What exactly is Blizzard trying to revision the Horde into at this point? First off we are being led by an Elf and Human with red eyes while Blizzard is trying to convince the player to dislike traditional Horde heroes like Baine, Saurfang and Thrall(not working for this OG Horde). Second they are attempting to rebrand Horde as the Paladin faction with characters like Lady Liadrin saying things like “darkness cannot abide within the light” and with the new allied races having Paladin for Horde but not the Alliance. Also with allied races they want to use the allied race thing to populate Horde with traditional looking Alliance races like Nightborne. Why is Blizzard trying to rebrand the Horde as an edgier version of the Alliance while abandoning the OG aesthetic of the Horde?
I don’t want to be more like the Alliance. What drew me to the Horde was how unique they were. Now we look similar to the Alliance but only our characters have glowing red eyes and yell “Lok’tar ogar” while embracing the ideals of the light.
I see what your getting at, the Horde is kinda split between two ideals at the moment. Before it was as you said, traditional Horde heros like Trall, Baine, Saurfang, being honorable and connecting more with elements and nature than with the light like the Alliance races do…plus zombies for some reason, but its cool cuz we kinda trust them. Now, those zombies have a reason, they all use to be Alliance humans and are still pissed at them and it’s weird because they are also leading the Horde.
Alliance is similar i’ve found. Classic vanilla Alliance was all about the Human, Dwarf, Gnome “good guys” and also tall elves that danced sexy. Now, there are humans, wolf humans, and big humans, and they all are different from the undead humans leading the horde, and they still hate the undead for being undead and the undead things they did in the past. Also the tall elves turned out to be super racist and thats why the other elves joined the Horde, but then Blood Elves banned Void Magic cuz people were going crazy and it was messing with their Sunwell and so the Alliance got Void elves. The Alliance also got super radically religious aliens that love to push the light onto other races, so much so that the Horde had to save the last remaining Maghar Orcs (non corrupted/brown Orcs) from them on Draenor. Not so much the “good guys” anymore as just another faction.
Before you know it Orgrimmar is going to be filled with Blood Elf styled castles and cathedrals with red eyed humans on guard patrol and a fake Night Elf(Nightborne) mage tower area. Horde will be the red bannered Alliance who hates the Alliance because reasons. Any trace of the traditional shamanistic and warrior culture of the Horde will be removed because it wasn’t edgy enough for the modern Horde player.
I hate to break it to you but Baine would fit in perfectly fine in the modern Alliance. It is pretty diverse at this point and Baine’s mindset fits their way of doing things in a lot of ways better than it fits the horde’s.
That isn’t a new thing. That is just how Baine has been written since pretty much Cata.
Imagine thinking a traditional Horde hero like Baine fits in with the Alliance. What has Blizzard done to the Horde playerbase? You play a Blood Elf, you want to look like the Alliance but play Horde. You want the Alliance aesthetic but want the Horde struggle. What even is Baines mindset that fits in with the Alliance? That he doesn’t approve of raising the dead and slaughtering everything in his path?
Imagine thinking someone wants an Alliance aesthetic while at the same time asserting that they slaughter their enemies mercilessly and raise the dead.
Imagine.
I think at the moment the Alliance playerbase WISHES they actually were that ruthless. But no, it’s basically blue Baine.
Well that part is simply due to the fact without those pretty races, the Horde would have population problems right now!
A more meta analysis of the factions is they are suppose to be both more similar than different. That ultimately our conflicts with each other were initially fulled by outside forces.
Alliance really only want that though because Blizz writes the Horde to raze their villages and towns laughing with our big monster faces. So the Ally player base gets ENRAGED and demands the utmost revenge which Blizz can never deliver on for multiple reason.
I think that’s questionable depending on the race Spuddyc, especially with the two new allied races. Even had the Worgen not lost Gilneas, or even not had any direct conflict with the Horde at all, one of the primary themes of that faction is that they are a harder rougher edge to the typically more gentle and compassionate Alliance. They are after all werewolves, and they bring a level of ferocity that hadn’t really been present since WC3 era Night Elves.
In the same vein the appeal of Void Elves and Dark Iron is that they are generally less scrupulous members of the Alliance who don’t mind resorting to brutal attacks with old god magic, rampaging elementals, or giant war machines that by and large tend to cause a lot of collateral damage.
Part of the appeal is their ruthlessness, and now that some races get to indulge in it I feel like other groups in the Alliance are(Rightfully) upset they don’t get to engage in the faction war to it’s extreme because of how relatively gentle their leaders are.
Idk I think there is a BIG uptick in the complaints and demands for this ruthlessness after things like Theramore and Teldrassil which dies down a little bit when this faction war stuff isn’t going on.
Either way I don’t get why striving for peace has to only be the “Alliance” thing and any time a Horde leader is written in this direction it means they’re really “blue”. People hate Anduin and call him incompetent but the language seems a bit different I don’t see him called secretly a “red” character just cause he believed in peace with the Horde, at least not as often. (I have seen peeps like Akiyass call him a traitor and what not and that Saurfang shoulda been executed not let go)
Why is Baine blue for being friends with Anduin but Anduin isn’t red for being friends with Baine?
the horde has been hijacked by elf and undeads fans who want to usurp the faction, they join the tribal faction of monster with shamanism roots and dislike the theme, now they demand more and more attention in detriment of the faction core values to play the “anti-hero/villain/edgy”
blizzard is trying to please everyone(like putting an undead elf as leader, but keep a mindless war just to kill alliance) but its a terrible job, then end up just pleasing this half fanbase who idolize her
Blizzard destroyed the entire orc narrative who was being Build since the books and war3 with mop and WOD, they kill their characters, and they take the horde leadership from then, more, they stayed with no racial leader for an entire expansion( cause the warchief is supposed to be the orc leader) and they just used Saurfang as placeholder and the information come from twitter, not even a ingame reference
They kill of vol’jin to do a sylvanas fanservice, after doing literally nothing in the most criminal way, the trolls are going 2 expansion without even a racial leader and when they could get spotlight in zandalari they are robbed by the undeads and the banshee prince, rly, Lorthemar get a new model for a heritage armor quest and rokhan just get a new armor?
Taurens did nothing since wtlk and blizz is making Baine to be the most boring, coward and spineless leader this world as ever seen
We are in a dire place, they are using the horde as plot device, with a rehashed story that nobody asked and make us look like retards pretending mop didn’t happen and we can do nothing about and just follow the crazy elf to the end when she will be kerrigan-ed and we will have to suck it.
What pissed me off is the alliance thinking the horde is liking this bias toward her and her toy, this is not horde they can just change the name at this point
I would say because unlike the Alliance, being overly cooperative has never really been a core Horde theme. Way back in the hayday of us being an underdog faction it was generally accepted(And might still be accepted depending on what race you play.) that if we tried to coexist with the Alliance we would of wound up a dangerously oppressed minority. The Horde was a sort of band of brothers crafted specifically so we would never get to that point.
Hence we’ve also always been fairly warlike, fighting to protect our rights, our homes, and our resources from individuals that would seek to exploit and use them for their own ends. Back in Vanilla the Alliance were a lot more ruthless too with the Stormpike essentially laying claim to a land they arguably had even less right then the orcs over, wiping out the Stonespire Tauren tribe completely, and ritualistically burning Forsaken hearts in the Cathedral of Light as mercy killing.
We could of simply late the Alliance take over during that era but at least one of our races would of been wiped out for sure and the rest of them would find their living conditions a lot worse. That’s not to say the Horde has never engaged in diplomacy, we can and do, but it was never to try and forge a peace that would essentially make the Horde a vassal state of the Alliance. So for a Horde leader, Baines insistence on negotiation just kinda highlights how out of place he is in the Horde leadership.
What is “overly cooperative” though? And since you display knowledge of the fact Alliance could be ruthless in the hayday, what makes them “overly cooperative”?
Thrall told the Orcs not to engage or kill humans unless they got in their way of trying to make a home for themselves/live peacefully. Even when Daelin Proudmoores bigotry lead to a conflict Thrall still spoke with Jaina and negotiated a peace with Theramore for after the disposal of her father. Horde is shown, at least under the new values laid down by Thrall, to bear its teeth when it needs to, to survive, not to simply conquer. This war, starting with the War of Thorns has never been anything but an attempted war of conquest despite the neat rhetoric Sylvanas weaved in order to sell it to an Old Soldier.
Peace should be a noble ambition not uniquely claimed by any of the races or factions in the game. The complain with return to Baine is that somehow he seeks peace at a horrible cost. But what is this cost? What is being a vassal to the Alliance even mean? If peace with the Alliance brings bread into the bellies of the Tauren, then wha is wrong with it?
I think the fundamental problem with this is we’re conflating ‘ruthlessness’ with ‘war’ and the thing is, the Alliance by and large was founded on peaceful values much like the Horde. Cooperation that would ultimately benefit every race that was party to it, the reason they were ruthless towards the Horde wasn’t strictly that they wanted to exterminate the Horde(Well, not ALL the Horde anyway.) but rather they felt the resources of the world were theirs to do with as they please and the misguided ruffins that made up the Horde are interfering with their divine right to rule.
That’s what I mean by vassal state, they wouldn’t of strictly put every orc to the sword but those orcs would be living in less then ideal conditions as the Alliance, rather then any of them, guides the path for Azeroth. The part about Jaina is a good point, but it’s worth noting that Jaina wasn’t really part of the Alliance after WC3, for the longest time Theramore was Alliance leaning but it acted as a mediator for the two factions precisely because Jaina could see either end of the conflict despite the fact the Alliance by and large wasn’t as extreme as Daelin.
And honestly? if the choice is to either die or live in a world where my people have no control over their destiny, where the Horde is rendered a lesser superpower with the Alliance taking the reins of Azeroth, death is preferable. Baines ideology of surrender would put the Horde at a disadvantage for pretty much the rest of their existence unless the Alliance asks for literally nothing from the Horde in return and everyone just moves back into where they were like business as usual.
Hence, both the Horde and Alliance have peaceful elements to their creation. But between the two the Horde has always been more willing to go out there and fight because they would of gotten a raw deal, while the ‘benevolent’ Alliance would of allowed us to exist at…great cost to ourselves and our autonomy.
Well aside from the Forsaken, we would of likely been wiped out from day one.
I think by now the Alliance, especially under God King Anduin, is really not gonna be trying to enslave the Orcs and other races… I think that’s being made clear. Personally I think circumstances have to be very very very dire to accept death over surrender tbh (despite “Lok’tar Ogar”, which should be reserved for battle and not political decision making). The cause must be great and “Conquer the world, at all costs( a la Teldrassil)”, the cause it feels like I am being sold, ain’t great to me. I will defend Durotar with blood if the alternative is slavery, but I don’t feel like that is what is being threatened. I feel like I am being told to give my life so the Warchief can rule a world of ashes.
Which is an understandable sentiment to have, I also don’t like Sylvanas’s rule either. I think it’s been an overly destructive unsustainable war that tears at the seams of the Horde, and that Anduin himself is not much of a threat to us. However, HOWEVER, at the same time I disagree with Baine because…well, just look at the Zolaco in Dazar’alor.
BtS took pains to emphasize that in a lot of ways the Alliance, even individuals like Anduin, are ignorant of how the Horde works and of the suffering it endures. I can’t in good conscious approve of Baines plan of action when there are humans out there who yes, hate undead for what they have done to humanity over the last couple years, but also humans who hate undead just because they happen to be undead.
Anduin can’t be everywhere, stopping every peasant with a pitchfork anymore then he could stop a few overzealous Dark Iron Dwarves with a Molten Giant. I don’t want to wipe the Alliance out, but I also don’t want to live in their shadow either, which puts me in a place where I am rooting for neither group.
The problem is at this point we don’t really even know the deets of Baines “plan of action” cause all he said was “Maybe we should open up negotiations”… we’d have to actually see what is in those negotiations to make up our minds. If Baine is given up the whole house, then sure, it’s dumb. But if it’s reasonable… even tho it will involve concessions considering Horde is in the weaker position… if it saves Horde lives… if it preserves sovereignty… then Idc. (Of course this means protecting Forsaken lives too)
And speaking of dangers to the Forsaken, their concerns, that’s reasonable. That’s why they joined the Horde… but this attempt at conquest has put them in a much worse off spot considering they lost they only home they ever knew from it and are now in a losing position
I agree with that, we are getting short changed in this war considering we lost Lordaeron which I cared about way more then…pretty much any other zone on Azeroth. Which is why i’m banking on Nathanos, Voss, other Forsaken turning on Sylvanas and starting a rebellion I can actually get behind.
I also think Baine really wasn’t helped by his timing. If he’d suggested negotiations in private that would be one thing, but I kinda agree with Sylvanas at Rastakhans funeral. A city gets siege’d. Talanji’s father dies, and one of the first couple things he talks about is surrender in front of our new allies. If I was a Zandalari I would of probably tried to strangle him.
I think that’s a lot of Baines problem. In a vacuum what he suggests is reasonable, but the framing just…makes him look really bad some days.