Blizzard doesn’t know what to do with them anymore.
They basicly made them a better Alliance then the Alliance, with a council, except they do not look like it or feel like it (with their whole monster races and outcasts trying to survive-schtick) they do not have the favored caste to be put in the spotlight akin to how the actual Alliance has a whole range of characters to be put in the spotlight.
The fact they made the Horde the bad guys in 2 expansions doesn’t work in their favor either! And when they introduce new characters, they do so in such convoluted ways they erase most of people’s support for such characters. or the characters likeability; Sylvanas for Calia, Nathanos for Derek, Rastakhan for Talanji, Cairna for Baine, Vol’jin for Rokhan, etc
For now I feel that its a good thing the Horde is getting “left” behind as a faction, not for the fans and the players, but because you can see slip through the cracks what some of the plans were(Queen Calia “mistake”), so aslong as they do not know what to do with the Horde, I rather they gather their bearings and find out before they turn Forsaken into Humans but zombified, BElves into Red HElves and NB into red NEs, etc!
Not to say everything is bad, the Orc heritage questline was probably the best one made to date, and the Forsaken heritage was pretty good aswell!
Narratively speaking, I think the Alliance can exist in a world without the Horde but not vice versa and you’ve described that feeling pretty succinctly.
The problem stems (I think) from Blizzard not feeling very interested in the factions and their conflicts anymore after however many years of writing them between the original RTS games and expansions.
In the absense of any specific faction themes, the ‘default’ position of writers is usually one that aligns with the perspective of Alliance characters, while the Horde’s narrative themes have yo-yo’d so frequently in the hands of writers that actually nailing what those themes are now is difficult and will vary wildly depending on what expansions you’re looking at. The problem gets particularly bad when the last time the Horde had much major expansion focus it was being saved from themselves, again.
The problem is made of the same stuff in either instance - what the writers consider a ‘default’ is not what the players consider a default. There’s not much of a reason for the Horde to be concerned with the new Night Elf capital in the same way there wasn’t much of a reason for Alliance players to care much about Saurfang’s rebellion. I remember back in Legion there was some dissatisfaction with the allied races (not to bring up that discourse again), as THEIR faction had helped the other faction, and then joined up with someone else. A lot of it was ultimately that Blood Elves but French and Blue are, at the end of the day, Blood Elves. A lot of players considered them default, but evidently, the writers did not.
I expect that the writers for War Within feel like Earthern and Arathi humans are acceptable ‘defaults’ who don’t represent a particular faction, while from the players, they’re just rock dwarfs and angry humans.
One feature that does play into the Alliance leading narrative is the focus on the ‘Main cast’, and who is taking centre stage which also can contribute. During the events of Shadowlands and Dragonflight, the primary character who took centre stage are often Alliance leaders or Alliance leaning characters.
With them at the front, it can lead people towards the Alliance narrative more. And they don’t need to do this. The Orc hertiage quest shows just how much story there can still be told.
The story should never be a case of “The Alliance do a thing… and the Horde is there, I guess.” and vice versa. If you want to go all in, go all in on a story. Night elves rebuild their city. Cool. Good story. Now, you focus on something with the Horde. Forsaken rebuild their city.
Don’t do a half and half or you just get a mess that is what we got with Gilneas and the factions.
The optimist in me is hoping they’ll do some joint gnomeregan/undercity reclaiming where both the gnomes and forsaken share techniques in making the uninhabitable habitable again.
Heck, there’s even a tie there with leper gnomes being officially part of the forsaken ranks, right?
Not wholly relevant to the topic at hand but just something that I thought of after reading that.
I’m not sure that faction cooperation is inherently a bad thing, let alone the factor that made the quest line a mess.
But from a roleplaying perspective, I’m afraid that you have a point. Even if the Horde was more heavily involved in the Reclamation, I don’t think that it would appeal to the Horde roleplaying community.
The Reclamation of Gilneas is ultimately a story about a member-state of the Alliance and I honestly don’t know many Horde roleplayers who would be enthusiastic about playing second fiddle to the Alliance in such a story.
Plus there’s the fact that a big chunk of the roleplaying community on both sides is staunchly opposed to the idea of faction cooperation, which would lead to Alliance roleplayers refusing to involve the few willing Horde roleplayers at all.
Cooperation can work when it’s against a shared enemy, in a location and situation that isn’t strongly attached to either faction. In such cases, roleplayers can (and have) create/d events and campaigns that involve the Alliance and Horde working together on equal terms.
And whenever Blizzard does decide to give one faction a lot of attention, it should consider paying attention to the other side too, like you suggest. Otherwise, we end up with a situation like the current patch where Alliance roleplayers gets a massive amount of story to work with, while Horde roleplayers have to continue making their own fun.
The easiest fix that they could of had that could of easily made both factions easily work together and give story opportunities can be done with a simple change of enemy:
This, a bunch of Sylvie loyalists under Belmont who were like “Hell nawh, we sacrificed to take this land, we ain’t giving it up now. F those worgen and all of you traitors.”
If they wanted Horde players to see it for content purposes, they could’ve had Hordies just fly over to Lordaeron where anyone but Calia goes “hey Horde Champion, did you hear about how Gilneas got reclaimed? Here’s how it went.”
and then they drop you into a race-swap thing like they did with storytime during the Dazar’alor raid.
Frankly, I think that would generally be a more positive way to do factional inclusion than contriving cooperation where none is needed or wanted.
I can agree that this would’ve worked better than Scarlets being shoehorned into Gilneas.
Keep Belmont out of it though. He and Faranell play an important part in the Desolate Council as representation of the Forsaken old guard, a part of the appeal that drew a lot of people to that race to begin with.
Defanging the Forsaken/Horde even further isn’t necessary.
Maybe this is a cop-out answer but I think the Horde needs a new enemy all of its own. A enemy that really will allow the Horde to show its muscle and not be forced to be toned down if it has to face the Alliance again.
Except that such a long time has passed in-universe, that it would have been like us fighting Garrosh Loyalists in the pre-patch of Shadowlands. I’d rather have something new, instead of the repeat of the same storyline of the Horde self-cannibalizing itself because “mwahahah Sylvanas” nearly a decade after she’s been gone on loop.
Please, just a crumb of Horde lore that isn’t yet another mini-civil war, I beg of you.
Bring back the Dark Horde led by heirs to the various Orc clans + trolls + war-like Tauren etc. and give the Horde an actual threat to be dealt with that can’t just be curbed by way of joining hands and singing kumbaya hard enough that the entire enemy force begs you to shut up so much they lower their weapons. Its hard to dismantle a force that has political, military and social influence throughout your civilization, like corruption it would be almost impossible to remove from said civilization as well creating a constant pressure between two diametrically opposed groups.
One wants to see a rejuvenation and peace on Azeroth, largely led by Thrall, Baine etc.
One wants to see a return to harsher diplomatic relations, fiercer border retaliations and funds subterfuge and skirmishes across Azeroth whilst all the while dismissing they had anything to do with those pesky radicals skirmishing.
To make it so the Alliance can’t just then steamroll into this situation with Anduin’s Premium Fixer-Upper Hammer bog them down in political turmoil. Some Worgen aren’t happy about a lack of funding for Gilneas’ rebuilding, the House of Nobles are trying to reclaim their almost-destroyed political and social influence in the Kingdom of Stormwind and the Alliance, Night Elf Extremists are engaging in constant guerilla warfare along Horde borders, the Dwarves are undergoing a period of social strife as lines are drawn between those loyal to the Council and those loyal to the upcoming Emepror Thaurissan (though the council of course denies any involvement with their own loyalists).
It’s asking a lot. But I think it has too frankly, having only 4 zones and 1 antagonist every expansion is bleeding the setting dry and its poisoning the worldbuilding to such an extreme degree that we’re now at a stage where WoW has ran out of antagonist forces which is frankly ridiculous. A world revamp is necessary for the above solution, but a world revamp is necessary to keep this game and its RP alive at this point.
Edit: Also good writers would solve a lot of the issues we all have but well. . .I think we can consider that solution as never happening.
I will be forever baffled that they saw the gothic zone led by a kingdom of werewolves and they said; “yeah add some uh… idk guys who are red I guess, who cares” instead of. . .you know, doubling down on the gothic tropes Gilneas oozes left-right-and-centre. Witches and spirits in the blackwald, ancient entities inhabiting the graveyards, something has moved into the mansion.
Every repeat of Warcraft 2 we have been put through has degraded the Horde through the repeated ‘soul searching’ and incredibly trite Fast and Furious tier “family is everything” moment. And now we’re left with a rather tepid soup.
It’s made worse by Blizzard either retconning Alliance bellicose actions or… just never making them pertinent beyond a brief questline. Narrative double-standards, really.
