The Horde should be lead by Ogres. The Horde “leadership” council should be desolved, the administration of the Horde given to a senate comprised of members who are first and foremost loyal to their new Ogrelords. The ruler of the Horde must be an Ogre Emperor, who will lead the Horde with a firm (but fair) hand. A highly militarized autocracy that effectively integrates the foreign cultures it conqueres. The Ogre Horde will be a nationalist, imperialist, totalitarian, homogenous culture that obliterates the identity of every group it conquerors. Long-term stability at all costs. The individual has no value beyond his utility to the state, whether as an instrument of war, or production.
As soon as High King was simply inherited by Anduin for absolutely no reason whatsoever it lost any pretense of just being a commander.
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Orcs being horribly mishandled in the story is pretty consistent-storytelling at this point. 
Albeit it looked like they were trying to shoehorn the entire Horde into that direction somewhat too …
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Blizzard devs need to remember that it’s OK to have bad leaders. Horrible people in positions of power. Just make them interesting.
Gallywix needing to dip out and burn the documents was actually great. Another example of BfA being surprisingly good. You don’t always have to make an evil leader the raid boss. Unless the game is legend of Zelda, you don’t need to kill Ganon.
We also need to stop developing actual hate for wicked leaders. Especially if Blizzard ever grows a spine again and writes morally grey or even dark stories. Blizzard could be forgiven for thinking that Sylvanas in BfA was bad, but really, it was us. We sucked. Just like the Star Wars prequels were actually good. We don’t need to make Jar Jar Binks contemplate the water safety of toasters.
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We bow to no aspect.
I don’t really think that is a good idea. To have an evil aligned leader there is a tightrope that has to be walked. And one that is really hard to do in an MMO.
Unless you are wanting a RL-esque every leader is bad and out for themselves (something I doubt many people want) basically you have two choices:
- Said evil leader is not generally known to be evil.
- Said evil leader is just powerful enough that it would be hard to deal with them but also weak enough to not be seen as a threat.
Anything else and it just ends up being plot armor keeping them around. And that is not a good story for anyone.
For the first one, the problem is that over time the idea that nobody finds out about them becomes less and less believable. At a certain point it is just unbelievable that nobody knows. Which means you are just setting up for said evil leader having to be removed. They cannot exist in perpetuity.
For the second one they would basically have to setup that the evil leader’s faction is weaker than every other faction. They cannot be a threat to anyone. Because anytime they are strong they create a plot hole of 'why are X, Y, & Z organizations not responding to this obvious threat. IF, and that is a BIG IF, they manage to portray the group as weak enough to justify nobody going after them you just upset fans of that group. Fans of the group would want them to be strong, but being lead by an evil leader means they can’t be. And everyone else would be frustrated by nobody dealing with the obvious evil. A lose, lose situation. And that is before we even talk about the idea of everyone in the group being willing to follow a known evil leader.
By having an evil leader you are stuck with results that upset people.
- That leader having to be removed.
- That group’s fans being upset at it being weak
- Giant plot holes because obvious evil is not being addressed.
- Etc.
Blizzard was writing her to be evil. That was the intent. And BfA was hardly the start of it.
We will have to just agree to disagree on this. 
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You don’t have to like them. But the fact remains that when they came out, cynical older people hated them so much and sent the actor who played Jar Jar Binks into severe depression, accusing him of ruining their childhood. They made Hayden Christiansen feel completely unloved and he thought he’d never do anything with the franchise again. Now, both of these actors are beloved by fans. Prequel Obiwan is the Obiwan. The prequel memes are some of the most popular Star wars references in all of pop culture. One of the most moving moments in one of the greatest shows of the Disney era is when they gave the actor behind Jar Jar a role as a heroic Jedi saving Grogu from Order 66.
Objectively, nerd-dom is very hard to please and this is not the fault of creatives. If they made no new installments of beloved franchises, we’d beg for more. When they do, we will complain that they should have left it alone (often).
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They don’t need to solve evil leader.
Sylvanas was evil for like 15 years. She was a necessary evil and the horde begrudgingly accepted her existence because of that necessity. In the old days the Forsaken would have been criticized by the moral majority of the horde and been like “Yes, yes, so sorry. Please bring me 10 deathshrooms, and 5 pristine night elf hearts so we can develop a more effective blight to execute the Dark Lady’s plan for all of Azeroth…”
You know in spy thrillers when there’s a CIA guy in a warzone and the special forces guys realize he’s moving contraband and massive amounts of blood money, and killing people and commiting war crimes, and we all have to experience this existential crisis with the characters where we realize that Bad People do Bad things, and we need bad things done and we don’t want any more bad people to fight so we need the bad person and we need them on our side? That should have been Sylvanas. Give us a cutscene cinematic where there is this detente between Sylvanas and whoever replaces her as Warchief. Where they have her dead to rights and they can totally kill her. She explains why they can’t, and why they won’t. And they don’t.
And it feels so dirty.
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While I believe the prequals were bad, it is NEVER acceptable attack an actor for a bad movie. Even more egregious was the degree people attacked Ahmed Best. He did what he was asked to do, and he did it well.
People are quick to blame and attack actors for bad movies, because they are the faces you see. But the actors are VERY rarely the cause of a bad movie.
The poor choices made in the prequals were ALL squarely on the writing choices. Jar Jar was not a bad character because of the acting, he was a bad character because of George Lucas choices. And the bad choices they made, including all the most cringe moments, in Anakin’s story were entirely on George Lucas. Hayden Christiansen did what he was asked, and he did it well.
This is true. But that doesn’t mean everyone who dislikes something is just being ‘hard to please.’
There are poor story choices that were made in the prequals that, imo, made them bad. Not saying there were not some good moments and good choices, just that there were enough significant writing mistakes that it lead to the movies being bad. I think most of them stemmed from prioritizing spectacle, nostalgia bait, and shock over substance. But we would be going VERY much off topic to dive into them all.
And there were a LOT of plot holes and issues surrounding her for much of it. She was an example of it being done wrong.
Sylvanas and the Forsaken is the perfect example of what I was talking about. Starting in Cata it was very apparent that She was doing bad things. The Forsaken were very much being the scourge 2.0. They were a massive threat. They did more damage during Cata than the Scourge invasion at the start of Wrath, the one that sent the entire world charging to Northrend to stop the Scourge before it was to late. They were openly killing and raising ‘minions’ to fight for them and grow their power. They were openly using blight on civilians.
That should have motivated the Alliance to consider them enemy #1. They should have motivated the Argents (who the Forsaken were on the doorstep of their home) to react. That should have motivated the Blood Elves who were trying to heal their blighted lands to try and stop them. And both the players and Blizzard knew it at the time. They had to fall back on ‘The Argents are watching them’ or ‘X group doesn’t like it.’ Blizzard even wrote in Garrosh of all people commenting on how they were just like the Scourge. It was VERY, VERY blatant that the only reason everyone was not actively trying to stop them was that they were a player faction. It was only plot armor that kept it from happening.
You are describing what would be one of the worst possible ways of doing it. For that to work Sylvanas would have had to have to have enough leverage and power to hold the entire world hostage. Remember the factions work together to stop massive threats. Look at the Lich King. Even during Cata where Garrosh was actively trying to wipe out the Alliance in its entirety groups from both factions worked together to help Thrall. Sylvanas can’t have a gun to everyone’s head, at least not for very long. The way the world is structured forces the logical conclusion to a scenario like that as she is dead almost immediately.
The only reason those spy thrillers that let the bad people stick around because we need them is because they are set in a more real world setting. In the real world significantly more leaders are bad than are good. So, it makes sense that even good guys have to work with bad people. WoW is a fantasy where most of the leaders are good. So, you can’t really set up the bad guy is needed scenario the same way.
Personally, I like WoW having the heroic fantasy world where the leaders are mostly good people struggling to make the world better. There other games/books/movies/etc that have better settings for those gritty RL-esque most leaders are bad stories.
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It’s the hypocrisy from the fake fans that I loathe with a passion. Most people hated Hayden Christensen for example, and now suddenly want to pretend they love him or always liked him. Hell, people even attacked the CHILD ACTOR who played young anakin in episode 1
I personally thought he did a great job with what the dialogue he was given.
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I think that is a product of the ‘bandwagon mentality.’ People tend to just jump on whatever bandwagon they think is the most popular at the time. Then try to ‘win’ against everyone not on the bandwagon. Sadly, it happens in every franchise. And, I agree. It is infuriating.
I agree. The acting was honestly really solid basically across the board. They all committed and did well with what they had. I never felt taken out of the story by any of the acting. Numerous story choices and dialogue did take me out. But, to find fault with the acting would require nitpicking.
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What bothers me is the people who bash and or hate others for enjoying Star Wars as it is.
Only character I dislike is Luke. The character I always found to be boring and dull. But I don’t bash people who like the character for whatever reason.
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I agree. People are allowed to like bad stories.
But seriously, everyone has their own taste and nobody should fault them for it. Liking or disliking a thing is the very definition of subjective. You wont get any hate from me for liking the prequals. I think they were bad for a number of reasons. But, if you enjoyed them, good for you. I would also bet there are a few movies/stories I liked you probably didn’t.
But Toche Station…
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And everyone has a different opinion on what constitutes a Bad Story. Often times, a story isn’t nearly as bad as people claim. 
Shame Anakin/Vader hated sand and couldn’t get over it 
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Even without full blown execution this just gives us a more formalized version of the Mists setup where most of the informal council walked out.
This was basically a big issue, once they had her main plot out of the way, Cata onwards just started pushing a version of Sylvanas that was barely recognizable from her Frozen Throne to Wrath incarnation even though the main person responsible at Bliz purported to be a fanboy. In Legion it was ironically really obvious in the Hunter hall with Velonara being closer to Sylvanas’s original characterization than the Sylvanas we had by then.
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Mustache twirling villains are boring and disastrous as factions leaders.
A “morally grey” leader could be interesting. Except Blizzard is incapable of handling this. They really only tried this once and the result was her being retconned back and forth between hero and villain. Nor have they shown any ability to handle the part of the player base wants to see “their side” as “good” and the “other side” as “bad”.
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It’s because both sides need to be seen as heroes. It’s tricky business walking that tightrope, even Arcane went the same route as WoW and halted the conflict with a third party villain for everyone to team up against.
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GW2 has weirdly juggled with both over its lifetime - the main player thing is a joint alliance but also stories have made factions of the Charr (the living season before Cantha), the Sylvari (the first expansion) and the Humans (the living season just after the first expansion) into rotating antagonists
its the problem where you have a story that has to enforce a status quo, like arcane had to throw all there interesting politcal intrigue away cause otherwise the story would withought a piltover or zaun.
I wouldn’t mind if they did more micro arcs over macro ones in regard to the factions. Instead of having them go headlong into total war again, address the inter-race friction that wouldn’t just go away because a peace treaty was signed. Night Elves and Forsaken for example.
And it’s why I hate the faction conflict, it’s always a waste of time that ends the same way every time. BfA trashed two major cities and you wouldn’t know it had even happened given how little impact it had. They only capitulated to NElf complaining with Amirdrassil because they wouldn’t let it go.
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