Look at the Fourth War, for example. After all that fighting, all those lives lost, the Grand Alliance finally won. The Horde has started multiple wars before, so the Alliance would have to something to prevent that from happening. Well, the Alliance won, so they should have authority over the Horde. Did the Alliance disarm the Horde military? Did the Alliance occupy Orgrimmar and put it on martial law? No. The Alliance did nothing and left. Makes no sense, man. Makes it feel like the war had no consequences. Just a little adventure. And why did this happen? Because it would make Horde players feel bad? Thatâs stupid. I main Horde and I would think thatâd be great for the story.
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The Alliance could do all that (dismantling the Horde, disarming them, occupying their cities) only and only if their victory was total and complete, sort of like the victory of the Second War, or in real life, the victory of the Allies during WW2.
Anything less, like in the case of the Fourth War or even the war of Garrosh, itâs truly only just an armistice, aka in both cases the result was that the Alliance could defeat part of the Horde only and only with the help of the other half of the Horde.
Since the help of one half of the Horde is needed by the Alliance to defeat the other half (which is shameful in itself for the Alliance considering they are supposed to be unified and stronger overall, both in terms of faction leaders and military), then itâs not a complete and total victory, only an armistice, which means for the part of the Horde that won, they can keep their freedom and even some of the territories they conquered.
And an occupation of Orgrimmar wouldnât last for long anyway, the Alliance would likely be kicked out of the city in a single patch, so it wouldnât be much of a story anyway. In WoW, no faction could truly win or have control over the other for long after all, that was only possible in the lore of the past games like WC2 and 3
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The idea that faction wins, cities and so on have to be balanced is misguided anyways. The only thing that has to be balanced is gameplay.
That said, I am sure that Blizzard does regard âstory balanceâ as relevant, and that that does lead to them not letting the story develop naturally at points⌠Since ânaturally developingâ their story isnât exactly their strong suite anyways, I canât say I see that this is very high up on my list of story problems, not even the faction-related ones. And I say that as an advocat of acually removing the factions.
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How would that stop the Alliance? What would the Saurfang rebels do, fight back? The Alliance was already in Orgrimmar, with a much superior position. They no longer needed the rebels. Remember that Sylvanasâ Horde was the same Horde that fought against Hellscream in the Darkspear Rebellion. What would stop the Horde of Saurfangâs rebels from doing the same? The Alliance had a good chance to finally put an end to the Horde menace, not settle with an armistice which could very well lead to the same thing happening again.
Thatâs completely fine. Itâll be at least something. Something to show the consequences of the war. It could even add to the story. The Horde has quests to try to get the Alliance to leave, while either re-arming in secret or persuading the Alliance to let it happen. Meanwhile the Alliance has quests to try to stop that. Then things go back to normal. Thatâd be much better than nothing happening.
Considering that the Horde and Alliance consists of individual factions, it would be hard for the Alliance to utterly dominate the Horde. However, holding Orgrimmar is significant. Even if the Alliance doesnât dismantle the Horde, they could still exert incredible influence over the Horde. Why they donât may be what the OP already suggested:
The problem as I see it is that they have already missed out on a perfect opportunity to tell this story. The Horde was made out to be the bad guys in Mists of Pandaria, but it worked out fine. I think the narrative of the Volâjinâs rebellion is a pretty good one, as far as original stories from World of Warcraft is concerned. The issue is that there was no follow-up. We had an entire expansion that was literally in another dimension, so we did not see how the Horde coped with the new changes. Then in rolls Legion where Blizzard decided that Sylvanas should be Warchief all of a sudden. And in Legion, it seems everything is back to normal. The Horde and Alliance as equals.
That, of course, eventually lead to Horde Civil War 2.0 that robbed the Horde of its identity. Surviving one civil war, fine. Surviving two civil wars? Whilst the other dominant power has suffered noting comparable? How are we to believe that the Horde can stand up to the Alliance at this point?
Exploring this side of the Horde as not only an underdog to the Alliance (like in MoP), but as a defeated political body struggling to maintain relevance could be interesting. If they actually commit to it. I think it is far more likely that the next time Blizzard decides to appeal to faction pride the Horde and Alliance will fight one another as equals once more. Because nothing screams âgood storyâ more than when the writers themselves ignores the consequences of their own narrative developments. /s
To add to the good points stated above, I feel like there is also more than just making one side feel bad. If this was the only case, then there wouldnât be no Civil War concepts happening at all. Garrosh and his loyalists, Sylvanas and her cronies would pretty much instead be âUnknown Face that owns an Unknown Army of Unknown Strengthâ v.1 and v.2
We already see that in the Shadowlands at is.
Itâs as Terres pointed out. Commitment to the end is a requirement for this - and just abot anywhere else lel - in order to ensure a satisfying resolution. Canât believe that I have to keep assuring that iâm a Horde main when I say this, but it would be great to actually see and experience the ravaging loss and recovery of the Horde.
And considering my community experience so far:
Will it be used against the players? Yeah.
Will it be used to haze the Horde community by the Alliance? Heck yeah.
Will it provide a good story regardless? Of course!
And thatâs all that matters in the end. Faction balance and equality can - and should - take on more forms than both near-enough always ending up holding hands, forgetting that they just shot or cut at each other just a few seconds ago.
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As Hellaynnea has eluded to the Aliance victory was more of a technicality than an actual military conquest. The Aliance and Rebel forces have been vastly diminished over the course of BfA, while the loyalists have been more of a specialised task force/double agents situation saving the bulk of the forces back home. Itâs eluded to when Aleria and Vereesa recommend that itâd be perhaps for the best that they back off and let Sylvanas dealw ith Nâzoth since she actually had the big army at that time and the only casuality was Saurfang himself.
On a meta level of storytelling the Horde is effectively a dead horse gettign kicked repeatedly. All the A listers either died or left, their thematic integrity doesnât exist and majority of the current leadership are all too friendly with the Aliance and happy to bend over when the golden boy beckons, for any real future tensions to be feasible.
TLDR all consequences of the 4th war are either tolerated or self inflicted and and stupidly contrived according to the established status quo, because the Aliance couldnât militarily pressure them into anything, even if Anduin had the mind to.
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Only if we had absolutely terrible writ- :looks at Danuser:
yeah, ok, youâre right.
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To be fair, in a biplar faction setting putting one of the factions in position to do that already is terrible writing.
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Iâll disagree. It can be a fantastic storytelling device for both factions. To use Horde and Alliance, off the top of my head:
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Horde is underdog faction again, and has to forge ahead to rebuild not only their honour, but their freedom and truly change and come back stronger, able to defend themselves -and- do their utmost to prevent what happened before.
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Alliance has to deal with itâs internal corruption and the sheer amount of ( justified ) venom they have for the Horde, and rediscover/reaffirm what it means to be Alliance. I see a lot of people calling for Turalyon to be a warmonger. So why not? We have that Sky Admiral, let her be a tyrant-governor of Ogrimmar and let the Alliance deal with the consequences, both internal and external.
Two example story threads that could be stretched out for an expansion. Thing is, Blizzard donât have the talent to explore these ideas anymore, or the spine to see them through to the end. If say, Horde territory was occupied wholesale by the Alliance, itâd be resolved in a patch, despite the story potential.
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They tried that premise to sell people on the War of Thorns and by extension BfA. Only they undercut any legitimacy the conflict could have had, because they canât have Aliance look bad, even from the Horde perspective, which in a mutually antagonistic premise is a massive problem.
I will grant you that there are ways to make it work, however both sides of the absolute victory have already kind of been explored with the ending of the original 2 Warcraft rts games. Exploring the mutual enimity and relative power dynamics i think would lead to more interesting and less difficult to pull off stories⌠once the Horde is given a good kick up the rear end and a proper leader anyway. This buddy buddy Baine themed nonsense always rubbed me the wrong way.
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I agree much with this. WarCraft story about Horde and Alliance is a complex and a very lengthy one.
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theese wars are starting to become quite stale, how ever, I am sure, there will be an other one, probably in next expac already, where Alliance is the bad guys and horde wins, I just hope after that they scrap the factions totaly and we become one new factions, like some sort of rebel faction that is trying to take back our cities after Turalyon have gone holy berserk whit yrel, what I think will happen real soon.
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You are not a true Horde fan. No real Horde patriot would call for the alliance to conquer us. Get out of here and go back to Stormwind wehre you belong. Alliance loving vermin.
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The Fourth War was not really a war in a sense, its sole purpose was so that more souls could pour into the Maw for the Jailer. This was all part of Sylvannasâ plan of helping the jailer, as we find out in SL.
I do think its a cop out for Blizzard as it would have been great to see how the war impacted all of Azeroth, not just a few areas. This is where the storytelling of Blizzard is lacking. They want us to believe in global changes across Azeroth for each expansion, yet they confine such changes to small areas of the map that it does not feel connected at all.
BFA should have changed the map, with azerite spilling out all over Azeroth and azerite minions, just as we saw the map changes in Cata.
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I think Azerite was a really weak plot device. As the âlifeblood of the planetâ itâs decent. It makes some sense, seeing as the planet got stabbed. However, the properties of Azerite and what it could or could not do was ridiculous. Azerite could do whatever the plot demanded.
But in general I agree with what you say. I hoped to see the conflict between the Horde and Alliance erupt in more places across Azeroth. Revamp certain zones to fit the war along with new quests and dailies. I think there was a ton of potential in BFA â but instead they chose to tell us a story centered around a dozen characters. Sylvanas had a master plan and we were all duped and just along for the ride.
The way theyâre writing this story doesnât make Sylvanas seem particularly clever, but it does make everyone around her seem incredibly dumb.
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Pretty much this. Some of the decisions made by these said certain characters arenât even remotely questioned and/or just randomly skipped over. Iâve still yet to get an answer as to why the hell no one bothered - not even the player or other significant characters - of why and how Nathanos got the dagger and just flipped it out of nowhere.
In fact, it just made it quite strange when Baine - in fairness - spoke up all of a sudden at rather inconvenient moments.
With Sylvanas it was just a poorly designed atmosphere of suspicion and veils. We never got told why the entirety of the Horde leadership was suddenly shaking in their boots and not once considered a public and open resistance. We are constantly told to: âSay nothing about x and just continue serving Sylvanasâ or âWe must bide our time, champion.â with no substance.
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There is a reason the proverb âA character may only be as smart as the writer.â existsâŚ
That said i fundamentally believe that itâs a top down issue, where the story just feels like it was penned by the marketing department, because of all the hollow shock value, âtwistsâ and cliffhangers.
Taking that saying in mind, it certainly has worked for them.
Probably not the way they wanted to, but it did work in its own magical way.
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