Yes, like most any creative work of mass media, Warcraft is a product with many hands playing different roles. The art team, animators, quest designers, and others also play a significant part in crafting the narrative. That’s why I generally prefer to refer to “the narrative” and Blizzard as a whole and not pick out/attack/credit individual creatives as if they alone are the sole person responsible.
And that does include writers, who have far more control over the exact wording of Tyrande’s statements, as compared to the higher ups who control, at best, the broader story points.
Which makes being able to critically engage with it and notice trends within it even more important, as things can show up as a byproduct of unspoken unconscious biases, unexamined practices, or miscommunication as opposed to any kind of intentional malice. I personally attribute very very little of what Blizzard does that I find disagreeable to any kind of malice. But I have noticed that when Blizzard really puts their mind to any kind of nuance/subtlety (and they are occasionally capable of it), the results tend to be vastly superior to their other stuff.
At best, as a follow up in-game, the Night Fae covenant will involve a lot of calling back to the burning of Teldrassil, and even Tyrande demanding a Horde player that chooses Night Fae to atone for it by saving the Night Elf souls trapped in where Tyrande and the player finds them in Torghast.
I object to the very idea of “obvious villainy” or petty labels such as “good” and “evil”. The literal definition of “Good” is being on God’s side. And God is always on the side of the victor.
Let’s take this on a different track. Let’s throw out the whole Old Gods/Jailor/segment of the storyline.
Let’s even throw out Sylvannas and just put this all on Saurfang. Let’s make him the War-Chief of the Horde.
Let’s say that YOU are Saurfang. You’ve been given notice by the wiesets Shamans of the Horde, Orc, Tauren, Troll, You’ve done your due dilligence in making sure that it’s not another Kil’jaden ploy and you’ve narrowed down the possible futures to the following 3.
The Horde is conquered by the Alliance. The Orcs in particular are exterminated by a coalition of Humans, Dwarves, and Night Elves, with the Draenei thrown in mostly as a cheering section given their relative lack of strength compared to the other three factions, but they’ve got enough bad blood with the Orcs to be fully compliant with the idea.
The Orcs survive and establish a long term peace by eliminating the Alliance as a long term threat.
Now supposed again that you travel the peace road with earnest Little Lion Anduin and that road buys you fifty years of peace, but the war faction of the Alliance uses that time to gear up for the day where they overthrow the peace faction and crush the Horde. So it’s actually playing nice with Anduin that leads you down the road to result 1.
Suppose that it becomes crystal clear that the only way to Road 2 is to decisively defeat the Alliance with a crushing victory over Stormwind.
What is the line you draw when the choices are between Road 2 and the ultimate extinction of your people.
What are the things that you refuse to do, knowing that refusing to do it means the death of your people, one that you might not live to see, but one that will happen nonetheless? Or in converse how far would you go?
I agree that in real life, good/evil are a lot fuzzier. But in a fictional narrative, you can kind of create any situation you want.
And you aren’t limited to just those two options. If you want to write a story including war and conflict, between two world factions, you can write a story in which there is a long term uneasy truce in which there are some localized skirmishes, but no warfare between the major powers on a planet-nuking scale.
You don’t have to create situations in which one of the only viable solutions is the extinction/conquering of one sapient species by another… I mean you can. But you don’t have to.
You don’t really know that. Most of the changes in the creative team happened after the first cinematic was done. it’s pretty much the same creative team from the actual launch until now.
It wasn’t a thing to the player. Same deal with Nathanos standing up to a supposedly empowered Tyrande.
I frankly don’t care what was going on in the writing room. The fact of the matter is that they executed a story so badly that they had to go back and “explain” key story points. And that is a sign of a bad story.
They don’t try to do it with the Alliance because in their eyes, the Horde are the protagonists, with the Alliance being the generically good hero npc faction that the Horde can use to advance its story when it needs it. Why do you think Horde gets tons of cinematics and in-game stuff (such as the whole rebel vs loyalist questline and aftermath) trying to explain and grapple with its actions? The Alliance doesn’t get these things because the Alliance has no depth, no real story, and was created that way from the beginning.
Lol you think this playerbase could handle war and peace, they’d be crying about how tis not fair that the french burned russian cities but russians didnt get to do the same
The Horde is by nature more interesting to write for. You have the challenge of making creatures which which were historically just monsters when the game first came out into characters, whereas the Alliance can’t get more generic with a few exceptions such as the inversion of roles between the dark skinned Night Elves and the fair skinned Blood Elves.
I wouldn’t boil it down to the Alliance being generic between the savage feral elves, werewolves barely in control of themselves, fanatical demons from space that rejected corrupt influences. There is plenty of room to write a compelling story between their races but the problem comes in the form that all of the alliance races have a boring and passive goal of existing in peace when really they shouldn’t.
Prior to BFA, Night elves and Draenei should be pushing for more aggression towards the orcs for being well…orcs with the goal of kicking them out of Kalimdor. Yeah the Draenei got Argus back, but why do they ignore the mass genocide back on Draenor? The two of them should be constantly pushing the Alliance to take the fight to the orcs in Orgrimmar.
The problem comes when peacefully co-existing is the only racial motive is when things get passive. The Horde wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if characters like Garrosh and Sylvanas just decided they were fine with their lot in life, but as a player that plays both Horde and Alliance, I am tired of seeing the Alliance act passively and largely ignored and just as tired of seeing the Horde practically dismantle with each xpac because they need to use them as bad guys again.
There are lots of ways Blizzard could have made Alliance more interesting. For starters, they didn’t have to take away Varian’s “angry king” persona and let him keep his blood thirst when fighting Horde. They wanted Varian as a hero and not a human Garrosh so they put him through his little ritual.
Worgen could have had more difficulty controlling their feral impulses than what Blizzard portrayed. Let a few lose control on the streets of Stromwind and attack, maybe even kill a few innocent bystanders. Let Alliance members assist Greymane in further efforts to control their feral side and help build trust between Worgen and the rest of the Alliance.
More recently they could have had some major friction by having both Lightforged Draenei getting real upset over the prospects of working with Void Elves.
They could have had Jaina as a villain this expansion but decided not to and turned her back into Peace Cheerleader.
Sorry but, nope. Alliance are doomed to be the faction where everyone gets along nicely, holds hands, and sings Kum Bah Yah. Blizzard wants them as the quintessential hero team without any villain qualities at all. I’d like to think that this thing with Tyrande will bear something interesting but I don’t think they have the nerve to let it go very far.
Because they know they could have prepared the races of Draenor for what they knew they were bringing to the planet. They chose to live out their days in luxurious splendor instead of vigorous preparation. They sinned. They know it. They know the onus of what happened to them falls squarely on their own shoulders.
See I would love it if Blizzard allowed the Night elves or anything Alliance to be that aggressive.
But they won’t. Remember, you guys are the proverbial ultra good guys and united team Blue. All this friction between night elves and the rest of the Alliance will blow over soon enough.
See I could buy that if the Draenei were described as seeing the events on Draenor as their fault and to some extent I’m sure some knew the Legion would eventually come for them. But that doesn’t mean that they would just give the Orcs a free pass. In all of their written lore, the Draenei despise orcs not only for the genocide, but for their giving into the corruption as well (and likely for continuing their warlock traditions even after their turn away from the Legion)
I know people aren’t too fond of BFA Yrel, but it would make perfect sense for a MU draenei to behave like her given how the orcs have acted throughout WoW.
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