Is Warcraft's narrative leaving the Horde behind?

Argent Dawn
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Let me just start with a disclaimer that this thread isn’t about faction conflict or the sins of the Horde or the Alliance. Instead, I want to talk about the roleplaying opportunities that each faction has access to.

After the end of the Fourth War with Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard stopped providing separate questing experiences for the Horde and the Alliance. From Shadowlands onwards, both factions received the same narrative experience. I can’t blame Blizzard for this, as it halves their workload when writing quests for the levelling experience.

However, the resulting narrative seems to leaned towards the Alliance over the years, instead of being entirely neutral. With 10.2.5, this has culminated in two major plot developments that revolve almost exclusively around the Alliance, with the development of Bel’ameth beneath the boughs of Amirdrassil and the Reclamation of Gilneas.

While the quality of these plot developments is often low, the reality is that this sort of narrative attention provides plenty of fodder for roleplayers. The Alliance RP scene is the healthiest it has been for roughly five years, with hundreds of players swarming to events and roleplaying opportunities in Amirdrassil and Gilneas every night for the past week. 10.2.5’s narrative has provided an excellent springboard for Alliance roleplayers, even if the quality of the writing is questionable.

Then I look into the future at the next couple of expansions that are lined up for us.

War Within SpoilersWar Within is a mostly neutral affair, though it grants both factions access to the earthen. While they are technically neutral, they look like they're going to have a very similar culture to dwarves, an Alliance race. I question whether any earthen that the Horde gets will actually feel like they belong in the Horde. I suspect that Argent Dawn's roleplaying community will make much more use of them in the Alliance instead.

Additionally, there’s the presence of the Arathi, an entirely human group of fire-wielding Light-worshippers. Once again, though both factions will be interacting with them, they feel like they’re going to be heavily Alliance-coded. I also feel like they’re going to be a strong source of inspiration for lots of human roleplayers in the Alliance.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that feels remotely connected to the Horde in that expansion is the fact that Thrall is in it, and there’s not a lot there that Horde roleplayers can work with.

Midnight SpoilersMidnight looks like it's going to give shine a spotlight on the homeland of the blood elves, a Horde race. Based off of this, you would think that it's going to give the blood elves and the Horde the opportunity to shine. However, Metzen has already said that the narrative of Midnight is going to be about the unification of all of the elven tribes.

Based on this, I suspect that it will be not as dedicated to blood elves as I first guessed. More importantly, it looks like it won’t just be an opportunity for blood elf roleplayers, but people who play void elves and high elves too. Midnight might even give night elves a chance to get involved as well. This expansion looks like it will be a fantastic experience for anyone who roleplays an elf, regardless of faction – and at this point, I would say that the Alliance’s elf roleplayers have the bigger community by far.

One issue with this is that the Horde’s community is made up of more than just elves. Unless we end up with the Amani signing up as an allied race or something similar, it looks like the orcs, trolls, tauren and goblins won’t have any part to play in this expansion, which means that the people who roleplay them won’t have much material to work with.

It seems to me that outside of the elves, Horde roleplayers won’t have a lot of material to work with in comparison to the Alliance, who are eating good at the moment and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

My primary concern is that this will lead to the disparity between the Horde and Alliance roleplaying communities growing even worse. Of course, Horde roleplayers can make their own events and their own campaigns unrelated to the overarching narrative like they always have, but I think 10.2.5 provides plenty of evidence that roleplayers thrive when they are given material by Blizzard that they can actually work with.

So, I’m just wondering what can be done to prevent the Horde roleplaying community from suffering, thanks to this slow descent into irrelevance.

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I mean, probably? People will gravitate to a scene where stuff’s going on and where there’s lore focus in want of active communities and the horde scene is already pretty fractured.

Without ongoing, engaging narratives people won’t have much to work with and I think that’s just a byproduct of the writing leaving the faction war behind, just as the Horde narrative has been tied into it as instigators and greater scope events being tied to horde characters.

I’ve said so before but BfA was a slog for an alliance player in a story absolutely dominated by the exclusive grand narrative of Warchief Sylvanas, the zandalari, Saurfang’s rebellion and to a lesser extent Vol’jin’s spirit foreshadowing shadowlands.

The difference here is that we can anticipate the coming state of the narrative and community focus well ahead of time in an expansion roadmap and there’s not much overtly for the Horde to do except the belf player darlings having more lore to eat as they get every expansion more or less.

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Answering the title, yes.

The appeal of the Horde, the diversity, the monstrousness and other things aside from empty aesthetics? The writers aren’t interested in exploring them, definitely not in how the races of the Horde could develop distinctly from the Alliance.

The world is at peace, the leaders believe in truth, compassion and justice. Much of the appeal of the Horde was in opposing relations, aesthetics and themes to the Alliance, the legacy of orcs vs humans, elves stealing the world from trolls, goblins polluting the earth and the Forsaken lashing out at the humans that reject them.

Horde’s identity and its aspirations going forward are identical to the Alliance’s, because exploring bonafide-Horde storylines that affect the world is in direct conflict to the status-quo Dragonflight established.

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I think the thing is that the Alliance really hasn’t changed fundamentally. While yes they lost cities like Theramore, Gilneas and Teldrassil, that didn’t cause some big fundamental shakeup for the faction, it just kind of further unified them against the Horde as a whole. From Vanilla until the present day the Alliance has had a human king in the human capital with everyone else staying together for the most part. There’s never been a moment that I can think of where relationships were strained there.

Compare that to the Horde and while yes that faction has Thrall that’s kind of seen as a forever ruler sort of kind of, there’s been the shift from peaceful-ish to war (Thrall to Garrosh), war to peace (Garrosh to Vol’jin), peace to war (Vol’jin to Sylvanas), war to peace (Sylvanas to… the desolate council I guess?)

While the Alliance’s identity has primarily remained the same, the Horde’s one… hasn’t. It’s remained the same for the tauren who’ve always followed mostly peaceful leaders, it’s mostly remained the same for the trolls who’ve also followed mostly peaceful leaders (excluding the non-Horde trolls), but for the Horde as a collective it feels like Blizzard has an idea, but then immediately scraps it in favour of another one, rinse and repeat.

There’s also the issue that while Blizzard tells the playerbase the Horde aren’t antagonists (and I truly believe that the intention is to have both the Horde and Alliance be on equally wrong or right footing), they can’t help themselves from writing the Horde leaders as antagonists and dragging the rest of the faction along for the ride regardless of if it makes sense or not for the entirity of the Horde to do so.

My best interpretation of what they’re currently doing (without having read the spoilers for the upcoming expansions admittedly) is that they’re trying to put the focus away from Horde-centric storylines for a while, at least until they have a greater idea for the faction as a whole. Which sucks, honestly, but I also can’t see how they could’ve resolved the plot threads at the end of dragonflight in any other way then how they have - Sylvanas is gone (:crab:) so the rest of the Horde has to be all penitent and grovelling and apologetic for Gilneas and Darnassus while basically getting bugger all in return.

I guess TL:DR - they wrote themselves into a corner and now they’re trying to write themselves out of it by just trying to do something of a reset.

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Blizzard write neutrality from a Western (American) perspective.
It just so happens that all of that coincides with the way the Alliance races are coded.
So whenever they’re writing neutral content that isn’t focused on the factions, it will always lean towards the Alliance.

This has always and will always be the case.

Just look at how they wrote in the class halls in Legion.

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Without focusing on midnight - it is three years away, and three years is a long time - I think you are somewhat right.

But I also wonder: how do you save the Horde?
Because let us be honest, it has been written into a corner. It is full of races who tried to conquer the world multiple times and when you set aside the “METAL RAAAR!” vibes, or the 90s marilyn manson dark and emo vibe, and take into account that maybe they are not very trustworthy, you’re left with a whole package of problems.

In the end you’re left with Thrall’s idea of the old Horde: an idea of penance and redemption from past mistakes that the Horde itself has rejected twice - first with Garrosh, then with Sylvanas.

So how do we go forward? Do we just invalidate both Thrall’s idea, and the Old “EVIL METAL AAARGH” Horde? Then there is nothing left of the soul of the Horde and this is a serious problem.

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:point_up: :nerd_face:
Uhm, acksually, not true, the Alliance is in the Eastern Kingdoms primarily.

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Split up the factions into several blocks of races, some standing alone. Dismantle the zero-sum NATO/Warsaw pact-game, where an assault on one is an assault on all. Emphasise regional conflicts between cultures, rather than the poorly written personalities of the superpower world leaders.

They’ll never do it.

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Yeah while in theory this works, it is just not something that is going to happen anytime soon.

edit.
This reminds me. When is the last time I heard about Stormwind? Aside from the humans’ heritage questline, I have the impression most of the playable races didn’t really receive love since Cataclysm.

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It’s how you fix the setting, implementing it in-game is a pipedream.

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When it comes to the roleplaying community, I think the important difference is that the events of BFA still involved the Alliance. Things might have be done to the Alliance by the Horde, but Alliance roleplayers could still decide how their characters reacted to it and use it as a springboard, hence the masses of events concerning Teldrassil and Lordaeron and other parts of that expansion where the Alliance was reactive but still had plenty to do.

Compare that to 10.2.5.

While the Horde does participate in the Reclamation of Gilneas, it’s a very minor role and it’s canonically limited to a handful of agents so that the Gilneans don’t end up panicking over another Horde invasion. Besides, even if Horde roleplayers did turn up to lend a hand, I know for a fact that the Alliance roleplaying community wouldn’t welcome them. I’ve seen a character get kicked out of a camp under threat of death for being a half-orc.

Similarly, while I haven’t kept an eye on Bel’ameth, I have no doubt that a lot of night elf roleplayers would reject a significant Horde presence there. Besides, there’s not much for Horde roleplayers to do in such a space, besides throw a “good for you” party for the night elves. The construction of Bel’ameth and the claiming of Amirdrassil as a new home for the kaldorei doesn’t concern the Horde.

So, that’s why I don’t think an equivalence can be drawn between what the Alliance went through in BFA and what the Horde is going through now. The Alliance was reactive, but the Horde is irrelevant.

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I´ve heard some explanations why this was the case, but in Vanilla, there was a huge dichotomy between what enemies each faction was fighting during its questing. While this isn´t universal as WoW is a huge game, in general Alliance fought local threats while Horde fought Alliance. Sometimes this resulted in interesting scenarios, such as Alliance owning more of the in-game Horde zone of Silverpine Forest than Horde did. In Hillsbrad, there are two human and one dwarven towns. Durotar and Barrens have Alliance fortresses. There are dwarven excavators in Mulgore.

The Horde, simply put, was the smaller faction when it comes to what it held in lore, even if the amount of flight paths was about same. When Cataclysm came, Blizzard balanced this situation which resulted in scenario where Horde gained a lot while Alliance lost a lot. Balancing of zones also resulted in Horde gaining one levelling zone which became capital of goblins (Azshara), while the new Alliance race didn´t get anything. As a result of this, in lore Alliance had ton of places they could restore in the future (and it didn´t help that both MoP and WoD started with destruction of major Alliance base).

So, now, when we have peace and Blizzard seems to be focused on doing the “let´s restore what was lost” storylines, Alliance will be the focus simply because, outside of Lordaeron/Undercity, Horde lost like a single tauren village to the Alliance because the largest faction war expansion, Cataclysm (by virtue of being the only expansion that was able to truly portray a world war because of revamp), was the one where massive Alliance and small Horde were balanced out.

Now, how does one fix this (because it´s a legitimate issue, one faction is getting no story while the other has to suffer having its story as neutral)? That I can´t answer because while I could provide ideas (world revamp with focus on minor conflicts, both against hostile forces and smaller faction fights, Outland revamp), they´re pointless given that main themes of next 3 expansions are Void, Titans, Light, elves and Northrend and the old world and Outland aren´t getting revamped in any of these.

One thing that could actually be changed is making sure the factions stay somewhat separate and return to some faction-based stories again (similar to how Stormheim worked, for example). For Midnight, making sure Silvermoon isn´t neutral but rather either works similar to Dalaran (Alliance/Horde parts, and small neutral one for neutral content), or alternatively that Alliance gets its own capital in Midnight.

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Do you want fixes to recent expacs or fixes to the next one
Recent stuff?
Not butchering their religion(s) in Shadowlands and ignoring shamanism entirely for the Afterlife and the Elemental expansions would probably be a great start.

Making the one Horde-oriented Aspect in Ebonhorn not turn his back on everything Tauren for his ‘new family’ to the extent he and Mayla don’t share a single conversation the entire expansion would also help.

Not thrusting the most Alliance-coded Horde character there is in Calia to the forefront of the Forsaken would also be good. Maybe actually support and give focus to…you know, Horde characters when they’re involved in stuff and make them proud of it.

For TWW? Frankly I’ve got no hope. If Calia’s the most Alliance coded, Thrall is barely a step behind her, and is already playing third fiddle to Anduin and Alleria in promotional materials.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/561287824964452363/1201197197635616798/image.png?

Bro’s barely in the frame, half covered up by the “BUY NOW” button. Also the only one that didn’t get a new model.

It’s too late to change their plans for the Earthen, so there’s no point even pointing at it, but “don’t give the Horde Reskinned Dwarves” would also be high up on my list of things.

Any indication there’s going to be a Horde aesthetic going on would be nice. Dark Trolls driven underground. Tauren Earthshapers who have been there for millenia after being separated from their tribes post-Sundering and were forced underground by Dwarven hunters. Maybe some fixes for how utterly abysmally they’ve treated goblins.

You know.

Something.

Anything.

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If there’s any silver lining I can offer here is that the four Shadowlands afterlives I believe aren’t the only ones, they’re merely the only ones we have access to during the duration of that expansion, meaning that the afterlives envisioned by the various races of Azeroth may very well still be out there but aren’t realms we’ve seen (and hopefully it remains that way honestly.)

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They aren’t, but that comes back to what gets focused on. “Is it leaving the Horde behind?” It kinda seemed to.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GC3n2xpWAAA8HJq.jpg
never forget

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This isn’t a major win, really.
Now, imagine you have a nice pizza that you love to eat. It is a perfect margherita.

You ask for another margherita. It is what you like. All of a sudden, someone puts a swarm of cockroaches upon it. You still try to eat it, it’s the same margherita… it’s just that there are cockroaches over it.

This is Shadowlands: it tells you that there are other after-lives, but also that they don’t matter one bit in the Great Design TM, and on top of it they are barely just a footnote. You just can’t avoid looking at the cockroaches on top of it.

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I do agree on the whole. But to play devils advocate on one minor point;

“Also the only one that didn’t get a new model.”

I mean, hang on now, how many model overhauls has he had? Also the first Orc to see the chiropractor, skipping the queue, smh :stuck_out_tongue:

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Somehow, fewer than Anduin. By my count Anduin’s on 9
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fuy-z4CXgAA0BMg?format=jpg&name=4096x4096) - this misses his ‘child’ model from vanilla and of course the new TWW one)

And Thrall is on 6
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fu4mP9XWIAIud4P?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
(his second one is also only used during the Caverns of Time section so…I’d kinda say five-and-a-half, since he kept using the ‘1’ model even after CoT came out. Mileage may vary.

It’s not really a competition, but Anduin got a new model, Alleria got a new model, whether it’s actually deliberate or not…he didn’t, and he’s in the background of the marketing stuff.

Why didn’t he?

Probably because the timeskip means less to him than Anduin and so they didn’t have to rejig an entire new high def cinematic model for him for the trailer.

But it still sucks!

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Not to nitpick… well, no, entirely nitpicking I guess :joy: but 1) the child model was entirely generic, wasn’t it? So barely counts. 2) isn’t that cloaked one on the end a cinematic only model? And is meant to be the same as the hooded one (but for some reason Blizz have this weird disconnect of in-game and cinematic models at times? Daelin Proudmoore had this in BFA as well; two entirely differnet looks for the same character. Weird)

Finally, Thrall has only just got the ‘Doomhammer’ armour back and is, I would argue, his most iconic look anyway.

Have the Horde been done dirty multiple times narrative wise, though? Oh, hells yes. No argument there.

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I mean…sure, but Thrall’s OG model wasn’t unique in any way either. Pretty sure you could replicate it 100% with vanilla gear. Ditto for his CoT model. Somewhat a result of Blizz not giving faction leaders unique models during vanilla, at least as memory serves.
Never forget Sylvanas and her recoloured NElfness
https://external-preview.redd.it/yGUqob7tJKCe6vjKhs_Kao3270bU1IEAhiN_feGfBeE.jpg?auto=webp&s=19ffccfbd54eadff755a71462247e52e04ccdcbe

He coulda got something though. Put his shaman beads back on, or a new wolfpelt cloak, maybe a big moustache.
https://preview.redd.it/yf1i7dl8ndz41.png?auto=webp&s=77610dc97189c143461163161c85f75311b057a1

Thrall’s model isn’t really the core point, since regardless I expect the narrative to treat him as a sidekick the entire time, it’s just another indicator of what we’re expecting.