The frustrating thing is that the alliance is drowning in justification, but is not allowed to act on it or the narrative tries to sell it as wrong as alli to despise the horde, but on the other hand there are supposed to be allicharacters that the horde is allowed to despise and that openly.
This will always be my biggest gripe with wow story (at least as a roleplayer) the world of warcraft story feels like a dnd campaign gone wrong that just focuses on a few characters rather than a story that grasps the world it’s set in. It’s so character centric it’s laughable, even in times of war where apparently everything up to farmers are being drafted a character like saurfang is the main focus.
Hell, we even see this currently in Dragonflight, elements and primalists running afoot and shaman representation is minimal at best.
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Just as night Elves in Astraneer were supplying the Night Elf military? But again, you have dropped the most important point. The NPC didn’t care. He wanted racially based revenge on innocents.
Actually, when Varian learns of the purge of Dalaran, he isn’t all “those innocent shop keepers”. He only cares that the Blood Elves will take umbrage at the Alliance they are negotiating membership with is killing and imprissoning its people.
But, again, the broader issue for me is how Blizzard handles it. We don’t know what Varian thought of trying to kill Bilgewater Goblins because they have never told it. The Alliance just doesn’t and then skips away without blame. And these are the people I’m suppose to think are the good guys?
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Most spectacular case of “missing the point” I have seen in a long time.
I would love it if the game ever remembered that side of him.
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Both sides have never had qualms about attacking laborers, particularly if they are working directly for the military. This has been the case since Warcraft RTS beginning. Hell, you can do this right now in Alterac.
Both sides have always balked(or at least always thought twice) when it came to civilians/non-combatants. That is simply the value system in WoW.
No he didn’t care. But his revenge wasn’t racially based. It was factionally based. He wanted us to attack the Horde/those helping the Horde.
You as a player are free to follow your own motivation. You can simply agree/want your own revenge on the Horde or you can take comfort in the fact that you are fighting the Horde in the Barrens and trying to stop them from advancing on the night elves and killing those goblins does still have some merit in that regard.
We are dealing with war, with people’s lives, with the future of the Alliance itself.
I think Varian was still concerned but yes, his priority was still the Alliance first and foremost. Having said that a person can do both and in this case, his goals with his words was to try to convince Jaina what she did was a tactically blunder. I don’t think saying “those were innocent shop keepers” was going to do that(and more important he himself couldn’t tell Jaina who was or wasn’t innocent)
No we don’t know what Varian though of the Bildgewater. Having said that we do know his thought on War. He could have orders us to kill any orc we met in Ogrimmar but he didn’t. In fact:
And a way I like to illustrate this, even in the Orgrimmar encounter (bounces up and down in his seat a little, excited ), I have asked the guys to have one of the main objectives, you know like when you’re going through a dungeon and you have those little side quests? Well, one of the main side quests is Varian being very specific: “Protect the kids. We’re not here to conquer these people; we’re here to bring down a guy that needs bringin’ down.” So imagine artillery, imagine the soldiers – it’s gonna be horrific – but Varian saying, “We’re the good guys. We’re not here to massacre or enact vengeance on these people. They’ve been put upon by a bad man.”
So in a way, I want even the gameplay to indicate that Varian is fighting a very different kind of war than Garrosh, remembering what the Alliance is supposed to be about. This lawful good overdrive. We’re supposed to be superheroes, you know? Have we lost our way a little bit with all this roughin’ up? And I want players to feel that overdrive – we’re in it to make the world a better place. And I think also the Horde will have its own version of that, you know, stopping to consider what’s happened the past couple of years and what’s been lost and fighting its feet again, spiritually. And that’s gonna play out in ways I think people don’t expect yet, which is really exciting to me.
So while I do wish more was added during the raid proper we know what Blizzard wanted the Alliance to look like. Lawful good overdrive.
To answer the question, yes the Alliance may have lost its was abit(which is alot better then the Horde who did a 360 turn to old Horde). Doesn’t mean it can’t course correct/try to be better.
Should just rename the entire franchise to Anduin and Friends tbh
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DON’T GIVE THEM IDEAS!
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The alliance will always portryed being in the right. That is the main problem of this story.
As I keep pointing out, this quest wasn’t about reducing Horde mining output, it was about killing Goblins for revenge, not military advantage.
Also, killing laborers is killing non-combatants.
Finally, there is no evidence that the miners were working any more directly for the military than some blacksmith in Astranaar. The NPC himself didn’t care either way. The mostly likely issue is that they were simply near-by.
He was specific about wanting to kill Goblins. He was specific about wanting them dead because they were Goblins.
But, in the end, the moral problem is that he wants you to kill innocents out of hatred for a group, be it racial, ethnic, or political.
Its true that if you don’t care about the morality of either side, you don’t care. Though presumably one wouldn’t care about which side is the “good side”.
For me, as someone who does care, I have found myself my troubled by the morality of my character playing Alliance than Horde. Both sides do thing. But the Alliance is the side who seems to talk about killing people being born into the wrong group or otherwise justifying killing non-combatants and innocents.
Goes back to the original point. Bliazzard apparently didn’t feel the need to show anyone in the Alliance caring about the ethnic cleansing. At best, the political downside is more important than the deah of innocents. As worst, he saw nothing wrong with it.
[deletions…]
Again, unlike with the Horde, it just gets forgotten as if it doesn’t matter. If it was one thing, it could be an oversight. But the consistent handling of that says they don’t think it matter.
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Aviala, I mostly agree with you. I think this is the best way to handle quests and actions that the player character is involved in.
But for the sake of both realism and parity, I think there have to be a few NPCs on the Alliance side that you’re thoroughly ashamed of—the kind that make you want to say “Get off my side because you’re making my side look bad.” The kind that you won’t mind losing if they happen to get killed during the inevitable next faction war.
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The Horde will feel the consequences of their attack on Bael’dun, and they’ll rue the day they ever crossed us, .
The Bilgewater goblins, was it? They want a fight do they? We’ll show 'em what it means to be a part of the Horde, we will. I’ll fill the Battlescar with their corpses. I’ll redden the dirt with their blood.
He was not killing them because of their race but because of them being part of the Horde. A faction that just destroyed one of their bases and killed who knows how many dwarves.
Seems to me it was both. Again, he even mentions it that there is strategic advantage in the deed. Even if it was the former, I am not exactly oppose to attacking them as payback for what did happen in Bael Modan. The Horde started a war, the Alliance was only finishing it.
Not as far as Warcraft has ever been concerned. Again, they don’t exactly have a geneva convention determining who is or who isn’t a combatant. But both sides have at the very least balked at killing people not directly part of their military industrial complex. On that note:
Worker Harassment - Wowpedia - Your wiki guide to the World of Warcraft (fandom.com)
I haven’t heard enough peasants screaming yet. I don’t think you’re done.
Oh please, did you forget the Horde themselves kill civilians all the time? What is worse is they don’t even seem to care even the least bit. I would also point out the Horde have used racial justfication as well for their actions. Or are you going to ignore the fact Garrosh started his war based on the justficiation that the Horde should dominate?
Delaryn brightened at the name. Anaris Windwood was a genuine war hero many times over, most recently during the Cataclysm. Silverwind Refuge, which had been a major outpost in Ashenvale along with Astranaar, had once lived up to its name—a welcoming place with a comparatively luxurious inn. But the upheaval of the natural order caused by the Cataclysm—and an influx of orcs—had changed everything.
The orcs had slaughtered Sentinels and civilians alike.
He tells you the player:
I can’t fault you for following orders. In fact, I can’t really fault Jaina for acting on her own behalf, for once.
But still… we aren’t playing a game here. We are dealing with war, with people’s lives, with the future of the Alliance itself.
He tell you that they are dealing with people’s live here. Ultimately saying to Jaina that the “Sunreavers were innocent” or something similarly was more likely to tick her off rather then anything else.
As I will keep telling you, the Alliance are not angels and yes does make mistakes, but so far it is a 100 times better then the Horde and everything it has done. Hell, it would take 3-4 genocide attempts before the Alliance ever gets to the moral derivative the Horde has reached.
You say that, but look at what happened to Fandrel after he went mask off and now he’s a martyr to horde bias and signs of night elf hate.
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If done right it wouldn’t be alliance loving. Maybe they should show reason horde dislikes the alliance. This is simple to do just point out alliance bases in horde starting zones durotar and barrens. It’s not like the alliance is that great they do plenty to antagonize the horde but are never called out for it. Genn attack the warchief and war wasn’t declared. Heck it wasn’t even considered a serious incident in the alliance or the horde. It was brought up 1 time when starting the last war.
Issue is blizzard shows the alliance as the perfect good faction and the horde as faction war fodders. Horde and it’s characters are an after thought now. Outside of faction war horde players even quest under alliance centric characters.
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Agreed - My explanation there was in regards to Hawthorne and that section being a story that both factions’ players were part of.
For reprehensible one-faction-facing characters, I think good(bad) ol’ Garithos is a good example - an absolute and uncomplicated villain to the Horde, and real piece of work that the Alliance won’t miss as a person… but can still be annoyed at the summary betrayal and murder of a Grand Marshal (and his men - I’m not sure exactly what happened to them) based on the Alliance only fuzzily knowing what went on in the chaos over there.
And, of course, the House of Nobles is a largely untapped goldmine of characters that the Alliance may not like but has to deal with, and who have the political savvy to run their own anti-Horde campaigns under LG Alliance characters’ noses. It makes me miss having a character like Fandral to be the same for the night elves.
Edit: This is still describing a sort of higher-authority, long-duration faction villain - the kind who are in the story for an expac or several before getting killed in the culmination of a story. I haven’t really covered lower-authority, short-duration villains, like the sort of named NPCs in a ‘go into [enemy faction’s] fort and kill ’ quest or short chain. Those don’t need (nor would they get) a deep story, and in general can be more villainous without implying that their whole faction is like that. I would want these small villains to be somehow linked story-wise to a higher-authority/long-duration villain, though, so that the NPC’s faction’s players have a clue of where these vicious ones come from.
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[waves the same “Create an anti-Horde human noble based off of Tywin Lannister who can be a hate-magnet for Horde players, acts as a foil to Anduin, and prevents the entirety of the Alliance faction from being villain-batted” flag I’ve been waving for years now]
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It is scary to know there are people on this forum who actually agree with Zerde.
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I think the issue at hand is, some people seemingly have no problem about attempting to white wash their side. There’s nothing wrong with the alliance having some actual depth to it.
It being this flawlessly perfect organization is what actually dragging it down and why we get the subpar faction stories we keep getting
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Bael’dun even existing along with Northwatch was already a violation of the former peace treaty Not to mention wiping out the Stonespire tribe and taking Honor’s stand. Jaina has no one to blame but herself for Theramore being destroyed when she did her best to aid the alliance in taking the barrens when the Cataclysm hadn’t even happened yet. Same for Baine’s sorry butt that never even tried to fight back but kept banishing his own people who were sick of it and went to the Orcs for help. With such awful leaders in your own ranks it is no wonder the Horde is in such a dire state.
There was never any formal peace treaty. The closest they ever got was in Cycle of Hatred discussing what do/thinking of setting one but then the Legion got involved and nothing ever materialized.
I mean, back in the Wrath era, Alliance wasn’t exactly grim either, they were portrayed as practically a perfect good faction, albeit suffering from cultist infiltrations. But so was the Horde, just in a different way.
Both factions were portrayed as so heroic that the people who deserted because they didn’t want to fight a nation-sized army of the dead that could possibly damn their immortal souls were considered cowards to be scorned and shunned by both sides.
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