Why do Horde races want to be in the horde?

Lore Story Forum
81

I think that’s something you’d say in private after pulling someone aside, not out in public in the middle of a mass gathering for her father’s public funeral. But I know realistically that’s just a casualty of WoW’s quest writers trying to pump out the content ASAP before moving onto the next on the list. It still really irked me at the time, though.

I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic. At least, I know I’m not trying to be. Unless you think I was posting to back up Treng, but my initial post about Baine here was more of a lament of how the story has gone because I know he (and the horde in general) isn’t meant to come off that way.

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82

No, I’m not.
I love Thrall.
What sold me on Thrall was his quest to save Magni’s daughter in Vanilla.

I love Leonid Bartholomew, who quit the Forsaken because he didn’t want to be cruel.

Baine is not benevolent. Baine is a door mat for the Alliance, and he is used to make the Horde lesser.

It is okay for the Alliance to kill a crafting village, according to Baine, who banished the defenders of the Barrens from Thunderbluff for defending Horde Sovereign Territory from malicious Alliance invasion that included killing civilians, digging up ancient burial grounds, and I forget what else.

Baine is garbotrash.
It is inarguable fact.

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83

Because it’s a better place for them to be.

The last time the Alliance was in charge of taking care of a Horde race, they put them in internment camps.

The Horde has it’s issues, but it’s still an improvement over that.

“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”

84

There are so many things wrong with what you said, I don’t even want to bother. I just get to know to add Dreadmoore / Treng to the “This dude might as well be Erevien” list.

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85

The orcs tried genociding the human race at that time. Let’s not gloss over that important event

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86

Aye, the condition of the camps were/are inexcusable but the humans not killing the orcs was an extreme act of mercy on the humans’ behalf.

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87

If the king of lordaeron wasn’t such a compassionate person, people like Greymane likely would have gotten their wish about exterminating the orcs.

The camps were horrible, no doubt about it, but the other options were equally horrible.

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88

Horde players LITERALLY forget that fact.

I cannot tell you how they all seem to think Human - Orc history begins with “The Humans put Orcs in camps” and gloss over “Orcs tried to exterminate and colonize Humans and other races not once but twice”.

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89

It’s weird to me how so many horde players willingly ignore large swaths of the horde’s history just to try and paint the alliance as the ultimate bad guys.

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90

Because there is this terminally online section that wants to roleplay a headcanon where they can live out their ‘fighting against the man’ desires.

Since the Alliance has ‘generic knight faction’, they want to supplant all their personal dreads and desires onto them and make them something that they are not.

I cannot tell you how badly people want the Alliance to become totalitarian maniacs just so they can feel like they are the scrappy underdogs fighting against a poorly veiled oppression critique.

Which, funny enough, has kind of been the Alliance since Cata fighting against a military dictatorship! And if you make the Horde races bad at all, well, then you are bad. They are not allowed to be bad!

I just wish they were more honest about it. The faction war is generally a mistake because it’s impossible to make both sides happy, and both sides SHOULD be villainized if they are at war, but the problem is right now there is a large segment of people who simply won’t address their biases and just want the Alliance to be something they are not to satisfy their IRL desires.

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91

Please tell that to Blizzard’s writing team.

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92

I’ll admit, I definitely wouldn’t complain if Turalyon went off the deep end and became a villain (I in fact want him to) (or if the Alliance just got villain batted in general) but I’ll also acknowledge that I’m biased to the Horde and I as of the moment don’t have any actual solid reasoning for Turalyon or the Alliance as a whole going off the deep end.

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93

Atleast you acknowledge it.

I just find it so telling that the people who are most vocal and LOATHE that the Horde got villain batted and how terrible it was somehow… get super excited to the point of hysteria about the Alliance getting it…?

That’s how I know they are bad actors in any argument; you shouldn’t want a fate you loathe and resented on other people!

But of course, they don’t view the Alliance as players with their own enjoyments and desires. They’re [Insert out-group here].

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94

Got to the heart of the issue. But don’t worry, tribal player behaviors will make the cycle continue.

95

That is one thing I did notice for a while now. Whenever alliance players bring up their grievances with the game or lore, it’s the same small group that rush in to every thread and complain about their own side having it the absolute worse and no one blue side should dare complain

It’s a weird phenomenon to witness

96

The Alliance:

Loses major race capitals.
Loses multiple smaller cities.
Experiences numerous genocides.
Does not have any major victories over the Horde that show any tangible results in the game.

The Horde:

Players don’t get to have a head canon where they are the heroes fighting against the literal Sith Empire or Imperium of Man.

Horde players: WE’RE THE VICTIMS HERE YOU GUYS HAVE IT SO NICE.

Yeah pretty sure the Alliance would trade this ‘moral superiority’ for their cities and people back and, more importantly, have it actually shown in game. The Horde lost one and gained it back already lol.

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97

I think a lot of Horde players are resentful that the Alliance has -always- had the moral highground. Warcraft 1 and 2 they were the Good Guys, they were founded as the good guys. In WoW they have continued to be the Good Guys when the Horde has been the major villain in a few expansions at this point.

A lot of them want to see the Alliance have a turn at being the villain as some twisted sense of revenge. “I had to deal with it, now it is your turn” and there are some Alliance players who want this too, because the flip side of that is the Alliance will get to inflict the kind of pain they themselves felt after War of Thorns, after Theramore and Southshore.

And that is where these arguments come from, because everyone wants their cake and eat it too. I will use myself as an example. I believe the Night Elves deserve revenge. I do not think them wanting that makes them a villain, and I think a -significant- martial victory over the Horde that somehow repays for the loss of Teldrassil is owed.

And it is not about making Horde fans feel what I feel over something they had no choice in. It is about my favorite race and their autonomy. Right now, playing a night elf feels empty. You are a weak and broken people, consistently brutalized and murdered by the Horde with complete impunity, and that’s it. That’s not fun to play. That doesn’t make me feel powerful, it’s not the kind of power fantasy that should come with playing a thousand year old, 7 foot tall, muscle mommy that can shoot an English Longbow as if it were a short bow. (Seriously, think about what is must be like fighting Night Elves. A volley of arrows fired from bows that can be much larger than any bow used by humans on Earth, hitting with the force and range of small ballista.)

I think a lot of Horde players don’t want to admit how much they enjoyed War of Thorns. Because it is a horrible piece of storytelling, and the effect it had on the community was so volatile, and it made playing a Night Elf so miserable, that people quit the game in droves.

But how could they not enjoy it? You kicking the ever living crap out of your enemy in their own house. Blitzing through an entire CONTINENT full of DENSE FORESTS GUARDED BY THE WORLDS GREATEST GUERRILLA FIGHTING FORCE in a matter of WEEKS and finishing it off with a completely merciless destruction of a Capital City that was a symbol for Kaldorei rebirth and perseverance, and cradled the blessings of the Dragonflights.

The Horde utterly embarrassed the Kaldorei and ontop of it all, got to destroy something that not only had political significance, but religious and social as well. Of -course- Horde players enjoyed that.

So now we are all in this place of, like I want retaliation without being villainized in the story, because quite frankly I don’t believe there is such thing as a response that wouldn’t be justified from the Kaldorei. But also Horde players want the Alliance to be villainized like they were without having to make the sacrifices the Alliance has had to make by playing the victims for all these years.

It’s not about what you want for other players, it’s about what you want for yourself. I quit retail for many reasons, but one of those reasons was I was tired of feeling like a victim. I was tired of playing a part in a story where I was the emotional motivation but otherwise completely irrelevant. I was tired being told my righteous anger and desire for vengeance was wrong.

It’s not, and no one can convince me otherwise.

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98

What I want is a realistic mix of heroes and villains on both sides. If we’re going to meet in the middle, the Alliance has got to get “dirtied up” a bit. Some people might consider that the villain bat, but I don’t think it goes that far.

And the Horde would trade some cities (not like we have many, but still) to get some moral superiority and a nice cast of powerful characters.

Players of both sides do this—in fact, you’re doing it in this very post by implying that Horde players are just whining unjustifiably. It’s possible for both sides to have different but equally valid complaints.

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99

On the topic of players hyperfocusing on the other faction’s misdeeds while minimizing or outright ignoring their own, I think that’s a mix of people wanting the WC3 Horde that was promised + human nature + factionalism + the view that admitting one of your wrongs invites the conclusion that all of your acts are wrong so therefore every mistake of yours has to be defended/forgotten and every minor mistake of theirs has to be picked at.

Also, I do want the Alliance to contain gray and villainous elements so that the Horde can feel morally upright even when fighting them, but so many suggestions for how to do so turn into a ‘let’s take someone who is a good example of a gray character and make them fully evil, or even pick an outright good person and make them suddenly evil’ which really sours the whole idea. The Alliance needs to keep an environment for its LG-aligned players to feel good about themselves and their faction choice, just as the Horde should be able to nurture its big-G Good players.

I think villainous parts of each faction should be able to be ignored by players who don’t want to assist or even condone them, while not being completely invisible (like the attackers in Brennadam or the “no witnesses” Alliance ships), but with enough in-story reasons for the good-aligned players to not be able to eradicate these parts (such as the villainous groups acting in secret, or having enough exaggerated or falsified justifications for their actions).

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100

I still maintain that all the alliance needs is more people like Greymane and Admiral Rodgers, especially the legion version of the characters. People who are willing to bend or ignore the rules to take the fight to the other side. Gives people who love characters like those two someone to root for, while giving the other side a bad guy to hate

But that’s me

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