change. Or that Calia and the leadership wouldn’t already be dealt with.
The Old Guard is not just the leadership. The leaders do NOT necessarily represent those they lead.
This characterization is not set in stone. Not to mention it isn’t just about being a moron that swings first and talks never. Again the utter over-simplification lack of imagination from you is… astonishing.
Like I said, you lack any sense of entertaining writing. It’s been pointed out you have really boring tastes.
You lack the imagination to think of a way for the conflict to budge one way or another because of the factions being player controlled. Doesn’t mean no way exists.
Yes, it is is a fault of the factions quickly coming together. Without faction conflict there’s no time for any other threats to properly be developed narratively, and it becomes increasingly implausible for any threats developed to even be considered truly threatening without messing up established lore because who the absolute hell is going to be able to pose a threat to everyone on the damn planet working together when the narrative has to be on our side in the first place?
What the hell does Illidan have to do with any of this? Illidan was always more of an anti-hero than a villain to begin with. But you’re derailing the topic with your nonsense.
I am asking for EITHER the Horde and/or Alliance to become more villainous/less heroic, or for a new superpower to manifest over time for players to play on. Maybe even both.
The current leaders very much still have the baggage of the past. The history why the two factions were enemies is literally barely a few decades old. And that history is bloody and horrible.
Your agenda is blatant and indifferent to a truly enjoyable story. You want your cross faction peace circle in the face of villains that can never get the necessary time to compellingly develop BECAUSE of said peace circle. And as such, I see the garbage wafting from your posts every time.
Even if it was, we very much did have a period where cancel culture was lessened in regards to expression in art and media, and just because something has been around for a long time does not make it acceptable.
The Orcs put aside their brutish warmongering. The Trolls put aside their darker rituals and cannibalistic ways. The Tauren are the Tauren.
Again, only the Forsaken were anything close to Horde ‘dark side’, and that was because they severely overcompensated with a boneheaded ‘huh-huh let’s kill all living things on the planet’ plotline that started back in Vanilla.
That wasn’t ‘dark’, that was a legitimate example of ‘diplomacy failed’. Also, WSG only had half-hearted support from the Horde; Thrall himself and the shamans of the Horde weren’t happy with what was happening there, but he didn’t want to sow divisions within the Horde at the time so the Warsong Outriders would receive token support. Thrall wanted to do things the diplomatic way. Again, not dark, just an unfortunate lesson in what happens when your diplomats either can’t talk to the other side or fail in negotiations with the other side.
Per WoWpedia:
’ Until they joined the Horde, the Darkspear tribe were cannibals. Since then, they officially gave up cannibalism. They seem to have a fondness for rice.’
Ah yes, ‘the majority is X so they must all be X!’ The fact that you later try to ding me on ‘nuance’ in your argument is hilarious considering this statement, by the way.
Did I strike a nerve? The Forsaken were attempting to engineer a plague to kill literally everything on Azeroth. Considering what values the rest of the Horde held, and that they would inevitably be in the crosshairs of this plague as well, the rest of the Horde should have clamped down on this a lot sooner than they did. The fact that they didn’t made Horde leadership look cartoonishly out-of-touch and laughably incompetent.
That idleness cost the Horde dearly, and has thankfully been met with increased vigilance since, though apparently not enough given that Sylvanas was able to pull the wool over the eyes of three of the most spiritually-tuned races on the face of Azeroth. Which led to, guess what, even more dead Horde by Forsaken traitors.
The Horde had two civil wars to answer the question of ‘are we willing to tolerate evil in our ranks’. The answer was a definitive ‘no’.
It made the rest of the Horde look like morons and/or hypocrites. Having a debate on how to deal with an assassination target while civilians are in the way makes you ‘nuanced and diverse.’ An entire group within your faction having a standard policy of ‘death to the living’ and the living members of that faction being all 'well surely they don’t mean us’ is just legitimate stupidity.
And notice where Warlocks have been in Orc culture since WoW Vanilla; hidden, hated, and only spared by Thrall’s decree, and even that was because Thrall knew that there was a danger in the group and was trying to honeypot as many Warlocks as he could before striking.
Fel taint was not something Orcs were willing to tolerate without significant assurances from the top that things would be fine.
Independent beings might act independently, news at 11.
I never claimed Garrosh did what he did because of Fel, I claimed that Orgrimmar’s standing policy regarding the use of Fel was ‘if we see it, you’re dead unless Thrall himself swoops in to pardon you.’ Garrosh happened because Thrall got starry-eyed and let the optimistic thoughts win despite the warning of two of his closest advisors about Garrosh. He was going to get everyone that followed him killed and this was evident all the way back in TBC.
Until Wrathgate, the factions were at relative peace with one another. They weren’t friends, but they weren’t interested in forcing any fights with the greater faction’s army. The Battlegrounds were skirmishes but there wasn’t a full-blown war happening. Both sides’ policies were generally ‘they stay over there, we stay over here, and it’s all fine’. Squabbles might break out between troops in the field away from watching eyes, but that’s just the bad blood sorting itself out. The official position was ‘if they leave us alone, we’ll leave them alone, but we’ll be ready for when they do mess with us.’
Then the bigger threats started to loom over Azeroth as well as the opportunities to deal with them, so with realization and careful negotiation, both sides saw that working together was going to be way better for each of them than trying to engage separately. Again, this is the lesson that’s been being pounded into players’ heads since WC3. Do they have to be the closest of friends? No, but I also never said that. What I said was ‘I’d prefer to not fight someone who would be on my side if only they’d chosen to wear a red tabard that day instead of a blue one’.
The Airship Battle was the culmination of just how stupidly forced the faction conflict got. ‘Through a joint effort and with the aid of the Argent Crusade, we’re on the doorstep of possibly one of the most powerful entities on the planet that’s felled entire kingdoms and grows stronger the more death there is around them. What should we do? Ah, yes, let’s shoot each other for some indiscernible reason and pile up the corpses for him to use! We are brilliant military strategists!’
Well, Garrosh, Putress, and Sylvanas prove that the less sane minds tend to filter themselves out (though regrettably after having done a ton of damage to the Horde itself) and people willing to cooperate have this funny tendency to last longer in group activity.
Also, again, I never said that there would never be agents that want to see open warfare or random destruction, I’m saying that when those agents attempt to come to power, their respective faction would (hopefully) be likely to notice and, if they couldn’t handle it in-house, plead for aid in resolving the crisis before one side’s army has to forcibly clean things up by marching into the other side’s capital.
If something happens to the Desolate Council, the entire Horde goes on full alert and starts many, many investigations, including external ones that won’t be stopped by a Deathguard saying ‘no.’
Fringe groups are handled with internal monitoring and policing for trouble. Assassinations of leaders, especially groups of leaders, are an entirely different kettle of fish.
No, but unless specifically shown otherwise it’s safe to assume the nameless citizenry of a particular region support their leader. The Forsaken aren’t grumbling about being dissatisfied with Calia’s presence (players don’t count here), nor are the Tauren complaining about Baine, or the Gilneans about Tess. Hell, before the Council itself was formed the Horde wanted its Thrall Security Blanket back before he came up with something better.
It would take an astonishing event to turn minds like Baine’s or Anduin’s to consider violating the peace and start battle once more. And needless belligerence is not a positive character trait. Garrosh started fights because Garrosh wanted fights. He figured he was entitled to the entire world because he would conquer it and they just didn’t know this yet. The rest of the Horde was extremely not down with this philosophy and tried to warn him off the path, but Garrosh was Garrosh and didn’t see the other literal Horde legends trying to wave him off, directly killed one, and forced the other into an insurgency against him.
I’d hardly call that operation ‘holding hands’. That was ‘making amends’ because the Forsaken did some really gnarly things to a nation that was content to sit behind a wall and let Azeroth fly on by. Gilneas wasn’t even a member of the Alliance at the time of the unprovoked attack.
The Desolate Council and the Forsaken at large decided to make up for their monstrous activity. It wasn’t just Calia or Voss.
Neither side can lose or win, all they can do is trade back and forth until both are dissatisfied with how pointless it all was. Player parity is always going to win in the end.
As you suggested, they should bubble upward from the bottom. Slow and steady. Build support. Act clandestine. Take advantage of the threat of the week to continue consolidating their power. Build themselves into a dangerous threat by being a smiling face everyone can trust. Maintain deniability. Even have them work alongside the heroes once or twice. Never go for the crown, the advisor’s robes are often far more valuable. Katrina Prestor almost had all of Stormwind under her control but she got sloppy toward the end.
Don’t do the WoW villain thing of announcing your intent like an idiot. Play the long game, nudge the pieces when no one’s looking, and keep things clandestine. If everyone’s looking at the dragon, then they’re not looking at you. A villain that runs out front and scream ‘I WILL DOMINATE AZEROTH’ is begging to get whacked. A villain that joins the choir of ‘for Azeroth’ usually goes unnoticed and is far more dangerous.
Illidan was mentioned because WoW ran out of noteworthy characters by that point and decided to just say ‘lol it didn’t count’ instead of building up a new NPC to take the mantle that Illidan once had. Good team has the same problem as Evil team; if Good team never retires or dies, then there’s never going to be new blood to lead into the future. Just like villains, new heroes need time and expansions to build themselves up into something that would feel worthwhile in taking over for someone like Thrall or Varian.
The problem is becoming villainous isn’t going to be something the playerbase of either faction tolerate; the Horde’s playerbase is tired of being made the villain, and the Alliance’s playerbase outright refuses to play the part. Then factor in that the narrative structure of WoW really doesn’t support divergent paths (again, perhaps back in Vanilla but ever since each expansion has had a singular goal for both sides). So creating an ‘evil team’ wouldn’t be feasible because what would they do? What would, say, team Scourge’s endgame look like in Wrath? Or a Burning Legion faction’s endgame look like in TBC or Legion?
The narrative structure of the game would have to completely transform to allow an ‘evil team’ because, again, WoW is built around the idea of heroic fantasy; the players are heroes in a world of adventure. Playable villainy has no long-term viability in such a game, unless the villain team is basically Team Rocket and just blasts off again whenever the heroes inevitably win.
This is why new blood is being put into leadership positions with different life experiences and values. Tess is not Genn, she doesn’t have his anger and wrath. She doesn’t fly off the handle the instant a Forsaken looks her way. Calia is not Sylvanas, she isn’t willing to let the darker thoughts of undeath take her people unopposed and isn’t keen on masking her intent and leaving people guessing at what she’s doing. New blood is rising and taking the mantle of leadership from the old firebrands, which are either annihilating themselves or taking up advisory positions.
Stop writing brain-dead villains that announce their presence to two superpowers and get appropriately crushed and instead use the monsters that draw the factions’ attention as opportunities to advance the agenda of budding villains within each faction. Start small, work small, get bigger over time.
Two problems with that. They can’t really go evil because the Horde is a gathering of multiple races and cultures so you can’t really say everyone is evil or everyone is good, you have the Tauren on one side, they are not evil, then on the other you have the Forsaken who are pretty evil. So you don’t have a constant mentality that drives in one direction but rather several each pulling in their own direction.
Second problem is human ret types like you who think that because the Horde is “evil” they need to be put to your human ret justice and that simply does not work for the rest of the players.
This game’s problem has aways been that they tried to measure the alignment of each faction, race or individual based on a generic moral scale, not on any scale that is based more realistically on perspective. So for example, while what the Horde does might not be evil on that generic scale, from your perspective as an Alliance human ret, it would be very evil, if that makes sense.
We should have 3 factions, that way we would never be at peace and it would always be a world of WARcraft. See the 3 body problem of why I think this would make sense.
No, we need people to get over the Alliance=good, Horde=Evil BS and ask for a faction made up of say the Mantid that will still fight against forces like the Legion or the titans if they turn against us but they are doing so not because it is the right thing but because it increases the chance of their gods (the Old Gods in the case of the Mantid) to win.
I’ll go even further than this. It’s not just goody-good becoming the baseline, so nobody shines. But the more good the baseline becomes, the more hurdles everyone jumps just to be non-evil, the more evil the society is.
Like imagine the Peter Singer crud became the baseline. Everyone has to donate every excess penny to help those who are starving. You do not get a coffee, ever. You work 16 hours a day, and all of it goes to the needy. You eat grey paste because it’s cheaper, allowing you to help more people. And that’s not to be really really good, it’s just to be average. That’s a dystopia of the highest order.
All the allied races were a trick by xal’atath to implant spies into the Horde and Alliance. At an appropriate time they will rebel and form the xal’atath bad taste faction - and people who rolled them will have no choice but to play as defenders of xal’atath.
Then after weeks of protest and rage quitting it will be revealed that it was a huge xal’atath mind control trick - and this will result in more rage quitting from people who enjoyed the existence of a new faction.
Why would an evil faction decide not to destroy other factions if it received the upper hand? Why would the good factions decide to let the evil faction continue?
Your question is flawed. It would take more than simply gaining the upper hand to be able to outright destroy the other factions. Why does the evil faction need to ever be written to get the upper hand to the degree that it gets to destroy the other factions? Save till the devs decide to retire the game maybe.
As stated, the good factions may not be able to stop the evil faction from continuing. It may not be within their power, even if they are arguably in a stronger position.
Idc if some people don’t like being stuck in a factional stalemate. Other people don’t like the idea of peace on Azeroth between the playable races.
