Actually, some of them are forcibly incarcerated: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/22/prisons-in-paradise
Especially if there is no way to send them back.
I’ve said again and again that the Alliance needs a Tywin Lannister character who talks a good honest logical talk about why the Alliance will never truly be safe until the Horde is outright destroyed, pointing out the many actual real times the Horde’s stupid violent actions have threatened not just the Alliance but the whole world. Really speaking to the many many citizens who have lost loved ones again and again in spite of the ‘peace’, so that he genuinely gets popular support (Tywin himself never cared much for the support of the masses, but he and the new character don’t have to be a one on one comparison. also, I want the character to be built up and grow in the story, not just be plopped down into it at full power out of nowhere.). While he craves power and rulership, I think it would be best if he himself actually did believe what he was saying, and that what he says is backed-up by in-game historical facts, so that even as we realize he’s a villain, there’s also that ‘he isn’t wrong though’ factor.
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Sure, I get that bit. My problem is they’re not satisfying in the role of “a bad guy to hate” for (some) Horde players because there’s a dose of guilt attached to their hostility. I want someone in the Allilance that we can all just hate in an uncomplicated way.
Bonus points if Alliance players also hate but are stuck with the character—not because I want Alliance players to suffer, but because that would be realistic. It would also be a way of showing “the Alliance” is not a monolith but is made up of individuals with realistically varying levels of virtue.
Ironically, they tried to do this in BfA. But their “Tywin” was Sylvanas talking up the War of Thorns.
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The faction war ideally should be scrapped and thrown to the side. Blizzard has proven that they’re incapable of writing world wars.
…That being said, if they do write a faction/world war again like BfA? They should have the Alliance perform a War of the Thorns but Quel’thalas, with the Burning of Teldrassil being the Ren’dorei/Alleria corrupting the Sunwell.
Y’all complain about how it was terrible for the Horde to do WoT, but than go suggest the alliance does the same in the future?
I don’t get this whole WoT sucked for the horde, but lets force everyone else to do evil thing even when it makes no sense mentality y’all seemingly have.
It just feels like you guys can’t really make up your mind if WoT was really as terrible you guys keep claiming it was for you all
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making it a ‘hot’ war with actual overt military conflict was the mistake. it was fine as a cold war during Vanilla TBC and Wrath.
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This is why I want more of the House of Lords actions - have the Alliance bad guys have enough legal fu to avoid consequences, generate rumors, falsify evidence, stall investigations, stonewall proposals against them, etc.
As long as the Alliance player is not forced to work for these villains (or does so only on the occasional good mission, like when the villains are also focused on big-picture enemies like the Legion/Scourge/villain-of-the-expac, or when they are delivering needed supplies to suffering Alliance populations), then I don’t think it’s a ruinous experience to have these villainous aspects visibly exist inside the player’s faction. And I think this standard should be applied to both factions.
I like the Tywin Lannister-type character mentioned above - one who, on the Alliance side, talks about the old grievances and dangers that the Horde has historically posed to the Alliance, but who the Horde can overhear talking about how none of that matters to him and he just wants power.
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Writing a hot war in a setting where each side of the conflict represents 50% of your player base just means you’re creating a situation that will eventually irritate and disappoint half of your customers.
That being said, the current love-fest of Dragon Flight is going to give me diabetes. Can we please go back to the wonderful, weighty tension of a cold-war setting? Please?
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My issue about going back to that is it’s going to lead to another villian batting of the horde for the next faction war.
I rather avoid at all costs another couple years of listening people cry about that
If there was ever going to be another faction war-themed expansion, the one after Dragonflight would be the “perfect” time to do it as it generally falls into the preestablished pattern of the last two, on top of it syncing up with WoW’s 20-year anniversary.
In my honest opinion. It’s because if you go deep enough, most reasons kinda fall flat on their face.
Oppression by Alliance races? Tbh most member nations of alliances races who did, are Horde now.
Self defense against the Alliance? Even in Classic this is really debatable if it’s true, given they’re also invading the Alliance in multiple areas at the same time.
The irony of this is, at the same time, the Alliance is still essentially just written to be a personality less thing that cant make any decisions or do anything itself and purely exists to be reactionary to horde driven narratives. Both sides literally are just written in a way where they feel like props to the other faction.
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Getting back the original post, I would say that it is rather hard to know how the various races and leaders of the Horde feel about one another. We don’t see a lot of interaction between them. From what I’ve played through, we see a lot more of that on the Alliance side, but I expect many of us would like more of those interactions.
Dwarves, night elves, trolls, blood elves–where are their stories right now? We are getting some Tyrande and Malfurion interactions which is fine, but it doesn’t speak to their feelings about the Alliance, or others. With the current emphasis on the new race and their leaders and their motivations, we’re seeing a lot more there–which is to be expected. We read about the wedding scene with Lor’themar and Thalyssra (and the uninvited Grimtotem), but even that story is a little light on details (which is fine, again, since it’s meant to be about the wedding). What we’re getting is character pieces, but not … race-specific pieces.
One of the things that was neat about Garrosh, for instance, was that we got a chance to see the orcs of Orgrimmar through his eyes. We saw his idea of the race, and his vision of what he felt they should be–albeit, again, in another story outside of the game. But that one story gave us more of a vision of the world and the people of Orgrimmar than really many stories since then.
We’ve had racial leaders shoe-horned in as the viewpoints for the various races, but then we get very little with regard to their views–apart from the current in-game issue of the quest, or vignettes that relate to…you guessed it, other racial leaders.
I think the reason that the story on the Horde side with the old veteran and the newbie troll in BFA felt so good is that we were seeing visions of the Horde through characters that weren’t trying to deal with leading it, but rather living and breathing and being a part of it. It’s also why some of the quests in Dragonflight are amazing. The one with the two orcs is amazing. It speaks about the scars we carry with us–not from the point of view of leaders, but from the point of view of just…people.
Not every story needs to be about the racial leaders, though I’d love to see some council meetings of the Horde where they just talk about resource problems or something. Better still, I’d love to read a story about new, young people who are trying to make sense of what’s going on in the world as they take part in its goings-on. Let’s hear from the solder left to stand guard out in BFE nowhere. Or the new denizens of a cosmopolitan town arising in Pandaria. Let’s hear from the an archeologist or three. Let’s walk in the boots and don the hat of a pirate. We don’t need world leaders to tell us the state of the world (though in key moments, that’s a good thing to do); we just need some viewpoints that allow us to understand the world from a broader point of view. Honestly, I’d love to read a story or do a quest where we go check in on the rebuilding efforts in Ashenvale. Or sit in on a meeting of both Alliance and Horde leaders where they’re hashing out the details of reparations and renumerations for various crimes. I’d love to see an orc statesman be frustrated that in spite of all the wars, they still don’t have enough food, water, and building materials to help continue rebuilding efforts after the Cataclysm of years past. Maybe we see some dismantling of spikes to create homes or dam rivers.
There are literally thousands of stories that can be written for each zone of the in-game world. It’s not like everyone is an adventurer–just leaving the place behind like we do. There are clean-up efforts, and rebuilding. There are economic issues and trade issues. And even a hint of those helps the world to feel bigger and broader, and gives us a sense of what our racial leaders might be doing, even if they’re not the main focus of the story or even the characters that are in the story.
That said, …I agree that it would be nice to see the world as the leaders of the factions see it. It would be nice to get some internal monologues, or see them interacting with their people or other racial leaders when there isn’t a world-ending crisis at hand. We’ve had three years pass, but it feels very stilted–as if the world has only grown because of the new continent, when there really ought to be some growth involved everywhere.
5 Likes
Some of yall need to open a window or something, holy cow.
Anyway.
More needs to be done to write the horde just being Horde. There’s no opportunity to breathe, to explore the faction, its members and how they exist together - and how they conflict as well.
And in all fairness, the Alliance has much of the same problem, though more of a variety that “The Alliance is Stormwind, with short humans, purple humans, and tentacle humans”
The next expansion or two needs to lean hard into the Factions just doing their own things, mostly separately.
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And that’s considered a bad thing, and not the proper way to treat refugees.
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I don’t think this is really relevant in our current story, as both factions work together they don’t necessarily need to not cooperate with their most recent allies as well as their oldest ones.
There could be a very interesting story being told in here with many of the more nature inclined societies to want to leave BOTH factions to join the primalists, but what I imagine triumps at the end of the day is the bonds they made over the years. Sure, without a war even if all wounds of the conflict are healed it’s likely that timmy from Undercity has more of a common lineage with tommy from Stormwind, but it was a darkspear troll the one who was there next to him when he needed it the most.
So as factions would matter less in a more peaceful world, what ultimately bonded them in the first place was this alliance of convenience for some that might’ve turned into a brotherhood of sorts at the end.
Since horde races aren’t a monolith it’s hard to make a blanket statement.
The primalist are an excellent example and plot device of how both factions can make amazing villains without it taking from the whole, but rather building more deeply into what is already in place.
And I am saying its the least bad thing. That the other options(like sending them back to their own country) could actually be a worse options.
Really?
Locking up children/young adults indefinitely for the crimes of their parents is the least bad thing you can imagine?
Really?
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And again, what exactly do you propose? Send them back to their country? Have them torn from their families? Send them to foster care because their parents are illegal in said country?
In the same vein, the Alliance was tossed a problem that they did not create and were forced to find a solution in a manner as best as they could. I mean, should the Alliance have taken all the orc kids out of the internment camps, never to see their parents again? Forced to live with Alliance families/force them to fundamentally change their culture because of the destruction the orcs initially did?
How about looking into a path to integrate them into society, even if they (the humans) ultimately decided against it? How about training the young orcs for productive jobs? How about looking into finding an island somewhere where they could settle once they were old enough? How about at least putting some thought and investigation into other alternatives instead of just leaving them in camps for life and forgetting about them?
And yeah, obviously you don’t want to tear young children away from their parents, but Thrall was an adult by the time he broke out.
Again, that was Terenas plan. As I mentioned earlier Terenas/Antonidas did both want to ultimately free them/integrate them into the Alliance.
There was this thing called the Lethargy that kinda made that difficult if not impossible.
Because 1) there was no gurantee they would stay in that island. 2) until after the 3rd war, I don’t think the Alliance knew about other islands/anything beyond the Eastern Kingdoms existed.
Again, Antonidas was investigating it. Suffice to say he didn’t actually find a cure to the lethargy thus making rehabilitation hard if no impossible.
Not to mention there was still pockets of orcs renegades constantly attacking the Alliance.