I’m jaded enough to expect the “horde content” to come in the form of Baine bowing to Anduin then standing behind him. Thrall apologizing about the naughty horde to Jaina then standing behind her. Calia showing up and trying to convince us she’s horde now. Then have Alleria be front and center of the Void elves moving back into Quel Thalas. Maybe have a moment where Anduin shows off how he’s the new OP Light magic user. Maybe Jaina becomes the new Guardian and claims to be neutral now and is the new strongest mage ever. We’ll pat ourselves on the back for all our “horde” content and then have a heavily Alliance favored patch to follow it up. You know to balance out all the above mentioned horde attention. Just to keep things fair. “Wait and see” approach has me cringing because the above is only half a joke. I could see Blizzard doing this.
Kinda sounds cynical to say, but with the trend from Legion onward, I honestly believe that blizz simply doesn’t know what to do with the horde as a whole, especially after BfA.
So they simply roll out the staples of Thrall, Gazlow and Baine for a few quests and call it horde content because righting the honorable horde ship after they sunk it years ago has long passed.
But hopefully I am wrong and they actually give the horde some much needed love. Midnight SHOULD, by all rights, be a Blood elven heavy expansion
Void elves will inherit all thalassian themes for the alliance. Arator is already living in Silvermoon. Alleria visits him freely, as does turalyon.
In an, appropriately, disappointing thread I do want to give a sliver of joy - High Arcanist Savor. While I have not gone back to Azj-Kahet after the primary questing story to see if he has more of a spot light, even just his few moments were a very welcome and entertaining sigh of relief filled with that dry Forsaken humor and perpetually annoyed attitude.
I’ve completed the sojourner achievement for the area and sadly he’s nowhere to be found. And I did that specifically because I’d hoped I’d run into him.
But the Nerubian content on it’s own was great. There’s one questline in particular that had my skin crawling and I’m anything but squeamish so props to that.
Gazlowe has a pretty sizeable role in the side quests though and that’s nice but you literally have to go out of your way to find it.
Death Knights have been stealing the Forsaken’s thunder for awhile now. I will die mad that they sieged Icecrown Citadel while the Forsaken vanished from the plot after the Wrathgate Incident.
If they’re determined to write one story for two factions it kind of behoves them to diversify the active character roster. People point to Thrall and Cataclysm as the Horde’s TWW and I laugh, because that expansion not only remade the old world in red and blue but split half of 80-85 between the factions. If Elemental Bonds with Alleria followed the MSQ rather than constituted it there’d probably be less criticism. Christ, that’s precisely what the Dark Heart patch was.
I don’t know, I’m no longer willing to give them the benefit of the doubt after BfA. Better to let them know there’s an overabundance of blue graffiti on the wall rather than hope they add a splash of red later; that way the next one, which people are really worried about, might get a better paint job.
Not only that, but Alliance players complain about the “robot cat” patch to this day, and they are not consoled by Alliance taking the lead in later material. Well, if this is our “robot cat” expansion, then we should get the right to complain too.
To be fair, they fired a lot of that writing team. I haven’t gotten to play the xpac yet but people seem to be praising the campaign writing so far. Like BFA war campaign/major set pieces and everything about Shadowlands was terrible from the get go. I think Metzin has earned some time to let him cook.
I’d argue it’s even worse than the MoP robot cat. The robot cat was one single patch and it’s story, since both ToT and release MoP had faction based questing and tons of faction specific NPCs we interacted with.
In TWW it’s the whole of release content, which traditionally make up the majority or at the very least half of an expansions questing experience. Can you imagine having the Alliance quest with Horde characters for 90% of Pandaria at release? Or how about playing WoD through only the Horde garrison with no Alliance garrison. There would’ve been an outrage.
It’s because the Horde doesn’t have any real iconic characters at this point. Sylvanas is gone, Vol’jin is dead, Thrall lost his mojo and hasn’t been the same for a decade or more, Baine was never established to be a heavy hitter, Kael’thas was killed instantly while Lor’themar isn’t on the same level, they killed Rastakhan and left us with his less-powerful and less-interesting daughter, etc.
As much as I hate to say it the characters Horde has simply don’t matchup to where we’re at currently. It makes sense that they aren’t utilizing more Horde when the cast just generally sucks at the moment. But that will only get worse the longer they refuse to use them and build them up.
Thrall needs to move on in his story, Vol’jin needs to return from his loa’ification, Baine needs to finally get something to do that isn’t related to the Alliance, and Kael’thas needs to return from the Shadowlands to lead the Belves again (this last one is only half-serious, I don’t expect anything like that)
Out of curiosity, which Horde characters would you have liked to see present and prominent in those quests, and why?
I’m not asking to be smart. I’m legitimately curious. I’ve tried thinking about Horde characters it’d make sense to see in TWW, and it’s all coming up a bit scant. At most, maybe some Blood Elves interacting with the Arathi, but which ones? Liadrin gets over-used, Lor’themar has his hands full with both Quel’Thalas and the Horde, and Rommath doesn’t exactly make sense down there. Maybe Halduron would, but its odd for the Ranger-General of Quel’Thalas to leave the kingdom, and for what? Pal around with half-elves who are major light worshipers? Kind of goes back to Liadrin making the most sense, but she’s over-used.
Maybe Calia could make an appearance, but as Horde players like her almost as much as Baine, I don’t see that working out favorably.
Geya’rah’s still got a hate-on for the Light, so I can’t see her wanting anything to do with them. Forsaken other than Calia, I don’t know how either the Earthen or Arathi would interact with. Tauren don’t have a lot of happy history with Dwarves, so unless we want a redux of Baine getting over prejudice from Dragonflight, it’s probably not a great story to pursue.
At that point, what’s left? The trolls and goblins? We’ve got some Goblins down underground already, but they don’t have a strong connection to anything going on. The Harronir seem like a place where the Horde could’ve had a lot more character presence, but they’re also not as big a presence as the Arathi and Earthen, so it’d still feel like Horde characters getting pushed into the corner as token representation.
Might’ve been a good time to introduce some new blood, but again, the race selection seems like it’d be skewed towards Blood Elves. Whenever the Horde’s representation is just the elves, a lot of Horde players don’t feel like they’re getting actual Horde representation.
To be fair we’re in yet another Alliance-Only expansion.
To be clear, right now, the Void Elves aren’t involved in TWW at all. There is only one Void Elf in the entirety of the new content, and that’s Alleria. Her narrative keeps driving home that she’s going lone wolf on this. In the pre-expac quests that opened Telogrus Rift to everyone, they even make it a point that the Void Elves aren’t happy that she’s abandoning them to go hunt down Xal’atath.
Likewise, if Blizzard is attempting to, ‘cement that they made the right call with making them a playable race as opposed to the generic high elves,’ then they’re doing a piss poor job.
Alleria’s been led around by the nose, outmaneuvered, overpowered, and outsmarted at every single moment she’s been on screen. She’s been utterly ineffective in handling Xal’atath as a threat, and gets manipulated more than the metrics for the monthly investor reports do.
If anything, Blizzard’s story thus far is only hammering home the fact that Void Elves were a terrible idea: the best of them is utterly useless.
“it’s only correct to add horde characters if it makes sense.”
Explain literally any night elf in the shadowlands pre emerald dream retcon.
This changes at the end of the main level up campaign, when she realizes she needs her family to remain stable as trying go lone wolf vs a primordial cosmic force is a one way trip to becoming Deathwing. Which… I am hoping also means the Void elves she sort of dismissed a helping hand from in the lead in from DF.
Legion was our robot cat expansion.
The horde was completely missing post broken shore.
Void elves being a terrible idea is something we can agree on. Possibly the only thing. It is clear now though that void elves were introduced to the Alliance so that in expansions focused on Light Vs Shadow and fleshing out the shadow side of things Alliance heros could stay in the spotlight (for both Light AND Shadow). Before the introduction of the Void Elves joining the Alliance I would have expected horde races to be front and center when exploring the void side of things. Dark magic is more of a Horde motif while the blue boy scouts on the Alliance are all about Light magic. Would have made for a great opportunity to flesh out Voodoo troll magic and Forsaken priests etc. Instead we get three racial leaders of the Alliance shouting out “I am no longer leading the Alliance!” and now we are all supposed to pretend they are neutral so they also represent horde. Dope.
Sure hope yall didnt shell out more cash for early access just to quest three days early in a game where youre increasingly unsatisfied with your factions presence in the story. Because that would be funny.
I didn’t do it for the early access, but it’s absolutely a learning experience. I trusted Metzen, and he burned me for it.