Ohhh, yes. Jaina did to Zandalar what Rexxar did to Theramore, except in Theramore's case it was warranted and the Horde worked to ensure the bloodshed did not exceed what was explicitly necessary to ensure the end to the threat against Durotar. But the Alliance still plundered the vaults of Dazar'alor and offered no compensation at all once the war ended
remember that Alliance and Horde have been at peace for 5 years before Dragonflight's start. aside from personal beefs here and there, they no longer want to genocide each other.
Having only played Alliance I legit assumed the Horde had an entirely separate leveling camaign as this is entirely Alliance focused. Bit wild that it doesn't.
It generally had been so up until BfA... Shadowlands killed it, coincidentally when the dearth of Horde leadership began to be felt and everything revolved around a few Alliance characters
right now we've only seen Thrall, and the woman who leads the Mag'har tribe. all these Horde players claiming bias are honestly a bit quick on the trigger, TWW isnt over and it's still only a third of an entire SAGA. anytime that the Horde have been on the focus they were the bad guys in a sense, there needs to be a cooldown, but i also believe that Midnight will be very Horde biased because that's happening in Blood Elf/High Elf turf.
I'll see you in our beloved Thunder Bluff as we sit round the bon fire and listen to our ancestors. Have you heard the tale of the goblin bomb maker who liked to do cooking on the side? It took a dark turn when he ran out of thyme...
read them also, half of them just get things blatantly wrong. Like apparently all four zones of DF include getting two gay lovers back together in their campaigns, which i don't recall happening in a single one of them. there's a side quest in Ohn'aran plains that involves it but i dont recall it in any of the others
@@orangesoda51414 dude it was literally a required quest in the crafting quest chain. you literally had to make their wedding present if you wanted to progress crafting
I think Blizzard’s problem with the Horde is way deeper of simply not having enough and important characters in the campaign (which is absolutely the case). Horde has lost its identity and I don’t think even Blizzard knows exactly what they want for the Horde at the moment Edit: I didn’t get to end the video when I wrote that but Tali literally mentions identity problem in the video lol
@@7PlayingWithFire7 I don't know I felt pretty immersed while playing Horde characters, especially in Vanilla or now in Classic. What do you mean exactly?
The problem is that we have had 10 years of Horde narrative - if it isn't Horde biased now, it's seen as alliance biased - the dwarven family, earthen, Arathi, Khadgar - even Jaina and Alleria are NEUTRAL characters. So - it's Anduin and Thrall - 1:1. After Garrosh, Garrosh, Banshee.
20 year Horde veteran here! First, a few thoughts, then my experience so far. It is disappointing that the Horde roster of heroes has been so underdeveloped, and I feel the loss of Sylvanas still (and likely always will, Dark Lady watch over us), and I hope they address this in the future. About the Alliance heroes we have been fighting alongside...well, Jaina is ok, I absolutely loathe Alleria (and likely always will, the stuck up $#&*%$), and Anduin...well, if you haven't played Horde, you might not know we first met Anduin as a boy in Pandaria, and we have a little quest line with him before finding out he's the prince, and since then, Anduin has never felt like an enemy to me. His treatment of Saurfang especially endeared Anduin to me as a loyal member of the Horde, and by the time TWW started, I felt very invested in his story. I have very much enjoyed his arch, and am a little embarrassed to say I shed a few tears at the end of it. I have greatly enjoyed getting to know Moira and Dagran, the latter of which I had never even heard of before. Even though Thrall showed up much too late and hasn't done jack yet in TWW, I am confident he will play a bigger roll later when the time is right. I have not felt at all like I have been excluded from the story as a Horde player, and I feel like I have been made to care about these Alliance heroes in a sincere way. I just hope that we get more fleshed out Horde heroes soon...because right now, it's kind of a bummer. Thrall is in my top 3 fav video game heroes of all time (maybe #1), and I always love to see him, but he can't keep carrying the entire Horde story on his back.
As another long term horde player I co-sign this. I recently played through the Allie campaign for the first time in remix for the first time and man, was that eye opening about these characters. I get the motivations before people come in and yell at me. However I feel like I have had very little emotional connection to this expac, as a long term be player I’m worried about sm next expac but I’ll still take it over being forced to bomb theramore or burn down the world tree. I do wish however just for once if a faction character is gonna go nuts and do war crimes I wish it was an alliance leader.
There's the problem, isn't there? The Horde leaders that are left have a lot of character and development, Voss, Lor'themar, Thalyssra, Baine and etc. But instead of getting them and their people invested into the action, all we see is Alliance here, there and over yonder too. Even the once-again-neutral Kirin Tor has only pretty human faces on its council, and those that aren't human are either gnomes, or Alliance high elves, save for Aethas who was not reinstated to the Council of Six and had to beg to be readmitted to the Kirin Tor. We should be spending time with our racial leaders, especially if there is to be a buildup to Midnight when Silvermoon and the Sunwell will take front and center. As a fiercely loyal Blood elf player since 2016 (and having accompanied the game's lore since 2007), I will not stand for Alliance swarming MY city to stop some void threat! Least of all Alleria, who forsakes her own realm by allying with the crazed voidsworn elves whose mere existance is a threat to the renewed Sunwell.
Longtime Horde boy here too. I just wish there was a forsaken that really represented us. I feel like Orcs have had more than a fair shake, but the Forsaken don't really have a good representative. Sylvanas has never really worked for me. She's a kind of normal looking elf. Her jaw is attached to her face. Her tongue isn't hanging out. She's just... normal.
As a 20 year Horde veteran, I agree with these points. But I will also say that I'm fine with there not being a Horde focused story, because whenever there is one, one of our leaders dies or is replaced. I'll take zero additional Horde-centric stories if it means we get to keep a leader for more than a couple of patches.
Horde has lost it's identity, mostly because most of them have been turned into forgotten relics or killed off as baddies in raids. I still do not understand why Blizzard cannot simply put some effort into bringing Rexxar back into the Horde's narrative nice and proper. He's literally THE CHAMPION of the Horde. He embodies everything that is the Horde! And he's an absolutely beast. Just play the WC3 Frozen Throne campaign. Dude is a legend.
This bizarre need to always "up the ante" has hallowed out any attempts at a down to earth narrative. I wasn't a horde vs alliance fan because of the pvp, i was a fan of it because of the story beat opportunities it presented, so no, the horde aren't "losing", they both are. Now it's go kill another super duper god and btw nobody knows who you are yet, but do they, maybe they do? Here's 20g, thanks for saving the planet again :)
@@bootnscoot5265 Like stopping Archimonde in WC3 wasn't about getting over differences to stop a super duper god. Like Sargeras being put at the centre of the Horde's invasion of Azeroth wasn't a decision taken in WC2. Like the lore for the orcs' corruption by the demon Kil'jaeden wasn't also a story told in WC2. I'd venture a guess you miss the RTS games, that is all, you don't have a problem with the scale of the storytelling, you just wanna order some peasants around then swarm the enemy base early with militia
@@moscanaveia Ill admit to the hyperbole but, the problem though is those events don't throw away that faction divide, they used them to strengthen the decisions to work together and build the tension while doing so. Now? Not so much, it's about erasing that tension, removing that divide. That isn't to say the story is BAD now per se, just that it's starting to miss more teeth, and so far, and im open to eating crow, take any real risk. Aside from that, i am happy they are improving on the cohesive nature of the story and that is an objectively good step in the right direction.
@@animeyay4 What's the use if the Alliance righteous holy leaders and the new Alliance-lookalike protagonists will lead the next expansion to save Silvermoon then have Tyrande take over?
they are and may still be, but there is an Ally focus due to it's main story characters. people need to chill though as we still got two seasons of TWW to go and that is only 1/3 of the Saga.
Blizzard simply has no idea how to include the Horde in the story without making them a villian. Grom. Kael. Garrosh. Sylvanas. They haven't, don't, and probably will never figure it out.
Kael never was part of the Horde though, same way Illidan was never Alliance. But they were both mistreated and villainized, from justified anti-heroes.
I used to be an almost exclusive alliance player. I gave the game up for awhile and when I came back, I decided to give horde a try. My all time favorite character is Mahargg, my orc shaman. I’ve gone back and dabbled with alliance because I’ve had friends either start as or switch back to alliance. My son prefers alliance because, like you said, the Horde are demonized. And, to be fair, they’ve done some bad stuff. I’ve never been super invested in Sylvanus or the Forsaken, but I love the tribal feeling of the Horde. I love the focus on strength and honor and loyalty. I am tired of alliance winning more often than not in PVP, of them going out of their way to gank me. I’m also tired of Horde spending more of their time killing each other than of defending each other against the alliance. I suspect, though that most of the ‘good’ horde players have switched to alliance. I just want the Horde to be proud and strong again.
@@LowestForm0fwit almost like most people play horde and having one you trust turn out to be a bad is is such a good plot twist. Wel. Once. Not 4 times. xD
Just make Silvermoon neutral. High Elfs being horde was necessary heresy to save horde from have only 20% to 30% the palyerbase. Thay were intended to be Alliance since the begining.
Super not disagreeing with you, but I will also say that we've heard a fair amount about a possible goblin update incoming. We've also had so many Horde-centric expansions over the years: Even the Burning Crusade, as balanced as it was (mostly, though back then BE were huge for the Horde and Alli got some dorky Russian sounding space goats) largely featured a beautiful BE woman and the BE prince with just some random Draenei paladin faded heavily into the background and Illidan who was never Alliance in the same way Alleria wasn't Horde. The best example might have actually been Cataclysm, where every Alliance NPC pushes the players into trusting and working with the Horde and then following Thrall around for the whole expansion as he becomes the World Shaman and simply declares himself 'not Horde' while still being the main Horde guy. The Horde starting zones even got more and better quests during the world revamp and Alliance largely didn't see many changes from their original poor leveling experience, including being unable to enter their Worgen starting area for about a decade while all players could return to the Goblin zone. Admittedly, Alliance got more Dwarves in Twilight Highlands, but the ever neutral Goblin faction was also not really as neutral as it once was and felt like a huge loss of neutral zones for Alli. Pandaria was entirely a campaign usurped by Garrosh story time, \/ as was Draenor until he passed the main story to Thrall and heavily featured a massive cast of Horde identifying Orcs with one new Nazi space goat kid and a couple returning Draenei Paladins and leader tagged in to feel like representation but were never important. Both Pandaria and Draenor stories felt like the Alliance were the annoying kid sibling back then. They even scrapped the Shattrath story entirely, further minimizing Alliance participation. Some would argue Khadgar was huge in the opening sequence, but he's kinda just there to intro himself to become relevant again and make it feel like Alliance got represented because he later disappears to his makeshift tower until he's needed in a raid... and a large number of Alliance quest givers are Horde/Orcs where almost all Horde quest givers are Horde/Orcs. (There was also a massive problem with playing Draenor as an Alliance Warlock, as almost every NPC you encounter openly badmouths locks and it truly feels like you aren't meant to be there, like they plan on assassinating you later that evening all while calling you 'commander' and you are made to feel like you should be ashamed of the demons and shadow magic, it's really bad actually; none of this is really there on the Horde side, even though they mention shadow magic and demons being untrustworthy they are more direct remarks about Gul'dan and his followers/army.) The Battle for Azeroth was almost entirely an unavailable story from the Alliance perspective (they see the before and then get NOTHING until suddenly N'Zoth with little to no context). It was mostly just a lot of cool Sylvannas videos that conflicted the player-base because it entirely contradicted her previous character but was never the less the driving force of the expansion and Horde representing, as was every story progressing raid where Alliance just kinda showed up a couple times. Even Shadowlands just felt like equal representation from an NPC perspective but the theme was just Horde dealing with their shit again with a few dramatic cameos from a rightfully angry NE queen and also Anduin because they needed an excuse to show more of Sylvannas .
@@tenshikaren i dunno, super disagreeing may be the best choice... the horde is the voice of reason/stability in this one... in stark contrast to the alliance. Anduin's the one being angsty, and Aelleria is the one being 'controlled' at times. if anything, they're the older bro, sent along to ensure the brats don't get into too much trouble.
@@davidaward82 I hate it when people reduce Anduins story to 'super angsty' because you are minimizing the trauma, PTSD, and other mental ramifications soldiers and victims deal with. The whole point of this expansion is accepting ones disabilities and learning to live with what you have. Memory loss Earthen, Anduin's trauma, voices in Alleria's head, Faerin's arm, Spoilers: Khadgar's arcane damaged skeletal structure...
The point is, the expansion isn't Horde vs. Alliance to begin with, and where it's STARTING with more Alliance representation, I don't think it's going to stay that way and it's silly to argue that Horde isn't getting enough in the very first patch when we've been told we'll be seeing more goblins in an upcoming patch and a lot of older Horde were featured for similar trauma in the patch before the prelaunch (lots of 'Stay awhile and listens). I wouldn't doubt we will see more of them soon, since the portals are open now.
@@tenshikaren you're starting to sound like a 'karen' ... i did not use the term you claim, nor did i minimise a thing, you are projecting. stop. think. breathe. I literally only said that disagreeing with the OP would have made more sense. also, just to be clear, yes, some of what anduin has is PTSD, but some is also pure 'woe is me' levels of angst. the two are not mutually exclusive. so... TLDR, stop looking for conflict where there is none, especially if you're gonna be so confidently incorrect.
The Horde currently feels aimless, without any purpose. While technically they are fulfilling the reason they exist (Protecting it's 'outcast' member races from external forces that would wish them destroyed), the current method for doing so (and the right one), is keeping their heads down. After the disasters that have been the 'corrupt' Warchiefs, not drawing too much attention to themselves with major activity, and the ones they do get involved with are redemptory ones (Ensuring Gilneans retake their homeland). This, combined with a lack of any particular 'personality' amongst it's leadership, leaves them feeling particularly irrelevant. Thrall's story seems to have been given to Anduin (I wish they would run a story for Thrall to reconcile with the elements so we can have our World Shaman back... he's really boring as a warrior), so he can focus on his family story of his children (Which, let's face it, are as dull and characterless as his wife. His son is the the orcish equivalent of Baine, completely milquetoast and generic, as I like to put it, the mix of green and brown orc producing an orc of purest beige. His daughter at least has some promise, being the youngest.). Gazlowe is a great leader, but very much on the downlow unless you're playing a Goblin. The Silver Fox Lorthemar is again pure awesome but criminally underused. Baine is, as mentioned, utterly generic and without any personality (with the one attempt to give him some resulting in a very awkward series of quests where he's an incredible racist running with the idiot ball). Calia, as you mentioned, just gives off an Alliance vibe (and her and Lillian are the only characters of note on the Forsaken Council). Rokhan is.... alright, but doesn't actually feel like he's the Troll leader (Even in typing this I'm not even sure if it's him and not someone else). In short, definite effort needs to be put in by Blizzard to make the Horde relevent, and they're just not doing so, probably feeling like they've written themselves into a corner. It's heartbreaking for a Horde at Heart like me (I have no problem playing both factions, but Horde are, were and always will be my favourite)
blizz devs are lazy and they will continue to be. I cannot see anything changing in the next 6 years or more. And yeah, when Calia opens her mouth its so easy to her to talk about her friendship with alliance leaders, she doesnt visually fit in the forsaken, all other light undead seems even worse than regular undead (she would fit more light undead models for an alliance allied race) and it seems like treason to get her as an horde leader xD.
i strongly believe that Midnight will bring that Horde relvance, since that is Blood Elf/High Elf turf, so i expect possibly another reunion of the Windrunner Sisters, i expect only Alleria and Valeera Sanguinaar to represent the Alliance while all the other members are Horde, showing them supporting their sworn brethren as any Honorable faction would.
i think the horde has strong characters in their allied race leaders - namely talanji and thalyssra, who have entire storylines worth of character building to lean on. its a shame theyre horrendously underused. I think it would be fascinating to have a storyline based on the various horde leaders dealing with the fallout of the Radiant Song visions causing disruption in the civillizations they run
We definitely need a greater focus on both factions in WoW lately. That used to be a guarantee back in the day and it's kinda fallen off since Shadowlands. Hoping we get more stories with Thrall, Gazlowe, etc in the later patches. Feels weird we got all these ads for Thrall and he has two moments in this expansion.
@@reavestone308 It's Elf Focused. Major difference there! Plus I think having an expansion entirely dedicated to the Alliance or Horde and not both is not good.
You nailed it. While alliance has felt more like a faction a player is a part of, the Horde has honestly felt like a vehicle for plot progression. We lost most of our OG characters which you mentioned, and the replacements might as well have been cardboard cut-outs. As a forsaken, sylvanas was undeniably cool (emphasis on "was", pre-BFA) - while Menethil is... there. The Horde haven't really felt like badasses in the story since Wrath in my opinion, from cataclysm on it's been one crises after another within the horde and we haven't really been made to feel whole or strong especially when compared to the Alliance - whose identity is pretty solid. It's likely why this bias is there in the first place, the foundation for story is solid for the alliance, whereas it's incredibly messy for the horde (which can be a positive thing, could make the Horde's redemption into a strong and united force an interesting tale); I just hope the Horde gets the love it deserves. All that said I'm happy for the alliance players, even as a horde I enjoyed the campaign - just wish the faction I've been with since vanilla had as much love.
Regardless of faction bias, I am glad to see as you mentioned, the highlight of Dwarven lore which hasn't been spotlighted in a long long time. Yes we have Magni and Brann, but their stories are more involved in the overall azeroth story. The stuff we're getting with Dagran, Moira, and Magni is more family focused and focused on Dwarven history and connecting with the Earthen. Also so pumped for future Goblin stuff!! As for the Haronir? I hope theyre cross fac. It would be nice for Horde to get a dwarf and ally to get a troll esque race. That is just my opinion though
Blizzard really wrote themselves into a corner with the Horde. Too many expansions of making major horde characters have Villain heel turns, too many horde leaders killed without doing a good job of promoting their replacements, and their most notable Horde leader, Thrall, comes with so much baggage at this point. Plenty of us love Baine, but ironically his story has largely been tied up with Anduin. I think Calia Menethil was an interesting addition (though, again, ironically, she has an Alliance background -- though that's true of many undead), but they haven't done a good job of promoting her in-game and the best of her backstory is in a book. Lilian Voss is dope as hell, but not the kind of character who will be front and center. From the pieces of the story they've established, there are still ways the Horde could see some increased prominence. As Elune comes more into picture, it gives the Tauren some potential to take center stage (alongside the Night Elves of course), and a Sylvanas redemption arc seems inevitable -- but how much of her story will involve the Horde proper vs being a solo actor, who knows. Honestly, I really hope Blizzard doesn't just start tearing down more Alliance leaders just because they feel like they need to level the narrative ground between them and the Horde, it will just feel cheap. Really, making Baine a major player going through the rest of this trilogy feels like their best option, but Blizzard just doesn't seem to like promoting the Tauren as major players.
The problem (other than yes, Alliance is often treated as default). is the episodic nature of WoW's content release. If an expansion is a book, and you were to read it all in a day, it might seem a fine story of adventure, ups and downs, conclusion, and balanced faction content division. The problem is that we only get to read a new chapter every few months. Resolutions may be years away. And balance within a chapter can be wildly skewed.
Which is weird to me, and has been for a long time. After playing other games that give you the whole story upon an expansion launch, WoW has no real excuse for it. We know that they do it because it keeps people subbed longer, but that doesn't really fly anymore (and shouldn't have back in the day, but the game was different back then). If they took the approach that ESO or even FFXIV do, and just give you the whole story out the gate I think people would feel better about some things. Granted they'd have to change stuff, add trial bosses like FF does, and then come up with a different story situation for raids (since they would have to be disconnected from the main story, which honestly makes it easier on them) which would be a side story. Even raids in ESO are side stories and not really pertaining to the main story. *sigh* idk, but this trickle feed stuff is garbo and i'm not subbed because of it.
Is it just me who doesn't miss Sylvanas? I actually want to see the whole identity of the Forsaken move away from her. I always hated how the lore portrayed her as an infallible deity. I'm talking before BfA. Anyone who hated her and her guts always happened to be " in the wrong " for doing so. Any story surrounding Sylvanas always bent to serve her, when it should have been the other way around. I always stood by the opinion, although unpopular, that Sylvanas' entire arc should have ended in tragedy, just not in the way BfA and Shadowlands handled that.
I do agree, she commited more war crimes than Garrosh. I think she was boring since after WC3. I found her power level sudden increase very bothering, too.
where's Velen is something you can say about A LOT of things in WoW. Part of the problem there is he should be a character with power on the level of Malfurion, if not more. And that's hard to insert into a story without more problems of 'well why doesn't he do more.'
7:19 I like Faerin. That a lot of those stupid, toxic idiots who get offended by her stopped playing wow explains why I have a gut feeling, that the wow community got a little less toxic recently. She's a good written character, who is absolutely driven by hope, light and everything that's just. She is, what Turalyon claims to be. I love lawfully good characters, who are able to inspire others without claiming to be perfect. There's an arc in the cave under the tower, where she tells a struggling Anduin, that everybody makes mistakes and that this is what forms your path. The cool thing about her is, that she isn't perfect but takes her strength from the light in her heart. And about the lesbian hair cut and the thing about her being ugly... what a bullshit statement. She's a fighter, not a model. If anything, her ingame appearance is kind of cute more often than not. As a Horde player for 18 years by now (OMG I'm effing old) I absolutely had and have a blast leveling in TWW. I have six lvl 80 character already and I absolutely love the campaign. It's a great story, espacially Hallow Fall. There's only one thing I don't get. Why is a giant spider the queen of crabs?
@abando_nation Personally i expected her to be far worse but she isnt preachy or annoying so its palatable imo. But blizz did go far with ticking so many diversity boxes on her character; female, black, cripple AND half blind. None on its own is a big deal but to put all of that in a single character AND make her a melee fighter is pushing it. Every opponent she fights can blindside her and has more arms than her. (especially nerubians!) She cant use that shield properly since its attached to her shoulder and any blow to it will knock her of balance. The weapon she has is a lance and is primarily used for thrusting from horseback but she doesn't even have depth perception because she is blind on 1 eye. Basically all she can do is whack someone with it, like a stick. The idiot who designed her could at least have given her a flail or mace like many other Arathi actually do! So the whole package just doesnt make sense when thinking more and 10 sec about it. Had she been a mage, priest, lock or a political figure i had no issues with her. (except from the obvious USA diversity politics infecting the game)
@@origami83 We had Kargath Bladefist who basically killed a god despite having an impractical massive cleaver on his armstump that would be impossible to put to any use in a real fight.
@@shizachan8421 An orc is many times stronger as a human, especially a female. A cleaver with such superhuman strength seems very deadly AND he also has his other hand. Because he still got his arm that cleaver is more versatile than a shield strapped to a shoulder. Also he is not halfblind and fought his entire life as a gladiator. I almost think that the one who designed fearin made these choices on purpose to troll people.
Brann is only the companion for this season. Next season will be a diferent one. And i bet will either be someone like Lilian, or one of the Elves from the horde counterpart to the explorer's league. Don't let this stupid video influence you. Tali is trying to create drama for clicks.
@@josejuanandrade4439 the most interesting thing is that you dont even know what is "the horde counterpart to the explorer's league" or its characters, and thats ok, horde players dont know any really impactful character from its explorers league counterpart too, cause they are really underdeveloped :) And why should anyone trust some specullation from you jose? cmon, at least Tali said what he said based on facts, not on hallucinations about what will happen in the future, there's not even a clue as to what's going to happen, if we're still at the BEGINNING of TWW
@@neptunviro They are relatively recent compareted to the Explorer's League, which exists since Vanilla. They are called The Reliquare, and while i remember it's main guy blood elf, i don't remember his name, true, but similarly in a way, othe then Brann, i dont know any other name from the Explorer's League. And Brann is a character that has been with us ever since vanilla, and is also the brother of Magni and Muradin, so is hard not to know him, even if not related to the EL. Also, the only thing i am speculating is who will be the next npc to go with us, they said is gonna be someone diferent each season, so there's the chance will be the Reliquary, but it could also be that blood elf lady that is always at the place with Brann and Reno and Mr Fliggerton.
@@josejuanandrade4439 Belloc Brightblade was the main guy, he was a play on belloq from indiana jones, whom harrison jones is totally based on but brann and reno jackson also are copies of
We definitely need some better horde story lines Certain races more than others. As a 17 year Forsaken player, I like the undead stuff recently (although it came about because they absolutely destroyed one of our best characters and sent her into literal hell for the foreseeable future). The forsaken have always been the most compelling race to me narratively as their entire struggle has been about reclaiming their identity and independence after a horrific betrayal. That said, I feel like the more recent undead storylines do forget about what they've been through from WC3 to Cata. One moment from last expansion really bothered me and I think it kind of lends to the idea of Blizzard forgetting about a lot of the old stories that resonate with players. In the quest "Stay A While" you talk to a dragon named Veritistrasz about what its like coming home after so long, and he says this: "You can probably remember where you grew up. Can smell your parents cooking, can remember playing with your friends who lived close by. Now imagine that you have forgotten how to get to your childhood home. You can never visit again, can never walk the paths of your childhood. Maybe you think me overly sentimental. You try living for ten thousand years, never being able to visit your home, finally visit it only to find it completely different, and then come back to me." Certain races get extra dialogue here. Blood Elves and Void Elves get this: Blood elf/ Void Elf: "Although... Arthas cut a bloody swath through Silvermoon, I imagine you can relate to what I'm talking about." Forsaken get nothing. At this point, we've seen Lordaeron destroyed TWICE by leaders we once trusted. It just feels like they really make a lot of simple mistakes with the undead storylines. Similarly, there's a moment in TWW right before Voss shows up where Alleria tells us to go meet with her and she says - to my undead character, literally wearing my heritage armor with the new undead tabard - "Unfortunately she is... well, you'll see." As if I’d have a problem working with an undead. Like, gang, I know it’s asking a lot to tailor dialogue to the players characters for all of these quests, but these couple things just felt sloppy.
I called this many years ago, the WoW story comes to an end either with the horde fully absorbed by the alliance or just the alliance being the heroes, because show me a fantasy setting where the humans don't win in the end.
I've never created an ally toon. Been horde from vanilla. Horde not being more front and center sucks. Played undead rogue before the will of the forsaken nurff to hell and back. Miss my queen Sitting in the throne room listening to her sing was the s***
i dont understand. horde what i have seen has been a much more focused part of the game in the majority of the expansions, cata had more horde focus, mop had more horde focus, WOD was basicly just horde focus (alliance felt like we were just there in the background) and BFA was the btich queen trolling and fuking around with the alliance while playing leader with the horde. TBC was rather even, ill give wrath was more alliance then horde but not by much, and legion was rather even in both sides. i played both factions and blizzard definitely felt like it favored the horde then alliance. also f sylvanas i wanted her to be a raid boss we acutely do kill so she just becomes a endless loot corpse but that doesn't even happen. thank god i didn't play shadowlands.
I don't even want the Quillboar Elves in the Horde. With Blood Elves and Nightborne, the Horde already has more than enough Elves. And with rock Dwarves, the Horde got yet another race that thematically is closer to the Alliance than the Horde. The Forsaken, being human corpses, arguably are thematically closer to the Alliance, too. This game needs more content with Orc, Troll and Tauren themes. Even Goblin and Vulpera content is more welcome to me than "Elf content is Horde content, even though it looks, sounds and smells like Alliance".
Remember in WC3 when each chapter of the story is from the POV of the race you're playing? Narratively speaking, we're currently in the HU story arc. I trust the Horde will get their time to shine later, and that to me is fine.
While I think it's okay to have more Alliance bits for a while if Horde bits come later to round things out, (I mean, Pandaria felt like an extremely horde-centric experience, for example) even if "later" is next expansion, this makes it more important, not less, that the Horde arcs are strong and interesting and carry the horde's identity and characters forward. If we're going to have horde characters just acting as support, it'd be better if they were supporting *other horde characters*. As an Alliance player, I think the rest of you deserve better. Cheers.
Its not just a count of the number of alliance vs horde faces that matters. Its the exploration, through in game story, of the beliefs, values and expressions of what made us like our factions in the first place. I chose an Orc/Horde not because I wanted to be green, but because the honor, determination and respect portrayed by the Orcs through Warcraft 3 made me choose to play an Orc first and decide class second. This was later reinforced through player exploration of spiritual Nagrand, through Saurfang's lessons in Northrend, through Voljin fighting for what was right in Pandaria. Through Lor'Themar welcoming the Nightbourne, while Tyrande largely scorned them. Through encountering Vulpera and immediately helping them... so many examples. Yet, since BFA there has been a drastic drop off in these types of stories reflecting Horde values and ways of doing things (like not spending ages crying in a Hallowfall cave whilst being the richest most powerful guy on the planet, Anduin - Overlord Geya'rah would have punched him in the face, she doesn't need the light either!). They have been displaced with a new form of storytelling, which while better flowing and less focused on reading external books than before, feels alien to me. Not like the Horde I know, not like the Warcraft I know. I think Taliesin and Nobbel, who seem to have started/tended towards Alliance, found the story of TWW fantastic because the values and culture presented tilts just that little more in the direction of whatever it was that made them pick Alliance in the first place. But as a Horde Loremaster, the story is feeling more and more distant instead. Its a bit sad, but there's much more to factions than simply warcries and racial abilities. I'm not sure Blizzard is even aware of the nuance they're casually stampeding over.
Your story is better than mine. I chose Undead after my friend deleted my character (it was his account tbf at the time, but he barely played and my character was AQ geared) but in the name of vengeance I spent every waking moment hunting him down in game and killing him. Same name as I had on my human...who was now undead.
I think the problem with Thrall is also that he is in a way too clean by now to fully represent the Horde. In some way you could forget he is an Orc and think of him more like a big green guy with strange teeth. Put a Tauren, Goblin or Troll next to him and Thrall will be the most humanoid looking being there. I understand that the Belfs and Nightborne will have their time in Midnight, so this expansion could have been great for the other races. The Tauren feel like they also only have Baine - it would be great to see other characters rise to some fame, some status. One could expand the Highmountain Tauren with the other two chieftains next to Mayla or the Mag'har. What has Ji Firepaw been doing? I really hope next patch will just be Horde. Goblins overload, Mayla Highmountain running sround, Ji Firepaw and Geya'rah as a team-up. Let a troll be our Delve guide
Ive been a fan of the Horde since WC3, and Horde has been my main faction for the last 20 years of WoW. For a long, long time Blizzard has not known how they should write for the Horde. The Horde for a while has only featured prominently when they were being the villains. I honestly believe the writers simply did not know how to balance the Horde being basically a military dictatorship, with them also being a group that cares about each other and have deep connections to their Ancestors and the earth. It also hurts that Alliance characters tend to not ever be truly dead, meanwhile major Horde characters get killed fairly often. Does anyone else remember when Turylon, Alleria, Khadgar, Muradin, and Magni were all considered dead at the end of WC2, 3 and start of WoW? Well good news! They're all alive and the Alliance can rejoice at getting these major characters back. They get to join the roster of other WC3 characters like Jaina, Tyrande, Malfurion and Illidan. The Horde also had characters from previous titles! Lets see how they fair! Thrall is alive! Gazlowe and Rexxar too! Surely those two will be big players in major storylines? Lets see who else. Cairne? Dead. Sylvanas? Gone. Vol'jin? Dead. Garrosh? Dead. Saurfang? Dead. How about Kael'thas? He was popular, and Illidan came back after TBC as a good guy so surely Kael'thas can too...oh he's going to stay evil and then stay dead? Well, the Alliance did lose Varian. Sure his son immediately became one of the most important characters, and gets entire arcs based off of his grief over Varian's death but I suppose that counts. All of that is to point out that, of course Blizzard isn't telling stories with the Horde. There's almost no significant Horde characters left to tell a story with. Blizzard wants to tell stories with exisiting characters, which makes sense. Nearly all existing characters now are Alliance.
I consider WC3 peak Horde writing. I wonder what happened to the team that wrote that story, because at no point the Horde got even close to reaching that point of absolutely banging writing since.
You really should have given more than 1 point to the alliance because ALL of Hallowfall is for Anduin. The entire ZONE for him and a new human kingdom. When was the last time we killed an Alliance leader? We have killed Garrosh and Rastakhan.
Horde indirectly killed Varian. Even if you disagree, it's still an Alliance loss. Also half of the alliance leaders might as well be dead because they're benched for being too powerful to be utilized (Velen, Malfurion) or being a gnome (I'm sure they're just saving Gelbin for when we get Tinkers /copium)
@@AvohajHorde didnt indirectly kill varian lol, he was both directly (the demon that stabbed him) and indirectly (the dreadlords that tricked the factions into attacking the broken shore) killed by the legion edit: I guess Gul’dan would be the guy that directly killed him lol whoops
@@Avohaj That is not true. If you ever played the Horde side of that scenario you'd know that the Horde had to bear the vast majority of the Legion's forces while the Alliance had to deal with a few stray demons. The Horde was in danger of getting wiped out entirely - they had no choice but to retreat. The only issue was that apparently neither Horde nor Alliance leaders ever thought about having some signals to inform the other army if one had to retreat, something that is part of every military campaign. And the Alliance going full rage mode and crying betrayal without even trying to find out first why the Horde had to retreat was just super dumb storytelling - no even remotely capable leader would ever do that. But what did we get instead? Wolfie boy throwing a tantrum and attacking the Horde in the middle of a Legion invasion. That was so dumb it physically hurt having to play through this nonsense.
@@Avohaj The only alliance loss. And the Horde "staying to protect the Alliance" would mean the Horde being wiped out entirely, instead of just losing Vol'jin. After all, the battle in the Broken Shore was a trap for both the Horde and the Alliance. The Horde gets overrun and is forced to retreat before the Alliance even knows that the trap has been sprung. It almost like Varian chose to be the one to lead the main assault against the Tomb while the Horde was placed in support...
The Horde skipped just on TWW? The only way the Horde has relevance is for a "corrupted warchief" plot and it's more like "the Horde helping Alliance to fix the shit"
@@UltimateGamerCC Elves are going to be prominent in Midnight, but that doesn't mean the Horde will be. As was pointed out in the video, most "elven tribes" are Alliance. The whole Worldsoul Saga is likely to be Alliance-focused.
@@SynaestheticAesthetic dude, you obviously cant effing count! there are 2 Elf races on the Alliance Side and two on the Horde Side. also QUEL'THALAS, that's High Elf aka Belf turf! are you really gonna die on that hill and look stupid in the process? again, Horde stick together, they'll be prominent, as probably will the Naga since they were Elves.
Imagine a story arc that takes place directly after saurfang dies. We, as the champions of the horde, had to immediately leave to deal with sylvanas and the giant hole in the sky. So this story arc could be us playing as Zappy Boy as he goes on a journey to discover what it meant to be a part of Saurfang’s horde. What was that honor that was lost that made him take a stand against sylvanas. The honor he charged willingly and knowingly into his death to fight for. Follow Zappy Boy as he goes off and ponders these thoughts and discusses them with other “average” members of the horde. Have him ask either the leader or members of each race why they joined the horde. Learning that the horde isn’t some giant war machine meant to conquer all of Azeroth. Rather a union meant to defend each race’s and individuals own freedoms to be themselves. At the end of this arc, have all the leaders of each race and champions of the horde come back to orgrimmar after defeating xali’toes to surprisingly find the people of the horde who stayed home all talking about Zappy Boy and his ideas. Remembering how he had met with each of them they all agree they should talk to him. He seems to have touched the very spirit of the horde. They hold a council which the player character just so happens to get invited to. They talk to Zappy Boy and see his has really taken to what saurfang stood for. He embodies all the horde was and should be. They invite him to join the council, not as a representative of the trolls, but to be the speaker for the people. To be the voice of the Horde.
Hopefullyyyyy, she'll work as our diplomatic in to Amani territory in Midnight - not in a "the unwashed masses throwing themselves at her feet" but moreso that the Amani won't humour another Zandalari emissary or Prophet again. They want something from Zul'Aman, Talanji better show up herself.
The answer could be more of a meta one. Susan Wokoma wrote, directed, and produced her own film around the time TWW was being made. She was also in a theatrical production this fall. Maybe she had some time in between to record lines for a new patch.
@@Dreamfillah Now that is a whole can of worms. I bet we'll have to level ZA (as in, destroy it until nothing remains but rubble, not like level in an MMO sense) one third time
Even though my heart is blood elven, I have to say Tauren and Darkspear desperately need some love and attention more than elves. Despite everything, Lor'themar and Thalyssra are two of the most featured Horde racial leaders
Hello!? are the lights on in there?! Silvermoon has always belonged to the Blood Elves, TF are you smoking? also, you evidently have NOT been paying attention to Story... Silvermoon and Suramar's leaders are getting hitched to each other, which is why they arent in TWW. they took the time to see us off to the Dragon Isles, but they've been "busy" if you catch my drift. :P
sry y'all i just meant in a revamping-of-the-city kind of way - def agreed other races need more love, but we need more Horde figures in general!! Aaaa!!!
@@moscanaveia Yeah but their stories weren't about blood elves or nightborne. The only development either race has had is conirming they very much like each other.
@@Altrantis Wdym Lor'themar's and Thalyssra's stories weren't about belves or nightborne? Thalyssra is the main focus character on the entire Suramar arc, beginning to end, and her continued appearances in BfA have been very neatly placed to reflect her history thus far, such as the role she plays in Nazjatar when exploring the deep ruins of Zin Azshari. Same goes for Lorthy, all of his featuring on MoP, for instance, has been intrisically tied to the roles of the elves in Garrosh's war machine and how Lor'themar wanted more for his people. If there are Horde leaders that were not at all mishandled it was these two. And I'm very glad for it, because I love the Highborne in all their flavours except those aligned with the Alliance :P
As a Horde I really dont mind that its fully Alliance, the loading screen still should have been Faerin, Brinthe the speaker, the widow and that dwarf that sacrifices himself. I HATE seeing Thrall there, like ??? he is not in the expansion, why is he in the loading screen. Keep being afk thrall and leave, such a useless character he has become.
@@neptunviro Pre-expac event was battle for the broken shore + demon hunter starting experience, which places DH's on Orgrimmar/Stormwind during the funeral rites for Vol'jin and Varian, and ready to work on the Legion invasion events
@@moscanaveia pre xpac were a bunch of world quests across kalimdor and eastern kingdoms and DH questline, so both dh and all players got ready for the first quest of the xpac when legion was released, which was battle for the broken shore
You can't even compare Gazlowe and Lilian Voss to other 'secondary' characters like Moira and Dagran. Lilian only is present for one questline, and so is Gazlowe (for now). Although I like to see how Thrall kinda turned into Warcraft's Stan Lee, I'm pissed off by how Blizzard seems decided to retire characters of the older era (Magni becoming nearly irrelevant, Khadgar probably having to carry the consequences of his transmutation into energy for the rest of his life + Dalaran being gone, Thrall losing Doomhammer and his powers). I just wish Thrall would've given a single F about trying to get Doomhammer back, to purify it, to repair it... With Ashbringer, those weapons of legends got the lamest end ever. And as for the Harronir... nah. Give them to the Alliance. I'm good. We got the Vulpera, the Nightborne, the Earthen, that's enough with the races that Blizz devs scooped-out of their collective bum. I want OGRES in the Horde!
They are obviously Trelves. Honestly I don't want them on either side. We have enough Elves already, and it'd be 3rd Troll. I'd rather have the Ascended
@@Hauke-ph5ui They look more like Elves than Trolls, I'd say. And yeah, even Forest Trolls would be higher on my list of races I'd like to have in the Horde. But Ogres have the particularities of having a fairly unique silhouette, not having direct 'cousins' already playables, officially being part of the Horde since WC3 (under Rexxar) and being part of the Lore since WC2. Blizzard never even bothered to make female models for them! Meanwhile we'd be getting those weird hybrids? Meh.
@@Inufan2005 I'd rather have neither. We got the Earthen, that's enough out of Khaz Algar for my tastes. We don't need to try to make an allied race out of every race we cross paths with. People were crying for the Shadowlands races as allied races and I'm glad we avoided that. Plus, the Ascended seem ridiculously easy to manipulate for someone like Xal'atath, so why would we want them?
@@goblinounours no easier for her to manipulate than anyone else to be fair. I agree with not having the Covenant races as Allied Races, and thought it would have been dumb because they are literally bound to the realm of death, can't have them trapezing around the lands of the living. The only other race I've wanted as an Allied Race is the Jinyu, but that ship sailed (Pun intended) when they gave us Fat humans, Trolls that love their Bling, and Diaper Gnomes. It would have made sense in BFA, but now? Not so much
6:51 Apparently this is a completely different group of Arathi with a still-active kingdom across the storming seas. Who also have a king name Thordain.... And Anduin doesn't even seem to consider them a separate group even though it's impossible for the fractured kingdom of Arathor to have any of Farein's relatives because they're all gone now and even if the are more Arathi descendants in the Eastern Kingdoms, the elf DNA was diluted out of their genes, making them far too distant genetically to be considered relatives. Anduin Lothar didn't seem to even have any elf DNA left... Granted, aside from Alodi in the comic (but notably not ingame), none of the ancient Arathi we've seen even had pointy ears and Alodi's ears looked full-elven rather than half-elven. Either way, with thousands of years and nautical miles of separation, it's not likely the Arathi across the Storming Seas are substantially genetically related to the Arathi in the Eastern Kingdoms.
They are the descendants of a group of Arathi who left the Eastern Kingdoms art least 1200 years ago. As such, Faerin is likely shares a common ancestor with (and is a direct descendant of) the OG Lothar line
The last four expansions have been written for the Horde with the Alliance attached. I can prove it. Take the Alliance out of the past four expansions and you still have a full, coherent storyline. You cannot remove the Horde or you would have to begin patching sections for it to make sense. I don't know enough about War Within yet, but I would be shocked if a den full of horde devs wrote from the opposite side. It's just not in their mindset. They give Alliance posturing victories, i.e., victories that happen in books or that you don't find out about until Blizzcon, but IN-GAME? Horde get to win against the Alliance and that's the difference. Those Horde devs have to play they game and they want to enjoy it. Throw the Alliance as many canon victories as you want, but in-game? Horde get to have fun. The Alliance have to buy books or listen to X posts from devs to find any kind of victory.
As a horde player I think it's fine that the campaign is focusing on a smaller cast of characters even if it's just one faction. I feel like keeping it focused in this way means that the story can be more tightly written but realistically we still got patches for more horde characters to come in and Midnight might be a more horde focused expansion as well. Ultimately I don't think it matters too much as so long as the story their telling is good I personally don't really care.
I personally agree with you, I'd like to see more horde but in a non destructive way, there's no need for more faction war. Maybe some Nightborne Storylines maybe elfs from horde-aliance getting a truce and coliving in Silvermoon again, maybe even allowing visits to enemy capitals because the world can't be at war all time
I feel like we need more “marketable” Horde characters that have been developed and can stand in the forefront of cast like Thrall. There aren’t a lot of intertwined core stories and dynamics between the races of the Horde right now. There are lots of character with a high likely hood if Blizzard cared enough (with some TLC and development) would be Talanji with Zekhan (Accompanied Bwonsamdi with the rare dialogue), Thalyssra, Lor’themar, Liadrin, Calia, more of Lillian (who could probably use a unique model update), more of Gazlowe (maybe with some more machinery or a mech), Rokhan, Baine (heh). Hell even Ji could be fine if they game him a unique outfit/model and some personality/development, but they are too afraid of Pandaren these days. Rexxar is too much of a lone wolf. Obviously Thalyssra, Liadrin, and Lor’themar will more than likely get a lot of focus in Midnight (I’d hope).
Everyone talking about the Horde “losing their identity” seem to be forgetting that the Horde hasn’t had a consistent identity ever in the series. The Warcraft 1 Horde is completely different from Warcraft 2, which is completely different from Warcraft 3’s and so on. They haven’t had any consistent theming since their inception. “Strength and honor” is just a catchphrase that means nothing when you have the Forsaken eating corpses.
15:14 I would unfortunately argue that Horde doesn't get the half point here since you have to be an Alliance to get the dialog. As a Horde, my personal experience was seeing Turalyon and thinking back to Legion, "Hell yeah! Me and Turalyon slew alot of demons and saved the world. Can't wait to see him acknowledge he knows me as "Champion"" I land near him and he calls me a random Horde Savage... I literally had to read the line again in chat to confirm, like he did not just say that. But he did, with his whole chest.
In defense of Brann Bronzebeard being the only Delve companion at the moment, he has always served as a neutral NPC. Outside the Stormpeaks, almost all of his quests have nothing to do with the alliance as a whole; it's just "Hey, I found this cool temple; let's see what's inside!" I don't think that just because a character is part of a race that's playable by the Hoard/Alliance automatically makes them a representative of that faction because A) That's a very black-and-white thinking that even WoW itself has never supported, and B) If that was the case, the only acceptable neutral NPCs would be non-playable races and Pandren/Drakthyr, and I guess Earthen.
He is a co-founder and the leader of the explorer's league, the ironforge organisation to research dwarven ancestry and old relics. They literally wiped out a tauren tribe in vanilla and have close ties to the stormwind spy organisation SI:7. It's not neutral, the Horde archaeological organisation is the reliquary.
@@istnuk1994 In Wrath, he leads both Hoard and Alliance through Ulduar. He also helps both sides in Uldum during Cata. You can pull up w/e obscure wowpedia article you'd like; the majority of times he shows up in the game he is helping both Hoard and Alliance players.
@@endtimer1There's no obscure reference going on here. Brann is literally the youngest sibling of Muradin and Moira, and the Explorer's League is an Ironforge-based institution, not a neutral one. The cases you mention are punctual exceptions to their role: at every other appearance of the Explorer's Guild, they're working for the Alliance. I'll give you one single reason why the Horde should have their own companion for delves. Before launching Dalaran to Khaz Algar, Brann says they're teaming up with the Reliquary again. Yet, even before Dalaran is destroyed there is absolutely no Reliquary presence on the city, only EG. The only blood elf in the explorer guild content is that one incompetent and stupid apprentice that features on a side quest
@@moscanaveia Ever hear of the Dragonscale Expedition? The EL and Rel joint effort to explore the Dragon Isles? You guys are starting to remind me of that youtuber Taliesin showcased a few getting upset because there are too many female characters in one tent. The organization he is currently helping is a neutral faction, just like the majority of the times we've encountered him in game. I guess the only member they were aloud to make a companion without upsetting half the player base was Sir Finley.
@@endtimer1 I didn't play through Dragonflight, I got burned out for a long time during 9.1.5. And I did hear of the Dragonscale Expedition, Brann mentions in early TWW they're teaming up with the Reliquary AGAIN, but that was the first time they collaborated. Besides, the fact the EG teamed up with the Reliquary does not make either faction neutral, it simply makes them interact despite faction divides, because officially Horde and Alliance are at peace. The point we're making is not that Brann shouldn't be made a companion for delves. The point we're making is that maybe it would be nice for the Horde to be represented as well. Not hard to understand, you're just grasping at straws at this point
I mean... Cata kind of made me tired of Thrall, MoP made me tired of Orgrimmar, WoD made me tired of Orcs, and BFA made me tired of Trolls and Sylvanas. It's about time we got an Alliance-biased expansion.
Every expasion is an alliance-biased expansion. Having horde races or leaders as villais doesn't make the expansion horde focused, it just makes the alliance have fun killing horde while the horde.
We saw the 11.1 raid armor being about the Goblin's Underdark. So I figure we'll have a huge Horde centric patch, Horde delv companion, and honestly I would love to see the Trolls meet that new weird proto-elf race. There's an area of roots with green mist that if you fly into it, you fall asleep and teleport to a lake. Just like the druid order hall in legion.
As an alliance player I really do wonder what all the nagging is about. Sure this expansion is alliance centric atm. But there have been multiple expansions previously that had been more centered on the Horde. MoP and WoD being prime examples where the Alliance mainly had to help the Horde which, for me, made for quite a boring story...
The problem isnt really that the expansion is Alliance focused, its that in the past few expansions Blizzard killed off most of the front and center characters of the horde. We still havce a few cool characters but none of them are really fit to be put in the spotlight. I mean we lost how many warchiefs? 3 now? Its kinda bad that I've been a horde main since I started in cataclysm but I know more about current alliance politics than horde lol. I dont even know who the hell leads the horde, a council or something?
lol that screen at 7:19..jeebus it's sad but true, just like every other outlet for entertainment..'you will like this' you will like this 'YOU will LIKE this' or we'll shame you...
True, it is the precedent modern western games has set. Even if she was a good character, people would no longer give this sort of character the benefit of the doubt. I blame modern western games. In making a big deal about diversity, they have made the problem worse
Complaining about horde "losing" after getting access to Bel'Ameth (Night Elf capital) and basically getting Dwarves as a playable horde race, is diabolical
maybe next story patch we can get some more of Gazlowe, thrall, ect. I want to see rokhan get some development, hell do something with Ji. Haven't seen anything of him since MoP.
BTW, I would like you to apply these same standards for the last four expansions and then tell me why you weren't worried when the Alliance were losing.
Legit stood around the whole leveling experience holding an ice cream cone for my boy Thrall only for him to be a supporting character for a earthen in the max level campaign and spend maybe 20 minutes on screen in total.
I would agree midnight likely is as horde slanted as this one is alliance just due to location. I do think some of the war within stuff probably is going to get more horde focused. I think gazlowe is going to become more important and we likely wind up with more goblin themed stuff as this goes on.
@@charlespickering2726 Based on those datamined goblin raid item icons and a surprising prominence of goblins in Azj-Kahet, yeah, I think the next raid is going to be the goblin one since it's early in the expansion they don't wanna blow their load on the possible ethereal raid just yet
@@YazzPott yeah but will most likeyl focus it's story on horde characters who live in the city, or the windrunner family aka Sylvannas ( again ) But yeah Horde and Alliance has been ruined since we are not in war anymore.
I didn’t think I’d mind an imbalance like this, but when I finally met Gazlowe it was a drink of cool pure water when I hadn’t even known I was dehydrated. I wanted to ditch the main story and help Gaz and the other Horse characters simply because they were some of the first real Horde interactions I’d had since Thrall dipped. The dwarven storyline was great, but it was done by characters I have very little experience with. They’re people I know the history of, but not people I really care about. Sorta like your brother’s roommates sister’s boyfriend. You know the guy, and they seem decent enough but you’re not really friends? Heck the character I’ve interacted with the most in the past was Anduin, but those times were either fighting him or holding him prisoner. I’m hoping the goblin patch will bring some much needed “FOR THE HORDE!” Energy I’ve been missing. I hope we get all of that and more in Midnight - but I worry they’ll be little dips while the rest and is Alliance. It’s not a deal breaker, but… it’s a niggling thing that makes it feel less like an expansion and experience for me.
Azj-Kahet felt like coming up for air. i'd be happy chilling in that zone the entire expac. i have so much for motivation to help the spiders because finally, after 3 zones, they aren't some variation of human. they felt like the Forsaken of old as far as their morals go and it was so fun. i feel like the Forsaken wouldn't even be allowed to be morally dubious ever again, sigh
This is especially annoying when I am a blood elf warlock main and I often am placed in the role of emotional support to heartbroken followers of the Light. Blood elves had to murder their own leader, the Horde had to stage a coup against their warchief twice, and get blamed for every threat the world had seen since Medivh, a human from Stormwind, opened the Dark Portal. But now that the boy-king has had a bad experience of mind control beside the Banshee that became a bitch because she too was mind controlled, and poked some weird afterlife entities for a convoluted plot by a mysterious mastermind of all evil, now we have to perk him up. Grow a pair, or join the Horde, mr. Anduin, getting blamed for everyone's problems will help you forget your own problem because sooner or later the humans will come banging down our door again.
Meanwhile, the Alliance has had stolen (half by the Horde) and/or destroyed (half by the Horde): 1. Lordaeron 2. Stromgarde (half-assed fixed after 15 years) 3. Silvermoon 4. Dalaran 5. Gilneas (half-assed fixed after a decade) 6. Theramore 6.5 Dalaran, Again 7. Suramar 8. Teldrassil (and the entirety of Darkshore) 8.5 Dalaran, Again, Again. And that doesn't even count all the rest of the Night Elven civilizations that have been taken and/or corrupted and/or blown up. If that's the kind of story bias you want, take it.
Yeah I feel like the horde has always been in the focus and fucked up everything, pandaria, WoD, BfA, it's like years and years of horde dominance so now we can have some ally dominance and the horde can be the background faction like the alliance was
1. Lordaeron was "stolen" by the Scourge, and when some Scourge broke free and reclaimed their lands from when they were alive, the Alliance just wanted to murder them too so they went Horde. 2. Stromgarde was abandoned until Sylvanas came along in Cata and colonised it. It was the home to the same breed of bandits that swarmed Alterac, and that kingdom was ravaged by the Alliance itself. 3. Silvermoon was also destroyed by Arthas, like Lordaeron, and instead of helping Silvermoon out, the Alliance tried to genocide the blood elves with Garithos, then later sent no support or aid, whereas the Horde through the Forsaken did send help and resources. 4. Dalaran was destroyed by Archimonde, summoned by Kel'thuzad. Where does the Horde factor in? Then, what meager and symbolic Horde presence in the city was destroyed in Jaina's quest for revenge. 5. Gilneas was fucked over by Genn when he walled it off then invited the crazy wizard to summon the worgen to defend against the Scourge. Then the Cataclysm happened, then Sylvanas invaded. Where was the Alliance that they didn't help Gilneas before Cata? And then, the gilneans were only saved because the Night Elves took pity on them after they realised the worgen were sort of the Kaldorei's fault. 6. Theramore forces tried to destroy Durotar long before Garrosh. Thrall agreed to only kill as many aggressors as was necessary to get to Daelin, and kept to his word of leaving the humans alone after the threat of Kul Tiras was removed. Nevertheless, Theramore kept encroaching on Horde territory via Northwatch Hold, and it was also the base from which the attacks on Camp Taurajo and the occupation efforts on the Southern Barrens were launched. Ergo, it was a legitimate military target. 6.5 I don't know where you get the idea Dalaran was destroyed or stolen after Theramore but before Dalaran's destruction in TWW, but I guess you mean the sabotage operations of the theft of the Divine Bell. Jaina's response was disproportionate and, if anything, it was Jaina who breached Dalaran's neutrality by arresting or murdering all the blood elven members of the Kirin Tor. 7. Suramar was never beholden to the Alliance in the 10000 years it had resisted after the Great Sundering. They were helped by both the Horde and the Alliance in the end. However, after Thalyssra busted her ass to save her city from the Legion and from Elisande, then made the decision to let the Nightwell end, the Alliance's favourite drama queen Tyrande saw fit to pass harsh judgment on the Nightborne, while the Sin'dorei were not only supportive of the Nightborne but also welcomed them into Silvermoon before they ever decided to join the Horde. As was done to the Blood Elves, the Nightborne were pushed on the Horde's lap and the Horde took them in honorably, so who's to blame for that? 8. Teldrassil, Darkshore, given. We Hordies destroyed those. Nevermind that, at every wrong turn that the Horde took, the Alliance stood ready to invade their lands and ravage their territories in response. If Orgrimmar, the Undercity and Muglore are not safe from the Alliance when war is out, why should the Alliance havens be any different? Silvermoon, ironically, got lucky because of its close proximity to the Plaguelands. And then again, only because the Argent Dawn was actually smart enough to look past faction divides in the name of staving off the Scourge advances for all those years, because if it depended on the Alliance goons the Horde would have no peace in their own territories in the Eastern Kingdoms.
6:53 Isn't Danath the heir to the throne of Stromgarde and therefore the Arathi Throne? I thought he was the last Arathi, or are those two not the same?
As a Forsaken fanboy what they did to Sylvanas made me quit WoW at the beginning of Shadowlands. They ruined one of my all time favourite characters in the Lore. As a consequence the forsaken have lost all their identity: I hate Calia Menethil, she (and the nonsensical light undead) has no place in the forsaken and the new council is a joke that doesn't make any sense. It made me loose all sympathy I had for Lilian Voss. I always thought that narratively, at a certain point, the forsaken should've been their own faction, because they always felt that way. I don't really see a way for the forsaken to go back to what they were supposed to be and all the new stuff is a major letdown.
Wtf is even the question here? Metzen himself said TWW is mainly alliance-leaning. He also said that Midnight is the opposite and will be more focused on the Horde. This video exists for nothing else than generating views.
Dont talk about midnight, I can only imagine Silvermoon being given to be a neutral city so alliance can access it too. And I prefer the Harronir being crossfaction so blizzard will do a good customization job with them, cause I felt a great disappointment about how the shal'dorei were done. Not to mention horde dont even have truly access to suramar as an capital city. And gosh, since blizz gave basically all the new cosmetic options to void elves to not look like void elves, now the blood elves customizations are worst. I would prefer to dissolve the factions or the horde at this point and let it be only races and subraces travelling around the world as they wish. Horde has nothing left, honestly, devs never really knew how to write anything but alliance. Its a big mistake they sell this game as a two faction gameplay, in truth there is only one. Horde RP is more dead than ever too.
@@UltimateGamerCC But the fact that the Alliance gets access to a Horde hub and there is no counterpart (maybe Horde getting access to the new Draenei city that will be built?), then that is still a bias to the Alliance.
@@williamp.6294 that's a dumb take, that's like saying Dalaran was biased. and are the Horde being denied access to Dornagal? no, they're not. they're here to help too, but many among the Horde are still on the Dragon Isles and dont even know that Dalaran was taken down. Jaina and Thrall obviously went right to Org and SW respectively, it's not like they left to get everyone from both factions. besides, we're only 1/3 of the way through TWW, there's still PLENTY of time to shift the so-called bias.
Some more good old racism from tyrande, driving the root trolls away from the alliance and into the horde, oughta fix this. Doubt theyll do that one again tho.
ugh, let's not be Racist FFS. that was already shameful behavior that led the Nightfallen to the Horde, that's lazy shit writing. and if you hadnt heard the news from under that rock you're cozy under, Danuser is GONE.
@@UltimateGamerCC Nightborne betrayed night elves in the War of the Ancients, Horde is welcome to them. Also, Tyrande brought up reasonable concerns that they couldn't accept; instead they got swept over by Liadrin's balant lies about how high/blood elves "protected the world while night elves slept". Only weak people accept easy lies over hard truths.
@@istnuk1994 i can see you're on a full copium tank there... "Da Snoozer" totally wrote that ish, lead or not. either way TWW's Story has already been milestones above Dragonflight from the moment he left.
@@catxborsuq1 dunno how TF you think they "Betrayed" the Nelfs in the war, from what i saw they turtled to protect themselves because they didnt see them beating the Legion. also that was like 10,000 years ago! they sure were there to help though, werent they? shut up, Danuser.
funnily enough, as a horde-player by heart i'm not truly mad that we have no true horde character (thrall is a joke at this point, lets be real) at the center stage right now. what bothers me is that all the alliance characters get mainly positive storylines and the horde got the villain arc twice. i really liked the fact that tyralion got to a position of power within the alliance but they missed the opportunity to have him go full zaelot, leading the alliance into a crusade for the light. the horde isnt all bad but everytime blizz wants to do a story of misused leadership they go "aaaah, that's a horde story right there, no doubt!" and on the other hand they want to do morally grey stories.. yeah no, that's as black and white as it gets. horde bad, alliance good. so far so boring.
The problem is how the writers want to let the Horde be grimdark badass and savage and beating the alliance up but t hen have to resolve the plotline to re-establish peace.-
Thanks for this video, this topic has vexxed me for a couple of weeks now, and you've touched on everything I was wondering about! Whilst leveling, I really thought Horde players must be having their own version of the Campaign, because I couldn't believe how much everything was centered around the Alliance. (Even Thrall is wearing Alliance blue now? Wtf?) I agree with you about the reasoning behind the focus on the Bronzebeards, Alleria and Anduin, but couldn't Blizz at least have come up with some Horde counterparts to even things out? That said - and please, I don't mean this as an insult of any kind - do the Horde actually have any noteworthy characters left? I really only know Thrall and Baine, and from what I've seen they're about as useless as Malfurion is to the Alliance. As for this Overlord Geya'rah, who is apparently considered a worthy counterpart to Turalyon... wasn't she in cahoots with Sylvanas until the banshee betrayed the Horde and then she quickly changed her allegiance? Must be nice to be represented by such a turncoat... Come on Blizzard, let's get some interesting characters on the Horde side again, this is getting ridiculous! 😁 (Edited for typos)
We do not have any noteworthy characters left, no. We have our Bloodelf leader guy Lordemar?(can't even remember his name because he shows up 3 times during important story development). We have Cairn, who doesn't leave the longhouse unless Blizzard needs to fill space in a cutscene or have a 2 part questline. We have the Forsaken council, who are devided amongst themselves because only Lilian likes Calia (Everyone else hates her guts, as does every forsaken player i think) and only show up for a 2-3 part questline. We also have Orgrimmar Guard, who's been with us since vanilla (very loyal). Oh, and Thrall ofcourse. The family man and Jaina's stepstool. The rest are kinda there sometimes, like the nightborne lady, the gold troll princess lady and Gazlowe. All half baked shitheads.
Horde main for well over a decade here. This conversation about which side gets more screentime is childish. I'm happy that both sides aren't being forced to fight each other for no good reason again. The WoW universe has the potential to be so much more than two factions constantly hating each other. Which faction currently has more voice lines is largely meaningless in the grand scheme of the story.
This is where I'm at. The story has moved away from the faction conflict, so I'm really happy they choose to focus on the characters that have the most thematic and emotional resonance with whatever plot is going on, regardless of what faction those characters might have the strongest affinity with. I can't see them telling the story of WW without the dwarves, without Anduin, and without Alleria. At least not without majorly rewriting those stories and probably chunks of the world building too.
I agree to the sentiment on the endless faction war. However, I cannot stress enough that Blizzard is incapable of writing the Horde if the context is not "Horde does evil". Just look at the tauren. They barely register anymore, and it's been like that far longer than Garrosh. Blizzard lacks the capability to outgrow the "Horde bad" mentality they started the franchise with to the point when, after we finally purge all specks of evil mofos from our ranks, that simply means our own characters get sidelined and get no development at all
Thrall is literally wearing blue and gold armor…….. like he is dressed as an alliance cheerleader. For the little time we see him. Great expansion so far but it’s def alliance focused, don’t forget though it’s 1 of 3 expansions packaged together, so hopefully horde gets their time and a warchief.
@@Nebuli2 I remember it being black and gold on Shadowlands, when they reworked his old model. I barely remember Thrall in TWW anymore though, didn't notice if it changed hues
the people in the comments who are calling the Horde the evil faction or edgelords genuinely make me wonder if they're aren't 15 (mentally). anyway, i really appreciate the video! as a Hordie, i'd love some more Horde rep among the "main characters" we have to work alongside with or take orders from. unfortunately, i feel like gone are the days of the two factions having different storylines to give an incentive for people to try both factions for the story. that was my favorite part, now everything is homogenized and we're defaulted to the Alliance storyline
@@bearcat1868 I know you're mostly memeing, butT they had to pick one. It's not unreasonable that they go with the Alliance perspective when the dungeon is fighting back an invasion of the Alliance capital of the expansion.
@OakenTome Eh, yes and no. It is reasonable that they had to pick one perspective to establish key timings/routes etc., but there is still a definite disparity in familiarity for Alliance players (who only have to learn the mechanics changes for M+) vs. Horde players having to learn all that plus a new topsy-turvy version of a dungeon where any experience they had with the place from BFA actively works against them. My M+ team definitely isn't enjoying Bizzaro-Land, even understanding why it's happened.
The Horde *is* evil. You need to stop coping. The reason why the Horde doesn't exist in the story anymore is because their faction is inherently built on a self destructive and evil identity, after being beaten back as the bad guys multiple times, they only exist a vestigial remnant to allow people to still pick them on the character select screen. Otherwise, they'd be completely gone, like the scarlets or the scourge. Evil before WC1 when they genocided the Draenei The Horde has been evil since invading in WC1 and WC2 and attempting to genocide everything they saw. Evil in WC3 when they attacked the Night Elves for no reason, then drank demon blood when they were losing. Evil in WoW when they invited the Forsaken to join. Evil in Wrath for not expelling the forsaken after Wrathgate. Evil cata for genociding the gilneans. Evil in cata for bombing druids. Evil for continuing to invade night elven lands unjustifiably. Evil for bombing theramore. Evil for using chemical weapons on southshore. Evil in MOP for everything they did to Pandaria, and for many of them following Garrosh. Evil in WOD by demonstrating that an uncorrupted orc population would still try to genocide the Draenei. In Legion, Evil for letting Sylvanas the war criminal be warchief, after Vol'jin coronated her on recommendation of death loa that Vol'jin sold himself to retake the echo isles. Evil for following Sylvanas in genociding the night elves AGAIN and obviously the burning of Teldrassil. If you lived in a world where the Horde existed, you'd immediately recognize them as an unstable and evil faction. Even "honorable" members of the Horde, like Saurfang, personally helped hunt down humans in WC1. Saurfang's biggest concern when the Horde genocided the Night Elves wasn't that they were genociding the Night Elves, because he was actively organizing the genocide. It was that Sylvanas put the Horde in danger, by being too efficient with it. Which he should have known, because this is the person who plagued Gilneas- it was an entirely foreseeable action that she would destroy Teldrassil.
@@Soraptor The Horde of today is as evil as the Alliance of today. The leaders of today's horde are none of the leaders of the Old Horde. The only reason the orcs were corrupted in the first place was because the draenei brought their fight to a world that wasn't theirs. But I guess you don't remember that part, right? It's convenient to forget it. Then we have genuinely Alliance mistakes. Like with Aegwynn, who thought so highly of herself as to face Sargeras alone, only to become the vessel to the dismantling of the Council of Tirisfal, the only organisation in Azeroth actively working to protect the world from a second demonic invasion, while at the same time allowing for the vessels of the Legion's wrath to enter the world through Medivh and the Old Horde. Then, after the Horde was defeated by the skin of our teeth in the Second War, the Alliance fucks it up again by letting Kel'thuzad, a known practitioner of corrupt magic, to be simply banished instead of killed off. He goes on to get to the Lich King, and create the Cult of the Damned under the Alliance's very nose. Meanwhile, humans were too busy persecuting orcs that had lost all ties to their once demonic masters, and begin rebuilding their society rooted in their old traditions instead of the old. So, when the Cult begins spreading the plague across Lordaeron, even though the Kirin Tor tried to warn Lordaeron, they were too busy hunting orc leftovers to notice until it was too late. Then we have the greatest alliance fuck up, when Arthas goes on his revenge trip and ends up becoming the harbinger of Lordaeron's destruction. So the Alliance has their hands just as filthy as the Horde when it comes to the problems Azeroth faces. Hope that helped enlighten your intellectual thicket
I'm playing a new nightborn priest as my main and I forgot I was in the horde until I played with my guild and I couldn't use any alts because they were all alliance(timewalking)... For the elves?
As a Horde main since the vanilla days I don't really have a problem with WW Alliance bias. I think the real problem is - as you pointed out - Horde identity has been too damaged by the leadership *ahem* problems. Thrall really messed up in that regard. I just hope they use Midnight to fix that rather than keep going on the path of mostly erasing Horde identity and reason to exist as a faction, as uniting the elven tribes sounds like something that makes a lot of sense, but may end up being detrimental to that as well. Personally I've never really understood the Night Elves being part of the alliance, so elves as a separate faction could be an interesting choice. And I always thought they were clearly setting the Forsaken up to be a separate factions - maybe with all the work they've been doing on erasing faction boundaries in gameplay (which I welcome) it would make sense to either do away with, or take the complete opposite direction and finally open up room for more granular factions.
Hello from Germany. I‘m watching one of your videos for the first time and I really like it. The German WoW TH-camrs don‘t dare to talk about mistakes and bad decisions in WoW. It‘s really refreshing to hear a pro address these issues! Best regards
Alleria's growing presence in Blizzard's storytelling is one of the majour indicators that every aspect of Horde representation is being shafted. Silvermoon was supposed to be the main broken linkbetween Horde and Alliance, because they were 90% of the 10% surviving population of Quel'thalas after Arthas, and the Alliance gave them multiple reasons, from Garithos all the way to the Purge of Dalaran and even the Legion intro and events, not to trust their old Allies. Being the most poignant broken link with the Alliance, the blood elves would make perfect foils for all the weight the Alliance is gaining with the Arathi and the Earthen. If there is to be an elven connection between the Arathi and ancient Quel'thalas, the Silvermoon faction should be the one to front that story link, as they are the custodians of the Sunwell and the Thalassian traditions, the High elves and void elves being very small minorities. Lilian Voss was another majour potential foil to Alliance pull with the Forsaken. After all, since their very existance the Forsaken were treated by the Alliance as abominations to be exterminated, and the Scarlet Crusade and the Cult of the Dammed, both manifestations of Alliance failures, also hunted them mercilessly. Voss might have no loyalty for Sylvanas, but she would have loyalty for the Forsaken, especially after the Fourth War. Voss letting Calia sway the undead towards the Alliance would be a betrayal not only of the Horde, but also of the Forsaken's closest ally, Silvermoon. But instead of using those opportunities to strengthen the identity of both factions, Undercity and Silvermoon, Blizzard chose to replace the Blood elves with Alliance faces, and make Voss a simp subservient to the Alliance and its claims to the territories lost to the Scourge. All this at a time when the Forsaken and Quel'thalas finally free themselves from the threat of the Scourge for good.
Another annoying tendency Blizzard has is to underestimate and undermine the traditional New Horde races, except for the orcs. Blizzard killed Vol'jin and left the Darkspear completely leaderless for the length of two entire expansions, while the tauren were made so peaceful as to become meaningless plotwise. Plus, the fact Blizzard chose to let druidism take so large a space in tauren society with WoW's launch, and with the Night elves being Cenarius' favourites (and druids being all about the Cenarion Circle), that almost make the tauren subservient and second to the Kaldorei too. All in all, it seems rather clear that the Hordenhas often been less of a playable faction with genuine story and progression, than just a foil for the Alliance of humans to shine brighter
Wait a minute, both the Cult of the Damned and the Scarlet Crusade, and I would add Garithos are not failures of the (WoW) Alliance, but rather of the Kingdom of Lordaeron, the Forsaken are claiming to be successors of. So I would consider those facts as part of a civil war over the remnants of Lordaeron. The Alliance of Lordaeron was broken after (and partially during) the 2nd war. The Blood elves more recently have been let down by Sylvanas and the Horde. They were clore to rejoinjng the Alliance before the Divine Bell facts.
I think what's happening is that the original vision of the horde was that they are the more brutal side and it allowed players to decide if they wanted more of a "good" character or "bad" character. However this was at a time where the playerbase was large and the game content itself was small so it worked out, especially for PvP parts. However it is getting to a point where the playerbase has less time to spend on more content and the only way to mend that is by having the factions "come together" to complete content. However this made it where they had to unalive a few of the problem children that would stop this vision and now a good chunk of OG horde characters are gone and we are left with the more morally good passive characters that lack any depth and major conflict. Its like they portray the horde to be so far gone that they dont know what to do with them except permanently remove them, instead of being able to come up with a good story about how they were able to compromise on things.
Beginning of BFA Sylvanas, banshee badass queen, was too too too cool to last. And yeah the fact that her character in that time was just paving the way for shadowlands kinda blows
I think we are forgetting the story of WOW is so old. It was written in a different time and the game was written around xenophobia. They wrote the horde to be evil. You could play as the heroes against an invasion or as the bad guys making sure they won. The world has changed and the story of WOW changed too, but the origins of the game built in tradition of the horde being bad. It’s obvious they are having a hard time managing the original style of the horde with the idea they could be the good guys.
Your analysis is spot on. As an Alliance player its funny seeing this issue come full circle. It use to be Alliance story that got the short end of the stick.
I want to show the stark difference at 15:14 between Alliance doing this quest and Horde doing it. Geya'rah called you a lackey. Meanwhile, if you do this on a Horde character, Turalyon calls you a savage. It felt very icky, with a racist bend to it.
The Mag'har intro quest to get them as an allied race showed the creepy religious zealotry of the lightforged. Xe'ra also showed it when she tried to force Illidan to become Lightforged. I hope Blizzard remembers that and we get to bash Turalyon's skull in to close off an expansion on a high note.
Just said it on another comment: I hope Turalyon stages a coup against Anduin and turns the whole might of Stormwind against the Horde and Silvermoon. Better yet, have that play right into Xally's hand, and force Alleria to choose between her hubby and total universal oblivion, like Locus-walker keeps foreshadowing
What I would find very interesting would be if an Alliance character switched sides. Maybe the Alliance left him behind and he's desperate and flees to Orgrimmar. That could lead to a lot of tension, show the darker side of the Alliance and spice things up a lot.
I want Turalyon to stage a coup against Anduin and turn the Lightforged and the whole of Stormwind against the Horde. Let them try to take over Silvermoon, I've been aching to push his face to the ground since he first escaped my grasp on that Stromgarde warfront.
Eh, honestly, this is a storm in a teacup. Seriously, the Horde spent like Vanilla through to Legion at least, probably more, as the much more dynamic and interesting faction (I mean, who had the better warcry? Who had the better memes?), that was proactive, whereas the Alliance was often very passive and reactive, and while the Horde was shown as being expansive and growing (invading territory, growing, building new stuff, etc.) the Alliance was often shown as being on the brink of collapsing several times because it was so decentralized. The Night Elves have been getting absolutely shafted by the Horde since vanilla (remember, Ashenvale was their home turf, but it's been contested in WoW since the beginning, for no particular reason other than that the orcs like lumber). And while the Horde was firmly centered around the Warchief as its overall leader, the Alliance had an awkward fit with no clear overall leader except a kind of implicit understanding that Varian Wrynn was in charge because... uh, humans, I guess? Ironically, because Night Elves, and Dwarves were allowed to be developed so well, I guess that means that the Alliance was better off because you couldn't just kill off one leader and then there weren't that many other interesting characters to play with. Hell, even after Legion, they justified giving the horde ALL the nightborne because of the excuse that Tyrande had been mean to them. They had to invent the "we have high elves at home"-void elves as a kind of runner-up prize for the Alliance, and the patently snore-worthy Lightforged draenei (seriously, how underwhelming is that as an allied race? GIVE US BROKEN, BLIZZ! Ah, but they'll probably end up with the Horde too, lol.) For so many years, the accusation was that Blizz had a Horde bias (despite them naming themselves after Azeroth's equivalent of the fucking Axis! Seriously, I cannot understate how funny that is in retrospect, and how many of the Orcs' upper echelons are DEFINITELY war criminals and ethnic cleansers from Draenor with very little comeuppance), so a little switcharoo I think we can live with.
You're basically whining that the Horde isn't the evil faction anymore. But that's what it was supposed to be since before Warcraft 3, except the writers chose to ignore it completely when writing WoW because this kids' mentality that the Horde cannot have more dimensions than that (fun fact, it's always been like that). Also, the only genocidal leaders werw Sylvanas, who was punished, and Garrosh, who was killed by Thrall himself right before he exiled himself for his blunder with the Horde and Garrosh
@@moscanaveia I don't see where you're getting me pining for them being evil, I think Thrall's New Horde's arc was very satisfying. However, most of the holdover orcish leadership (including Saurfang) in the New Horde were veterans from the Second and First Wars, as well as the Horde's takeover of Draneor - and those campaigns WERE campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide. That's just fact, it's not debatable. I like the orcs plenty, and I love Durotar and the fantasy of them building up their own new country, but this is how Blizzard wrote their story, lol.
@@nakenmil The Old Horde died out in battle. The survivors were rounded up like cattle, and had to fight for their freedom ever since. The orcs' corruption was ultimately Kil'jaeden's work, and the Horde did not create Kil'jaeden (he's much closer to Velen, in fact). Even so, they fought against Mannoroth at great peril (and if you say it was only Grom who did, there's an entire mission where the Horde has to fight the fel-corrupted warsong clan, spill their own blood because it was the right thing to do). You claim it is the orcs' fault that the first attempt at genocide on Draenor happened. But the orcs were literally tricked then corrupted by Kil'jaeden. Which part of demon blood corrupts the ones who drink it is difficult to understand? And even with that, the orcs recovered their agency and revolted against both the Shadow Council and the demon lord who corrupted them. If that wasn't enough, Thrall chose the empty desert as a home for his people, had to scrape for resources. His invasion of Ashenvale was not for conquest, but for resources. Only Garrosh made the Horde presence on Ashenvale a point of conquest. So Saurfang, Eitrigg and Drek'thar have earned their place as legends and heroes. Hell, Eitrigg was even defended by Tirion at the cost of his own station as lord of Hearthglen! And most of the orc leadership that came afterwards is too young to have participated in the Second War anyway, let alone be there in the original formation of the Horde.
I'm very sure that chris metzen said that this patch was gonna focus mostly on alliance stories and the next big patch. Was gonna focus more on Horde, and I think the last patch was gonna be finishing off all the stories
Ooohh don’t worry, We’ll be in the undermine here soooon enough. Goblins can get back to carrying the Horde like they have been since Thrall sent the soul of the horde to Torghast with Garrosh.
Mists of pandaria = all about the horde Warlords of Draenor = only about orcs and the horde Legion = only about illidan Battle for azeroth = majorly about the horde Shadowlands = idk didnt play Dragonflight = dragons and alliance TWW = ally so far One more ally only expac and its equal
The fact you're leaving out is in most of those Horde focused expansions the Horde were focused on because they were the villains. So for true parity we need an expansion where a faction of the Alliance goes rogue and we all need to band together to put them down. It would be a nice change of pace.
@@Thingswithstuff101 yes it would still be alliance focues then, just like having horde villains is a focus on the horde and their culture. I wouldnt mind if turalion goes full light facist
@@Thingswithstuff101 And when an alliance windbag says "boohoo Horde focus" they always get their characters and their stories furthered while the Horde makes yet another act of aggression.
Emotional Supporc.
Emotionthrall support
Thats it I am making an Orc Priest lmao
At least he's a shaman so it makes sense.
Feels super weird as a Zandalari troll to have Jaina and Anduin treat me like I’m their bestie.
Ohhh, yes. Jaina did to Zandalar what Rexxar did to Theramore, except in Theramore's case it was warranted and the Horde worked to ensure the bloodshed did not exceed what was explicitly necessary to ensure the end to the threat against Durotar. But the Alliance still plundered the vaults of Dazar'alor and offered no compensation at all once the war ended
@@moscanaveia I guess they’re really into the “forgive and forget” mindset.
@@josecastro-fq4kb She isn't, but Horde leaders are mostly and afterthought these days
@@moscanaveia Rexxar still exist? Thought he was useless
remember that Alliance and Horde have been at peace for 5 years before Dragonflight's start. aside from personal beefs here and there, they no longer want to genocide each other.
Having only played Alliance I legit assumed the Horde had an entirely separate leveling camaign as this is entirely Alliance focused. Bit wild that it doesn't.
Samesies
It generally had been so up until BfA... Shadowlands killed it, coincidentally when the dearth of Horde leadership began to be felt and everything revolved around a few Alliance characters
Blizz is very biased towards alliance even in stuff like racials. But it's gotten worse these last few expacs.
right now we've only seen Thrall, and the woman who leads the Mag'har tribe. all these Horde players claiming bias are honestly a bit quick on the trigger, TWW isnt over and it's still only a third of an entire SAGA. anytime that the Horde have been on the focus they were the bad guys in a sense, there needs to be a cooldown, but i also believe that Midnight will be very Horde biased because that's happening in Blood Elf/High Elf turf.
@@UltimateGamerCCdon't forget about Monte Gazlow
I find it so appropriate and telling Tali left the Tauren out hahaha. *Cries in Taurahe*
never heard of em
I'll see you in our beloved Thunder Bluff as we sit round the bon fire and listen to our ancestors. Have you heard the tale of the goblin bomb maker who liked to do cooking on the side?
It took a dark turn when he ran out of thyme...
LOL i heard that cry
They did have a questline in DF. Something no other horde race got except maybe orcs with the dragonaw thing.
@@Altrantis Lillian Voss? Not to mention the races that had Heritage armors or a character of their race fulfilling a notable roll.
I actually paused at the reddit comments to read them.
I want my lost minute back.
I did the same thing lol
read them also, half of them just get things blatantly wrong. Like apparently all four zones of DF include getting two gay lovers back together in their campaigns, which i don't recall happening in a single one of them. there's a side quest in Ohn'aran plains that involves it but i dont recall it in any of the others
@@orangesoda51414 dude it was literally a required quest in the crafting quest chain. you literally had to make their wedding present if you wanted to progress crafting
I think Blizzard’s problem with the Horde is way deeper of simply not having enough and important characters in the campaign (which is absolutely the case). Horde has lost its identity and I don’t think even Blizzard knows exactly what they want for the Horde at the moment
Edit: I didn’t get to end the video when I wrote that but Tali literally mentions identity problem in the video lol
Truth is that the horde never had an identity really. Just like the forsaken. They've been all over the place since vanilla.
since they made Alliance and Horde friends and all happy times together there shouldn't be a horde or alliance just call it Azerothians lol
Hard to give the Horde an identity when they keep killing their major characters.
@@7PlayingWithFire7 I don't know I felt pretty immersed while playing Horde characters, especially in Vanilla or now in Classic. What do you mean exactly?
The problem is that we have had 10 years of Horde narrative - if it isn't Horde biased now, it's seen as alliance biased - the dwarven family, earthen, Arathi, Khadgar - even Jaina and Alleria are NEUTRAL characters. So - it's Anduin and Thrall - 1:1. After Garrosh, Garrosh, Banshee.
20 year Horde veteran here! First, a few thoughts, then my experience so far. It is disappointing that the Horde roster of heroes has been so underdeveloped, and I feel the loss of Sylvanas still (and likely always will, Dark Lady watch over us), and I hope they address this in the future. About the Alliance heroes we have been fighting alongside...well, Jaina is ok, I absolutely loathe Alleria (and likely always will, the stuck up $#&*%$), and Anduin...well, if you haven't played Horde, you might not know we first met Anduin as a boy in Pandaria, and we have a little quest line with him before finding out he's the prince, and since then, Anduin has never felt like an enemy to me. His treatment of Saurfang especially endeared Anduin to me as a loyal member of the Horde, and by the time TWW started, I felt very invested in his story. I have very much enjoyed his arch, and am a little embarrassed to say I shed a few tears at the end of it. I have greatly enjoyed getting to know Moira and Dagran, the latter of which I had never even heard of before. Even though Thrall showed up much too late and hasn't done jack yet in TWW, I am confident he will play a bigger roll later when the time is right. I have not felt at all like I have been excluded from the story as a Horde player, and I feel like I have been made to care about these Alliance heroes in a sincere way. I just hope that we get more fleshed out Horde heroes soon...because right now, it's kind of a bummer. Thrall is in my top 3 fav video game heroes of all time (maybe #1), and I always love to see him, but he can't keep carrying the entire Horde story on his back.
As another long term horde player I co-sign this. I recently played through the Allie campaign for the first time in remix for the first time and man, was that eye opening about these characters. I get the motivations before people come in and yell at me. However I feel like I have had very little emotional connection to this expac, as a long term be player I’m worried about sm next expac but I’ll still take it over being forced to bomb theramore or burn down the world tree.
I do wish however just for once if a faction character is gonna go nuts and do war crimes I wish it was an alliance leader.
Banshee Simp
There's the problem, isn't there? The Horde leaders that are left have a lot of character and development, Voss, Lor'themar, Thalyssra, Baine and etc. But instead of getting them and their people invested into the action, all we see is Alliance here, there and over yonder too. Even the once-again-neutral Kirin Tor has only pretty human faces on its council, and those that aren't human are either gnomes, or Alliance high elves, save for Aethas who was not reinstated to the Council of Six and had to beg to be readmitted to the Kirin Tor. We should be spending time with our racial leaders, especially if there is to be a buildup to Midnight when Silvermoon and the Sunwell will take front and center. As a fiercely loyal Blood elf player since 2016 (and having accompanied the game's lore since 2007), I will not stand for Alliance swarming MY city to stop some void threat! Least of all Alleria, who forsakes her own realm by allying with the crazed voidsworn elves whose mere existance is a threat to the renewed Sunwell.
Longtime Horde boy here too. I just wish there was a forsaken that really represented us. I feel like Orcs have had more than a fair shake, but the Forsaken don't really have a good representative. Sylvanas has never really worked for me. She's a kind of normal looking elf. Her jaw is attached to her face. Her tongue isn't hanging out. She's just... normal.
As a 20 year Horde veteran, I agree with these points. But I will also say that I'm fine with there not being a Horde focused story, because whenever there is one, one of our leaders dies or is replaced. I'll take zero additional Horde-centric stories if it means we get to keep a leader for more than a couple of patches.
Horde has lost it's identity, mostly because most of them have been turned into forgotten relics or killed off as baddies in raids.
I still do not understand why Blizzard cannot simply put some effort into bringing Rexxar back into the Horde's narrative nice and proper. He's literally THE CHAMPION of the Horde. He embodies everything that is the Horde! And he's an absolutely beast. Just play the WC3 Frozen Throne campaign. Dude is a legend.
So very much this. He's my favorite lore character, and he's criminally under-represented.
This bizarre need to always "up the ante" has hallowed out any attempts at a down to earth narrative. I wasn't a horde vs alliance fan because of the pvp, i was a fan of it because of the story beat opportunities it presented, so no, the horde aren't "losing", they both are. Now it's go kill another super duper god and btw nobody knows who you are yet, but do they, maybe they do? Here's 20g, thanks for saving the planet again :)
Yep but Hexxar is honestly boring and in fact he isnt of any horde playable race so it makes no sense he is the big champion of the horde.
@@bootnscoot5265 Like stopping Archimonde in WC3 wasn't about getting over differences to stop a super duper god. Like Sargeras being put at the centre of the Horde's invasion of Azeroth wasn't a decision taken in WC2. Like the lore for the orcs' corruption by the demon Kil'jaeden wasn't also a story told in WC2. I'd venture a guess you miss the RTS games, that is all, you don't have a problem with the scale of the storytelling, you just wanna order some peasants around then swarm the enemy base early with militia
@@moscanaveia Ill admit to the hyperbole but, the problem though is those events don't throw away that faction divide, they used them to strengthen the decisions to work together and build the tension while doing so. Now? Not so much, it's about erasing that tension, removing that divide. That isn't to say the story is BAD now per se, just that it's starting to miss more teeth, and so far, and im open to eating crow, take any real risk.
Aside from that, i am happy they are improving on the cohesive nature of the story and that is an objectively good step in the right direction.
The new Bechdel test: Do two horde characters have a scene where they talk to each other about something other than Anduin?
That shouldn't be difficult. Especially not when two of their faction leaders are married to each other.
that would require there being two horde characters in TWW
@@michaelpettersson4919im out of the loop. Which 2 leaders got married?
@@meerak915 lor'themar and thelyssra (blood elf and nightbourne)
@@TroggyPK when...where?
Extra word in the title. Shouldn't ask if the Horde are *losing* in TWW and should ask if the Horde are in TWW.
They are going to redo Silvermoon in the next expansion I'd expect at least to see a ton of Blood Elf stuff next time if that helps
@@animeyay4 Please finally add more spellbreaker stuff.
@@animeyay4 What's the use if the Alliance righteous holy leaders and the new Alliance-lookalike protagonists will lead the next expansion to save Silvermoon then have Tyrande take over?
@@animeyay4 I think it will be more about void elvens than blood elves.
they are and may still be, but there is an Ally focus due to it's main story characters. people need to chill though as we still got two seasons of TWW to go and that is only 1/3 of the Saga.
Blizzard simply has no idea how to include the Horde in the story without making them a villian.
Grom. Kael. Garrosh. Sylvanas.
They haven't, don't, and probably will never figure it out.
Kael never was part of the Horde though, same way Illidan was never Alliance.
But they were both mistreated and villainized, from justified anti-heroes.
kael was never a part of the horde though.
I used to be an almost exclusive alliance player. I gave the game up for awhile and when I came back, I decided to give horde a try. My all time favorite character is Mahargg, my orc shaman. I’ve gone back and dabbled with alliance because I’ve had friends either start as or switch back to alliance. My son prefers alliance because, like you said, the Horde are demonized. And, to be fair, they’ve done some bad stuff. I’ve never been super invested in Sylvanus or the Forsaken, but I love the tribal feeling of the Horde. I love the focus on strength and honor and loyalty. I am tired of alliance winning more often than not in PVP, of them going out of their way to gank me. I’m also tired of Horde spending more of their time killing each other than of defending each other against the alliance. I suspect, though that most of the ‘good’ horde players have switched to alliance. I just want the Horde to be proud and strong again.
@@LowestForm0fwit almost like most people play horde and having one you trust turn out to be a bad is is such a good plot twist. Wel. Once. Not 4 times. xD
Just make Silvermoon neutral. High Elfs being horde was necessary heresy to save horde from have only 20% to 30% the palyerbase. Thay were intended to be Alliance since the begining.
9:54 "The Problems with Lillian", Hirumaredx wants to know your location. Hide! He'll send Gunther Arcanus after you!
The Horde this expansion feel like the little brother or sister your parents forced you to bring along to get them out of the house.
Super not disagreeing with you, but I will also say that we've heard a fair amount about a possible goblin update incoming. We've also had so many Horde-centric expansions over the years:
Even the Burning Crusade, as balanced as it was (mostly, though back then BE were huge for the Horde and Alli got some dorky Russian sounding space goats) largely featured a beautiful BE woman and the BE prince with just some random Draenei paladin faded heavily into the background and Illidan who was never Alliance in the same way Alleria wasn't Horde.
The best example might have actually been Cataclysm, where every Alliance NPC pushes the players into trusting and working with the Horde and then following Thrall around for the whole expansion as he becomes the World Shaman and simply declares himself 'not Horde' while still being the main Horde guy. The Horde starting zones even got more and better quests during the world revamp and Alliance largely didn't see many changes from their original poor leveling experience, including being unable to enter their Worgen starting area for about a decade while all players could return to the Goblin zone. Admittedly, Alliance got more Dwarves in Twilight Highlands, but the ever neutral Goblin faction was also not really as neutral as it once was and felt like a huge loss of neutral zones for Alli.
Pandaria was entirely a campaign usurped by Garrosh story time,
\/
as was Draenor until he passed the main story to Thrall and heavily featured a massive cast of Horde identifying Orcs with one new Nazi space goat kid and a couple returning Draenei Paladins and leader tagged in to feel like representation but were never important. Both Pandaria and Draenor stories felt like the Alliance were the annoying kid sibling back then. They even scrapped the Shattrath story entirely, further minimizing Alliance participation. Some would argue Khadgar was huge in the opening sequence, but he's kinda just there to intro himself to become relevant again and make it feel like Alliance got represented because he later disappears to his makeshift tower until he's needed in a raid... and a large number of Alliance quest givers are Horde/Orcs where almost all Horde quest givers are Horde/Orcs.
(There was also a massive problem with playing Draenor as an Alliance Warlock, as almost every NPC you encounter openly badmouths locks and it truly feels like you aren't meant to be there, like they plan on assassinating you later that evening all while calling you 'commander' and you are made to feel like you should be ashamed of the demons and shadow magic, it's really bad actually; none of this is really there on the Horde side, even though they mention shadow magic and demons being untrustworthy they are more direct remarks about Gul'dan and his followers/army.)
The Battle for Azeroth was almost entirely an unavailable story from the Alliance perspective (they see the before and then get NOTHING until suddenly N'Zoth with little to no context). It was mostly just a lot of cool Sylvannas videos that conflicted the player-base because it entirely contradicted her previous character but was never the less the driving force of the expansion and Horde representing, as was every story progressing raid where Alliance just kinda showed up a couple times.
Even Shadowlands just felt like equal representation from an NPC perspective but the theme was just Horde dealing with their shit again with a few dramatic cameos from a rightfully angry NE queen and also Anduin because they needed an excuse to show more of Sylvannas .
@@tenshikaren i dunno, super disagreeing may be the best choice...
the horde is the voice of reason/stability in this one... in stark contrast to the alliance.
Anduin's the one being angsty, and Aelleria is the one being 'controlled' at times.
if anything, they're the older bro, sent along to ensure the brats don't get into too much trouble.
@@davidaward82 I hate it when people reduce Anduins story to 'super angsty' because you are minimizing the trauma, PTSD, and other mental ramifications soldiers and victims deal with. The whole point of this expansion is accepting ones disabilities and learning to live with what you have. Memory loss Earthen, Anduin's trauma, voices in Alleria's head, Faerin's arm, Spoilers:
Khadgar's arcane damaged skeletal structure...
The point is, the expansion isn't Horde vs. Alliance to begin with, and where it's STARTING with more Alliance representation, I don't think it's going to stay that way and it's silly to argue that Horde isn't getting enough in the very first patch when we've been told we'll be seeing more goblins in an upcoming patch and a lot of older Horde were featured for similar trauma in the patch before the prelaunch (lots of 'Stay awhile and listens). I wouldn't doubt we will see more of them soon, since the portals are open now.
@@tenshikaren you're starting to sound like a 'karen' ...
i did not use the term you claim, nor did i minimise a thing, you are projecting.
stop. think. breathe.
I literally only said that disagreeing with the OP would have made more sense.
also, just to be clear, yes, some of what anduin has is PTSD, but some is also pure 'woe is me' levels of angst.
the two are not mutually exclusive.
so... TLDR, stop looking for conflict where there is none, especially if you're gonna be so confidently incorrect.
The Horde currently feels aimless, without any purpose. While technically they are fulfilling the reason they exist (Protecting it's 'outcast' member races from external forces that would wish them destroyed), the current method for doing so (and the right one), is keeping their heads down. After the disasters that have been the 'corrupt' Warchiefs, not drawing too much attention to themselves with major activity, and the ones they do get involved with are redemptory ones (Ensuring Gilneans retake their homeland).
This, combined with a lack of any particular 'personality' amongst it's leadership, leaves them feeling particularly irrelevant. Thrall's story seems to have been given to Anduin (I wish they would run a story for Thrall to reconcile with the elements so we can have our World Shaman back... he's really boring as a warrior), so he can focus on his family story of his children (Which, let's face it, are as dull and characterless as his wife. His son is the the orcish equivalent of Baine, completely milquetoast and generic, as I like to put it, the mix of green and brown orc producing an orc of purest beige. His daughter at least has some promise, being the youngest.). Gazlowe is a great leader, but very much on the downlow unless you're playing a Goblin. The Silver Fox Lorthemar is again pure awesome but criminally underused. Baine is, as mentioned, utterly generic and without any personality (with the one attempt to give him some resulting in a very awkward series of quests where he's an incredible racist running with the idiot ball). Calia, as you mentioned, just gives off an Alliance vibe (and her and Lillian are the only characters of note on the Forsaken Council). Rokhan is.... alright, but doesn't actually feel like he's the Troll leader (Even in typing this I'm not even sure if it's him and not someone else).
In short, definite effort needs to be put in by Blizzard to make the Horde relevent, and they're just not doing so, probably feeling like they've written themselves into a corner. It's heartbreaking for a Horde at Heart like me (I have no problem playing both factions, but Horde are, were and always will be my favourite)
blizz devs are lazy and they will continue to be. I cannot see anything changing in the next 6 years or more. And yeah, when Calia opens her mouth its so easy to her to talk about her friendship with alliance leaders, she doesnt visually fit in the forsaken, all other light undead seems even worse than regular undead (she would fit more light undead models for an alliance allied race) and it seems like treason to get her as an horde leader xD.
i strongly believe that Midnight will bring that Horde relvance, since that is Blood Elf/High Elf turf, so i expect possibly another reunion of the Windrunner Sisters, i expect only Alleria and Valeera Sanguinaar to represent the Alliance while all the other members are Horde, showing them supporting their sworn brethren as any Honorable faction would.
i think the horde has strong characters in their allied race leaders - namely talanji and thalyssra, who have entire storylines worth of character building to lean on. its a shame theyre horrendously underused. I think it would be fascinating to have a storyline based on the various horde leaders dealing with the fallout of the Radiant Song visions causing disruption in the civillizations they run
@@Eggwynn Midnight will feature Thalryssa and her new husband Lor'themar.
@@UltimateGamerCC 🙏
We definitely need a greater focus on both factions in WoW lately. That used to be a guarantee back in the day and it's kinda fallen off since Shadowlands. Hoping we get more stories with Thrall, Gazlowe, etc in the later patches. Feels weird we got all these ads for Thrall and he has two moments in this expansion.
The correct take
Midnight is horse focused. They already said this.
@@reavestone308 It's Elf Focused. Major difference there! Plus I think having an expansion entirely dedicated to the Alliance or Horde and not both is not good.
Started a Forsaken in vanilla even then i always thought _why am i helping the humans and alliance so much?_
@@Didi_Meow_Recordsoh boy you should see the belf stories in the Warcraft RTS 😂
You nailed it. While alliance has felt more like a faction a player is a part of, the Horde has honestly felt like a vehicle for plot progression. We lost most of our OG characters which you mentioned, and the replacements might as well have been cardboard cut-outs. As a forsaken, sylvanas was undeniably cool (emphasis on "was", pre-BFA) - while Menethil is... there. The Horde haven't really felt like badasses in the story since Wrath in my opinion, from cataclysm on it's been one crises after another within the horde and we haven't really been made to feel whole or strong especially when compared to the Alliance - whose identity is pretty solid. It's likely why this bias is there in the first place, the foundation for story is solid for the alliance, whereas it's incredibly messy for the horde (which can be a positive thing, could make the Horde's redemption into a strong and united force an interesting tale); I just hope the Horde gets the love it deserves. All that said I'm happy for the alliance players, even as a horde I enjoyed the campaign - just wish the faction I've been with since vanilla had as much love.
Regardless of faction bias, I am glad to see as you mentioned, the highlight of Dwarven lore which hasn't been spotlighted in a long long time. Yes we have Magni and Brann, but their stories are more involved in the overall azeroth story. The stuff we're getting with Dagran, Moira, and Magni is more family focused and focused on Dwarven history and connecting with the Earthen.
Also so pumped for future Goblin stuff!!
As for the Haronir? I hope theyre cross fac. It would be nice for Horde to get a dwarf and ally to get a troll esque race. That is just my opinion though
Blizzard really wrote themselves into a corner with the Horde. Too many expansions of making major horde characters have Villain heel turns, too many horde leaders killed without doing a good job of promoting their replacements, and their most notable Horde leader, Thrall, comes with so much baggage at this point. Plenty of us love Baine, but ironically his story has largely been tied up with Anduin. I think Calia Menethil was an interesting addition (though, again, ironically, she has an Alliance background -- though that's true of many undead), but they haven't done a good job of promoting her in-game and the best of her backstory is in a book. Lilian Voss is dope as hell, but not the kind of character who will be front and center.
From the pieces of the story they've established, there are still ways the Horde could see some increased prominence. As Elune comes more into picture, it gives the Tauren some potential to take center stage (alongside the Night Elves of course), and a Sylvanas redemption arc seems inevitable -- but how much of her story will involve the Horde proper vs being a solo actor, who knows.
Honestly, I really hope Blizzard doesn't just start tearing down more Alliance leaders just because they feel like they need to level the narrative ground between them and the Horde, it will just feel cheap. Really, making Baine a major player going through the rest of this trilogy feels like their best option, but Blizzard just doesn't seem to like promoting the Tauren as major players.
The problem (other than yes, Alliance is often treated as default). is the episodic nature of WoW's content release. If an expansion is a book, and you were to read it all in a day, it might seem a fine story of adventure, ups and downs, conclusion, and balanced faction content division. The problem is that we only get to read a new chapter every few months. Resolutions may be years away. And balance within a chapter can be wildly skewed.
Which is weird to me, and has been for a long time. After playing other games that give you the whole story upon an expansion launch, WoW has no real excuse for it. We know that they do it because it keeps people subbed longer, but that doesn't really fly anymore (and shouldn't have back in the day, but the game was different back then). If they took the approach that ESO or even FFXIV do, and just give you the whole story out the gate I think people would feel better about some things. Granted they'd have to change stuff, add trial bosses like FF does, and then come up with a different story situation for raids (since they would have to be disconnected from the main story, which honestly makes it easier on them) which would be a side story. Even raids in ESO are side stories and not really pertaining to the main story.
*sigh* idk, but this trickle feed stuff is garbo and i'm not subbed because of it.
To be fair the amount of story you do get is pretty solid
Is it just me who doesn't miss Sylvanas? I actually want to see the whole identity of the Forsaken move away from her. I always hated how the lore portrayed her as an infallible deity. I'm talking before BfA. Anyone who hated her and her guts always happened to be " in the wrong " for doing so. Any story surrounding Sylvanas always bent to serve her, when it should have been the other way around. I always stood by the opinion, although unpopular, that Sylvanas' entire arc should have ended in tragedy, just not in the way BfA and Shadowlands handled that.
I do agree, she commited more war crimes than Garrosh.
I think she was boring since after WC3.
I found her power level sudden increase very bothering, too.
Where's Velen? He'd be at Beladar as soon as it was discovered.
He died
where's Velen is something you can say about A LOT of things in WoW. Part of the problem there is he should be a character with power on the level of Malfurion, if not more. And that's hard to insert into a story without more problems of 'well why doesn't he do more.'
@@Epck He is very alive, but I think Blizzard also thinks he died.
@joaom3234 we got a 2nd velen from the draenor time split, the original is dead they are prolly just scared to touch alternate velen
@@Epck alternate velen is the one that died, our velen did nothing
7:19 I like Faerin. That a lot of those stupid, toxic idiots who get offended by her stopped playing wow explains why I have a gut feeling, that the wow community got a little less toxic recently. She's a good written character, who is absolutely driven by hope, light and everything that's just. She is, what Turalyon claims to be. I love lawfully good characters, who are able to inspire others without claiming to be perfect. There's an arc in the cave under the tower, where she tells a struggling Anduin, that everybody makes mistakes and that this is what forms your path. The cool thing about her is, that she isn't perfect but takes her strength from the light in her heart. And about the lesbian hair cut and the thing about her being ugly... what a bullshit statement. She's a fighter, not a model. If anything, her ingame appearance is kind of cute more often than not. As a Horde player for 18 years by now (OMG I'm effing old) I absolutely had and have a blast leveling in TWW. I have six lvl 80 character already and I absolutely love the campaign. It's a great story, espacially Hallow Fall. There's only one thing I don't get. Why is a giant spider the queen of crabs?
If only they had given her a proper melee weapon instead of a lance...
@abando_nation Personally i expected her to be far worse but she isnt preachy or annoying so its palatable imo.
But blizz did go far with ticking so many diversity boxes on her character; female, black, cripple AND half blind.
None on its own is a big deal but to put all of that in a single character AND make her a melee fighter is pushing it.
Every opponent she fights can blindside her and has more arms than her. (especially nerubians!)
She cant use that shield properly since its attached to her shoulder and any blow to it will knock her of balance.
The weapon she has is a lance and is primarily used for thrusting from horseback but she doesn't even have depth perception because she is blind on 1 eye.
Basically all she can do is whack someone with it, like a stick. The idiot who designed her could at least have given her a flail or mace like many other Arathi actually do!
So the whole package just doesnt make sense when thinking more and 10 sec about it. Had she been a mage, priest, lock or a political figure i had no issues with her. (except from the obvious USA diversity politics infecting the game)
? its just as toxic as ever
@@origami83 We had Kargath Bladefist who basically killed a god despite having an impractical massive cleaver on his armstump that would be impossible to put to any use in a real fight.
@@shizachan8421 An orc is many times stronger as a human, especially a female. A cleaver with such superhuman strength seems very deadly AND he also has his other hand. Because he still got his arm that cleaver is more versatile than a shield strapped to a shoulder. Also he is not halfblind and fought his entire life as a gladiator.
I almost think that the one who designed fearin made these choices on purpose to troll people.
How there wasn't a different character for Horde for delves is very lazy.
Brann is only the companion for this season. Next season will be a diferent one. And i bet will either be someone like Lilian, or one of the Elves from the horde counterpart to the explorer's league. Don't let this stupid video influence you. Tali is trying to create drama for clicks.
@@josejuanandrade4439 the most interesting thing is that you dont even know what is "the horde counterpart to the explorer's league" or its characters, and thats ok, horde players dont know any really impactful character from its explorers league counterpart too, cause they are really underdeveloped :)
And why should anyone trust some specullation from you jose? cmon, at least Tali said what he said based on facts, not on hallucinations about what will happen in the future, there's not even a clue as to what's going to happen, if we're still at the BEGINNING of TWW
@@neptunviro They are relatively recent compareted to the Explorer's League, which exists since Vanilla.
They are called The Reliquare, and while i remember it's main guy blood elf, i don't remember his name, true, but similarly in a way, othe then Brann, i dont know any other name from the Explorer's League. And Brann is a character that has been with us ever since vanilla, and is also the brother of Magni and Muradin, so is hard not to know him, even if not related to the EL.
Also, the only thing i am speculating is who will be the next npc to go with us, they said is gonna be someone diferent each season, so there's the chance will be the Reliquary, but it could also be that blood elf lady that is always at the place with Brann and Reno and Mr Fliggerton.
@@josejuanandrade4439 Belloc Brightblade was the main guy, he was a play on belloq from indiana jones, whom harrison jones is totally based on but brann and reno jackson also are copies of
@@josejuanandrade4439 Holy damn I hope it's not that black explorer elf. Her voice is so damn condescending.
We definitely need some better horde story lines Certain races more than others. As a 17 year Forsaken player, I like the undead stuff recently (although it came about because they absolutely destroyed one of our best characters and sent her into literal hell for the foreseeable future). The forsaken have always been the most compelling race to me narratively as their entire struggle has been about reclaiming their identity and independence after a horrific betrayal. That said, I feel like the more recent undead storylines do forget about what they've been through from WC3 to Cata.
One moment from last expansion really bothered me and I think it kind of lends to the idea of Blizzard forgetting about a lot of the old stories that resonate with players. In the quest "Stay A While" you talk to a dragon named Veritistrasz about what its like coming home after so long, and he says this:
"You can probably remember where you grew up. Can smell your parents cooking, can remember playing with your friends who lived close by. Now imagine that you have forgotten how to get to your childhood home. You can never visit again, can never walk the paths of your childhood. Maybe you think me overly sentimental. You try living for ten thousand years, never being able to visit your home, finally visit it only to find it completely different, and then come back to me."
Certain races get extra dialogue here. Blood Elves and Void Elves get this:
Blood elf/ Void Elf:
"Although... Arthas cut a bloody swath through Silvermoon, I imagine you can relate to what I'm talking about."
Forsaken get nothing. At this point, we've seen Lordaeron destroyed TWICE by leaders we once trusted. It just feels like they really make a lot of simple mistakes with the undead storylines.
Similarly, there's a moment in TWW right before Voss shows up where Alleria tells us to go meet with her and she says - to my undead character, literally wearing my heritage armor with the new undead tabard - "Unfortunately she is... well, you'll see." As if I’d have a problem working with an undead.
Like, gang, I know it’s asking a lot to tailor dialogue to the players characters for all of these quests, but these couple things just felt sloppy.
I called this many years ago, the WoW story comes to an end either with the horde fully absorbed by the alliance or just the alliance being the heroes, because show me a fantasy setting where the humans don't win in the end.
I've never created an ally toon. Been horde from vanilla. Horde not being more front and center sucks. Played undead rogue before the will of the forsaken nurff to hell and back. Miss my queen Sitting in the throne room listening to her sing was the s***
i dont understand. horde what i have seen has been a much more focused part of the game in the majority of the expansions, cata had more horde focus, mop had more horde focus, WOD was basicly just horde focus (alliance felt like we were just there in the background) and BFA was the btich queen trolling and fuking around with the alliance while playing leader with the horde. TBC was rather even, ill give wrath was more alliance then horde but not by much, and legion was rather even in both sides.
i played both factions and blizzard definitely felt like it favored the horde then alliance. also f sylvanas i wanted her to be a raid boss we acutely do kill so she just becomes a endless loot corpse but that doesn't even happen. thank god i didn't play shadowlands.
I don't even want the Quillboar Elves in the Horde. With Blood Elves and Nightborne, the Horde already has more than enough Elves. And with rock Dwarves, the Horde got yet another race that thematically is closer to the Alliance than the Horde. The Forsaken, being human corpses, arguably are thematically closer to the Alliance, too.
This game needs more content with Orc, Troll and Tauren themes. Even Goblin and Vulpera content is more welcome to me than "Elf content is Horde content, even though it looks, sounds and smells like Alliance".
Remember in WC3 when each chapter of the story is from the POV of the race you're playing? Narratively speaking, we're currently in the HU story arc. I trust the Horde will get their time to shine later, and that to me is fine.
While I think it's okay to have more Alliance bits for a while if Horde bits come later to round things out, (I mean, Pandaria felt like an extremely horde-centric experience, for example) even if "later" is next expansion, this makes it more important, not less, that the Horde arcs are strong and interesting and carry the horde's identity and characters forward. If we're going to have horde characters just acting as support, it'd be better if they were supporting *other horde characters*. As an Alliance player, I think the rest of you deserve better. Cheers.
Cataclysm and Green Jesus
Its not just a count of the number of alliance vs horde faces that matters. Its the exploration, through in game story, of the beliefs, values and expressions of what made us like our factions in the first place. I chose an Orc/Horde not because I wanted to be green, but because the honor, determination and respect portrayed by the Orcs through Warcraft 3 made me choose to play an Orc first and decide class second. This was later reinforced through player exploration of spiritual Nagrand, through Saurfang's lessons in Northrend, through Voljin fighting for what was right in Pandaria. Through Lor'Themar welcoming the Nightbourne, while Tyrande largely scorned them. Through encountering Vulpera and immediately helping them... so many examples. Yet, since BFA there has been a drastic drop off in these types of stories reflecting Horde values and ways of doing things (like not spending ages crying in a Hallowfall cave whilst being the richest most powerful guy on the planet, Anduin - Overlord Geya'rah would have punched him in the face, she doesn't need the light either!). They have been displaced with a new form of storytelling, which while better flowing and less focused on reading external books than before, feels alien to me. Not like the Horde I know, not like the Warcraft I know. I think Taliesin and Nobbel, who seem to have started/tended towards Alliance, found the story of TWW fantastic because the values and culture presented tilts just that little more in the direction of whatever it was that made them pick Alliance in the first place. But as a Horde Loremaster, the story is feeling more and more distant instead. Its a bit sad, but there's much more to factions than simply warcries and racial abilities. I'm not sure Blizzard is even aware of the nuance they're casually stampeding over.
Your story is better than mine. I chose Undead after my friend deleted my character (it was his account tbf at the time, but he barely played and my character was AQ geared) but in the name of vengeance I spent every waking moment hunting him down in game and killing him. Same name as I had on my human...who was now undead.
But does the Alliance have a Waze Navigation companion? I think the horde have them beat there.
I think the problem with Thrall is also that he is in a way too clean by now to fully represent the Horde. In some way you could forget he is an Orc and think of him more like a big green guy with strange teeth. Put a Tauren, Goblin or Troll next to him and Thrall will be the most humanoid looking being there.
I understand that the Belfs and Nightborne will have their time in Midnight, so this expansion could have been great for the other races. The Tauren feel like they also only have Baine - it would be great to see other characters rise to some fame, some status. One could expand the Highmountain Tauren with the other two chieftains next to Mayla or the Mag'har. What has Ji Firepaw been doing? I really hope next patch will just be Horde. Goblins overload, Mayla Highmountain running sround, Ji Firepaw and Geya'rah as a team-up. Let a troll be our Delve guide
holy shit that's an L take!
Ive been a fan of the Horde since WC3, and Horde has been my main faction for the last 20 years of WoW. For a long, long time Blizzard has not known how they should write for the Horde. The Horde for a while has only featured prominently when they were being the villains. I honestly believe the writers simply did not know how to balance the Horde being basically a military dictatorship, with them also being a group that cares about each other and have deep connections to their Ancestors and the earth.
It also hurts that Alliance characters tend to not ever be truly dead, meanwhile major Horde characters get killed fairly often. Does anyone else remember when Turylon, Alleria, Khadgar, Muradin, and Magni were all considered dead at the end of WC2, 3 and start of WoW? Well good news! They're all alive and the Alliance can rejoice at getting these major characters back. They get to join the roster of other WC3 characters like Jaina, Tyrande, Malfurion and Illidan. The Horde also had characters from previous titles! Lets see how they fair! Thrall is alive! Gazlowe and Rexxar too! Surely those two will be big players in major storylines? Lets see who else. Cairne? Dead. Sylvanas? Gone. Vol'jin? Dead. Garrosh? Dead. Saurfang? Dead. How about Kael'thas? He was popular, and Illidan came back after TBC as a good guy so surely Kael'thas can too...oh he's going to stay evil and then stay dead? Well, the Alliance did lose Varian. Sure his son immediately became one of the most important characters, and gets entire arcs based off of his grief over Varian's death but I suppose that counts.
All of that is to point out that, of course Blizzard isn't telling stories with the Horde. There's almost no significant Horde characters left to tell a story with. Blizzard wants to tell stories with exisiting characters, which makes sense. Nearly all existing characters now are Alliance.
I consider WC3 peak Horde writing. I wonder what happened to the team that wrote that story, because at no point the Horde got even close to reaching that point of absolutely banging writing since.
You really should have given more than 1 point to the alliance because ALL of Hallowfall is for Anduin. The entire ZONE for him and a new human kingdom.
When was the last time we killed an Alliance leader? We have killed Garrosh and Rastakhan.
Horde indirectly killed Varian. Even if you disagree, it's still an Alliance loss.
Also half of the alliance leaders might as well be dead because they're benched for being too powerful to be utilized (Velen, Malfurion) or being a gnome (I'm sure they're just saving Gelbin for when we get Tinkers /copium)
@@AvohajHorde didnt indirectly kill varian lol, he was both directly (the demon that stabbed him) and indirectly (the dreadlords that tricked the factions into attacking the broken shore) killed by the legion
edit: I guess Gul’dan would be the guy that directly killed him lol whoops
@@Avohaj That is not true. If you ever played the Horde side of that scenario you'd know that the Horde had to bear the vast majority of the Legion's forces while the Alliance had to deal with a few stray demons. The Horde was in danger of getting wiped out entirely - they had no choice but to retreat.
The only issue was that apparently neither Horde nor Alliance leaders ever thought about having some signals to inform the other army if one had to retreat, something that is part of every military campaign. And the Alliance going full rage mode and crying betrayal without even trying to find out first why the Horde had to retreat was just super dumb storytelling - no even remotely capable leader would ever do that.
But what did we get instead? Wolfie boy throwing a tantrum and attacking the Horde in the middle of a Legion invasion. That was so dumb it physically hurt having to play through this nonsense.
@@Avohaj The only alliance loss. And the Horde "staying to protect the Alliance" would mean the Horde being wiped out entirely, instead of just losing Vol'jin. After all, the battle in the Broken Shore was a trap for both the Horde and the Alliance. The Horde gets overrun and is forced to retreat before the Alliance even knows that the trap has been sprung. It almost like Varian chose to be the one to lead the main assault against the Tomb while the Horde was placed in support...
@@moscanaveia exactly!
The Horde skipped just on TWW?
The only way the Horde has relevance is for a "corrupted warchief" plot and it's more like "the Horde helping Alliance to fix the shit"
Horde are gonna be prevalent in Midnight and it's not gonna be about starting a war, it'll be about fighting one that Xal'atath has already began.
@@UltimateGamerCC Elves are going to be prominent in Midnight, but that doesn't mean the Horde will be. As was pointed out in the video, most "elven tribes" are Alliance.
The whole Worldsoul Saga is likely to be Alliance-focused.
@@SynaestheticAesthetic dude, you obviously cant effing count! there are 2 Elf races on the Alliance Side and two on the Horde Side. also QUEL'THALAS, that's High Elf aka Belf turf! are you really gonna die on that hill and look stupid in the process? again, Horde stick together, they'll be prominent, as probably will the Naga since they were Elves.
@@UltimateGamerCC You know there are more types of elves than the playable ones, right?
Imagine a story arc that takes place directly after saurfang dies. We, as the champions of the horde, had to immediately leave to deal with sylvanas and the giant hole in the sky. So this story arc could be us playing as Zappy Boy as he goes on a journey to discover what it meant to be a part of Saurfang’s horde. What was that honor that was lost that made him take a stand against sylvanas. The honor he charged willingly and knowingly into his death to fight for. Follow Zappy Boy as he goes off and ponders these thoughts and discusses them with other “average” members of the horde. Have him ask either the leader or members of each race why they joined the horde. Learning that the horde isn’t some giant war machine meant to conquer all of Azeroth. Rather a union meant to defend each race’s and individuals own freedoms to be themselves.
At the end of this arc, have all the leaders of each race and champions of the horde come back to orgrimmar after defeating xali’toes to surprisingly find the people of the horde who stayed home all talking about Zappy Boy and his ideas. Remembering how he had met with each of them they all agree they should talk to him. He seems to have touched the very spirit of the horde. They hold a council which the player character just so happens to get invited to. They talk to Zappy Boy and see his has really taken to what saurfang stood for. He embodies all the horde was and should be. They invite him to join the council, not as a representative of the trolls, but to be the speaker for the people. To be the voice of the Horde.
What the fuck is Talanji even DOING in TWW? I don't think we've even seen her in the background.
Hopefullyyyyy, she'll work as our diplomatic in to Amani territory in Midnight - not in a "the unwashed masses throwing themselves at her feet" but moreso that the Amani won't humour another Zandalari emissary or Prophet again. They want something from Zul'Aman, Talanji better show up herself.
The answer could be more of a meta one. Susan Wokoma wrote, directed, and produced her own film around the time TWW was being made. She was also in a theatrical production this fall. Maybe she had some time in between to record lines for a new patch.
Lmao you're right, I forgot about her
@@Dreamfillah Now that is a whole can of worms. I bet we'll have to level ZA (as in, destroy it until nothing remains but rubble, not like level in an MMO sense) one third time
All the good Horde leadership was killed to push Sylvanas to the forefront. This is a consequence of that.
The Horde needs Silvermoon & Suramar back.
Even though my heart is blood elven, I have to say Tauren and Darkspear desperately need some love and attention more than elves. Despite everything, Lor'themar and Thalyssra are two of the most featured Horde racial leaders
Hello!? are the lights on in there?! Silvermoon has always belonged to the Blood Elves, TF are you smoking? also, you evidently have NOT been paying attention to Story... Silvermoon and Suramar's leaders are getting hitched to each other, which is why they arent in TWW. they took the time to see us off to the Dragon Isles, but they've been "busy" if you catch my drift. :P
sry y'all i just meant in a revamping-of-the-city kind of way - def agreed other races need more love, but we need more Horde figures in general!! Aaaa!!!
@@moscanaveia Yeah but their stories weren't about blood elves or nightborne. The only development either race has had is conirming they very much like each other.
@@Altrantis Wdym Lor'themar's and Thalyssra's stories weren't about belves or nightborne? Thalyssra is the main focus character on the entire Suramar arc, beginning to end, and her continued appearances in BfA have been very neatly placed to reflect her history thus far, such as the role she plays in Nazjatar when exploring the deep ruins of Zin Azshari. Same goes for Lorthy, all of his featuring on MoP, for instance, has been intrisically tied to the roles of the elves in Garrosh's war machine and how Lor'themar wanted more for his people. If there are Horde leaders that were not at all mishandled it was these two. And I'm very glad for it, because I love the Highborne in all their flavours except those aligned with the Alliance :P
As a Horde I really dont mind that its fully Alliance, the loading screen still should have been Faerin, Brinthe the speaker, the widow and that dwarf that sacrifices himself. I HATE seeing Thrall there, like ??? he is not in the expansion, why is he in the loading screen. Keep being afk thrall and leave, such a useless character he has become.
Maybe same reason Varian was in the Legion artwork for the loading screen when he died in the pre-xpac
@@moscanaveia he didnt die in the pre xpac exactly, but at the beginning of legion xD
Thrall is definitely in the expansion lmao. Like.. I talked to him. He and Anduin had a stay a while lol.
@@neptunviro Pre-expac event was battle for the broken shore + demon hunter starting experience, which places DH's on Orgrimmar/Stormwind during the funeral rites for Vol'jin and Varian, and ready to work on the Legion invasion events
@@moscanaveia pre xpac were a bunch of world quests across kalimdor and eastern kingdoms and DH questline, so both dh and all players got ready for the first quest of the xpac when legion was released, which was battle for the broken shore
You can't even compare Gazlowe and Lilian Voss to other 'secondary' characters like Moira and Dagran. Lilian only is present for one questline, and so is Gazlowe (for now).
Although I like to see how Thrall kinda turned into Warcraft's Stan Lee, I'm pissed off by how Blizzard seems decided to retire characters of the older era (Magni becoming nearly irrelevant, Khadgar probably having to carry the consequences of his transmutation into energy for the rest of his life + Dalaran being gone, Thrall losing Doomhammer and his powers).
I just wish Thrall would've given a single F about trying to get Doomhammer back, to purify it, to repair it... With Ashbringer, those weapons of legends got the lamest end ever.
And as for the Harronir... nah. Give them to the Alliance. I'm good. We got the Vulpera, the Nightborne, the Earthen, that's enough with the races that Blizz devs scooped-out of their collective bum.
I want OGRES in the Horde!
I want the Harronir for the Horde. They are trolls after all. That said - I also want the Forest Trolls back in the fold.
They are obviously Trelves. Honestly I don't want them on either side. We have enough Elves already, and it'd be 3rd Troll. I'd rather have the Ascended
@@Hauke-ph5ui They look more like Elves than Trolls, I'd say. And yeah, even Forest Trolls would be higher on my list of races I'd like to have in the Horde. But Ogres have the particularities of having a fairly unique silhouette, not having direct 'cousins' already playables, officially being part of the Horde since WC3 (under Rexxar) and being part of the Lore since WC2. Blizzard never even bothered to make female models for them! Meanwhile we'd be getting those weird hybrids? Meh.
@@Inufan2005 I'd rather have neither. We got the Earthen, that's enough out of Khaz Algar for my tastes. We don't need to try to make an allied race out of every race we cross paths with. People were crying for the Shadowlands races as allied races and I'm glad we avoided that.
Plus, the Ascended seem ridiculously easy to manipulate for someone like Xal'atath, so why would we want them?
@@goblinounours no easier for her to manipulate than anyone else to be fair. I agree with not having the Covenant races as Allied Races, and thought it would have been dumb because they are literally bound to the realm of death, can't have them trapezing around the lands of the living. The only other race I've wanted as an Allied Race is the Jinyu, but that ship sailed (Pun intended) when they gave us Fat humans, Trolls that love their Bling, and Diaper Gnomes. It would have made sense in BFA, but now? Not so much
6:51 Apparently this is a completely different group of Arathi with a still-active kingdom across the storming seas. Who also have a king name Thordain.... And Anduin doesn't even seem to consider them a separate group even though it's impossible for the fractured kingdom of Arathor to have any of Farein's relatives because they're all gone now and even if the are more Arathi descendants in the Eastern Kingdoms, the elf DNA was diluted out of their genes, making them far too distant genetically to be considered relatives. Anduin Lothar didn't seem to even have any elf DNA left... Granted, aside from Alodi in the comic (but notably not ingame), none of the ancient Arathi we've seen even had pointy ears and Alodi's ears looked full-elven rather than half-elven. Either way, with thousands of years and nautical miles of separation, it's not likely the Arathi across the Storming Seas are substantially genetically related to the Arathi in the Eastern Kingdoms.
They are the descendants of a group of Arathi who left the Eastern Kingdoms art least 1200 years ago. As such, Faerin is likely shares a common ancestor with (and is a direct descendant of) the OG Lothar line
@@TaliesinEvitel Doesn't Faerin say she had memories of her original home as an infant though? Are the Arathi really long-lived?
It was HordeHordeHorde for literal decades. Going the Alliance some depth? LONG overdue.
Ngl...... thrall really feels like an alliance character now.
Iono why, but he left us and was always a jaina apologizer. Just feels wrong.
The last four expansions have been written for the Horde with the Alliance attached. I can prove it. Take the Alliance out of the past four expansions and you still have a full, coherent storyline. You cannot remove the Horde or you would have to begin patching sections for it to make sense. I don't know enough about War Within yet, but I would be shocked if a den full of horde devs wrote from the opposite side. It's just not in their mindset. They give Alliance posturing victories, i.e., victories that happen in books or that you don't find out about until Blizzcon, but IN-GAME? Horde get to win against the Alliance and that's the difference. Those Horde devs have to play they game and they want to enjoy it. Throw the Alliance as many canon victories as you want, but in-game? Horde get to have fun. The Alliance have to buy books or listen to X posts from devs to find any kind of victory.
The Silvermoon elves are gonna be written like Alliance characters lol
Yep. More elf stuff. Elves elves elves.
@@knightofwhale2834 They were the ones that popularised both the Burning Legion and arcane magic on the world of Azeroth. They merit the attention 🤣
@@moscanaveia well I'm booored of them
As a horde player I think it's fine that the campaign is focusing on a smaller cast of characters even if it's just one faction. I feel like keeping it focused in this way means that the story can be more tightly written but realistically we still got patches for more horde characters to come in and Midnight might be a more horde focused expansion as well. Ultimately I don't think it matters too much as so long as the story their telling is good I personally don't really care.
I personally agree with you, I'd like to see more horde but in a non destructive way, there's no need for more faction war. Maybe some Nightborne Storylines maybe elfs from horde-aliance getting a truce and coliving in Silvermoon again, maybe even allowing visits to enemy capitals because the world can't be at war all time
Talk for yourself you alliance loving peasant.
Treason will not go unpunished!
For the Horde!!!!
I feel like we need more “marketable” Horde characters that have been developed and can stand in the forefront of cast like Thrall. There aren’t a lot of intertwined core stories and dynamics between the races of the Horde right now. There are lots of character with a high likely hood if Blizzard cared enough (with some TLC and development) would be Talanji with Zekhan (Accompanied Bwonsamdi with the rare dialogue), Thalyssra, Lor’themar, Liadrin, Calia, more of Lillian (who could probably use a unique model update), more of Gazlowe (maybe with some more machinery or a mech), Rokhan, Baine (heh). Hell even Ji could be fine if they game him a unique outfit/model and some personality/development, but they are too afraid of Pandaren these days. Rexxar is too much of a lone wolf. Obviously Thalyssra, Liadrin, and Lor’themar will more than likely get a lot of focus in Midnight (I’d hope).
Everyone talking about the Horde “losing their identity” seem to be forgetting that the Horde hasn’t had a consistent identity ever in the series.
The Warcraft 1 Horde is completely different from Warcraft 2, which is completely different from Warcraft 3’s and so on. They haven’t had any consistent theming since their inception. “Strength and honor” is just a catchphrase that means nothing when you have the Forsaken eating corpses.
*burps*
you killed them with your strengths and you are eating them with honor, because loot isnt theft
15:14 I would unfortunately argue that Horde doesn't get the half point here since you have to be an Alliance to get the dialog.
As a Horde, my personal experience was seeing Turalyon and thinking back to Legion, "Hell yeah! Me and Turalyon slew alot of demons and saved the world. Can't wait to see him acknowledge he knows me as "Champion""
I land near him and he calls me a random Horde Savage...
I literally had to read the line again in chat to confirm, like he did not just say that. But he did, with his whole chest.
In defense of Brann Bronzebeard being the only Delve companion at the moment, he has always served as a neutral NPC. Outside the Stormpeaks, almost all of his quests have nothing to do with the alliance as a whole; it's just "Hey, I found this cool temple; let's see what's inside!" I don't think that just because a character is part of a race that's playable by the Hoard/Alliance automatically makes them a representative of that faction because A) That's a very black-and-white thinking that even WoW itself has never supported, and B) If that was the case, the only acceptable neutral NPCs would be non-playable races and Pandren/Drakthyr, and I guess Earthen.
He is a co-founder and the leader of the explorer's league, the ironforge organisation to research dwarven ancestry and old relics. They literally wiped out a tauren tribe in vanilla and have close ties to the stormwind spy organisation SI:7. It's not neutral, the Horde archaeological organisation is the reliquary.
@@istnuk1994 In Wrath, he leads both Hoard and Alliance through Ulduar. He also helps both sides in Uldum during Cata. You can pull up w/e obscure wowpedia article you'd like; the majority of times he shows up in the game he is helping both Hoard and Alliance players.
@@endtimer1There's no obscure reference going on here. Brann is literally the youngest sibling of Muradin and Moira, and the Explorer's League is an Ironforge-based institution, not a neutral one. The cases you mention are punctual exceptions to their role: at every other appearance of the Explorer's Guild, they're working for the Alliance.
I'll give you one single reason why the Horde should have their own companion for delves. Before launching Dalaran to Khaz Algar, Brann says they're teaming up with the Reliquary again. Yet, even before Dalaran is destroyed there is absolutely no Reliquary presence on the city, only EG. The only blood elf in the explorer guild content is that one incompetent and stupid apprentice that features on a side quest
@@moscanaveia Ever hear of the Dragonscale Expedition? The EL and Rel joint effort to explore the Dragon Isles?
You guys are starting to remind me of that youtuber Taliesin showcased a few getting upset because there are too many female characters in one tent. The organization he is currently helping is a neutral faction, just like the majority of the times we've encountered him in game. I guess the only member they were aloud to make a companion without upsetting half the player base was Sir Finley.
@@endtimer1 I didn't play through Dragonflight, I got burned out for a long time during 9.1.5. And I did hear of the Dragonscale Expedition, Brann mentions in early TWW they're teaming up with the Reliquary AGAIN, but that was the first time they collaborated. Besides, the fact the EG teamed up with the Reliquary does not make either faction neutral, it simply makes them interact despite faction divides, because officially Horde and Alliance are at peace.
The point we're making is not that Brann shouldn't be made a companion for delves. The point we're making is that maybe it would be nice for the Horde to be represented as well. Not hard to understand, you're just grasping at straws at this point
4:32 in short: HES A NERD!!!!!1
I mean... Cata kind of made me tired of Thrall, MoP made me tired of Orgrimmar, WoD made me tired of Orcs, and BFA made me tired of Trolls and Sylvanas. It's about time we got an Alliance-biased expansion.
Thank you!
I agree, but only if they lose major characters. Anduin and Alleria dying in this and the next expac sounds fair honestly.
Every expasion is an alliance-biased expansion. Having horde races or leaders as villais doesn't make the expansion horde focused, it just makes the alliance have fun killing horde while the horde.
@@Altrantis heard that before "TBC was Alliance expansion because Illidan is a night elf!" xD
We saw the 11.1 raid armor being about the Goblin's Underdark.
So I figure we'll have a huge Horde centric patch, Horde delv companion, and honestly I would love to see the Trolls meet that new weird proto-elf race. There's an area of roots with green mist that if you fly into it, you fall asleep and teleport to a lake. Just like the druid order hall in legion.
As an alliance player I really do wonder what all the nagging is about. Sure this expansion is alliance centric atm. But there have been multiple expansions previously that had been more centered on the Horde. MoP and WoD being prime examples where the Alliance mainly had to help the Horde which, for me, made for quite a boring story...
Must be such a surreal experience for a Mag'har orc to watch the leader of the Alliance cry and weep to them.
We had too many Horde biased expansions.
Let Alliance have their's.
The problem isnt really that the expansion is Alliance focused, its that in the past few expansions Blizzard killed off most of the front and center characters of the horde. We still havce a few cool characters but none of them are really fit to be put in the spotlight. I mean we lost how many warchiefs? 3 now? Its kinda bad that I've been a horde main since I started in cataclysm but I know more about current alliance politics than horde lol. I dont even know who the hell leads the horde, a council or something?
lol that screen at 7:19..jeebus it's sad but true, just like every other outlet for entertainment..'you will like this' you will like this 'YOU will LIKE this' or we'll shame you...
True, it is the precedent modern western games has set. Even if she was a good character, people would no longer give this sort of character the benefit of the doubt.
I blame modern western games. In making a big deal about diversity, they have made the problem worse
Complaining about horde "losing" after getting access to Bel'Ameth (Night Elf capital) and basically getting Dwarves as a playable horde race, is diabolical
those rock dwaves are not a win for the horde. keep them out of Orgrimmar
maybe next story patch we can get some more of Gazlowe, thrall, ect. I want to see rokhan get some development, hell do something with Ji. Haven't seen anything of him since MoP.
BTW, I would like you to apply these same standards for the last four expansions and then tell me why you weren't worried when the Alliance were losing.
Legit stood around the whole leveling experience holding an ice cream cone for my boy Thrall only for him to be a supporting character for a earthen in the max level campaign and spend maybe 20 minutes on screen in total.
Midnight set in silvermoon : Are alliance loosing to horde in Midnight....
I would agree midnight likely is as horde slanted as this one is alliance just due to location. I do think some of the war within stuff probably is going to get more horde focused. I think gazlowe is going to become more important and we likely wind up with more goblin themed stuff as this goes on.
@@charlespickering2726 Based on those datamined goblin raid item icons and a surprising prominence of goblins in Azj-Kahet, yeah, I think the next raid is going to be the goblin one since it's early in the expansion they don't wanna blow their load on the possible ethereal raid just yet
Well, consider Silvermoon will likely become a neutral city so.....
@@YazzPott yeah but will most likeyl focus it's story on horde characters who live in the city, or the windrunner family aka Sylvannas ( again ) But yeah Horde and Alliance has been ruined since we are not in war anymore.
@@Corfield81 I sure hope so! I need some Trolls in my life ASAP
what addon is it that gives the nice looking quest text boxes?
I didn’t think I’d mind an imbalance like this, but when I finally met Gazlowe it was a drink of cool pure water when I hadn’t even known I was dehydrated. I wanted to ditch the main story and help Gaz and the other Horse characters simply because they were some of the first real Horde interactions I’d had since Thrall dipped.
The dwarven storyline was great, but it was done by characters I have very little experience with. They’re people I know the history of, but not people I really care about. Sorta like your brother’s roommates sister’s boyfriend. You know the guy, and they seem decent enough but you’re not really friends? Heck the character I’ve interacted with the most in the past was Anduin, but those times were either fighting him or holding him prisoner.
I’m hoping the goblin patch will bring some much needed “FOR THE HORDE!” Energy I’ve been missing. I hope we get all of that and more in Midnight - but I worry they’ll be little dips while the rest and is Alliance. It’s not a deal breaker, but… it’s a niggling thing that makes it feel less like an expansion and experience for me.
Azj-Kahet felt like coming up for air. i'd be happy chilling in that zone the entire expac. i have so much for motivation to help the spiders because finally, after 3 zones, they aren't some variation of human. they felt like the Forsaken of old as far as their morals go and it was so fun. i feel like the Forsaken wouldn't even be allowed to be morally dubious ever again, sigh
This is especially annoying when I am a blood elf warlock main and I often am placed in the role of emotional support to heartbroken followers of the Light. Blood elves had to murder their own leader, the Horde had to stage a coup against their warchief twice, and get blamed for every threat the world had seen since Medivh, a human from Stormwind, opened the Dark Portal. But now that the boy-king has had a bad experience of mind control beside the Banshee that became a bitch because she too was mind controlled, and poked some weird afterlife entities for a convoluted plot by a mysterious mastermind of all evil, now we have to perk him up. Grow a pair, or join the Horde, mr. Anduin, getting blamed for everyone's problems will help you forget your own problem because sooner or later the humans will come banging down our door again.
What addon do you use to zoom in on the npc when reading quest text?
Meanwhile, the Alliance has had stolen (half by the Horde) and/or destroyed (half by the Horde):
1. Lordaeron
2. Stromgarde (half-assed fixed after 15 years)
3. Silvermoon
4. Dalaran
5. Gilneas (half-assed fixed after a decade)
6. Theramore
6.5 Dalaran, Again
7. Suramar
8. Teldrassil (and the entirety of Darkshore)
8.5 Dalaran, Again, Again.
And that doesn't even count all the rest of the Night Elven civilizations that have been taken and/or corrupted and/or blown up. If that's the kind of story bias you want, take it.
Yeah I feel like the horde has always been in the focus and fucked up everything, pandaria, WoD, BfA, it's like years and years of horde dominance so now we can have some ally dominance and the horde can be the background faction like the alliance was
Still beats having NO story
1. Lordaeron was "stolen" by the Scourge, and when some Scourge broke free and reclaimed their lands from when they were alive, the Alliance just wanted to murder them too so they went Horde.
2. Stromgarde was abandoned until Sylvanas came along in Cata and colonised it. It was the home to the same breed of bandits that swarmed Alterac, and that kingdom was ravaged by the Alliance itself.
3. Silvermoon was also destroyed by Arthas, like Lordaeron, and instead of helping Silvermoon out, the Alliance tried to genocide the blood elves with Garithos, then later sent no support or aid, whereas the Horde through the Forsaken did send help and resources.
4. Dalaran was destroyed by Archimonde, summoned by Kel'thuzad. Where does the Horde factor in? Then, what meager and symbolic Horde presence in the city was destroyed in Jaina's quest for revenge.
5. Gilneas was fucked over by Genn when he walled it off then invited the crazy wizard to summon the worgen to defend against the Scourge. Then the Cataclysm happened, then Sylvanas invaded. Where was the Alliance that they didn't help Gilneas before Cata? And then, the gilneans were only saved because the Night Elves took pity on them after they realised the worgen were sort of the Kaldorei's fault.
6. Theramore forces tried to destroy Durotar long before Garrosh. Thrall agreed to only kill as many aggressors as was necessary to get to Daelin, and kept to his word of leaving the humans alone after the threat of Kul Tiras was removed. Nevertheless, Theramore kept encroaching on Horde territory via Northwatch Hold, and it was also the base from which the attacks on Camp Taurajo and the occupation efforts on the Southern Barrens were launched. Ergo, it was a legitimate military target.
6.5 I don't know where you get the idea Dalaran was destroyed or stolen after Theramore but before Dalaran's destruction in TWW, but I guess you mean the sabotage operations of the theft of the Divine Bell. Jaina's response was disproportionate and, if anything, it was Jaina who breached Dalaran's neutrality by arresting or murdering all the blood elven members of the Kirin Tor.
7. Suramar was never beholden to the Alliance in the 10000 years it had resisted after the Great Sundering. They were helped by both the Horde and the Alliance in the end. However, after Thalyssra busted her ass to save her city from the Legion and from Elisande, then made the decision to let the Nightwell end, the Alliance's favourite drama queen Tyrande saw fit to pass harsh judgment on the Nightborne, while the Sin'dorei were not only supportive of the Nightborne but also welcomed them into Silvermoon before they ever decided to join the Horde. As was done to the Blood Elves, the Nightborne were pushed on the Horde's lap and the Horde took them in honorably, so who's to blame for that?
8. Teldrassil, Darkshore, given. We Hordies destroyed those.
Nevermind that, at every wrong turn that the Horde took, the Alliance stood ready to invade their lands and ravage their territories in response. If Orgrimmar, the Undercity and Muglore are not safe from the Alliance when war is out, why should the Alliance havens be any different? Silvermoon, ironically, got lucky because of its close proximity to the Plaguelands. And then again, only because the Argent Dawn was actually smart enough to look past faction divides in the name of staving off the Scourge advances for all those years, because if it depended on the Alliance goons the Horde would have no peace in their own territories in the Eastern Kingdoms.
6:53 Isn't Danath the heir to the throne of Stromgarde and therefore the Arathi Throne? I thought he was the last Arathi, or are those two not the same?
As a Forsaken fanboy what they did to Sylvanas made me quit WoW at the beginning of Shadowlands. They ruined one of my all time favourite characters in the Lore. As a consequence the forsaken have lost all their identity: I hate Calia Menethil, she (and the nonsensical light undead) has no place in the forsaken and the new council is a joke that doesn't make any sense. It made me loose all sympathy I had for Lilian Voss. I always thought that narratively, at a certain point, the forsaken should've been their own faction, because they always felt that way. I don't really see a way for the forsaken to go back to what they were supposed to be and all the new stuff is a major letdown.
Sylvanas was meaningless and boring since Wotlk, they should have found a way to get rid of her back then.
Wtf is even the question here? Metzen himself said TWW is mainly alliance-leaning. He also said that Midnight is the opposite and will be more focused on the Horde.
This video exists for nothing else than generating views.
Dont talk about midnight, I can only imagine Silvermoon being given to be a neutral city so alliance can access it too.
And I prefer the Harronir being crossfaction so blizzard will do a good customization job with them, cause I felt a great disappointment about how the shal'dorei were done. Not to mention horde dont even have truly access to suramar as an capital city. And gosh, since blizz gave basically all the new cosmetic options to void elves to not look like void elves, now the blood elves customizations are worst. I would prefer to dissolve the factions or the horde at this point and let it be only races and subraces travelling around the world as they wish. Horde has nothing left, honestly, devs never really knew how to write anything but alliance. Its a big mistake they sell this game as a two faction gameplay, in truth there is only one. Horde RP is more dead than ever too.
this is nonsense, Silvermoon will only be neutral due to the peace, it's still a HORDE hub.
@@UltimateGamerCC But the fact that the Alliance gets access to a Horde hub and there is no counterpart (maybe Horde getting access to the new Draenei city that will be built?), then that is still a bias to the Alliance.
@@williamp.6294 that's a dumb take, that's like saying Dalaran was biased. and are the Horde being denied access to Dornagal? no, they're not. they're here to help too, but many among the Horde are still on the Dragon Isles and dont even know that Dalaran was taken down. Jaina and Thrall obviously went right to Org and SW respectively, it's not like they left to get everyone from both factions. besides, we're only 1/3 of the way through TWW, there's still PLENTY of time to shift the so-called bias.
To be fair, Silvermoon is literally divided in two since 2006 xD
What is the conversation screen altering addon that T&E use?
Some more good old racism from tyrande, driving the root trolls away from the alliance and into the horde, oughta fix this. Doubt theyll do that one again tho.
ugh, let's not be Racist FFS. that was already shameful behavior that led the Nightfallen to the Horde, that's lazy shit writing. and if you hadnt heard the news from under that rock you're cozy under, Danuser is GONE.
@@UltimateGamerCC Nightborne betrayed night elves in the War of the Ancients, Horde is welcome to them. Also, Tyrande brought up reasonable concerns that they couldn't accept; instead they got swept over by Liadrin's balant lies about how high/blood elves "protected the world while night elves slept". Only weak people accept easy lies over hard truths.
@@UltimateGamerCC Danuser wasn't in lead of the story until well after bfa was released. The nightborne joining the Horde isn't on him.
@@istnuk1994 i can see you're on a full copium tank there... "Da Snoozer" totally wrote that ish, lead or not. either way TWW's Story has already been milestones above Dragonflight from the moment he left.
@@catxborsuq1 dunno how TF you think they "Betrayed" the Nelfs in the war, from what i saw they turtled to protect themselves because they didnt see them beating the Legion. also that was like 10,000 years ago! they sure were there to help though, werent they? shut up, Danuser.
Alright gotta ask: what's the name of this quest text add on they used in the video? :)
funnily enough, as a horde-player by heart i'm not truly mad that we have no true horde character (thrall is a joke at this point, lets be real) at the center stage right now. what bothers me is that all the alliance characters get mainly positive storylines and the horde got the villain arc twice. i really liked the fact that tyralion got to a position of power within the alliance but they missed the opportunity to have him go full zaelot, leading the alliance into a crusade for the light. the horde isnt all bad but everytime blizz wants to do a story of misused leadership they go "aaaah, that's a horde story right there, no doubt!" and on the other hand they want to do morally grey stories.. yeah no, that's as black and white as it gets. horde bad, alliance good. so far so boring.
The problem is how the writers want to let the Horde be grimdark badass and savage and beating the alliance up but t hen have to resolve the plotline to re-establish peace.-
Anyone knows What is the quest text mod being used in the video?
Dialogue UI
Thanks for this video, this topic has vexxed me for a couple of weeks now, and you've touched on everything I was wondering about! Whilst leveling, I really thought Horde players must be having their own version of the Campaign, because I couldn't believe how much everything was centered around the Alliance. (Even Thrall is wearing Alliance blue now? Wtf?) I agree with you about the reasoning behind the focus on the Bronzebeards, Alleria and Anduin, but couldn't Blizz at least have come up with some Horde counterparts to even things out? That said - and please, I don't mean this as an insult of any kind - do the Horde actually have any noteworthy characters left? I really only know Thrall and Baine, and from what I've seen they're about as useless as Malfurion is to the Alliance. As for this Overlord Geya'rah, who is apparently considered a worthy counterpart to Turalyon... wasn't she in cahoots with Sylvanas until the banshee betrayed the Horde and then she quickly changed her allegiance? Must be nice to be represented by such a turncoat... Come on Blizzard, let's get some interesting characters on the Horde side again, this is getting ridiculous! 😁 (Edited for typos)
We do not have any noteworthy characters left, no.
We have our Bloodelf leader guy Lordemar?(can't even remember his name because he shows up 3 times during important story development). We have Cairn, who doesn't leave the longhouse unless Blizzard needs to fill space in a cutscene or have a 2 part questline. We have the Forsaken council, who are devided amongst themselves because only Lilian likes Calia (Everyone else hates her guts, as does every forsaken player i think) and only show up for a 2-3 part questline. We also have Orgrimmar Guard, who's been with us since vanilla (very loyal).
Oh, and Thrall ofcourse. The family man and Jaina's stepstool.
The rest are kinda there sometimes, like the nightborne lady, the gold troll princess lady and Gazlowe.
All half baked shitheads.
@@dutchielander2478 It is as I thought then, sorry to hear it. I do appreciate Orgrimmar Guard though, long may he live!
horde is dealing with the same thing the avengers are. no ironman, no cap, no black widow. end of an era
Horde main for well over a decade here. This conversation about which side gets more screentime is childish. I'm happy that both sides aren't being forced to fight each other for no good reason again. The WoW universe has the potential to be so much more than two factions constantly hating each other. Which faction currently has more voice lines is largely meaningless in the grand scheme of the story.
This is where I'm at. The story has moved away from the faction conflict, so I'm really happy they choose to focus on the characters that have the most thematic and emotional resonance with whatever plot is going on, regardless of what faction those characters might have the strongest affinity with. I can't see them telling the story of WW without the dwarves, without Anduin, and without Alleria. At least not without majorly rewriting those stories and probably chunks of the world building too.
I agree to the sentiment on the endless faction war. However, I cannot stress enough that Blizzard is incapable of writing the Horde if the context is not "Horde does evil". Just look at the tauren. They barely register anymore, and it's been like that far longer than Garrosh. Blizzard lacks the capability to outgrow the "Horde bad" mentality they started the franchise with to the point when, after we finally purge all specks of evil mofos from our ranks, that simply means our own characters get sidelined and get no development at all
Tali, your new camera angle and what you're doing with it is hella cool. Keep it up my dude
Thrall is literally wearing blue and gold armor…….. like he is dressed as an alliance cheerleader. For the little time we see him.
Great expansion so far but it’s def alliance focused, don’t forget though it’s 1 of 3 expansions packaged together, so hopefully horde gets their time and a warchief.
That's Thralls old fit though and I dig it.
It's literally Doomhammer's armor. This is the same armor Thrall wore in vanilla.
There are so many Alliance that they should change the name to "The Soy Within"
@@Nebuli2 I remember it being black and gold on Shadowlands, when they reworked his old model. I barely remember Thrall in TWW anymore though, didn't notice if it changed hues
i remember i logged out to cheak if my character is hord or aliance while playing the main story
the people in the comments who are calling the Horde the evil faction or edgelords genuinely make me wonder if they're aren't 15 (mentally). anyway, i really appreciate the video! as a Hordie, i'd love some more Horde rep among the "main characters" we have to work alongside with or take orders from. unfortunately, i feel like gone are the days of the two factions having different storylines to give an incentive for people to try both factions for the story. that was my favorite part, now everything is homogenized and we're defaulted to the Alliance storyline
Literally, in the case of Siege of Boralus in Mythic+.
@@bearcat1868 I know you're mostly memeing, butT they had to pick one. It's not unreasonable that they go with the Alliance perspective when the dungeon is fighting back an invasion of the Alliance capital of the expansion.
@OakenTome Eh, yes and no. It is reasonable that they had to pick one perspective to establish key timings/routes etc., but there is still a definite disparity in familiarity for Alliance players (who only have to learn the mechanics changes for M+) vs. Horde players having to learn all that plus a new topsy-turvy version of a dungeon where any experience they had with the place from BFA actively works against them. My M+ team definitely isn't enjoying Bizzaro-Land, even understanding why it's happened.
The Horde *is* evil. You need to stop coping.
The reason why the Horde doesn't exist in the story anymore is because their faction is inherently built on a self destructive and evil identity, after being beaten back as the bad guys multiple times, they only exist a vestigial remnant to allow people to still pick them on the character select screen. Otherwise, they'd be completely gone, like the scarlets or the scourge.
Evil before WC1 when they genocided the Draenei The Horde has been evil since invading in WC1 and WC2 and attempting to genocide everything they saw. Evil in WC3 when they attacked the Night Elves for no reason, then drank demon blood when they were losing. Evil in WoW when they invited the Forsaken to join. Evil in Wrath for not expelling the forsaken after Wrathgate. Evil cata for genociding the gilneans. Evil in cata for bombing druids. Evil for continuing to invade night elven lands unjustifiably. Evil for bombing theramore. Evil for using chemical weapons on southshore. Evil in MOP for everything they did to Pandaria, and for many of them following Garrosh. Evil in WOD by demonstrating that an uncorrupted orc population would still try to genocide the Draenei. In Legion, Evil for letting Sylvanas the war criminal be warchief, after Vol'jin coronated her on recommendation of death loa that Vol'jin sold himself to retake the echo isles. Evil for following Sylvanas in genociding the night elves AGAIN and obviously the burning of Teldrassil.
If you lived in a world where the Horde existed, you'd immediately recognize them as an unstable and evil faction.
Even "honorable" members of the Horde, like Saurfang, personally helped hunt down humans in WC1. Saurfang's biggest concern when the Horde genocided the Night Elves wasn't that they were genociding the Night Elves, because he was actively organizing the genocide. It was that Sylvanas put the Horde in danger, by being too efficient with it. Which he should have known, because this is the person who plagued Gilneas- it was an entirely foreseeable action that she would destroy Teldrassil.
@@Soraptor The Horde of today is as evil as the Alliance of today. The leaders of today's horde are none of the leaders of the Old Horde. The only reason the orcs were corrupted in the first place was because the draenei brought their fight to a world that wasn't theirs. But I guess you don't remember that part, right? It's convenient to forget it. Then we have genuinely Alliance mistakes. Like with Aegwynn, who thought so highly of herself as to face Sargeras alone, only to become the vessel to the dismantling of the Council of Tirisfal, the only organisation in Azeroth actively working to protect the world from a second demonic invasion, while at the same time allowing for the vessels of the Legion's wrath to enter the world through Medivh and the Old Horde. Then, after the Horde was defeated by the skin of our teeth in the Second War, the Alliance fucks it up again by letting Kel'thuzad, a known practitioner of corrupt magic, to be simply banished instead of killed off. He goes on to get to the Lich King, and create the Cult of the Damned under the Alliance's very nose. Meanwhile, humans were too busy persecuting orcs that had lost all ties to their once demonic masters, and begin rebuilding their society rooted in their old traditions instead of the old. So, when the Cult begins spreading the plague across Lordaeron, even though the Kirin Tor tried to warn Lordaeron, they were too busy hunting orc leftovers to notice until it was too late. Then we have the greatest alliance fuck up, when Arthas goes on his revenge trip and ends up becoming the harbinger of Lordaeron's destruction. So the Alliance has their hands just as filthy as the Horde when it comes to the problems Azeroth faces. Hope that helped enlighten your intellectual thicket
I'm playing a new nightborn priest as my main and I forgot I was in the horde until I played with my guild and I couldn't use any alts because they were all alliance(timewalking)... For the elves?
As a Horde main since the vanilla days I don't really have a problem with WW Alliance bias. I think the real problem is - as you pointed out - Horde identity has been too damaged by the leadership *ahem* problems. Thrall really messed up in that regard.
I just hope they use Midnight to fix that rather than keep going on the path of mostly erasing Horde identity and reason to exist as a faction, as uniting the elven tribes sounds like something that makes a lot of sense, but may end up being detrimental to that as well. Personally I've never really understood the Night Elves being part of the alliance, so elves as a separate faction could be an interesting choice. And I always thought they were clearly setting the Forsaken up to be a separate factions - maybe with all the work they've been doing on erasing faction boundaries in gameplay (which I welcome) it would make sense to either do away with, or take the complete opposite direction and finally open up room for more granular factions.
Hello from Germany. I‘m watching one of your videos for the first time and I really like it. The German WoW TH-camrs don‘t dare to talk about mistakes and bad decisions in WoW. It‘s really refreshing to hear a pro address these issues! Best regards
Alleria's growing presence in Blizzard's storytelling is one of the majour indicators that every aspect of Horde representation is being shafted. Silvermoon was supposed to be the main broken linkbetween Horde and Alliance, because they were 90% of the 10% surviving population of Quel'thalas after Arthas, and the Alliance gave them multiple reasons, from Garithos all the way to the Purge of Dalaran and even the Legion intro and events, not to trust their old Allies. Being the most poignant broken link with the Alliance, the blood elves would make perfect foils for all the weight the Alliance is gaining with the Arathi and the Earthen. If there is to be an elven connection between the Arathi and ancient Quel'thalas, the Silvermoon faction should be the one to front that story link, as they are the custodians of the Sunwell and the Thalassian traditions, the High elves and void elves being very small minorities.
Lilian Voss was another majour potential foil to Alliance pull with the Forsaken. After all, since their very existance the Forsaken were treated by the Alliance as abominations to be exterminated, and the Scarlet Crusade and the Cult of the Dammed, both manifestations of Alliance failures, also hunted them mercilessly. Voss might have no loyalty for Sylvanas, but she would have loyalty for the Forsaken, especially after the Fourth War. Voss letting Calia sway the undead towards the Alliance would be a betrayal not only of the Horde, but also of the Forsaken's closest ally, Silvermoon. But instead of using those opportunities to strengthen the identity of both factions, Undercity and Silvermoon, Blizzard chose to replace the Blood elves with Alliance faces, and make Voss a simp subservient to the Alliance and its claims to the territories lost to the Scourge. All this at a time when the Forsaken and Quel'thalas finally free themselves from the threat of the Scourge for good.
Another annoying tendency Blizzard has is to underestimate and undermine the traditional New Horde races, except for the orcs. Blizzard killed Vol'jin and left the Darkspear completely leaderless for the length of two entire expansions, while the tauren were made so peaceful as to become meaningless plotwise. Plus, the fact Blizzard chose to let druidism take so large a space in tauren society with WoW's launch, and with the Night elves being Cenarius' favourites (and druids being all about the Cenarion Circle), that almost make the tauren subservient and second to the Kaldorei too.
All in all, it seems rather clear that the Hordenhas often been less of a playable faction with genuine story and progression, than just a foil for the Alliance of humans to shine brighter
Wait a minute, both the Cult of the Damned and the Scarlet Crusade, and I would add Garithos are not failures of the (WoW) Alliance, but rather of the Kingdom of Lordaeron, the Forsaken are claiming to be successors of.
So I would consider those facts as part of a civil war over the remnants of Lordaeron.
The Alliance of Lordaeron was broken after (and partially during) the 2nd war.
The Blood elves more recently have been let down by Sylvanas and the Horde. They were clore to rejoinjng the Alliance before the Divine Bell facts.
I think what's happening is that the original vision of the horde was that they are the more brutal side and it allowed players to decide if they wanted more of a "good" character or "bad" character.
However this was at a time where the playerbase was large and the game content itself was small so it worked out, especially for PvP parts. However it is getting to a point where the playerbase has less time to spend on more content and the only way to mend that is by having the factions "come together" to complete content.
However this made it where they had to unalive a few of the problem children that would stop this vision and now a good chunk of OG horde characters are gone and we are left with the more morally good passive characters that lack any depth and major conflict.
Its like they portray the horde to be so far gone that they dont know what to do with them except permanently remove them, instead of being able to come up with a good story about how they were able to compromise on things.
Sylvanas had the BEST "For the Horde!" moment hands down.
It's completely ruined by the fact that none of it was genuine. She was handled so badly that anything to do with her is tainted
Beginning of BFA Sylvanas, banshee badass queen, was too too too cool to last. And yeah the fact that her character in that time was just paving the way for shadowlands kinda blows
She also had the BEST "The Horde is NOTHING!!!" moment hands down.
Great video! Thank you! I felt this way too as I played through. I understood the choices, but DF had a good mix of Horde and Alli back stories.
I think we are forgetting the story of WOW is so old. It was written in a different time and the game was written around xenophobia. They wrote the horde to be evil. You could play as the heroes against an invasion or as the bad guys making sure they won.
The world has changed and the story of WOW changed too, but the origins of the game built in tradition of the horde being bad. It’s obvious they are having a hard time managing the original style of the horde with the idea they could be the good guys.
Your analysis is spot on. As an Alliance player its funny seeing this issue come full circle. It use to be Alliance story that got the short end of the stick.
I want to show the stark difference at 15:14 between Alliance doing this quest and Horde doing it. Geya'rah called you a lackey. Meanwhile, if you do this on a Horde character, Turalyon calls you a savage. It felt very icky, with a racist bend to it.
The Mag'har intro quest to get them as an allied race showed the creepy religious zealotry of the lightforged. Xe'ra also showed it when she tried to force Illidan to become Lightforged. I hope Blizzard remembers that and we get to bash Turalyon's skull in to close off an expansion on a high note.
Just said it on another comment: I hope Turalyon stages a coup against Anduin and turns the whole might of Stormwind against the Horde and Silvermoon. Better yet, have that play right into Xally's hand, and force Alleria to choose between her hubby and total universal oblivion, like Locus-walker keeps foreshadowing
What I would find very interesting would be if an Alliance character switched sides. Maybe the Alliance left him behind and he's desperate and flees to Orgrimmar. That could lead to a lot of tension, show the darker side of the Alliance and spice things up a lot.
I want Turalyon to stage a coup against Anduin and turn the Lightforged and the whole of Stormwind against the Horde. Let them try to take over Silvermoon, I've been aching to push his face to the ground since he first escaped my grasp on that Stromgarde warfront.
Eh, honestly, this is a storm in a teacup. Seriously, the Horde spent like Vanilla through to Legion at least, probably more, as the much more dynamic and interesting faction (I mean, who had the better warcry? Who had the better memes?), that was proactive, whereas the Alliance was often very passive and reactive, and while the Horde was shown as being expansive and growing (invading territory, growing, building new stuff, etc.) the Alliance was often shown as being on the brink of collapsing several times because it was so decentralized. The Night Elves have been getting absolutely shafted by the Horde since vanilla (remember, Ashenvale was their home turf, but it's been contested in WoW since the beginning, for no particular reason other than that the orcs like lumber).
And while the Horde was firmly centered around the Warchief as its overall leader, the Alliance had an awkward fit with no clear overall leader except a kind of implicit understanding that Varian Wrynn was in charge because... uh, humans, I guess? Ironically, because Night Elves, and Dwarves were allowed to be developed so well, I guess that means that the Alliance was better off because you couldn't just kill off one leader and then there weren't that many other interesting characters to play with.
Hell, even after Legion, they justified giving the horde ALL the nightborne because of the excuse that Tyrande had been mean to them. They had to invent the "we have high elves at home"-void elves as a kind of runner-up prize for the Alliance, and the patently snore-worthy Lightforged draenei (seriously, how underwhelming is that as an allied race? GIVE US BROKEN, BLIZZ! Ah, but they'll probably end up with the Horde too, lol.)
For so many years, the accusation was that Blizz had a Horde bias (despite them naming themselves after Azeroth's equivalent of the fucking Axis! Seriously, I cannot understate how funny that is in retrospect, and how many of the Orcs' upper echelons are DEFINITELY war criminals and ethnic cleansers from Draenor with very little comeuppance), so a little switcharoo I think we can live with.
You're basically whining that the Horde isn't the evil faction anymore. But that's what it was supposed to be since before Warcraft 3, except the writers chose to ignore it completely when writing WoW because this kids' mentality that the Horde cannot have more dimensions than that (fun fact, it's always been like that). Also, the only genocidal leaders werw Sylvanas, who was punished, and Garrosh, who was killed by Thrall himself right before he exiled himself for his blunder with the Horde and Garrosh
@@moscanaveia I don't see where you're getting me pining for them being evil, I think Thrall's New Horde's arc was very satisfying.
However, most of the holdover orcish leadership (including Saurfang) in the New Horde were veterans from the Second and First Wars, as well as the Horde's takeover of Draneor - and those campaigns WERE campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide. That's just fact, it's not debatable. I like the orcs plenty, and I love Durotar and the fantasy of them building up their own new country, but this is how Blizzard wrote their story, lol.
@@nakenmil The Old Horde died out in battle. The survivors were rounded up like cattle, and had to fight for their freedom ever since. The orcs' corruption was ultimately Kil'jaeden's work, and the Horde did not create Kil'jaeden (he's much closer to Velen, in fact). Even so, they fought against Mannoroth at great peril (and if you say it was only Grom who did, there's an entire mission where the Horde has to fight the fel-corrupted warsong clan, spill their own blood because it was the right thing to do). You claim it is the orcs' fault that the first attempt at genocide on Draenor happened. But the orcs were literally tricked then corrupted by Kil'jaeden. Which part of demon blood corrupts the ones who drink it is difficult to understand? And even with that, the orcs recovered their agency and revolted against both the Shadow Council and the demon lord who corrupted them.
If that wasn't enough, Thrall chose the empty desert as a home for his people, had to scrape for resources. His invasion of Ashenvale was not for conquest, but for resources. Only Garrosh made the Horde presence on Ashenvale a point of conquest. So Saurfang, Eitrigg and Drek'thar have earned their place as legends and heroes. Hell, Eitrigg was even defended by Tirion at the cost of his own station as lord of Hearthglen! And most of the orc leadership that came afterwards is too young to have participated in the Second War anyway, let alone be there in the original formation of the Horde.
I'm very sure that chris metzen said that this patch was gonna focus mostly on alliance stories and the next big patch. Was gonna focus more on Horde, and I think the last patch was gonna be finishing off all the stories
Ooohh don’t worry, We’ll be in the undermine here soooon enough. Goblins can get back to carrying the Horde like they have been since Thrall sent the soul of the horde to Torghast with Garrosh.
Unrelated to the whole video, can someone tell me what addon that is for the quest dialogue box UI?
Mists of pandaria = all about the horde
Warlords of Draenor = only about orcs and the horde
Legion = only about illidan
Battle for azeroth = majorly about the horde
Shadowlands = idk didnt play
Dragonflight = dragons and alliance
TWW = ally so far
One more ally only expac and its equal
The fact you're leaving out is in most of those Horde focused expansions the Horde were focused on because they were the villains. So for true parity we need an expansion where a faction of the Alliance goes rogue and we all need to band together to put them down. It would be a nice change of pace.
@@Thingswithstuff101 yes it would still be alliance focues then, just like having horde villains is a focus on the horde and their culture. I wouldnt mind if turalion goes full light facist
@@Thingswithstuff101 And when an alliance windbag says "boohoo Horde focus" they always get their characters and their stories furthered while the Horde makes yet another act of aggression.
Don't play bad faction then
What's the quest addon Tali is using?