In context, it had kind of a “Han shot first” vibe. Or that’s how it came across to me, anyway.
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Agreed.
Particularly as we’ve pretty much hit the zenith of escalation with regard to the near constant stream of world (now universe) ending threats to the point that it’s just getting increasingly more ridiculous as Blizzard attempts to one-up themselves.
So maybe a break from “Oh noes, reality must be saved!” and Faction Pride expansions would be a sedition expansion for the Alliance? The Horde can watch nervously from outside as their story tension comes from preparing for another war that never manifests but strains and ultimately solidifies the current council and member nations.
Just throwing bananas at the wall here.
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I always found it funny that by the start of BfA, the factions seemed to get reversed.
What was once originally supposed to be the savage underdogs with hearts of gold and a home to those the world shunned the Horde ended up the most stable factions in WoW.
Orcs: Durotar. While food is apparently always an issue forever despite numerous ways to cope, the orcs have a nation that is thiers. Mag’har are included here because as far as I’m aware they just live with the other orcs.
Darkspear: Echo Isles, same deal though strangely without the food shortages.
Tauren: Mulgore seems to be doing perfectly fine.
Blood Elves: Quel’thalas
Goblins: Bilgewater Harbor
Nightborne: Suramar
Highountain Tauren: …Highmountain.
Zandalari + Volpera: Zandalar.
Where the noble and civilized Alliance ended up if you aren’t human looking (tall or short variety) you will be squatting somewhere.
Humans: Stormwind and Kul Tiras are fine.
Dwarves: All three clans have Ironforge, Aerie Peak and Shadowforge so they are fine.
Gnomes: Still trying to reclaim their irradiated city will squatting in a makeshift base over it.
Night elves: Oh gods.
Draenei: Squatting in a crashed space ship. I don;t know what the Lightforged are doing, they could just be sitting in their functioning space ship, which brings the question why the non-lightbright ones are still squatting in a crashed ship.
Worgen: Squatting in Stormwind after the above Oh gods. Before that they were squatting in a Tree, IN a Tree.
Void Elves: A chunk of floating rock in the void. Which at this point seems like a blessing.
Mechagnome: I -think- they reclaimed Mechagon so honestly if the gnomes just…move there they will at least be set.
And to cap it off, BfA ends with the Horde being led by a council where every member has a voice, while the Alliance looks to pushing more power onto the High King.
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This is why I want to see an updated Stormwind. Blizzard is hell bent on forcing all the Alliance races into Stormwind because Human superiority I guess, so the least they could do is at least update it to give all the races living there their own respective districts or areas they could live in.
Hell Goblins got Bilgewater Harbor as their own little town in the Horde, and Worgen/Gilneans got??? Literally a tree. Really?
Like I said, if Blizzard is forcing us all into Stormwind they could at least give it some racial representation for all the races that live there.
I mean…it used to. The Park was very distinctly night elven, the dwarven district was gnomish and dwarven, for about as much as they could do with Vanilla assets.
Then Cataclysm happened and the park got blown up (for some reason). and despite their graphical advancement they did nothing to make the Dwarven District look more dwarven/gnomish, the new park is a shrine to King Varian and outside of the Tushi Pandaren, nothing else has been done to incorporate the other races of the Alliance into the city.
Blizzard just trying to make Stormwind more Human because of all that Human Potential LOL. I will never understand why they destroyed the Park only to replace it with ANOTHER statue and shrine to Varian, as if he didn’t have a giant one in front of the castle or anything…
The Horde has undergone massive, massive changes over the course of BFA, and if you ignore the main plot line of the expansion, and focus on the other changes happening in the Horde, you can see a fundamental shift in their super power status.
The Horde has gained 3 of the oldest cities on Azeroth during this expansion. Atal’Dazor, capital of the Zandalari. A city that may be the oldest one on Azeroth (not counting titan facilities), and one with a nearly incalculable amount of riches in both the sheer amount of gold at their disposal, and the natural richness of the jungles around them. It is, as evidenced by the Bazaar, an established international trade port with an incredible access to foreign markets from both neutral groups, and the other Troll Tribes. (Even the ones who may dislike them)
Then you have Suramar, a city that may as well be a relic of a by-gone era brought largely undamaged to the present. You have a culture and history of Arcane study that has gone in different directions to Silvermoon, and Dalaran (the other two major centers of Magical study on Azeroth) which gives the Horde a majority on centers of Arcane study. Not only that, but the Nightborne live in a land ripe for expansion with almost the entire Suramar region just waiting to be rebuilt / resettled by the Nightborne not to mention how rich the land is in mana and ley-line confluence. In addition to all of this of magical might, the city is now a perfectly positioned harbor city with a fully self sufficient population (else they’d have all died in the bubble by now).
Next you have Thunder Totem, the ‘youngest’ of these 3 ancient cities. It was founded sometime around the War of the Ancients, and has served as the power base for the Highmountain ever since. Not only is the city well situated but the entire region of Highmountain is well controlled by it’s faction, with a natural richness to the land that should make a resource starved Horde balk at the sheer embarrassment of riches that is the Highmountain region. Rich farmlands, bountiful hunting and fishing grounds, plentiful herbs and rich mineral wealth within the mountain itself. Not only are the Highmountain Tauren sitting on all of this, but the region hosts multiple smaller cities / settlements, all with unique cultural strengths and resources. Then, you have the Drogbar who now sit on the Council (of Highmountain) with Navarrog. Depending on how much he’s been able to rally the other Drogbar after the death of the Underking the Horde may have control of the Drogbar lands under Highmountain, which seem to be miles of caverns and tunnels running under Highmountain, and (at least based on the Dungeon) could well constitute a city or two in addition. Likely as ancient, or perhaps even more so, than Thunder Totem itself.
These three cities each have the power to completely shift the Horde’s power base on their own, but combined have the effect of making Orgrimmar something akin to Washington, D.C. in America. As in, a political center but far from the most prosperous or populated city in the ‘nation’ of the Horde.
The Alliance gained valuable cities as well, of course, in the form of Dark Iron City, and Boralus, however I would argue that both of these cities, as resource rich, well defended, and central hubs that they are do not benefit the Alliance as much, relatively speaking, as the addition of the cities to the Horde.
This is not to say the Alliance did not benefit, I believe they did immensely by these cities joining. It is just that the cities the Alliance did have were already well established power centers and that the addition of new established power centers, rich with resources does not shift the internal balance of power within the Alliance as much as it does the Horde.
Edit: I forgot Mechagon, and the fact that Stormgarde was reclaimed.
Mechagon is a technological metropolis (from the looks of the dungeon at least) and can serve the Alliance in the same way Gnomergon did (and will again once it gets cleansed)
Stormgrade is more of a long-term investment at this point, as it will take a long time for the once ruined city to be back to it’s former glory, but once it is set up it pushes up Alliance control by a good portion of the Eastern Kingdoms, and turns what was once a contested middle ground between Horde and Alliance into a hard border on border division between the two factions with the Thoradin wall. (Assuming of course nothing ever further changes the tenuous balance of power…)
2 Likes
All of these are just more words to what I said. By BfA the Horde has made out like bandits and have ended up the most stable faction with just about all of it’s members having homeland that is theirs and they can live in relative peace should they decide to not be like the orcs and decide to rush Ashenvale for the 8th time.
Meanwhile unless you are a human, dwarf, or gnome, you are likely squatting somewhere on the good nature of your new benefactors. Or you’re the void elves and live in a void hole in the middle of void space.
That’s where it gets funny to me. Most of the Alliance are squatters who pump themselves up on the fact that they used to have a Kingdom, but lost it somehow and vow they will get it back.
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It’s a pendulum effect. Everything changes as the pendulum swings. Mighty nations rise and then fall. The Alliance isn’t any different and the more it grows, so it’s problems start to compound.
And history repeats itself. We’re already starting to see the Alliance starting to repeat the same mistakes of the last.
We see a lot Bob since 8.2 and now that Thrall and Baine are gone, he’s the face of the Horde with Calia (How the mighty has fallen to use this poor excuse of a character and existential being)
And if you check their recent death toll, no blood elf character has been killed in a long time and now have more faces than the orc and tauren cast combined
Indeed, they’re in a Matt Ward phase wanting to make Anduin loved by everyone so they can save up time and effort in just writing for one main character and not focus in the “side characters”
Sure. As we clearly could see since at least MoP, Garrosh, Vol’jin, Sylvanas… dream on. Perhaps you will one day post something real and contribute to a topic instead of your constant trolling.
4 Likes
To repeat myself from a previous thread.
If Blizzard loves you, they will actively kick you in the teeth. They love a good struggle story as evident that they gave the Horde the same one twice. It’s also why they keep using the night elves to constantly kick them in the teeth one way or another in every expansion.
Moral of the story, if you want good things to happen, pray Blizzard doesn’t like you.
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Except if you’re Stormwind humans, literally the only downside they got was getting their main hub being charred for 5 years.
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Oh Blizzard doesn’t care about Stormwind humans. Case in point, Stormwind was on fire for 5 years.
That was until Golden showed up with her lean towards Anduin. If Golden was not around, I’d expect a whole lot of nothing except more night elf kicking.
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The heck are you both even talking about. I would point out the Stormwind humans 1) lost Darkshire 2) had a Horde breakout that nearly caused ito to be burned to the ground by Zul 3) had one of its fleets utterly destroyed by the Zandalari. 4) had the Skyfire end up in ruins.
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Worst of all, they’re all stuck in a stagnant, developmentless void that OCCASIONALLY gets updated when the story requires it (Cata) but usually left completely forgotten about for most of the story. They ONLY development Stormwind humans get is through OTHER races and THEIR stories.
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Darkshire getting wiped out in a rogue questline is about as devastating to Humans as Theramore and that’s a fact and I am being very factitious. Overall, Darkshire burning was a set piece and nothing more.
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Stormwind almost being burned to the ground was nothing more than a set piece that had so little effect on the city itself it’s not even brought up.
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Having Stormwind’s fleet destroyed says a lot more about the Alliance than Stormwind in that the entirety of the Alliance fleet is apparently Stormwind. It’s also about as devastating to humanity as the fact that the entirety of Elwynn Forest being terrorized by a gnoll named Hogger.
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Kinda like all the Horde airships that’s ever been in service, and this one in particular has more to do with Genn than Stormwind.
Two of the above points are practically pointless, the other two speaks of more issues with the Alliance than with Stormwind in general, but Light if that’s about as far as can be reached at how bad Stormwind has got it I’m going to have have to now begrudgedly admit that everyone who hate Stormwind humans as the protective golden boys of the Alliance now have a point.
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…it had a moon well and some Night elf NPCs. That’s basically it. About as cultural as a panda express.
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Context is important.
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To be fair that is better than what Night Elves have no in Stormwind… which is living on the streets. I really liked the Park back before Cata, it was just unique and felt like a nice place for Night Elves while they are in Stormwind since it had it’s own trainers and shops too.
That is what I want for all the races currently stuck squatting in Stormwind.
1 Like