I gleaned that I saw way better conspiracy theory lore ideas of the Burning of Teldrassil & how it becomes ‘morally grey’ with an amazing expansion feature discussed on the forums than what we actually got.
Ultimately: There’s some brilliant minds that post or discuss on these channels, that have better ideas than what Blizzard execute — Obviously not always, such would be hubris; but there’s a lot that players are outraged by because simple minds could write better plots for various X stories.
As someone who has played Alliance i would agree with you, but I’ve also played Horde and with the disparity between the factions I think both PoV are both wrong and right. To the Horde Genn sounds like a monster because he is monstrous and and an antagonizer. To the Alliance he sounds civilized because the Alliance believe they are more civilized than the Horde.
That’s not what the Horde are saying at all. I’m saying that the people of Zandalar would see the Alliance attackers as antagonistic, if the Alliance attacks their city and threatens to enslave their princess. That’s not victim blaming, it’s stating a fact.
I’m a night elf main. Do you think I’m against the Alliance?
I’ve seen threads like this, it boils down to what type of magic elves consume to make them genetically mutate. You are purple because you drank too much arcwine.
To be fair, some Night Elf mains would rather not be in the Alliance…
In seriousness, though, I think this subthread is actually a good example of a topic where it would be useful to examine the disconnect between what the canon says and what the presentation of the story is pushing the players to feel.
The devs are clearly trying to sell Horde players on the emotional idea that the Alliance wants to oppress the Horde and so the Horde has to fight them to maintain its freedom. But the writers don’t construct a story that supports that idea. But then on the third hand, they throw in some (dry, canon) NPC dialogue to try to plant or back up that idea even when it makes no logical sense, plus the (more emotionally loaded) publicity material. It feels almost like the story is being cowritten by two different and hostile groups of people.
A lot of WoW’s faction writing reminds me of this old internet joke, in fact: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/writing-wrongs/
I think the reason players are dropping after Shadowlands is due to the gameplay not the story. There’s valid feedback that the gameplay itself has become too geared towards Esports rather than it’s intended base as an RPG. It’s too based around proficiency with little margin for error, and doesn’t feel organic anymore. It’s hard for new or returning players to feel like they can just pick it up.
Not to mention the fact that WoW has one of the most, if not the most, toxic player bases in any games.
Oh yeah the Anima draught is agony. Gameplay atm is tedious, alts are an impossibility, etc.
But I will actually say the playerbase has been noticeably less racist, homophobic, sexist, etc since I started 2010. The last time I personally heard a Gamer Word™ when pugging was like, MoP circa 2013 maybe, and the big reddit post recently exposing certain guilds really had few and far between.
It’s never one thing, and that’s if we think we can separate gameplay from story, which we can’t. But I’ve already describe the model for how I see things in this thread, back in post 74.
This is hands down one of the best comments out of any thread in the story forum. It’s totally true, and I think we are all guilty of this.
Eh, guilty isn’t a word I’d use.
It’s a natural and human thing to identify with your “team”. We do it for sports teams, for video game consoles, for soft drinks, for computer types, and yes, for factions. Those identifications are normal, and ought to be anticipated. They also can be fun under the right set of conditions.
The faction war in Warcraft is not following that set of conditions. Rather than building up a series of positive reasons for identifying with your faction (“they have a rich culture”, “they look cool”, “their values line up with my own”, “they do cool things”), Blizzard has gone out of its way to create negative reasons (“they destroyed what I cared about”, “I was forced to be the bad guy for them”, “they killed my favorite character”). It’s been creating an atmosphere of mutual resentment, hatred, and either feelings of self-inadequacy or self-disgust that it’s a fundamentally miserable experience to be in.
If I had to ask where toxicity and extreme bias comes from, on a faction level? I would say it was from there.
So we agree that generalizing all Horde players as supporting white supremacy, due in part by your personal feelings on the narrative, is toxic right?
We can also agree that your view on the Horde is largely due in part to your faction bias as an Alliance player (i’m assuming you’ve only ever played as Alliance) yes?
Just checking that we are still on the same page.
On the surface, yes, although I’m curious to know where you’re going with the first statement. If we’re about to discuss how I feel it’s a bad idea to put the fourteen words in your video game and lay them down as justification for a side that players identify with to go to war as we did in a recent and previous thread, then I would stop to note right here that what Blizzard writes and what players generally want are often different things.
I think this sentiment in particular is what leads to the feeling that there was/is basically a power struggle in the writing department or over the creative direction of Blizzard in general. Marketing feels at odds with the story which feels at odds with zone quests or other game content.
There’s obviously some limitations to how much the game can reflect a story which moves (relatively) quicker than the game can. It’s a lot less difficult to write that something happened than it is to create or alter a world which shows this. But other times it seems like the writing team is trying to hoodwink the player base by muddling the in-game story enough that there’s no possible way to reach a definite conclusion, and then sneaking that conclusion into some other piece of written material.
Case in point (since it’s been on my mind): I’ve been of the opinion that the Horde lost, and very badly, in the Fourth War. Other people have used (canon) in-game statements to argue against this, while the flow of the game and other (canon) in-game statements support my interpretation. There’s recently been an argument over whether or not a recent atlas which purports to show huge Alliance territorial gains is true. It feels sometimes like the writers want that to actually be the conclusion but are afraid to say so for a) keeping people subscribed to the game and b) the expectation that they’d then have to bring the Horde back up to a level playing field when they’d rather spend time with the authors’ pets and the shiny new story of Shadowlands.
No, to the Alliance he sounds civilized because they literally heard in person what he said. This isn’t ‘he said, she said’. Horde get a 2nd hand retelling of what Genn said, Alliance got to hear first hand what he said. All this proves is that the Alliance really are as noble as they believe themselves to be and the Horde has to lie and invent a false narrative to make themselves feel better.
The Horde is not a white supremacist group, and Sylvanas and Saurfang’s conversation was not the fourteen words.
At the end of Before the Storm both Anduin and Sylvanas assert that they have legitimate cause to declare war against one another and Anduin does not deny Sylvanas’ assertion. Anduin had done something that he very well knew could trigger a war, and went against his better judgement because it “felt right”.
Sylvanas’ rationale is NOT some ethno-supremacy propaganda. Saurfang did not see it that way- his mind immediately went to recent foreign aggressions AS DID THE MIND OF PROBABLY ANYONE that played Legion, and read BTS- and determined that the Alliance could not be trusted and was indeed a threat to the Horde, and could not be allowed to control the Azerite.
The “Fourteen Words” was an attempt by an ethno-nationalist and ethno-supremacist to justify inter-ethno-racial violence. Crimes against people and the state. His theory presumes the existence of a “white nation” that no longer exists as such- if it ever truly did- and other false premises. His message is “we need to take power or white people will die”
This war was between 2 coalitions of states that have a history of diplomatic failure. Both of which had recently asserted their right to declare war against the other, and which had just discovered the Azerite, which presumably would decide the outcome of the next war- and had the potential to annihilate BOTH sides. Her rationale was “we need to maintain a balance of power or everyone will die”.
Isn’t it “we need to upset the balance of power and then we will be infinitely good”?
I’m just going to point out that traditionally, when one army invades the capital of another people, the “most accurate version of events” is generally not the invading army’s version but rather the invaded people’s version.
The point of that discrepancy is to perpetuate the faction conflict among the playerbase.
It is the equivalent of how Horde players rescue some Horde soliders being tortured (water boarded, used as target practice, forced manual labor) in Boralus in a world quest but the Alliance players never see this.
It is the equivalent of how Alliance players are told the Horde has enlisted some Sanlayn in a probationary capacity, but the Horde players are never told this.
But the logic of that to the Alliance, the voice acting presents you to yourselves as heroic whereas to the Horde, the Alliance is presented to us as imperialist is the problem.
In that moment, the Alliance (invading army) is being presented to the Horde (people being invaded) as imperialist and murderous while the Alliance retains moral highground to its own playerbase.
The expected reaction by the Blizzard Writers is the Horde will respond, as is reasonable, “The Alliance is imperialist” to which the Alliance will respond, “That never happened”.
It’s basically a ham fisted way to make the Alliance feel justified in invading Dazaralor without actually having to write a coherent story.
Because the writers refuse to let the Alliance feel like “the bad guys” even when invading the capital of a foreign nation and murdering its king.
Or maybe people are capable of looking at a battle in the context of a larger war and geopolitical environment instead of acting like things happen in a vacuum.
Being the aggressors attacking a capital and killing political leadership is not a universally bad act unless you’re going to start demanding reparations for the Scourge after the sacking of Icecrown Citadel
Implying the Scourge is a comparable civilization to the Zandalari is a degenerate argument made clearly in bad faith, and that’s like the fourth time you’ve done so in the past day, so not going to respond to you further xoxo
Oh imperialism. Perfectly.
Is the Horde imperialistic towards the night elves?