That was the Tl;dr version. Slightly longer version is:
Some Horde players want to be the evil empire that kills the Alliance because red is dead, others want to be honorable barbarians. This Sylvanas vs Saurfang split had already existed amongst the players before they added it in BfA.
That’s kind of the problem though; there is a shortage of Alliance war crimes, at least in-game. We have Genn attacking Sylvannas, which is understandable after Gilneas even if it was still a bad idea. We have dwarves in Mulgore, doing dwarf things. We have Alliance guys in Durotar, doing Alliance guy things. We have Camp Taurajo. And a few other, scattered incidents.
Compare that to Cata-era Ashenvale, Cata-era Stonetalon, MoP-era most things the Horde did, and the entire BfA war.
Alliance crimes against the Horde seem miniscule in comparison. You have a few big events, but hardly on par with blowing up a city and burning down a city and two or three villages atop a tree, blighting population centers left and right including another city’s surrounding lands, and all that.
Blizzard can say the Horde aren’t evil, but this is a case of showing verses telling. What they tell us has nothing compared to what they show us.
The lesson that blizzard should learn is that internal faction conflicts aren’t appealing and only serve to divide the players from a faction. On the Alliance side the only possibility of internal conflict i can see is between the Night Elves and the rest, but they are cornered and in the worst moment of their history and making even more enemies doesn’t seem logical.
There is the opportunity, they just don’t want to do it.
I imagine it’d go about as well as it currently is going in the Horde, anyways.
Which is to say, it isn’t. It’s a dumpster fire and no-one likes it.
Duuuuh? The Alliance is the boring homogeneous faction and the Horde is the active homogeneous faction. I complain about this a lot!
Im sorry but this is the Sylvanas way, anything to achieve victory, even if it means to bomb a town with farmers and merchants because they might supply the alliance forces. I cannot expect a Horde lead by Sylvanas to be anything but brutal and cold, and a lot of people don’t seems to like that.
There SHOULD be tons of conflict between the Lightforged and Velves. The Lightforged view all shadow as evil.
For that matter, Velves should have lots of internal conflict and weaknesses with themselves regarding the Void. (And they might get some).
Also, Dwarves are not opposed to using Warlocks, particularly Dark Irons. That should not play well with most of the rest of the Alliance. Kul Titans might fall into that somewhat too with their shamans, shadow Priests, and Druids. (There should be lots of conflict between them and Nelves imo)
The idea of conflict between Lightfored and Velves at a first look seems logical and fair, but you have to take a deeper look on the things. First is a basic notion that when you are fighting real bad guys you don’t wanna to make more enemies, especially when the odds are against you, this was already talked on this thread.
Second, the Void Elves are lead by Alleria, and she was part of the Army of the Light for a thousand years, she had a important lead position on it and she earned even more respect after the long awaited victory against the legion, plus the Lightforged are lead by her husband.
If a conflict can exist just because two groups of people use different kinds of powers like shadow x light, the light worshiping Blood Elves would have conflicts with the rest of the Horde because of the large presence of warlocks among the orcs, trolls and undead.
Also, what does the dwarves have against warlocks?
I mean, it’s not even just a Sylvannas thing. Insert something-something Garrosh here. And back then, Blizzard tried to say that there was a view where Garrosh was justified. And like with Sylvannas, there was! It was just a hollow view, with token mentions of some comparatively minor slight done by the Alliance for the Horde’s over-reaction to “justify”. And Blizzard said Horde totally wasn’t the evil faction then too.
I kind of wonder what Blizzard thinks the evil faction would look like if the things they’ve had us do thus far across three of the past five expacs don’t qualify as the evil faction. But then I’m also a bit scared of what it’d be, seeing as the genocidal, multi-city bombing faction of ruthless aggression with little provocation isn’t, in their eyes, the evil one.
It doesn’t make sense for all tension to go away just because they are at war with the Horde. The entire culture/philosophy of the Lightforged is that the Void is the ultimate enemy. In the same way that the Alliance wouldn’t use plague out of principle, the Lightforged wouldn’t use anything Void related out of principle and would hate anyone else using it.
And in the Three Sisters comic there was tension between Alleria and Turalyon and we know he almost killed Alonsus Faol because he was undead and he was a holy priest. They are prejudiced against anything that’s not the Light. That doesn’t just go away.
I didn’t mean the Dwarves have something against Warlocks, I mean they use Warlocks and there’s no way that sits well with most of the Alliance, particularly, again, the Draenei and Lightforged.
The idea that the Horde is the real enemy over their Magical cosmic whatever opposite is part of the problem. The Horde is mortal and fleeting. Light and the Void are eternal. Being able to put aside their differences for mortal problems is just dumb and cheapens both the Lightforged and the Void Elves. Alleria was also imprisoned for dealing with void stuff.
Warlocks are outcasts in Horde society. It’s why they live in the Cleft of Shadows away from the rest. Not to mention the Blood Elves have plenty of warlocks themselves. It’s a personal choice to be one, not a societal one.
I’m pretty sure the Horde using Warlocks still was a big sticking point with Garrosh. I think he killed all he could find.
Yeah, all the old orc warlock trainers were impaled on hooks in the cleft of shadows during SoO. Kinda sucked to lose them.
Speaking of shadows, I think in the Warfront Turalyon taunts Rokhan about how the Light will triumph over shadow. While warfront battles aren’t really canon, it does show his viewpoint on shadow.
Tensions happening with 2 groups doesn’t mean that they enter in conflict, especially when they are allies at the start. The lightforged crusade against the void would never happen if they are all dead because they created a ludicrous internal conflict against their allies in the midst of a large scale war.
There was no tension between Alleria and Turalyon, it was the void voices going crazy in the presence of a lightforged being.
Turalyon didn’t tried to kill Alonsus, it was Genn, Turalyon actually prevented it from happening.
It’s also problematic when his wife is basically the shadows at this point.
At the same time that Liadrin does a light tantrum. Assuming that viewpoints on use of light and shadow are enough to create conflict, Liadrin would already take a initiative against Rokhan and the shadow hunters, but of couse it would never happen because it makes no sense.
The true war is against the void, that’s true, but don’t expect those lightforged that number so few that they can fit in a spaceship to do all of it by themselves and goes against the Alliance concepts of union against evil bois. If they are part of the Alliance they better fit it, just as the Void Elves.
The War of the Light and Shadow would make a awesome theme for a expansion by the way, i expect all the Light fanatics of the Horde and Alliance to unite and go full Deus Vult against anything that isn’t Holy, while the Shadow devotees go crazy into doing the void lords will.
The problem is they’re ignoring the only enemy that actually matters to them in order to fit in with the Alliance. They’re giving up what makes them unique in order to be generic Alliance members number 7 and 8. Light and Void are apparently just gimmicks because you can ignore them and do whatever you want.
The only unique thing I’ve seen about them is Umbric is kind of a communist. They might as well be High Elves and Gold Draenei.
I agree with almost everything, blizzard should definitely review their visions of evil.
But this is actually a Sylvanas thing, she was always ruthless and cold, the difference is that she didn’t have that much power and didn’t occupy such a important position, it’s about scale. Sylvanas doesn’t follow a moral code or care about honor (whatever type of honor), all that matters is to the enemy to be gone for good.