Would this divide the player base, or would most Horde players be okay with a more edgy Horde?
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Are…are you serious? BfA was this and you can see what people thought of it.
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As long as they don’t drag all orcs, tauren and trolls into it. And some blood elves and Nightborne.
Most races of the Horde don’t really fit the evil thematic, which is why BfA was so jarring to play as Horde, I mean just compare the starting area questing for these races and then the War of Thorns. I find it ridiculous, but to each their own. I definitely couldn’t hop on my blood elf paladin for that.
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I have an entire list for a new horde council based on a more darker theme instead of the alliance boot lickers we have to deal with right now.
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The problem with it is that many people who play the Horde did so because of WC3 where they were very much no longer the evil Horde. Since WoW, too, the Horde was never evil. It has its morally questionable moments, but it was never defined by total evil other than in the minds of those who played it that way in their personal fantasies because of WC1 and 2. So It’s too late to suddenly introduce an honest “Good vs Evil” “Jedi vs Sith” dynamic with the factions in my opinion.
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If they were going to make an evil Horde, the time to do it was launch day, 2004. That time has long passed. We have gone too long with a Horde that is billed as something else to switch now without ticking off a massive number of people, myself included.
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We had two whole games with evil Horde during the RTS and then basically BfA was essentially evil Horde, though they tried their hardest to make both sides morally equitable with a whole lot of telling and not showing.
Player factions in the context of WoW don’t work with a good and evil format for either one, because an evil faction would logically ally with a lot of the villains we’ve killed, as opposed to fighting against them. The factions fight evil groups, they aren’t supposed to be evil themselves, because otherwise the good faction has no reason to keep them intact at all.
Moreover, what makes Warcraft as a franchise unique is specifically turning typical fantasy tropes on their head, and Blizzard’s decline in writing has been mirrored by a significant crutching on those much more common fantasy tropes instead of those that made the franchise really take off in popularity in the first place.
Orcs that weren’t evil to start, but corrupted and manipulated, and are striving to regain their lost heritage.
Minotaurs (tauren) that are inherently peaceful and nature loving in spite of their monstrous strength and size.
Trolls that aren’t just dumb brutes living under bridges, but actually cunning with a very fleshed out culture and a varied past history.
Undead who aren’t just mindless evil zombies, but a darker themed people broken from the yoke of a power, malevolent force, trying to find their place in the world.
Blood elves also had a pretty unique concept for a brief, shining moment before TBC ended.
These themes are what really made the franchise stand out, it’s no accident that Warcraft really exploded in popularity in the third iteration of it, that was when all those unique concepts were first put forth. Chipping away at those themes only marginally worked in Cata and MoP, but since then it’s been a decline in both what makes the Horde itself, and what defines the various races. Arguably that decline started in Cata, though.
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Blizzard doesn’t know how to write dark characters without making them full psycho, imagine batman or ghost rider written by blizzard lol, they would be instant raid boss
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They really didn’t. 
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“I FEEL LIED TO,” POST-BFA VERSION - Take a gander at this.
Personally, I think the simplification of the Horde as the “evil” faction is uninteresting and just feeds into the notion that this is a story of blue (good guys) vs red (bad guys).
The Horde warchief having nefarious schemes is a story beat we’ve seen before. BfA was an opportunity for nuance and a “morally gray” narrative and they squandered that.
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Well, let me just say that I switch to Alliance because of Blizzard making the Horde evil. And I know I’m not a alone.
Similarly, all the people who I know personally, or in my old guild, didn’t like the evil Horde either.
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One thing for Alliance players who like to push the “evil Horde” spin.
The only plot Blizzard has used in recent memory is that “evil” strikes a massive and horrible blow. The plucky heroes then rally against the appearantly overwhelming odd to prevail.
This is plot of BfA, where Blizzard decided to make the Horde evil. So if you liked Teldrassil, they you will love Blizzard keeping the Horde evil. If not be careful of what you wish for.
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The problem with “Evil Horde” is that it is not what Blizzard sold to Horde players from the start. Even now, Blizzard’s own descriptions of the factions paint each one in a heroic light, so if you make the Horde actually, legitimately evil, then that is pulling a massive (and unfair) bait-and-switch on Horde players.
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Because it’s not what they pitched to the playerbase from the get go. No one faction was meant to be good or evil.
An important thing to realize is that World of Warcraft and Warcraft III’s development were partly simultaneous - initially, the Horde was meant to be the “evil” faction (which is why there was a dissonance with the Forsaken’s Vanilla themes), but during development it was decided that the Orcish Warchief would take on a more traditionally heroic role, and the blonde-haired Human Prince would be the villain of the story. It threw a sudden twist after two RTS games where the Horde was more traditionally evil - the Horde could be heroes just as much as the Alliance could be villains, neither side became relegated to one role.
Take a look at The Old Republic on the flipside. Star Wars is a franchise that’s been going on for decades, but from the get go, they’ve kept one thing thematically consistent - the Sith are the villains, and the Republic are the heroes. There have been instances where this balance has been called into question, but ultimately nothing that draws such a heavy parallel as World of Warcraft. Because of this, people who play Sith KNOW what they’re getting into from the start.
Had WoW stuck to its original plan and gone with an evil Horde and a heroic Alliance, then it would’ve made sense. But at this stage of the game, suddenly pulling out the rug from under their playerbase would be, to put it lightly, a dick move.
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The thing is Horde can be “Bad” without being evil. Unfortunately blizzard dont know how to write stuff like horde needing resources without villainizing characters for the sake of Loot or what i call “InterDimensional Space Time cosmic etc etc travel”.
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Murder and mayhem await. The republic has it’s scumbags, though… so that makes being a sociopathic murderer somewhat easier. But, yeah, Sith… are pretty bad.
The Horde, I don’t think, should have been ever taken down the road that it’s currently on, and I definitely feel like the BFA story was a dick move, regardless of any possible pending redemptions or apologies… but I guess I’ll take what I can get at this point.
Not really. SWTOR players had the option of becoming good guys or villains whichever side they chose. It was perfectly possible to play a heroic Sith or a dark Jedi.
With WoW you can’t really call Horde player characters “villains” though. They might be accomplice to villains, but all the while Sylvanas was doing her scheming in the background off screen through BfA, the Horde PC was defending Zandalar from Old Gods, blood trolls, Zul’s army, etc. Even during the 8.0 war campaign, Horde players spent about 10% of it total actually fighting Alliance.
Even this so called “choice” of being loyal to Sylvanas wasn’t really much of a choice since all it did was grant us a cutscene with Sylvanas and then they’re shoehorned into being her enemy.
In short, even during the nastiest faction war, Blizzard still has players from both factions doing hero stuff instead of villain stuff.
Player characters are not really canon, they are part of a collective denominated “champions” and participated through all the storyline, they may not have been intellectual authors but were a key part anyway
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I feel like this already happened and now Blizzard’s trying to walk it back with the story equivalent of a pinkie swear and that meme of the monkey looking back and forth.
But I’d sorely dislike making it official too.
If PC’s aren’t “Canon” than I hate to see what the canon really is. I guess it’s just the story running along without the players really being there at all. This really doesn’t change the fact that Horde still responded to Telanji’s request for help and defended Zandalar from the above listed threats.
Unless that all wasn’t canon either.