Relevance baiting is more frustrating than just outright ignoring major characters, really.
I’m sure Thrall will probably get some big moment in the last expansion of this saga but its kind of bizarre how he and Baine get treated as token characters time after time.
And what is this writing? Like this is the best Blizzard can come up with? Are they just so afraid of conflict at this point that they’ve pushed too far in the other direction?
I do get this feeling. And I wonder - with all the shake-up that Blizz has had since BfA, how many writers there are those who wrote the earlier faction conflict versus new employees who only know that ‘You see the place the sunlight does not touch? That’s the faction war. You must never go there’?
It does feel like the story is trying to sweep the conflict under the rug and pretend it doesn’t remember the conflict ever existed in the first place. And I wonder how much of that is an intentional choice, or if it is employee churn so that the writers themselves are not personally familiar with what came before, and thus don’t reference much when writing the current setting.
Honestly while I think that’s part of it, with how bad BFA ticked off people, I think it comes down more to them realizing its cheaper and easier to just do one unified campaign.
I could be wrong but I would be shocked if even Midnight had a tangibly different experience based on faction.
Yes, because the dialogue between Aethas and Jaina, or even Lilian and Shandris in DF, seemed so off-color for these characters’ relationships.
There really is a sense that the writers don’t really care for warcraft and wanna do their own thing. The characters don’t act like themselves and all have the same personalities.
Heck, even our two newest races have the same story beats. They were created for a singular purpose by a greater being that is now gone, possibly evil, and now have the chance to make their own destinies. I mean how lazy is that?
THe worst part of Nu-blizzard writing is that they still have great writers who can write great scenarios/quests/characters that fit the setting.
And then you get on the main story lines and its just off, because it feels like you’re a guest at someone else’s DnD table.
Yes. If Thrall was replaced with a generic shaman, who would act as Anduin’s surrogate dad when Anduin is all sad about the Light??
I hated typing that, it hurts.
Being at someone else’s dnd table is exactly how it feels to play the msq.
The thing is, I love the idea of Thrall being the one to bring Anduin back to MoP era Anduin.
They have a shared history of mutual respect, Thrall was part of the group that freed him, and wholly understands Anduins struggles with failing as a leader.
But that would have required resolving Thrall’s issues from over a decade ago already, or giving Thrall meaningful focus time or having Anduin outright talk about the failures of the Alliance.
What failings? /s
Given how lazy the writing has been from BfA through DF, any latent vitriol about potentially more lazy tropish writing for when this all goes down is 100% understandable.
Unfortunately, I don’t expect any of these things to happen.
My sense of it is that they are trying really hard to stay away from pushing Thrall to the center stage again. And understandably so. Even a lot of us long time Horde players are kind of burnt out on him being the focal figure constantly.
But Anduin talking about the failures of the Alliance is almost assuredly never going to happen, because that would require the writing team to admit the Alliance has faults in the first place.
I’m not burned out on Thrall, I’m burned out on them treating him like a housecat that can’t decide if he wants in or out. and stretching out his sad phase for a decade now.
Frankly there’s so few horde lore figures that get any focus that aren’t dead, I’ll take what I can get.
And we, as players, all collectively gasp when the newly invented blood elf, Falaforel Armageddonsong turns out to be a villain! gasps
The saddest thing, is that they are aware enough of the Horde’s irrelevance to put in some cameos with Thrall. But they still don’t actually make the Horde relevant.
So it is seems they know they are ignoring the Horde, and have no problem with it.
The problem is that Blizzard has given the Horde no story other than faction conflict. Their only roll in the game is to be foes for the Alliance.
Heaven forbid they give any other Horde character some time.
They use Thrall because he is easy and obvious. It they wanted the Horde to have any real importance, they would just use another character.
I mean it has, several times. Not the least of which was Anduin’s talk with Saurfang how Daelin and Arthas was our ghost and Shaw talked about Garithos.
And recently Shaw told Renzik in his short story “the Alliance isnt perfect, nothing is but it is trying to be better”.
yeah, but the Alliance isn’t just humans.
He doesn’t know that though. 
The question becomes who exactly do you want in the Alliance to apologize and for what. Because most of the more controversial thing done were done by humans.