If I remember it right, night elves were quite close to it after Teldrassil, if not have outright done it. At least if the books are to be trusted.
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They used to straddle the line. Throughout the lifespan, the Forsaken have been more or less villainous at different points, but they have always been a grim and dark people.
I think that they’ve found a reasonable balance at this point with the Desolate Council dynamic, with every character representing a different aspect of the race that might have drawn players to them. The balance was struck again with the Forsaken heritage quest, which shows them using their unique and morally questionable methods to defend themselves against a foe that believes they have no right to exist. It works.
In fact, I’ll outright say that the Forsaken are one of the only parts of the Horde that Blizzard has done justice in recent years. Calia is an unpleasant stain and Voss is borderline nonsensical, but in the content that is Forsaken-focused, Blizzard has handled that race well.
Similarly, orcs were handled very well on the one occasion when Blizzard focused on them in their heritage quest. Ideally, every race should receive good writing in their heritage quest that honours the themes of that race and respects the fans of that race, but Blizzard has missed the mark more than once.
And while the om’gora is something that orc roleplayers can work with, it’s nothing nearly as monumental as the reclamation of Gilneas or the founding of Bel’ameth. Those are springboards that have massively enriched Alliance roleplay in a way that leaves the Horde roleplaying community behind.
Even something as simple as a patch about shamans and druids rejuvenating the Barrens, even just the Northern Barrens, to at last give the orcs and tauren and trolls a home where they can thrive, instead of just survive. That would be enough. It could resolve the issue of the orcs still needing to plunder Ashenvale and bring an end to the tension in that region, if Blizzard still wants to focus on themes of reconciliation. Maybe Ashenvale could get an update too, with night elf druids rewilding the lumber camps.
A new phase that turns the Northern Barrens into less of a minefield full of conflicting Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria nonsense would be great. I know a full old world update is too much to expect, but I’d hope Blizzard could do that much to try and balance out the attention that the factions receive.
I appreciate the Horde has gotten the best heritage quests so far, but both factions receive heritage quests and I don’t think that’s a good reason to deny the Horde all of the additional content and roleplaying opportunities that the Alliance has gotten.
At some point this post stopped being a reply to Obahar and just became me rambling generally about the topic of “is the Horde being left behind,” sorry about that.
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Forsaken, to me at least, always worked best as the spice/seasoning to the Horde meal. They gave it that extra kick and zing, but trying to make a whole meal out of it (as they were at least) is what made BFA feel so bad, in my opinion anyway.
The Forsaken were a great foil to the Orc and Tauren ‘Honour above all’ focus, the good ol’ ‘If you need Things Done, get the bad guys/gals’ solution to problems. The characters that could see a group running into issues and roadblocks, and go “Oh, for goodness sakes” and walk in and do something emotionally detached/harsh but efficient and get progress.
As soon as they were forced to adopt centre stage 100% it felt like everyone was twirling their non-existent (sigh) moustaches and kicking puppies. Partially that was just bad writing, admitedly, but the Horde, far more than the Alliance I think, works best like a delicately balanced full meal. The Alliance is like different components that have their own thing, but can combine to form Alliance-tron. The Horde works less well when it tries to mimic that, instead of being its own thing.
(Sorry, I’ve been up since 5am and am only one cup of tea deep… @_@ )
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Sylvanas as Warchief and The Forsaken as the leading force in the Horde was such a square-into-triangle-hole moment. Neither the character or the faction were written to occupy the global limelight, the result was expected.
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I still hold that the BFA we were sold at Blizzcon is a different product from what we got.
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I still hold that, if they’d completely avoided the 
show we got, they could have made Sylvanas work.
Having a final capstone to her (up til then) character arc being her realising that she does actually still care for ‘her people’, and that that term can stretch to actually encompassing all the Horde species, and finally allowing herself to return to being what she considered she failed to be, i.e. the Ranger General? Absolutely. Hell, the whole of New/Thrall’s Horde was basically the Found Family trope writ large, and that was good actually? Having this big, disparate mishmash of cultures and species and personalities, and they pull a bit in different directions, and bicker and squabble at times, but god forbid you ever hurt their family, because You Will Die.
It could have been so good ._.
I mean hey, it’s what the thread is about!
And I think that’s partially why the focus has (for now) shifted towards talk of the forsaken because yeah, a lot of people probably did roll Horde purely because of the undead evil(?) monster race. The dissastisfaction there is absolutely just as much of a part of the whole puzzle of Horde losing it’s identity as it is with say, tauren being constantly pacifistic at best and literally sat on their backside for an entire expansion at worst, or the darkspear getting a chance to push the Horde in a new direction only literally to die in the opening cutscene of the cinematic.
(Tangent on that last bit but Varian gets a big dramatic send off where Gul’dan disenchants him, I’m fairly certain Vol’jin dies to an unnamed, non-specific, unimportant NPC. They did him so wrong.)
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I think Vol’jin was a waste; his leadership as Warchief literally had zero building around it. Which is, i think, the essence of my primary disgruntlement with WoW’s narrative.
Worldbuilding is, in some areas, not even an afterthought.
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Based on the interview re worldbuilding/narrative, sometimes it’s not even a beforethought ._.
The Forsaken’s OG spirit originated from the 80s/90s cultural trends that explored the struggles of asserting individuality in a world that rejected individualism, and their main answer was but one: existential angst, alienation from the mainstream.
The forsaken were grounded upon the idea of being unredeemable by higher powers, it often entailed a strange courtship between acknowledging certain christian values as mainstream (the Light) and at the same time their rejection from the individual (undeath).
It is hard to keep the forsaken’s spirit as meaningful as it was back then, if anything because those trends belong to the past. The mad scientist, the emo rockstar, the inner angst, they are all old tropes these days. The old narrative, where you had this systematic, internalized hate, well, it doesn’t really find a place in today’s narrative, which focuses mostly upon the positives of different identities, and in general an idea of colorful universal acceptance.
Edit.
Another question which I’d pose is. How much of what they have designed and done was just inspired by popular culture references?
Because if that is the case, then the problem is that the worldbuilding was always very weak from the beginning.
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Yup, and I dont think it works in WoW, or it’s done awfuly at least.
Local warchief does nothing for 2 expansions and then dies to a trash mob just to mirror the alliance king dying.
I will never get people who say that vol’jin was their favorite warchief.
Favourite character who also became warchief would be more accurate I guess.
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I don’t really have an issue with Warcraft’s story moving away from “racial tensions” (for want of a better term), there are much more interesting topics to engage with. It’s a pity with WoW’s age rating that they can’t really lean into the horror of the Old Gods/Void.
What makes Vol’jin a kick in the teeth is Blizzard hyped it up with the whole “YoU’Ll NeVeR gUeSs WhO iT iS”.
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I guess the competition isn’t that high. I’d take Vol’jin over Thrall (I just don’t vibe with Green Jesus™), I’ve never enjoyed Sylvanas due to Blizzard refusing to let her be the villain they so obviously want her to be, so it’s between Garrosh and Vol’jin for me, and while I prefer Garrosh as a character I can’t deny the appeal of a warchief that isn’t going to immediately be axed because he does irredeemable things.
…Instead he got axed to set up Sylvanas maybe to set up the Jailer as a big bad? That’s a bad trade deal.
It shoulda been me.
is it the guy who had an entire novel centered around him
woah it was!!!
He showed us how to talk to short people
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/310050753727430658/1030194440217829486/unknown.png?0
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https://i.gyazo.com/8520ee84c7c58a8eea6c7544afd00afa.png
The advice has been taken to heart.
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In many ways, this was the goal of the pre-BFA Warcraft stories: everyone had to come together to fight the ultimate evil in spite of their differences.
The Legion and the Scourge were the perfect villain for this kind of story-telling. Unlike the Void, which incarnates the ultimate otherness, the great unknown, the Legion and the Scourge symbolized at large the potential to do evil within everyone’s souls.
The Legion and the Scourge preyed upon the faction’s vices - power, greed, ambition without regard for one’s community - and became stronger because of it. They were not just some evil faction, they were, like a lot of fantasy villains, the shadow of civilization: corruption, looming darkness. A representation of evil. Defeating the Legion, or the Scourge, meant defeating the temptation to be the worse version of ourselves.
These stories did work for universal acceptance because they did show us that our souls are the same: orcs and humans, draenei and blood elves, and so forth. Indeed, ultimately, we both had to defeat evil and be good, and this was a process that required to work together… perhaps because, in a narrative like this, we are not so different after all, and uncompromising hate often leads to internalizing such feelings and becoming worse beings ourselves.
But without the Legion and the Scourge, without forces that tempt us towards evil and without the faction conflicts… what is left there, truly?
Neither the Jailer nor the Primalists are a decent replacements.
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