The odd thing is they have Sunwalkers and Blood Knights hanging out in Mereldar chatting with the Arathi about how the ways they channel the Light are arguably more similar than how the people of Stormwind do it.
They brought out major Horde characters like Lady Liadrin to talk to characters like Great Kyron, but made them token background dialogue without voice acting. Just background exposition.
Many people have mentioned elsewhere that it’s kind of insulting that the likes of Turalyon and Velen couldn’t help Anduin out of his malaise but then Faerin comes along and tells him to “cheer up” and spouts some platitudes about the Light and that fixes him. That whole storyline plays out in a zone and in a town with the members of the Horde with the strongest personal connections to the Light and they just never interact at all. They’re completely irrelevant.
These Horde characters were present and highly relevant and would’ve served as great vehicles for this particular part of the story, but they were sidelined. Instead all of the knowledge and wisdom and spirit and zeal for the Light they embody after years of building their characters was instead placed in a brand new character that comes across as a Mary Sue because she’s somehow wiser and more knowledgeable and just better at everything than any previously established character.
Take any of Faerin’s lines about the Light and put them in the mouths of Sunwalker Dezco or Lady Liadrin or even someone like Turalyon and they hit significantly harder because we know how and why these characters can say these things. We know about Lady Liadrin’s struggles with contempt for the Light. We know about Dezco losing his wife and son and seeking them in the Shadowlands. We know about Turalyon fighting the Legion for a millennium and being found so worthy by the Naaru that he was blessed/cursed with immortality to continue fighting.
Each of these characters have backstories that vastly overshadow Faerin’s even though they made her an “orphan” with a missing limb that’s blind in one eye and trapped in a vast cave system for most of her life. They gave her a backstory that would be crushing in the real world, but can’t compare to what the Blood Elves went through, or seeing one of your infant children crushed to death and being forced to give the other up, or spending a thousand years fighting demons in the Twisting Nether.
There are definitely strong stories to tell with members of the Horde right now and they’re just being overlooked.
i’d really like to see more stories where we go around questing with a horde and alliance racial leader if only to see how their personalities clash and see how they could move past that. like if we went around questing with mekkatorque and gazlowe, or tyrande and baine
The max level campaign seems to try to split attention evenly between factions.
You start with the stormrook plotline, which is split between Thrall and Kurdran, then you have the training of earthen small quest, which is split between Turalyon and Geya’rah (shoutout for Aysa and Ji firepaw training the earthen together, now kiss). Then If I recall correctly, we get a whole questline with Dagran and Brinthe, and then a whole questline with Lilian Voss and the Nerubian or the other way around.
After that it seems the final part which has mostly alleria, so, thats a pretty even split.
I didnt say that alleria was evenly split, I was saying the questlines on max level were more or less evenly split between you following alliance and horde npcs.
Alleria’s current status as a “world hero” highlights a big wasted opportunity for Horde plot relevance, now I think of it. What better time to explore Alleria’s unresolved issues with the orcs than the expansion allegedly co-starring Thrall?
Exactly. The first thing Warden Stillwater does upon the Forsaken/Horde PC showing up to his prison, is tell you in the most suspicious way he can, that “Everything’s fine here, yes-yes, move on. On your way.”
You wander through the prison, until you run into Lyndon, a senior Apothecary who was imprisoned by Stillwater for demanding he shut down the entire site.
Lyndon is very clear that none of what Stillwater is doing—including burying humans in dirt—is sanctioned, especially because his necromancy is just creating mindless zombies instead of individuals with free agency. He charges the Forsaken/Horde PC with killing all the monsters Stillwater is creating, and then killing Stillwater for his crimes.
As for the infamous Shovel Quest, it’s one of the more unique Cataclysm quests because you choose how you want to carry it out. You can be a monster and use it to bludgeon the living prisoners in a way that keeps them from becoming zombies, or you can dig them out—which sees them thanking you and fleeing the prison. It’s implied that due to Stillwater’s actions, they’re probably doomed anyway, because they’ve been exposed to the old Scourge Plague which is the cause for them becoming zombies in the prison.
Either way, the Forsaken shut him down and killed him for some of the only crimes they have as a society. His later resurrection for seemingly no reason in BFA was a clear sign of the War-Table designer just google searching Horde NPCs in Hillsbrad, and making them all the baddies in the Alliance EK War-Table missions.
Practically a reversal of the “Falstad, isn’t he dead?” “Sword, what sword?” moment I’ve come to expect from Blizzard. Might have been around the time they got rid of their entire QA department and just threw that job to the Alpha-testers.
Any time whatsoever that players voice that they feel Horde characters aren’t getting much time to shine, you get the Alliance-simps raging “SHUDDUP, YOU GOT THRALL!!” — as if having Thrall, one Horde character, equals to several Alliance characters … I mean really?
Midnight
I seriously seriously, oh so desparately seriously hope — That the Horde can actually have some Horde characters that truly shine in Midnight, heck even having an elven mage go on equal footing to Jaina Her flexing on the ENTIRE Horde despite having both the Nightborne and all of Quel’Thalas allied with them, is rather embarrassing.
INB4 – They shoehorn Alleria & the void elves, Vareesa & the Silver Covenant and whatever other “Alliance-only-High-Elves” nonesense they try force down our throats in the Midnight expansion @ becoming the great saviours along with virtue signalling the Blood Elves, along with the Horde … Again.
But yeah, I’m not exactly holding my breath for the Horde to get a cool story or some epic-scene moment anymore.
Well, I think there is a moral difference between using entangling roots to kill someone trough suffocation (still brutal and rage motivated) during combat and burying people while keeping them alive to harvest their organs…
Alliance fans: “Feels good to be the focus of the whole story we are the best.”
Horde: “Can we gt some of that too?”
Alliance fans: “OMG why are you so entitled you got Thrall.”
The only mechanism to get a guaranteed Horde-centric plotline is through a Troll unification plot
Anything elf related will inherently involve a disbalance of 60% Alliance Elf Groups (Sin/Shal vs Kal/Ren/Quel, with Sanlayn on both sides thanks to BFA)
Her flexing on the ENTIRE Horde despite having both the Nightborne and all of Quel’Thalas allied with them, is rather embarrassing.
