Going back to the original point of this thread -
If you head back to the area where the Baine Questline in Dragonflight ends, you will see the area has been updated.
There you can see Baine talking with Rokan, Chen, and Rexxar as they talk about Bovan. Baine actually talks about the bond that was forged between them by his rescue, and that he is happy to see them again even if he wishes it was under happier circumstances.
Bovan shouldn’t have died. I hate how Blizzard isn’t stopping killing beloved Horde characters to raise the stakes.
Edith: At least Tagar and Ironhoof are still there. It is small but it is something.
Yes, which is another reason for the Orcs to be heading a rival faction.
Lets do this by list.
Orcs …well the first version of this game was Orcs vs. Humans.
Trolls Thrall saved them from the Sea Witch, they’ve been buddies ever since.
Tauren. pretty much a copy of two… also the Tauren do seem to have this desire to spread their spiritual enlightenment around. and the Horde is a receptive audience.
Forsaken. Rejected by Humanity, the Tauren were the first race to look at them beyond their nature. The Forsaken for their part, found the Taurens to be ample test subjects.
Blood Elves. The Human Kingdom the Blood Elvs had the biggest ties with was Lordaeron…whose population are now the Forsaken. The Forsaken sponsored them for Horde membership. Also, Tyrande.
Nightbourne. Blame it all on Tyrande… I certainly do. She also contributed her part in giving a fresh round of Alliance alienation for the Blood Elves as well.
Zandarlar Trolls. The Alliance captured their princess and murdered their King. Where do you think they’re going to turn to?
Mag’har Orcs. A segment of Draenei gave them a choice of indoctrination or extermination, the Horde offered a third option.
I have played both Alliance and Horde. I prefer the Horde far more. Yes, there are characters like Baine, but there was also Doom Hammer, Garrrosh, Vol’jin, Sylvanas. Varrock (even though he turned out to be a traitor), Rastakhan, of course Gallywix, and many others.
We were always meant to be the antagonist, but being Horde is soo much better.
EDIT: It’s a shame they are all gone now, but that’s what made me love the Horde.
If you do the Nightborne allied quest, you find out that she directly turned down the NB approaching them as allies.
Both sides are meant to be “the antagonist” for the other.
How is Anduin leader of the Alliance an Antagonist to the horde?
He’s not, but that’s just one of BFA’s many problems.
Objectively because he doesn’t punish antagonists like genn and Admiral KillHorde.
lol, right because he was supposed to punish Genn for being right that she was up to no good. I mean he told Genn off but I even find that stupid. Genn Should have gotten a celebration parade on his return.
Again, however this proves my point the writers wouldn’t have let Anduin been in the wrong in the first place for sending genn after Sylvanas. The Horde had to be in the wrong this instance, you trying to paint the Alliance as the bad guys just hides the Bias the Writers have.
This is kinda one of the problems I was thinking of. The alliance isn’t being written as “in the wrong” even when they do something that should be considered wrong.
Genn didn’t ambush the horde fleet because he suspected Sylvanas was up to no good. He just wanted to get her, and everything in the way of that. But the story retroactively justifies the backstab because it turned out she was all along, completely ignoring the route he took to get there.
With the game being written like that, even the premise of a faction war is failing before it starts, because the horde player’s supposed to feel motivated as a protagonist to fight against the alliance, just like an alliance player should be motivated as a protagonist to fight the horde.
I think the issue is that Blizz knows who their audience for each side is…or at least they think they do? Because it’s up to you if you line up with this.
They know the Alliance attracts “good guy/girl” types. People who are peaceful unless threatened. Who want to go on classic fantasy adventures about saving villages, slaying dragons, healing forests, etc.
They know the Horde attracts people who want to play “monster” races. They want to be morally ambiguous, sometimes do darker stuff when needed, go on the offensive, and be in “survival mode” in a world that’s against them, but have enough sympathetic qualities to be complex.
The issue is when pitting these two factions against each other in an actual faction war. We all know the Horde is willing to break the rules, because that’s partly why you signed up. But people on the Alliance don’t want to break the rules, or at least don’t care to because we don’t need to, we mainly care about defense or making new allies. Blizzard even reflects this with the Pandaren and Dracthyr who join either faction with their personal philosophies. The ones that join the Horde are more offense oriented, and the ones that join the Alliance are more defense oriented.
So they seem to settle in on making the Horde start stuff most of the time because it’s not far-fetched, it’s just they always make it go too far to spur on the Alliance’s will to fight back. They know they can’t make the Alliance do anything TOO bad, because it’s not why we signed up.
Exactly, The story should have been written as Anduin going after sylvannas for the death of his father. Genn should have been there as well as they both have a stake in his death it should have been a story driven by revenge and showing how humans even the best humans aren’t immune to emotion.
Except what we got was a story about Anduin being a perfect little robot without any emotion sending they big bad wolf after the one person he wanted dead more than anyone else and then being surprised things turned out the way it did.
The Horde doing extremely bad/horrific bad things isn’t what we signed up for either. Thrall’s Horde in WC3-WOTLK is what we signed up for. We did not sign up for Garrosh and Sylvanas.
I’m not saying you did necessarily, but I’m saying Blizz views your faction choice that way. And because they already know the Horde is partly about “breaking the rules”, that them turning the dial may annoy you, but may not make you quit. If they did that with the Alliance, the faction’s numbers would drop even more, because we signed up to be the “goody two shoes” faction.
As many of us probably do, I live in the US. I’m fully aware of all the bull**** we do to ourselves internally, let alone do to others. I log onto this game to be the good guy and save the world on a faction I can be proud of. If we get viallain batted I’m out.
It doesn’t help that we keep getting conflicting reasons for why Teldrassil was a thing in the first place.
One interview claims that the prepatch isn’t what everyone thinks it’s going to be. Another says they’re not doing a good/evil story. Yet another claimed that Teldrassil was done because they didn’t think BFA’s premise was enough to motivate the alliance playerbase without it (but apparently good-aligned + sympathetic horde wasn’t a consideration?).
And then we have a three-way leak co-confirming that it was all Afrasiabi’s idea and none of the other devs liked it, but as their boss he made them all do it.
I can’t fathom how a plot point of genocide was supposed to be seen as anything but morally black, though. That’s not “breaking the rules”; that’s just plain evil.
The Horde still did bad things in those expacs/stories as well, asking for this horde is like asking blizzard to repeat this same story over and over again which is what has happen. The whole horde civil war arc / teaming up with the alliance is exactly what happen in warcraft 3 and every expac since.
You need to be far clearer about what you want for the Horde otherwise we will get another bfa.
Besides the Horde has far more history than just warcraft 3, you can’t simply just ask for that horde and exclude the rest of their story/history.
The human Alliance story is more than what it was in warcraft 3 or 2 or 1 as well yet we don’t get any of that story. instead we get a Kingdom from the first game(not even really that kingdom) which nobody cares about.
I agree. But if faction morality is a spectrum, at least in my opinion, the Alliance is closer to good and the Horde is closer to neutral. Because of this, they know they can slide that baby to evil more often with the Horde than they can with the Alliance. The furthest they can slide that baby with the Alliance is around neutral, like the Genn in Stormheim thing. They knew we wouldn’t like that happening unless they wrote a justification for it, and it works on me. While I recognize it was probably wrong, finding out Sylvanas’ plan makes me accept that it happened. And them writing her to be a pos since Cata definitely helped build it up and make it more palatable for me to participate.
The Horde is a faction that as others have said, was made up of “monster” people who were persecuted and needed each other for survival. The Horde is a desperate faction, like a cornered wolf. And because of that the Horde is willing to be more morally ambiguous.
Again, I’m just making an assumption on how Blizz is treating the factions, I think it could be accurate though.
At least when Varian was in charge that spectrum was far more mallable. With Anduin in charge the Alliance is cranked right up to Chaotic good with no chance of that shifting.
Hell Anduin is the scale for good in warcraft