Participations trophies don’t feel good when a majority of the people you tried to protect died, unfortunately it was a complete failure and most of the innocent kaldorie population suffered for that. The only thing you got out of this as an alliance player is complete failure.
Two expansions later we can’t even get information on what is happening with the night elves, as they were mostly forgotten in BfA after their genocide, only remembered for a warfront in 8.1 that didn’t impact anything, and then forgotten again for the rest of the expansion. Then you have Tyrande showing up to do nothing in shadowlands.
Why is it so hard to even attempt to get any kind of resolution to this plotline? Why is a genocide of a player race barely touched 2 expansions later?
We still haven’t gotten in game resolution for Alteraac Valley and that’s a battlefield created in Vanilla.
Tyrande, nor Anduin, nor even Thrall are supposed to be the agents of resolution… that’s what the raids are for. Darkshore was an opening act, it wasn’t supposed to resolve an expansion which had barely started.
True, we got a mount out of it, the story is over.
Bad comparison, that wasn’t a genocide of a player race and the destruction of their home. It’s not even worth talking about this with you when you have takes this bad on top of things like “it’s heroic to watch a lot of innocents people die lmao”.
Now, to be fair, the Kul Tirans have a way more fleshed out culture than Stormwind humans, so I gave that a pass. I was actually really disappointed when we moved to Naz’jatar. We could have explored the issues in Kul Tiras and the politics for an entire expansion, but we didn’t.
We do/can interact with non-humans though, that said. There’s a Red dragon in Drustvar, as well as the leader of the Thornspeakers proper. And there’s Anyport which is mostly non-humans.
Oh no, I will say it was fine. I like the internal politics, the stuff with brother pike, drustvar, I thought flynn was great as well. I wish they did something with the house of nobles in stormwind like they did with the different leaders in Kul tiran, but that probably won’t ever be a thing.
But the issue though is now as a new player you just go from a human starting zone to a pretty much all human questing area until 60 and then for dragon isle you go to the SW docks so it’s likely most of the stuff you interact with on the faction side is likely just going to be all humans because you basically have no interactions with other alliance races and going into dragon isles the new players will have only experienced human content.
This all though goes back to blizzard just preferring to write only human stuff and then reluctantly once in a while giving a cameo to a non human (likely something they fail at or something that is non important and doesn’t impact the main story etc.). The quality of the questing though wasn’t really the issue.
Tragedy isn’t the antithesis of heroism. I think the point they’re driving at is that Alliance remains reactionary good guys striving for peace (even when they shouldn’t) and justice, while the Horde keeps being mindless monsters with a couple of depressed boys sprinkled on top.
Heroes strive against evil, and the Horde was the evil in these storylines. That doesn’t mean the Alliance got a great story or that Teldrassil wasn’t a gut punch to Night Elves. It just means the Alliance weren’t the villains.
It’s definitely not worth talking about when you’re determined to twist someone’s words to the point where you’re stuffing your own into their mouths. You’re not watching people die when you’re going into a burning city to try to rescue them. You are literally trying until you yourself pass out. If you are so determined to interpret that as passively doing nothing further conversation on this is pointless.
And, in fact, this is how Blizzard writes most everything. The general plot of BfA was exactly what you expect from a “make the Horde” bad guys approach. A classic Blizzard approach is that the antagonists (ie “Bad Guys”) strike a near crippling blow that the plucky heroes overcome. Teldrasil was basically the Burning Shore. But a playable race can’t be eliminated like the Legion was.
So remember this, if you want a plot that involves “getting back” at the Horde, it will be one of two things.
-The Horde will score another big win that really can’t be responded to the way you want.
-Or maybe the big opening win will be the Alliance, but that will mean you will be villains of the expansion. (And no, that isn’t fun. I know that meme sometimes get pushed to support NE entitlement, but that has only lead to people not understanding what it is like.)
So, If I wish I can sit and justify most stuff that happened in BFA to the Kaldorei. I’ve done it a number of times, if only because the alternative is a dysphoric feeling from seeing a chunk of my childhood fall collapse. The problem, to me, is that I need to justify it.
A story should stand on its own merits without me needing to fill in the gaps to grant it some degree of cohesive internal logic.
On the same token just not being the villain isn’t anything heroic. Reacting poorly and failing to protect the people who need it isn’t heroic. I know the point they are driving home “watching innocent civilians die is heroic”, it’s not and it doesn’t feel heroic, it feels terrible. After blizzard gave the player a task they couldn’t complete in the pre event in failing to save a small fraction of the innocent people being burned alive, they pretty much ignored that story for the rest of the expansion which only made it worse.
The night elves just existing to be the victims of evil is not heroic either as they and alliance react poorly and never really get any resolution to this story as blizzard continues to ignore it and sweep it under the rug as if delaying any kind of actual story or resolution to this is going to help.
The players were not passive, nor the faction at large. They sought to mitigate the damage where able and bring the culprits to justice (Darkshore, Lordaeron). That doesn’t mean the heroism was enjoyable or that the player experience was good, but the story itself very plainly set up the Alliance as the heroes throughout BFA. One of SL’s biggest sins, imo, is whatever this psychotic justice/renewal spin is with Tyrande and Sylvanas, because it seems to be implying that Sylvanas facing reasonable consequences is somehow bad.
To some extent, they tried to do the same heroic angle with Baine and Saurfang, which obliterated what little identity the Horde still had. But again, the storytelling was bad enough that the players hated it. Still, they were clearly intended to be heroes for Team Red.
Heroism isn’t really tied to success or failure, ultimately (which should be evident in that tragic hero is a huge trope). In the context of the game itself and the trainwreck of a story it has presented, the Alliance are the clear heroes. Most of the discussions that dominate the forums support that as well, especially those begging the Alliance not be the good guys for once and actually get their hands dirty.
I think people are taking how much they hate the story and using that to push back against anything that sounds like even a hint of a positive, like being called heroic, but heroic and awful, unsatisfying writing aren’t the same discussion.
They didn’t bring the culprits to justice, the alliance basically brings no one to justice, the people who were still participating in the genocide after the burning are still out there and face no concequences. But even Ion said the alliance lost at Lordaeron, as they did lose before Jaina showed up to deus ex the plague away, because of course the alliance is once again shown to be unreasonably stupid, then the horde blow up their own city on their terms while getting no justice for anything there. The player just wakes up on the docks surrounded by coffins because it was yet another failure, but sure you can say fighting is “heroic” in the same way the horde players fighting for sylvanas at lorderon were also “heroic”. Darkshore you don’t even get to see any kind of resolution to that, other than a buggy cutscene in 8.3 (that didn’t even show up really until the pre patch), there was no justice there.
You don’t get any good or heroic movements, you just go through the motions until you get to watch the leader of the alliance giving a eulogy for the person who orchestrated the invasion of ashenvale/darkshore that lead to the genocide of the night elves civilians and then we get to hear anduin condemn Tyrande for being angry over a genocide that never gets a resolution. It’s both an absolutely terrible story with no follow through or resolution for the victims of the genocide and also does not feel heroic.
The alliance just aren’t the bad guys, that doesn’t make them the heroes. They pretty much only fail to protect anyone, even at Brennadam the horde just massacres the whole city and you just show up to kill a few of them, then you kind of move on to the next kill quest without getting to pick up the pieces and help the survivors.
But when your success is rarely shown and your failures start to pile up then Heroism feels meaningless. Of course a person would much rather be a hero than a villain but at some point Blizzard should stop and try to balance the score. They have the tech to phase zones so why don’t they? over a decade later and I still have to watch Ashenvale invaded and on fire.
Well continually failure/incompetence is only part of it. Continually not being able to protect the people who need it and not being able to help the survivors is another part of it that was omitted from the alliance story, we just get to be murder hobos going around killing pointless grunts because blizzard doesn’t want to give an actual resolution to such a horrible tragedy.
I agree. I’m not saying the Alliance got satisfying story or gameplay experiences, as they clearly did not. But they are the reactionary good guys, to a fault, which is a commonplace complaint from most of the playerbase. A hero coming up short doesn’t mean they were never a hero.
I consider myself to be somewhere in a middle ground about the way I feel Blizzard should handle Night Elves. I understand the duality of the faction system wow has. That being said I do want my fantasy reflected in game. Night Elves were presented as a powerhouse but I understand we lost much during our encounter with the Burning Leigion back in WC3 and the loss of our immortality. So what I proposed is to keep Night Elves virtually unbeatable in their territory but unable to opress the horde outside of it. WoT in my opinion and despite its flaws aproached it the best it could. We were fighting against the might of the Horde so it was to be expected a loss more so because we had no army at the moment.
But in Cata we were told we pushed the horde back during the questing experience but if you happened to blink you’d missed a line saying we won and there’s no way of telling because even after so many years Astraanar is still on fire.
I’m not really mad about Alliance losing at Lordaeron. That was an anounced war. The Horde had plenty of time to prepare. It’s logical they’d win the fight.
All I ask for is consistency. If something has to happen in game then so be it but show it.