Who does Blizzard think the Horde player is?

As the Horde narrative continues to unfold like some sort of dreadful slow motion train wreck, I find myself increasingly stumped by the question I pose in the title: who does Blizzard think their Horde players are?

Seriously…who are they writing for? Not the “rawr, Horde smash!” crowd, or they wouldn’t be emphasizing that we should feel shame for all the stuff they have us wreck. Certainly not the “noble outcast” crowd (i.e. the fools like me who actually bought Blizzard’s own description of the Horde). Not Forsaken fans, given that it is increasingly clear that Sylvanas is ultimately getting thrown under the bus.

Are there any Horde fans who want a narrative where we do monstrous things before once again being torn apart by civil unrest as we endlessly debate the “who is the Horde, REALLY?” topic for the umpteenth time.

Here’s the thing, Blizzard: Your basic concept for the WC3/Vanilla Horde (“They look like monsters, but they’re not!”) may have been sort of novel for a video game, but it’s not really that challenging a concept. We got it. We were cool with it. We certainly weren’t having an existential crisis over it.

I’m going to take a chance and explain what I think MOST Horde players want:

We want to be the faction described on the box. We want to be a ragtag collection of hardened survivors who have banded together to survive in a largely hostile world. We want to be capable of pragmatic and even brutal actions when we have to, but we don’t want to be evil for its own sake. We want to embody virtues such as honour, family loyalty, and tenacity. And most of all, we want to be the heroes of our story.

I don’t think most of us mind being villains from the Alliance perspective. We accept that conflict is an integral part of the game. But we don’t want to be villains from our own perspective. Nobody enjoys that. And we don’t want to be written as relapsed addicts struggling with the meaning of our own existence.

The next time you are preparing a Horde cinematic, Blizzard, pause and ask yourself what music you plan to score it with. If it will require ominous low tones, or a melancholy minor key…maybe we have had enough of those. Maybe think about the story you are giving us. Ask if you would enjoy a story that is ALL failure.

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Metzen, so basically male human paladins

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The answer is they arent writing for the Horde players. They are writing for themselves and their inexplicable obsession with WC2s black and white good vs evil boring dichotomy.

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I don’t know if they exist but, I find it insulting when the developers claim that MoP 2.0 isn’t the case. Isn’t that insulting our intelligence?

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People who are hopelessly addicted to the game and will keep playing it regardless of whatever high falutin plot Blizz cooked up.

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I like the imagery here. And I agree with you 100%

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Given the dissonance in the honor narrative and the Sylvanas narrative, a sociopath probably.

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i don’t want to offend horde players but…

monsters? people who enjoy the “horde is metal”? or “lol red is dead fordahurd”

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They said it themselves best. Saurfang is the heart of the horde.

This is just a roundabout way of getting rid of the forsaken to make way for the new forsaken that is like saurfang.

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As far as I can tell, somebody in Blizzard was really really offended by Horde pride back in WotLK, and has spent all this time trying to tear it down.

They just decided to go all out because they realized that somewhere out there, Horde players that had faction pride still existed, and they couldn’t have that.

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Well you know what they say, every villain is the hero of their own story. So in essence they at least got that part down…

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that makes no sense

L****-F***** U*****
/10char

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You would think, except that our story also keeps reminding us to be ashamed. So…not even villains who are heroic in our own minds.

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If Saurfang is the heart of the Horde then I’m Riko’s uncle.

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The part where they turn all the aggressive “evil” forsaken into diehard sylvanas loyalists then splinter the race in half and force the player to side with the group that see’s things from a more honor based perspective.

Or that saurfang is the heard of the horde and his sad face at lordaeron totally makes up for watching a tree full of civilians burn.

Because I kinda think it’s both. Is it both?

Old and dying is surely what they meant.

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“I’d rather sob in my enemy’s prison begging them to solve my problems, than go and solve my problems myself. A bloo bloo blooooo!”
-Saurfang

Yeah. He really speaks for us all.

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They write this garbage to stroke their ego…(they can get away with it, after all the average player doesn’t care for the lore but merely for the precious purples, mounts, titles and toys),.

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Honestly, I feel like “they’re writing for themselves” is the correct answer.

Not so much that they love the WC2 METTUL HURD (although I think they do) but more that they’re overcome with arrogance: “Well, that MoP plot really had something deep in there, but people didn’t like it only because it was poorly executed. If WE had written it, it would have been much better, deeper, and more meaningful.” That people hated the general thrust of the plot in addition to its execution seems not to have occurred to them.

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Blood thirsty idiots given they think we didn’t get it the first time so we should enjoy SoO 2 Forsaken Boogalo.

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