I think part of the problem, especially on these forums, is when we’re discussing these event there’s no shortage of people who will tie themselves into pretzels to explain how there was nothing wrong with what the alliance characters did, and ackshually, if you squint your eyes and ignore a bunch of stuff you’ll see that it’s really the horde at fault. So it can feel like if the story allows any nuance people will ignore it to keep the current status quo of Alliance good horde bad.
(I may have been arguing with a certain poster about Genn’s actions there last night)
I can only speak for myself, but that lack of history is honestly the only thing that would make a firebrand alliance character come close to working. I’d worry even that won’t, because you’d have to explain why somehow said character wouldn’t be affected by the knowledge that the current horde committed genocide in BFA.
A character already existing is nothing but a negative trait for a horde-hating alliance character in that light, because the key is feeling as if that hatred is unjust.
It’s even more ridiculous if you consider Taurajo with the context of what happened in vanilla wow as well, the nearby Bael Modan dwarf fortress that is used as a staging ground and foothold in the barrens for the Alliance, where the attack on Taurajo is mounted from, is literally built on sacred tauren land that used to be inhabited by the stonespire clan of tauren, the Tauren warned the dwarves that there was something dark buried there and it would be best to not disturb the land, the dwarves then answered by killing off most of them and driving away the rest, with at least one of the survivors living in Taurajo (he did not survive cata). The dwarves also had digsites in Mulgore itself despite the protest of the tauren, and it ended up rousing earth elementals that the tauren later had to clean up.
They have every right to be mad at the Alliance at that point.
Aside from the issue of why miners are fair game but all Alliance non-combatants are off limits. The NPC made it clear he wanted you to kill them out of racially based revenge.
The idea that the Alliance are the good guys is based, IMO, far too much on justifying the killing non-combatants, from Stormspire Tauren, the Bilgewater Goblins , to shop keepers in Dalaran. Now that I play Alliance, the idea that I should happily go along with this leaves a major bad taste in my mouth.
If they want to be good guys, then they shouldn’t kill them at all. They should have Anduin seek to get Azerite another way, even if it means a disadvantage wrt to Horde, rather than just killing Goblin miners. Being good isn’t doing whats easiest for yourself. And if they want morally grey, they shouldn’t justify the killing of non-combatants.
Note, under the rules of war, targeting industries is legitimate, targeting civilians in those industries is not. You can try and destroy the factories in a city, you can’t try and destroy the factor workers. After all, fi you could then every civilian would be a legitimate target. The rules would have non meaning.
If the NPC wanted you to collapse the mine, that would have been legitimate. Of course then you would be required to do so in a way that let as many Goblins escape as possible. But just killing the miners is not OK, even if he hadn’t told you the main goal was just to kill Goblins.
this is warcraft. We have been killing miners since Warcraft 1. 2) I think the main difference is these people are actively helping the military/have a direct military purpose. A non-combatant like say someone living in Darnassus have at best an indirect military benefit.
No one says you have to be happy about it. In fact several NPCs tell you war is a dirty business.
We were told the lesson in Legion. Peace is the noblest of aspirations but to preserve it you have to be willing to fight.
There was no evidence the mines were directly supplying the military anymore than a blacksmith in Darnassus. Even if the NPC hasn’t told you he didn’t really care about that, that he just wanted you to kill Goblins.
And you always have a choice, it just seems like the Alliance feels that any advantage justifies killing non-combatants, like killing Bildgewater Goblins because they wanted “no witnesses”. That isn’t being good. That is being ruthless and justifying it afterward.
It was a Horde mine. Of course it was being used to supply Garrosh’s war machine.
No one particularly justifies that. And honestly, I dont think Alliance high command even knew about it/ordered it. I really dont see Varian of all people ordering to kill off bystander goblins.(my guess is Twilight Hammer probably had something to do with it considering it had infiltrated Stormwind)
I think the issue stems from that this is in effect a World, but it is not inherently portrayed as a world within the narrative itself. A lot of the time it relies upon characters to be the focal points on why something is happening, and the reliance of these characters often are put at odds if not totally negate the current lore based upon the faction and how it would feel, with the intention that with this ‘pivotal’ scene the race themselves have gotten over ‘X’ or accomplished ‘Y’.
Think about the reclamation of Lordaeron City. That is what should be happening. An entire race banding together and collectively doing something.
Instead with the reliance on character-centric narrative it has flummoxed a lot of actually legitimate tension and grievances that the Horde and the Alliance have against one another. Personally, I’m of the belief that the best thing to happen was the War of Thorns because it was a completely horrific tragedy. It solidified – or rather should’ve – how at odds the Horde and the Alliance are. That outside specific characters and scenes, cooperation is rare but ultimately cathartic in its senses.
But as it stands, the characterization of faction leaders have stripped away a lot of autonomy and the ability to feel human that they once had. I’m moreso talking about their flaws. Genn Greymane is a warmonger whose racism is founded upon the belief of an unjust invasion and the death of his son. But overcoming said racism on the crux that “It’s only Sylvanas.” Is, although right, also deprive him of a lot of his flaws which make him not only an interesting character but also makes it feel extremely awkward for his faction whom are deprived of their homelands (still? Lore is weird.) and the inverse of what one should see in World of Warcraft.
Eventually these diametral forces come to a head where the positions that they fill are countermanded by their faction’s interests at heart and, because of their inverse personalities and ambitions, make it understandably hypocritical when they actually choose to go to war and make the actual war contrived and hamfisted.
genn can even say “I hate you why you killed my son, i hate you why your plundered and blighted my people and almost killed all of us, i hate you for invading my second home and burn down the three, our second home”
genn is someone who have every reason to be seen as in his right to hate the horde.
Genn and Tyrande i would say have the strongest case today for “hating the horde” and you don´t should feel bad about this hate…because in the end, its well earned and deserved.
i see a issue here, you have to justify the action of this new character aswell…even the hatred in wc3 was JUST, that the horde get, they did and commit horrible crimes…thats an fact, that was never the point, the question wc3 asked was “can we work together…and solve an issue and overcome our misstrust to work together to end an existing threat for all of us to build a better world…or not”
I worded my post badly but I mention that in the previous sentence.
Yeah, but that’s why I think they’d make for garbage antagonists; if you can’t tell a faction war story without making the player feel like they’re in the wrong for fighting against what’s supposed to be your enemy, then the story sucks. Ergo, anything involving the two of them will suck. Jaina too.
the alliance is allways remembered that the horde are people aswell…even in bfa you had the entire “Anduin” plot that was allways around the horde feelings and that the alliance should be not do this because X…it was laughable. So i get what you mean, but then this counts for both sides.
I don’t know, from the forsaken perspective genn is pretty bad. He’s basically a raging hypocrite who sees the people of lordaeron occupiers of the own kingdom they died for. And then there’s that thing where Genn closed the gates on everyone else and is pikachu surprised that the dead people with free will now want to kill him and his people for that.
Genn closed the gates to the fleeing from the scourge, that’s right, on the other hand, probably that even saved Gilneas, his kingdom. Genn was certainly not always the best man or king, but what happened in Gilneas was absolutely unprovoked, genn did nothing, and what happened in Gilneas was a tragedy, the undead of the horde sinned here against a whole people who had done nothing to them except live there.
Most of the forsaken are former servants of the Scourge, so we don’t know how many of them were actually killed and awakened at the gates of Gilneas…probably not nearly as many as some here would like to make it seem.
Hm. Just an off-the-wall idea, but would the following kind of scenario make things better or worse in your eyes:
What if the NPC, to the Alliance, is a member of a notable family that had been wronged by the Horde, and used that as their justification for fighting…
…But meanwhile the Horde, in their initial introduction to this Alliance firebrand, learns that he isn’t even part of the wronged family he claims to be from, but is just an opportunist who claimed the name and the legacy for personal power?
I’m just trying to think of possible ways for the Alliance half to feel grounded in Alliance player experiences without making the Horde player feel targeted.
Do not look at it in relevant terms; from where your faction is, but look at it from an absolutist standpoint: The World is met with many things that should remind the player that the enemy they face off against is human.
War is always a dog-and-pony show. The best theme in World of Warcraft is that the War between the Horde and Alliance is internecine, but it’s something that is omnipresent because as the Shado-Pan Leader once said: It’s a cycle of hatred.
No side is without their causes. No side is without their racists. No side is without their heroes and their victims.
And WoW works best when both Alliance and Horde are represented equally on this.
I’m sure that’s what WoW would like to be, but I’ve definitely never felt that in the previous two faction wars. Both times, it felt like the horde was just being aggro for its own sake and the alliance had to mournfully defend itself, and that the “moral” of both sides needing to trust each other was, in practice, about how the horde was in the wrong to fight the alliance.