I’ve been thinking about this topic quite a lot lately, and again I’m not trying to start a war between Horde and Alliance players or trying to bash players for playing a certain faction, I just want to criticize yet another important part of BfA’s writing.
So, BfA started with the Horde being the villains once again, commiting irredeemably evil things, painfully killing thousands of civilians, raising the dead soldiers as undead slaves, burning and blighting forests etc…
Then we had Saurfang who felt regret for what was done which was a good start I’d say, but the problems started appearing when he was the first to blame everything on Sylvanas even though he was the one who suggested, planned and lead the war of thorns until the very end which was already an atrocity in itself. He made it seem like it was all Sylvanas alone until the very end. And every single war criminal did the same thing at the end to be forgiven for their crimes.
BfA ended with the Alliance leaders saying that the Horde has changed and this time they mean it, this time they can be trusted that something like this won’t happen again except that the exact same thing happened at the end of MoP and it didn’t work out there either as the Alliance had to pay the price for it in BfA. Well mostly the Night Elves.
The main problem is that the Horde hasn’t done anything to prove that they are better than Sylvanas. From how it is portrayed ingame and in the cinematics, the Horde was completely fine with genocide against innocents as long as it’s for their own good. From what I gathered, Horde soldiers and members were okay with everything Sylvanas did because they thought that she was doing it for the good of the Horde.
When they realized that this wasn’t the case by finding out that the Sylvanas doesn’t care about the Horde but only about herself, they were suddenly no longer on board with it, but the narrative still failed to paint the Horde better than Sylvanas, because Sylvanas does evil things for herself while the Horde wanted to do evil things for themselves instead, but both are obviously very morally wrong.
If not Horde soldiers, Horde leaders like Baine, Lor’themar or others should’ve acted way sooner by expressing their regret for the crimes the Horde commited, but there was absolutely nothing of that. The only thing Baine had a problem with was mind controlling Derek Proudmoore and using him as a weapon, but killing and torturing a whole civilization is apparently not as bad.
Really the only person that felt some regret about what was done was Saurfang, and they portrayed it in a way that he blames it all on Sylvanas instead of taking responsibility for his own actions and errors.
Then after Sylvanas abandoned the Horde, a bunch of Sylvanas loyalists were captured and in chains, but only those that didn’t change or pretended to change their minds about Sylvanas, because if a loyalist NPC changed his mind or pretended to do so, they were instantly forgiven by the others.
We don’t actually see a single named Horde NPC face any consequences for the crimes they commited under Sylvanas orders.
Then after the council was formed, we still don’t see anything that implies that the Horde actually has changed. The least they could do is apologize for what they did, return the lands they are still occupying and ensure that something like that will never happen again (I know that would be meaningless at this point but it would be much much better than nothing). Our great leader Anduin however says that this time it will definitely work, even though history has proven otherwise and the Horde has not shown any regret or remorse for what was done. They have only shown that they would’ve been on board with Sylvanas atrocities if they were for their own good instead of Sylvanas’, this however doesn’t imply that they have changed at all, it shows the opposite instead.
So far, no Horde leader has expressed or shown any regret for what was they commited, only Saurfang, and he’s dead now. So why do Alliance leaders say that the Horde has changed? Even Tyrande and Genn don’t blame the Horde anymore since they are only after Sylvanas. It just doesn’t make sense for me the way they have portrayed it at all.
I’m making this post because the writers themselves have said that they have concluded the faction war in BfA and that what happened in BfA stays in BfA and won’t be addressed in the future, except that this is just wrong and they did the complete opposite. The faction war was mostly concluded after MoP and in BfA they just reignited it instead of concluding it, yet they claim that it’s concluded.
The only way for them to actually conclude some things would’ve been the book at the end of BfA, but since that one doesn’t even feature or include the Night Elves, how can anything that was left unanswered BfA be concluded in this book when the whole expansion’s faction war revolved around Teldrassil, which was also never addressed again. Still they claimed that they pretty much concluded Teldrassil in relation to the Horde in 8.1 by the Night Elves killing 1 recreatable Val’kyr which we all know doesn’t make any sense either.
I wanted to end this post by saying that I don’t like how they portray the Horde in BfA, they portrayed them to be just as evil as Sylvanas, just with their own good in mind instead which is conflicting Sylvanas’ goals. I always thought that the Horde was supposed to be embodied by rather honorable characters like Vol’jin, Thrall, Baine (MoP) or Lor’themar (MoP) and I would’ve prefered if they carried on with that Horde, but that’s just my opinion. I personally would’ve liked if the Horde actually showed regret for what they did under Sylvanas’ leadership and apologized for it to the Alliance, tried to do some minor compensations such as returning land, rebuilding destroyed towns, handing over war criminals etc. but nothing of that sort happened. I liked the concept of an honorable Horde instead of a villain Horde and that’s why I used to play Horde in the past, but maybe I’m part of the minority with this? Let me know.
I tried to make this short but it turned out longer than I expected, I hope people get my point and don’t see this post as an attempt to infuriate or annoy others, I just wanted to express my complaints about that topic and what they made out of the Horde in BfA and how they have failed to conclude the faction war in every aspect even though they claimed that they did.
Edit: Wow this turned out as a mistake