Chaotic lore where to place it ?

Lore Story
1

Hello Everyone.

I have been thinking in the late discussions, one of them made me think:

One thing I noticed in all discussions is everyone is forgetting the other part of the player base.
Who also reads lore.

They are not big enough to fill a entire faction, but big enough to make a impact.
The chaotic community.

If we think from the two factions:
Alliance and Horde, which one is the best suited for this community ?
I think it’s the Horde, since there’s no space for chaos in the Alliance lore or community.
We can see how lawful the Void Elves have become under Alliance leadership and we are talking about void users.

If we look back to vanilla from the four factions that came from Warcraft 3:

  • Humans.
  • Orcs.
  • Night Elves.
  • Undead.

The Forsaken (Undead faction related) lead by Sylvanas comes as the most chaotic race and was placed with Thrall’s Horde (Orc faction) even though, their ideals were completely opposite.
We can see how different was Thrall, Vol’Jin leadership when compared to Sylvanas on BfA.

Orcs and Undead don’t match.

Any doubts we can see how Garrosh, considered by some a true Orc, treated Sylvanas with disdain, to say the least.

That’s the reason I accepted the Horde was different from the Alliance.
Monstrous race with opposite values.
Which can be translated in to: someone has to put up with chaotic players …

That changed over the years.

During Cataclysm, Garrosh reign has brought a old type of chaos related to the Old Horde.
Chaotic Orcs.
Hatred for the Alliance and the desire to wage war on them, it was basically a return to the Horde roots.
A step back, when compared to what Thrall wanted to build.

If we look at the type of lore this players enjoy we can see three types:

  • Sylvanas and the Forsaken.
  • Garrosh and his Kor’Kron.
  • Faction War.

I believe players that like war, will side with Garrosh or Sylvanas.
Players that like Garrosh will not like Sylvanas and vice versa.

So my question to the story forum community is:

Where would you place a community that doesn’t represent 50% of the player base, but it’s large enough to not be ignored (20% perhaps), in the lore ?

Thanks for your attention.
Cheers.

1 Like
2

Unrelated answer to the thread, but I would place WOW’s lore in a dumpster, before setting it on fire.

6 Likes
3

I dunno I feel that devs should’ve either:

  1. Kill Sylvanas at the end of WotLK and create a new figure that would be far more level headed while at the same time being one with the rest of the Forsaken.

  2. Keep Vol’Jin and use Varian’s death from Legion to introduce more pro-active Alliance. They don’t really need any more reasons to fight the Horde. And yet through half of this expansion they were being given reason after reason to show how evil and irredeemable Horde is while I believe their previous experience was enough to spark proper agressiveness, and Varian’s death was perfect excuse for that. Vol’Jin didn’t have any friends on Alliance to hold him back unlike Thrall or Baine, but he wouldn’t go total bananas as Sylvanas. But as I wrote above it would require for the team to write Alliance in shady/ agressive way. And apparently we cannot have that.

  3. Never make the Forsaken as playable faction. Just let people play Scourge. Forsaken were always their “diet” version. Scourge offers various rank of races and big names. But here is a massive flaw of this concept - that would require to create the third faction, and it’s hard to imagine scourge trying to save the world by participating in raids.

  1. Make that both factions have “inner evil subfaction” inside. Forsaken were that for years, but I believe Alliance should’ve have one as well. Be it Scarlet Crusade or something else. It would balance the scales knowing that both factions can do their best and their worst.

So I believe there would be a way to make this game more “moraly balanced” but it would require for writers to actually pull it off. But these kinds of threads are quite discouraging, some Alliance players are perfectly fine with it’s pristine image :

2 Likes
4

Every player deserves to have the fantasy that was sold to him, fulfilled to some degree in one way or another.

Forcing what other players want on the rest, regardless if they are the majority or not, should be something that never happened.

If the story created warmonger styles and races, and Blizzard felt like pumping hype for them, to the point they pushed players to like them and made them playable, those same people deserve to feel like they count and have an enjoyable experience.

There shouldn’t be the “correct” and the “incorrect” story choices.

A Forsaken/Warmonger Orc player has as much rights to have a fulfilling story, as the Human/Good/Pacifist one.
The story should never punish the former while rewarding the latter. They have the same rights to have an enjoyable experience.

3 Likes
5

I happened to be thinking about this earlier.
There is no way to satisfy everybody. I feel wow has run its course. We have defeated all the big threats and the time has come to wrap up the story.

Thrall finally admits his Horde was a failure. In theory, all these small groups forming a big group to help each other out sounded good, but in practice the races simply differ too much to form a real alliance.
The Horde disbands.
This is hard for me since I main Forsaken, but really Forsaken are done. They have no real point in existing and after everything that happened, will never be welcomed in society. I think it would be best if they all get their true death and seize to exist.
What happens to Sylvanas I’ll leave to other speculators.
Tauren live in peace in Mulgore still, maybe night elves can move there and grow a new tree, the land looks fine enough. They can practice druidism together and find ways to restore Azeroth.
Goblins will keep to themselves trying to make a buck or a million, not really bothering anyone beyond annoying marketing strategies.
Trolls live on peacefully in their already established areas.

The Alliance undergoes changes as well.
As mentioned, the night elven join the tauren in Mulgore, they don’t need the Alliance any longer so they leave.
Dwarves and gnomes still keep a close allegiance to the humans, but mainly keep to themselves. Like goblins trying to make a buck in the world.
All human kingdoms help rebuild Gilneas, and then move on to cleanse the lands of Lordaeron. There will be built a neutral safe haven for anyone that needs help. Undiscriminately. In honour of all those who have lost their lives in service of Azeroth. City of Hope.

Wow 2. Cut to a few centuries past the events of BfA. Azeroth is mostly healed, and lands that previously seemed unsalvageable are now flourishing. Wildlife is no longer aggressive due to the actual defeat of the Old Gods.
Azeroth finally knows peace.
Until…
You start your adventure as a descendant of one of the old factions. Through your travels (questing/scenarios) you learn of the history of Azeroth.

Anything could happen, and it all can begin small again.

Eta: Right, so I forgot a lot of elves there. Over time they accept the past and make attempts to live in peace with one another again. Some still live among themselves, but others mingle.

3 Likes
6

I must say I really like this idea.
A time leap and generation change would be just what WoW needs at this point.

As for the player, this would of course mean, all former achievements have to be null and void.
We’d start off fresh in a mostly peaceful environment where old threats and grudges are mere shadows of a darker past. In the beginning anyway😏

Azeroth may be healed, but centuries of war have left its traces and a lot of rebuilding needs to be done. For which lots of ressources are needed.
So, ffa fighting over ressources instead of faction war.

I would also like to see players choices and actions affect the storyline more directly and have more consequences.

For example: You start friendly with your own race, all the rest are neutral. Your interactions with others ( players and npc alike ) define your popularity with them. Like, if you kill another player, your reputation with the race they play will inevitably drop.
( You can be redeemed again, but not easily, you’d have to do a lot of questing and/ or pay reparations.)

You cannot enter other peoples cities or interact with npc’s there unless you’re friendly or higher. This is important if you want to learn a certain profession. I could imagine you can learn all gathering skills like mining etc but if you want to be a blacksmith for example you’d have to be friendly with dwarves.
( Even though the factions are no longer at war, I’d say with regard to history, this should be made harder for a troll player than gnome or human, but not impossible .)

Would also have trimmed- down versions of the respective races and remove everything that makes no sense in lore, like Night Elf mages and Tauren paladins. Really not a fan of this- everyone must be allowed to have everything -system.

So yea- basically classic without the factions, more focus on racial lore and player choice.

2 Likes
7

Well Blizzard, through novels and stories, have now truly shown that the Highborne Magi have become well established in Kaldorei society.

During the War of Thorns, Sentinels and Huntresses cheered when the Highborne arrived and began opening up portals to Darnassus, to usher in soldiers and supplies. The same Highborne were also the primary targets of Sylvanas.

So now, Night Elf Mages, because of the “background” lore, as I call it, have become more established. Out of Tauren Paladins and Night Elf Mages, the latter have been given more insight and more acceptance.

1 Like
8

Yeah that’s what I thought, not just for the story but also as an opportunity to do away with the old game engine and start from scratch.

I’d like to see actual player choices matter. I also like the idea of rep having more influence. We could even go as far as for instance: orc and humans never came to really trust each other even though there is peace. While being friendly (or higher) with one faction, gaining rep for the others will be harder.

We might stumble upon secret splinter groups. Like maybe we find a group of Sylvanas-loyalists that we could quest for and gain a lot of gold/resources, but if any of the ‘peaceful factions’ found out, we’d take a massive hit in rep. Risk/reward.

We’ll have a few base races, but tribes within them. If you choose a tribe, you will gain easier rep with the other tribes inside that race. I like the idea of reputation mattering more than simply buy better stuff. I would like for rep to have more benefits and also downsides, much like the Scryers vs the Aldor for instance.
It could be used to unlock a lot of stuff, as opposed to level for instance, but then rep gains shouldn’t be gated.

I kinda like the idea of not being able to enter cities of factions when you’re not friendly, but I don’t know how much that would fit with a ‘peaceful Azeroth’ Why wouldn’t strangers be welcome? And how do you start gaining rep if you can’t go there to gain it?
Ofcourse questhubs don’t have to be in cities. But maybe we can find a middle ground, where everyone is welcome in the ‘public’ part of town, for instance where the bank and some general stores are. And some people you can do tasks for to gain rep, and get more access to further parts of town.

Trimmed-down races, I don’t know, with the respective peace some people might travel and learn or teach others. I think in this time it might make more sense to see tauren paladins and night elf mages. But I do agree there are allowed to be differences within races/tribes.
This could be more of an all-purpose sort of game. We could have playable characters that might be bad at battling, but have for instance an improved learning rate when it comes to (certain) professions. Lets say we get the tinker-class. They wouldn’t be great at fighting, but excel at engineering and blacksmithing and making bombs and weapons for those that need it. They would know less fighting skills, but automatically learn a few engineering/blacksmithing recipes that other classes would have to actively train. And if they do want to join battle, they will have this great arsenal of weaponry that makes up for lack of attacks/spells.

I’d also like to see things like hunter needing to bring arrows/bullets again. Just the little things that make immersion that much better.

2 Likes
9

Of course there isn’t. Chaos is heretical and should be purged in the name of God Emperor Anduin and Human Imper-, I mean, the Alliance.

5 Likes
10

My stance on this is that the story should be what Blizzard wants to write, which has a natural progression and feels like it isn’t held in place because of game mechanics. This is regardless of player implications, wishes and desires. What hinders the WoW story is that in their attempt to please the player base they have failed at near enough every type of person who likes the story, nothing feels satisfying and everything feels forced beyond belief what shatters both immersion and consistency.

The reason why the Warcraft stories worked so much is that there was none of this game mechanics or player opinions holding them back. Lordaeron wasn’t immune to Arthas because that faction had the playable race plot-armour, King Terenas wasn’t spared because he was the leader of said faction and so on.

If a faction needs to be crushed, its lands lay in ruins and people killed then it should be for a good and engaging story. If a faction leader needs to die because of what he/she did in a war then it should happen to stay consistent and logical for the people who suffered through that to have happened. And every part of the story should try its absolute best to avoid retcons or any sort of bad writing.
But this is just a pipe dream really. People will always want X regardless of X implications and Blizzard will cater to them as their grand narrative storytelling has been trash for years and they have forgotten what makes them good.

6 Likes
11

I think a good example of this is war of thorn’s.
I recall many players saying it would had been more acceptable if:
1: The alliance attacked first.
2: The alliance won and didnt need jaina to save them.
3: They showed the 1 to 8 ratio in game rather then have the horde slaughter there way to poorly defended night elf lands.
4: The night elves wherent stupid and left there lands ungaurded.

Having sylvanas burn the tree in revenge for both the loss of undercity and her troops would sting but it would be more acceptable.
Why?
Because we see the full might of the horde taking revenge on alliance aggression.
At best we blame the humans for getting night elves involved in there war.

But nope blizzard desided that having sylvanas burn the tree in an emotial rage and compleetly curbstoming the night elves in game(who magicly forgot the horde try to invade ashenvale twice before and that the horde troops where in the barren, really the correct move would have been to send more forces to ashenvale to disencourge leaving ogrimar undefended.)

Pity.
A good story require’s you to be willing to kill off everyone and remain consitant.
A bad story is good guys humans “winning” by losing troops, ships and land where the bad guys “horde” just murder stuff because it can.
Ugh.
They could atleast had people refuse there orders to fire at tedrassil or had sourfang challange sylvanas for warchief right there.
But nope.
We need sylvanas to be evil so we are going to destroy all her years of being a master manipulator and just have her act like a mustage twirling villian because ???

3 Likes
12

Hard to say with the War of Thorns, there is so much rot within that short arc alone that it breaks everything.

Even the reasons you gave about other people are still questionable and would lead to the same result if not done properly.

In what regard? The only options I can see is Genn and Jania forcing a war or in BtS Anduin snaps due to Calia’s death and attacks straight away. Which TBH would be alright as no side was in a positon to fight and still recovering which hold back a lot of fighting. But numbers would still be a problem and it is annoying how they have just been ignored.

Jania saving everyone was played for Rule of Cool and in order to do so they had to dumb down the Alliance I.E not have gas masks.

Kinda the same, you are letting a possible hostile army gather up for months without doing nothing but spy and when they move out you send the majority of your army south while they were still in Durotar/Barrens. Perhaps if the leadership with incompetent and delusional to begin with this wouldn’t be so and but they aren’t/not suposed to be.

But at the same there should be a better reason for a war to begin with, Sylvanas wanting one (assuming she isn’t being controlled by something or suffering from rampancy ) is a horrid idea and the various Horde leaders shouldn’t be ok with going to war so soon.

Even then, burning the tree fulled of citizens/innocents as well as a holy site for druids would always end in a questionable outcome, mostly negative.

If you wanted Sylvanas to burn the tree then it should have been something she was forced to do, not actively do. But regardless the way they did the base-trade/lose was awful.

1 Like
13

Here is how i woud have done it:

Genn greymane leads the alliance army to undercity with the goal to destroy it.
Andiun learns of this and rushes to stop him but arive’s too later.
Greymane seige tanks already blow up undercities blight storage facilities costing the lives of thousents of forsaken.
His prey sylvanas was in ogrimar at the time for warchief business.
When she learns of it she takes the full might of the horde to remove the alliance major power house on kalimdor.

At the time of the horde revenge campaign tyranda and malfurion are debating with andiun in stormwind about what to do with greymane.
As he used to alliance for personal revenge.

Greymane will debate from the point of view that the forsaken will always cause suffering and need to be put down for the good of the alliance where andiun is more about forgiveness.
We could have a cutscene or short movie about how the alliance leaders are of two minds on this with both greymane and andiun trying to convince the rest to there point of view.

While the alliance is debating sylvanas leads a lighting campaign against the night elves.
Using undercity as a valid reason for war.
Claiming that the horde must control all of kalimdor in order to safegaurd it future’s and spare other the fate of the forsaken at undercity.
During the war she makes having use of fire to burn the tree’s as her blight supply got destroy back in undercity.
Also she needs to keep the horde from revolting againt her for using blight.
The night elves fight for every inch but the sheer numbers of the horde(there shoud be one of eatch horde race for every night elf enemy to make is clear how much they are outnumbered)
Have a few offensive quests in which the player is the only survivor and the army site is smaller every time they get back.
Have sylvanas sound more and more desperate to end this campaign quickly.
By the time they reach tedrassil the horde numbers are to few to be able to seige or take the city.
She also recieve’s news of the alliance fleet reaching ogrimar.
Unable to conquer tedrassil and with ogrimar threaten she give’s the order to destroy it.
When called out by saurfang she points out that ogrimar is endanger and they simply dont have the numbers to go on fighting.
Saurfang claims she wants revenge for undercity to which she countered and what if it was ogrimar.
This shuts saurfang up.
The tree burns and sylvanas takes the player on a bat back to ogrimar.
Where the alliance is already bomming the city.

Out of nowhere zandalari ships show up and sink the alliance navy.
Princess talani explains to sylvanas that zul has seen that the horde and zandalari fate are intertwint(aka they need eatchother) and that is visions have always come to pass.

So now we got the horde in control of kalimdor, the zandalari working with the horde to ensure the survival of both and the alliance got a chance to be aggressive and payed for it.

Really all it takes to make the story work is having greymane take the fall.
The guy hate’s sylvanas.
Having him go behind andiuns back for revenge would be believeable.
It also nicely sidesteps 2 dimigods which would prevent the horde for conquering ashenvale and darkshore.
Tyranda and malfurion underestimated how fast sylvanas counter attack would come.
They expect weeks from now not days.
Preparing an army for war takes time.
It can also be used as justification for so many loss troops.
They horde had to win quickly or die at the lack of supplies.

The war of thorn from the horde standpoint shoud hammer down the need to win quickly or die.
And from the alliance standpoint it shoud show one of there own going to far and them being hampered by indecision.
It would also give andiun a chance to prove his worth as high king.

Anyway it is not the story we got.

2 Likes
14

A nice idea but with this a lot of problems come up with your version of events.

How did Greymane get enough forced of the Alliance to siege and take Undercity, why did Anduin take so long and not notice? As well as in BtS he is more accepting of Forsaken so that’ll either have to be changed, retconned or a contradiction.
How is there so many forces in Kali’ to be able to puncture the Alliance forces in Northern EK, how long would it take to moblise such a force?
Burning Teldrassil would still have the same negative results, burning a tree isn’t an issue (besides the druids), it is also the people living there. Would neutral nations like the CC get involved now or would they be AFK like they are now?

A lot of issues from the current prepatch story would still arise from this scenario of events as well. The entire idea of both sides being able to trade land and captials is too unrealist with the resources given. And stuff like the Zandalari navy coming in at the last minute would just feel cheap and almost like a deus ex really with a meh explanation. A bit like Jania showing up in that regard.

I generally don’t think there is any way to make this work properly if you are forced to go from after BtS. The story is just too limited to have anything as drastic as the SoL and WoT happening without a lot of issues.

1 Like
15

Thanks.
The goal was too keep the outcome mostly the same but i like to think it is vastly superior to the crap we gotten.

Falsified orders.
He manage to have the alliance hero and the skyship forces attack the forsaken.
Telling his troops they have orders to destroy undercity shoudnt be that hard.
Especialy with what the forsaken had done.

I think we can both agree that anduin is incomptent on militery mathers and too trusting for his own good.
In my senario he did find out but was to late to do anything about it.
The goal was to show anduin being against it but at the same time showing he coudnt have stoped it.

First what does bts stand for?

Second: Did you ever talk to a young child about how great is moronic idea is?
I like to pretend what whenever anduin talks about how the forsaken are not evil genn just goes along with it as going against it would just lead to hours of headache inducing debate’s.
It also double as an extra motivations as he needs to save anduin from there bad incluence.

If i understand this line correctly you are asking why there are night elf forces in the invasion army?
Sorry i shoud have pointed out that there wherent.
Night elf forces in my senario are in ashenvale and darkshore.
They didnt join genn little crusade.
You have to keep in mind they where going to attack undercity while trying to keep information about the attack to a minimum.
The attacking forces would be humans, worgens, dwarves and gnomes.
Race’s with a interest in revenge against the forsaken and who known that need to know basis means shut the crap up about our mission.

I was trying to make it appear that sylvanas did it as a combination of revenge for the thousent of death in undercity and the fact she lost most of her army getting to tedrassill.
It was an act of desparation.

They accauly have a reason to not interfere now.
From the outside point of view:
Alliance murder a city full of people by bombing it until the blight storage broke open.
Then the horde retailed and did the same to them.
An eye for an eye might leave the world blind but unlike the current story there is something to be said about: This is there problem.
Sylvanas isnt threating to turn the world into undead in my story.
Merely trying to get control of kalimdor to ensure there can be no more attack’s on the horde.
I think very few neutral factions would take offense to that.
Sure the war is horrible but it isnt like the horde and alliance dont go to war.
Alsong they are fighting eatchother the rest of the world will see it as there going at it again.

Ow i known.
I am just trying to keep the outcome the same but make it more believeable.

This is why i made it so that sylvanas acted so fast.
She know’s she cant fight the alliance in attrition warfair.
It is why she had to get control of kalimdor so fast.
It was conquer now or die later senario.
At the end of my senario the horde navy is fine but there land forces are depleted.

Beat stormwind having an important political prisoner so poorly gaurded, being set on fire and it was the same reason they used.
I just gave the zandalari a moment of awesomeness instead of horde somehow manage to sneak into stormwind, save talani and set it on fire.
It is still meh but at the same time it does achieve 3 goals.
1: The horde is helping the zandalari because they need to keep the zandalari interested in helping the horde.
2: It would show the might of the zandalari fleet and force the alliance to find a fleet on there own as the horde now owns the sea.
3: Because both the zandalari and horde land troops are too few to go and wage war on the eastern kingdoms they are forced into defendsive war until they can get new troops.

It isnt great but it is a beter thing then we had.

A tiny but important different here:
Jaina shows up out of nowhere with a flying ships and save the day.
Compleetly random.
In my senario the zandalari arive with a massive fleet because there prophet told them it was needed for the good of the nation.
There is a reason why they are here and why they are allying with the horde.

It can work but it require time, planning and human error.
A big reason why it doesnt work is because blizzard make both side’s incompetent.
Instead of making to so that both side make mistake’s but are general speaking competent.
The reason my story could work(and i fully admit it isnt flawless) is because of mistakes made on both side’s.

That is kinda the problem.
They scaled it up too much.
Had sylvanas not declared herself an enemy of life but instead take revenge and defend the horde by seeking control of kalimdor after the alliance attacked and destroyed her city alot of the issu’s would disapear.
The reason for zandalar and kul’tiras?
Both side needs ships.
The reason for burning tedrassil?
Desperation and revenge.

It would even make the cycle of haterd line work.
As the war was started by genn inability to let go.
We could then spend the entire expension pack with the horde trying to keep what they took and the alliance balancing there need to reclaim the night elven lands vs the fact that it was one of them that started this war.
It would justify andiun reluctiance to hurt the horde.
He feels responsible for all losses on both side because of greymane act.
Because he was too trusting and didnt see it comming.
He blames himself.

As i said.
It isnt perfect but you can make it work by simply scaling it down to a war started by a old man unable to let go and the destruction suchs a war brings.

1 Like
16

First of all thank you, everyone, for the replies.
I understand this theme was complicated, so I appreciate all the effort everyone did on their posts.

My opinion as well, untill something called BfA landed, after a expansion like Legion, that led me to belive the Horde and the Alliance had moved past their differences and the narrative had moved forward.

Couldn’t agree more.

I agree.

I feel exactly the same.

Exactly.
I had people replying in the Classic forum that WoTLK should had been the end of WoW.

When the Forsaken joined the Horde, i had big hopes that the Tauren would find a way to “cure” them or making their existence less painful.
Heck I even thought Sylvanas could be redeamed, that was in 2005 …
I gess that was just a cheap ilusion sold by Blizzard.

In my opinion, they should had done it long time ago.
I am sick of buying expanions sold at the price of new games tbh.

Old and buried.

My opinion: Vanilla period, you go on adventure.
2019 “Champion” of your Warchief/High King, which translates in to: do what you are told or else.

I think they forgot immersion and what that means tbh.

Agree.

This is where the “magic” is gone.
When you see the strings behind the ilusion, meaning “bad writing”.

My opinion:
They have no courage to write anything else than what they are used to.
2019 and whe have:

  • WoW classic.
  • Warcraft 3 reforged.

We don’t have:

  • WoW 2.
  • Warcraft 4.

which than leads to:

Thanks for your attention.
Cheers.

5 Likes
17

Wow/warcraftlore is interesting and there us alot but a ton of retcons (eveb chronicles had stuff retconned not long after was out).
And has its stupid parts(1legion acros all dimensions/realities).

And some is good retcons (no more medan and surumar/nightborne)

But theyve just been treating ut really badly really. Like writers shouldnt care about concistency and anything negative is toxic and unhelpfull. Bfa repeat of mop.

Like the lore can be awsome but theyre not using it well as whole really. The potential fir awsome stories is there but alas.

3 Likes
18

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.