Balance of power (8.1. spoilers)

Lore Story
101

Yes and there is a reason why people think the Blood Elves joining the Horde is stupid and incredibly forced.

Amani would never join the Horde because of the Blood Elves with the fact that the Horde turned their backs on them to allow said Blood Elves to join. 2.3 (I think) and 4.1 has you going in there as the Horde and killing them. If anything there is more chance of them joining the Alliance than the Horde.

Compare the 2, one was burned down never to be used again, one was self inflicted and only plagued. It can be used again.

Eledy/A Good War.

It isn’t as simple as that. Comparing the WoT to the Battle of Lordaeron is completely different. At least from the game perspective one comes off a lot worse than the other, and the Night Elves were portrayed as bumbling idiots compared to the Forsaken and the rest of the Horde.

Add the short novellas into it and it gets so much worse considering how bad they made the Night Elves and a lesser extent the Alliance look in said event. Night Elves getting outflank in their lands? Some secret smuggler route from Darkshore to Felwood? Dying to bloody crabs etc…

The Forsaken didn’t lose a lot of its population, The Night Elves did, The Forsaken didn’t lose the land itself permanently, the Night Elves did, Sylvanas got to control the outcome of the SoL, The Night Elves didn’t, The Horde portrayed in the WoT was much better than how the Night Elves were. But you seem to ignore this when discussing it.

Nothing will come even to this unless one of your races gets genocided like this in one of the worst events from both a lore/story perspective. And no them Desert Vermin doesn’t count.

Erm no, 8.0 has the War Effort which makes the Alliance looks like a dominating force while the Horde struggles to hold on everywhere. Which leads on to the question how if we are this powerful did the Horde ever think they were able to win in the first place. And how the Night Elves lost in such a crushing way. While I am sort of glad there is something to tell us that there is a war waging over the world it feels cheap for it to happen in a mission table, furthermore if our moment of victory and pride comes from said table then it is damn right pathetic.

Well the entire war is stupid to begin with, if your faction was this weak then why the hell did Sylvanas think (even with Azerite) that she could possibly win. But regardless you get more than just the fleet, you get Loa to help you out. You get new allies from the continent (admittedly they are pretty much been drained).

I am not the person to think that Blizzard are actively bias to one said. But the Horde so far has received far more treatment from the writing then the Alliance has. The fact that the entire world isn’t against you currently should show this. At how the Alliance was dumbed down for you to somehow go toe to toe with us. At how we have forced conflict from Tyrande and Anduin (going against what they said in Elegy) and now pulling out forced genocide on the desert rats just to try and make the Alliance look more dark for no reason.

The best part of this is that the war will end, there will most likely be 2 factions standing and everything that you have done will once again be swept under the rug. In 4 years your faction has tried to commit a genocidal war to wipe out the Alliance, if you faction comes out of this without being destroyed, capitulated or crippled to the point of no repair then

4 Likes
102

Dazar’alor doesn’t burn. It gets besieged, Rastaman dies, then the Alliance is chased away. With, I believe, yet another Alliance racial leader dead and Jaina wounded.

… I kinda did. I don’t mind that he dies, because let’s face it he’s been circling the drain pretty hard since the start of BfA (lost his Loa, died-sorta, had to pledge his entire family line to ol’ Bwonsamdi just to stick around long enough to win back Dazar’alor) so it makes narrative sense, but he was a nice change of pace from the frowny “srs bzns” hypercompetent kings we see everywhere else (Stormwind). He reminded me of Louie from The Jungle Book. I’ll miss him :frowning:

1 Like
103

The point is mute yes, but either way my point wasn’t that an older character can trust be powerful just because she hasn’t had development previously.

My point was that it makes sense to us to see Jaina being powerful (not as powerful as She is though)

Purely because we have seen her develop so much and seen her grow in power and can see why she is powerful, so it makes sense to us HOW she gained that amount of power as we see why.

Whereas with Talanji we are just shown she is powerful. That’s it. Even worse considering how young she apparently is

Edit - but like I say, all of this Way too OP representation is purely because of the “rule of cool” philosophy

104

That’s nitpicking. It gets besieged, and conquered. The Zandalari are forced to take it all back, and force their enemies out, after they have already raided their treasury, destroyed their docks and killed their king. For all intents and purposes, the city was ravaged top to bottom. And suffered even more with the fights that raged all over it during the raid.

105

Well most of her powers is coming from Loa. The only thing that she was able to cast on her own is that protection shield which is imo nothing game braking but rather expected from Loa High priest.

As for her age I think it would make more sense if she was around Vol’Jin’s age so she could hear that Darkspears assisted in downing Hakkar and watch them grow from afar.

Also her model shows her to look older than 20’ties.

1 Like
106

I was going to make the point that her powers come from the loa. But isn’t that true for a lot of trolls? Yet they couldn’t all pull off the stuff she has done.

107

The Horde didn’t start of weaker. It was the narrative itself that drove it head first into the ground with some weird random moves.

108

Numerically speaking, The Horde is weaker in this war. That can not be disputed.

4 Likes
109

Yes they did, the entire point of the war was that Azerite could give the Horde the advantage they need to beat the Alliance. You wouldn’t be losing this hard if we were even.

3 Likes
110

Strength speaking, both sides were at a stalemate both Anduin and Saurfang acknowledge prior to the War of Thorns.

111

They only acknowledge that no faction can have a victory worth having. The winner will come to a burned home either way.

5 Likes
112

That’s still balance.

Saurfangs quote leaves it abundantly clear:
There had been a stalemate, of sorts, between the Alliance and the Horde for years. Both sides were strong and had forces placed all around the world. No action could be taken without suffering a swift reprisal. That was why Varian Wrynn had decided not to crush the Horde after the Siege of Orgrimmar—he knew how many lives it would have cost his people to see it through. And, in hindsight, it would have meant the death of Azeroth, for it had taken the full strength of both the Horde and the Alliance to ensure the world’s survival.

But the Broken Shore had altered the balance, hadn’t it? The disastrous counterstrike against the Legion had destroyed a significant portion of both factions’ fleets, and the months of warfare that followed only made the problem worse. The Horde and the Alliance still had strong positions on every continent, but they now lacked the means to reinforce them or maneuver their troops to another front.

The only wild card left was the fleet. Something both sides suffered from.

113

Lets just clarify here, is this thread about Faction imbalance, or is it a thinly disguised complaint about what happened to the Night Elves? Its getting hard to tell at times…

4 Likes
114

Depends what you treat as balance. You basically linked a claim which shows that the Alliance could have defeated the Horde post siege of Orgrimmar. The fact that the Alliance did not do so because of the great loses that would entail is not a proof of Horde strength.

In the same book that you quote, Saurfang also says that:

It would take a thousand battles—no, a thousand victories to even conceive of a total Horde triumph over the Alliance. The cost would be devastating.

While after Teldrassil being burned, after a huge Horde victory, Sylvanas says:

“This was your battle. Your strategy. And your failure. Darnassus
was never the prize. It was a wedge that would split the Alliance apart. It was the weapon that would destroy hope. And you, my master strategist, gave that up to spare an enemy you defeated. I have taken
it back. When they come for us, they will do so in pain, not in glory. That may be our only chance at victory now.”

4 Likes
115

Only if your definition of “burned” is something other than “destroyed by heat and/ or fire”. Dazar’alor isn’t destroyed, that’s not contentious to say.

“Ransacked” and “burned” are two entirely different things, though. The Zandalari lose their treasuries, their king, many soldiers and civilians, but not the city itself nor the lands it commands.

Fact still is, the Zandalari (and by extension, the Horde) lose precisely zero real estate. Moreover, it’s been established that Kul Tiras has an exceptionally powerful navy, and the opening act of the invasion sees the Alliance take out the Golden Fleet at anchor. The invasion of Dazar’alor makes sense in that context - it’s a naval landing against a city with a huge open coastline and no means to prevent a powerful navy reaching said coastline to deposit an invasion force.

Compare and contrast Darnassus, which sees the Horde roll 600 Demolishers unopposed through ancestral Night Elf lands while Night Elf druids are massacred by crabs, before torching a tree that, rather than being protected by magic to prevent it burning, is in fact just a regular old tree that burns.

These aren’t equivalent losses. Moreover, the Invasion of Zandalar is presented in a way that makes sense in universe, rather than being thrown at players like a rock for the sake of separating the continents into a Horde one and an Alliance one.

EDIT: As for Rastakhan, even if we ignore the fact he’s been on borrow time for the whole expansion, Talanji is, like, right there. You lose an incompetent if charismatic king and gain a hypercompetent Disney Princess in his stead.

3 Likes
116

Just so happens that when it comes to a discussion about faction imbalance the treatment of night elves especially in relation to the war of Thorns is particularly relevant.

3 Likes
117

I’m just responding to what you have put. the WoT doesn’t compare to the SoL or SoA and how it was handled. It will never be even unless such an event happens to you. While Night Elven whining is irritating don’t get me wrong it still valid and key to discussing this.

You do know that a stalemate doesn’t mean even right?

It changed the dynamic of the war. I can argue that this actually helps the Alliance more than the Horde in most ways.

3 Likes
118

Not really. The Alliance is winning. That is one factor.
The Fact that one race amongst the Alliance has taken an almighty kicking is another.
You can’t claim Horde Bias, when the Alliance is winning, just because your favourite race took a kicking, is my point, because then the original point is lost, and this just goes back to being yet another thread about how beastly Blizzard are to Night Elves.

So which is it, a complaint about Faction Bias, or another complaint about Blizzard hating Night Elves?

2 Likes
119

Yeah it is. But only a few people cry about it. The same people…

120

The Alliance won’t be winning for much longer, as I said earlier Sylvanas will do some messed up sh*t and screw us over again bad, yet She will still survive.

And again, it’s not that teldrassil/WoT happened, it’s HOW it happened and how it was handled. SoL and BfDA isn’t equal in my personal opinion, but that’s fine.

Yes, night elves are my favourite race but as I said I’d be more than fine with losing northern kalimdor if it made sense and currently, for the Nught elves to lose in Darkshore, it does not make sense.

But again, it was only brought into the discussion because it’s fitting.

Would you prefer to talk about the many that other instances of horde bias instead?