Lore and gameplay inconsistencies

Lore Story
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What ideals did they have? It’s Thrall who wrote down the first written law of the horde. And that one was all about unquestionably loyalty.

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Let’s say that they failed to show how the new Horde is supposed to like. I don’t know if Blizz just forgot it or just let this opportunity always open to villain bat the Horde once more.

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118

Gives everyone a villain bat

Everyone gets a villain bat! Baine villain-bats himself
I’m sure something along the lines of Warcraft 3’s Horde is reasonable. The same Horde that allied with the Alliance expedition at Hyjal.

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Are you sure ?

I see here he does make a strong case, Sylvanas burned Teldrassil and the Nightborne are ok with that ?

  • Nightborne are related to Night Elves.
  • Highmountain Tauren are related to Tauren.

Each faction should have his own allied race.

And i ask you, is Tyrande a living person ?
Does she acts on her own way ?
Did you witnessed live flesh Tyrande being rude to the Nightborne ?
Or you witnessed a character Activision Blizzard wrote to act that way ?
Sylvanas also is a writen Activision character, as Tyrande.

One was writen to act rude to the Nightborne :

The other ordered the burning of Teldrassil:

Would it be impossible to write the Nightborne joining the Alliance and Sylvanas just deciding to occupy Teldrassil ?
I think you can write anything you want.

Agree to disagree.

Let us see the case of the Blood ELves, another lore supported race in the Horde:
Go back to page 37 Steabra post, because Ii can’t link posts and ope the reddit page.

“Angelflavor: How far into development of bc did the team decide on blood elfs. At the time you where there, did they consider blood elfs as high elfs, or think of them as 2 different races?”
"Alexander Brazie: They were distinct pretty early on - the Blood Elf starting zone was one of the earliest pieces of BC content and was highly polished by the time we rolled into testing.

I do remember a certain poor 3d artist having to chop the Silvermoon city into pieces because it was so overloaded many GPUs would overheat just loading it.

OH - one thing I vaguely remember was that Blood Elves were based on a STRONG request from a poll of asian players (either korean or chinese - I can’t remember which was live at that point) - where many remarked on the horde side that they and their girlfriends wanted a non-creepy femme race to play."

So there you go.
All Activision Blizzard had to do now, was write the Blood Elves in the lore as people who chose the Horde.

I think one case implies the other.
You can think it’s not and I am fine with that.

Cheers.

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Who says they are? The Nightborne were introduced into the Horde long before Teldrassil happened.

We are to assume she has about the usual kind of reactions a normal person would. At least in terms of setting the treatment others are to expect from her.

Are you implying that the way Tyrande reacted towards the Nightborne was unjustified or unreasonable?

Because contrary to Sylvanas current depiction, her character seems rather consistent with what we are to expect given her previous characterisation.

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I am telling that she acts as she is commanded, as Sylvanas.

If Activision Blizzard wants the Nightborne on the Horde she will act accordingly.
If Activision Blizzard wants the Nightborne on the Alliance she will act accordingly.

Any doubts look at Sylvanas, if they write: “BURN IT !”
She will say it.
If they write : "Take prisioners. "
She will say that.

Fair enough, than let them go back to the drawing board and make a new animation and writing that will convince you, that Sylvanas did wanted to burn Teldrassil.

It’s Activision Blizzard writing they decide what they want and they are entitled to it.
Or are they not ?

Cheers.

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The way they handle both events mark whether they manage to create a logic/consistent story or not.

Not the player feelings about the outcome of it.

They might want to convey a certain message, and still do a piss poor job in order to do so.
If the road to make people feel like Sylvanas is a villain, is full with sudden twists, retcons, and stuff that goes against previous depictions of the character, regardless if they achieve their end goal, the story will still be crap.

And someone still can look at previous developments in this overall poor expansion story and acknowledge acceptable (not even going to bother saying ‘good’) storytelling.

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For the tribal Horde (Orcs, Trolls and Tauren) it was Thrall’s values of Honor, he brought from the Frostwolf clan, extended to the rest of the Horde races:
Bravery, to die in battle, to honor ones clan members, to honor yourself and to treat other people with decency in the same way they wanted to be treated.

Orcs, Trolls and Forsaken (no Taurens) were all associated, with bad actions in the past.

  • Orcs had, Gul’Dan, Blackhand Horde association.
  • Darkspear Trolls, perhaps associated with other more conflicting tribes.
    Zakkaru mentioned Zul’Jin and the Amani association to the Blackhand Horde as allies.
  • Forsaken were associated to Arthas scourge army.

Everyone tried to survive in a world that came to hate them.

That’s my definition of the old Horde

The game system also worked naturally with that narrative.
Horde had ugly races, Alliance had better aesthetics.
I played in Silvermoon server, Alliance based server.
Every weekend Ogrimar was raided by Alliance players searching for Honor, all of them decked in epic gear, wether it was 40 man raid or PvP gear .
Silvermoon was a PVE server by the way.

Honor wasn’t just in the narrative of both factions Alliance and Horde it was also something that measured your current stand with your faction.

The more Hks you had during that week the higher would be you rank with your faction.
Scout, Sargent, Grunt … Legionaire … Lieutenant General, General, Warlord/Marshall and finally rank 14 High Warlord or Grand Marshall.

That changed with the expansions that came after.

  • Blood Elves added the aesthetic that only the Alliance used to have.
  • Goblins added the small sized character that only the Gnome in the Alliance had.

Honor system was removed in TBC as well.

Horde changed during Garrosh period to the fighting machine we have today, everything that I used to value in the old Horde, is gone now in BfA, all for the sake of War, with the Alliance

I agree.

Things I appreciated in BfA was the Zandalari culture, the art style, the music, and the 3 cinematics, Kul-Tyras was also very good.

Unfortunately, as always the war campaign and having to follow Nathanos for even more doubtful actions, in case Teldrassil wasn’t enough, just obscured the good part, making me forget the good part.
First time a narrative made me quit.

In every other expansion, I was too busy playing it and having fun, there were inconsistencies, but I just ignored them.

Every single one of them, you mentioned WoTLK, Cataclysm, MoP and Legion, I think I will take all of them including the others you didn’t mentioned, except one …

BfA just makes me wanna sit and write about it, probably that’s what I will do till the next expansion comes out.

I had 2 level 120 characters:

This characters are the proof how much effort I put on the expansion.

  • Tried RP over the story, as Brigante said he did;
  • Tried to play the other faction;
  • Just do my dailies, transmog, nothing worked.

In the end, I ended up quitting that account.

It’s more comfortable to play my vanilla account which has Legion.

Someone told me in the general forum the fact so many people, including me are talking about the story, is a success.

I think the best praise you can give to a game is:
Never wanting to logg out, like this streamer:

That’s what I lost, the irony is:
I might be the few minority, maybe 5% who did it not for gameplay or PvP or azerite … It was the story as it was discussed in US forum that will not count, as story doesn’t have impact in player base numbers, in the end they, will consider it was the game system …

Sorry for the rant.
Cheers.

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124

Regarding Lore and gameplay inconsistencies:

Night Elves druids are selling “teldrassil-sproutling”. According to a nature, druids can regrow Teldrassil using those sproutlings, making Night Elves race rise again.
But by Lore, instead druids will grow pumpkins on the Stormwind farms, wile living as bums on the open streets. Just because Blizzard are Night Elves haters.

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I wouldn’t call them Night Elf haters, I would say that they not know what they’re doing.

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126

OK, well that’s a coherent and well thought out answer Amazoner, so cheers for that. I think some of those core values have remained the same, and that’s the conflict we’re seeing right now in the Horde. If you think about it, even Garrosh’s Horde had a certain twisted, bloody knuckled sense of honour, it was tattered and torn, but Orcs like Nazgrim lived and died by it. Forget Garrosh, he never did, but some of the people working for him -still believed-.

Its interesting the way you describe how people regarded faction rank on a PvE server, its not quite the same on an RP Server. Some people place importance on that, some people focus more on the purely RP aspect, I fall in the latter camp well, ehh, My Guild are based on the WC3 units of ‘Dragonhawk Riders’, Whilst there are Alliance Guilds on Argent Dawn playing Wildhammer Gryphonriders, and Gnomish Gyrocopter riders, you can’t really have an air combat, except for a mutual give and take type narrative emote story over Discord (Which incidentally works really well, we love our enemy flyboys and gals in blue).

I really do think that BfA is not just a War between the Horde and Alliance, it is a War for the Horde’s very -SOUL-. What have they become? How did they allow themselves to become that, and how, having reached that nadir, can they climb from where they are…How can they go back to Thrall’s Horde, and not Sylvanas’ Horde?

That’s the story, from Horde side,

From Alliance side it is that tangled thread of “When does Justice stop becoming Justice, and is in fact Vengeance, Once it becomes Vengeance, how far is -Too Far- and that Vengeance transmutes into something more terrible, and the killing becomes the reason itself, rather than retribution, when it is no longer justice for what was done to you, but the sheer unholy joy of killing, when do you stop and look at yourself in the mirror without seeing a monster…Can you?”

Both stories are pretty complex, if you look at them that way.

I don’t think BfA is a weak story. As I say, the two global superpowers in our own world fought continual wars by proxy (Though thankfully never a direct one) for almost five decades, before one collapsed under its internal pressures. Its a realistic scenario. Want to take it further? They did so after having united against a common threat that was a danger to -everyone-! Sound familiar? Take your pick, that’s either Legion to BfA, or its Earth from 1945-1991.

I’ll mock Wow’s story when it is silly, but when it is things that have actually -happened- in our real world, I can’t mock it. It is something that -happened- in Reality, so how can I say it could never happen in Fantasy? You see what I mean? I mean I could go on, Horde attack on Stormwind? The raid on Dieppe 1942, Blood Elves joining the Horde? Italy swapping sides in 1943, or for that matter the Vichy French in 1940, Seeking out maritime powers to increase your naval fleet? That’d be the English going to Genoa and saying, can we have your ships so we can go crusading, which is -WHY- the Flag of England is now white with a red cross on it, never used to be,* but that was the flag of Genoa, so when all these ships rocked up with English soldiers, with those sails on it, everyone went “Oh, that’s England then”. That’s BFA. That is almost literally the plot of BfA.

*Used to be a Black Flag with three Golden Leopards upon it (Which is weird as leopards were never native to England) and before that a Black Flag with a Golden Dragon on it (Believed to be a compromise between the native Britons, who favoured a Red Dragon on White, and the invading Saxons, who favoured a White Dragon on Red, Which actually plays a part in some of the original Arthurian Legends, and tales of the Mabinogion. the “Dream of Rhonabhwy” if anyone is interested)

So yeah, BfA? Yep, that’s cool, Legion, Yep, that’s cool, WoD, well that’s weird, could be said to be the Colonial period with Africa, Cataclysm is pretty much post Black Death, WotLK is post Mongol invasions, TBC is the Christian invasion and indoctrination of Western Europe, and Vanilla is, well, just standard Europeans kicking the poo out of each other.

There is very little in WoW that is ‘Impossible’

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127

Thanks Brigante.
I will keep your post for further analysis, because, that’s how good it was.

And my apologies if I was rude.

I think the real reason I made this post is: I am lost.
Can’t get imersed, for the first time since October 2005.

I was looking for a answer, that would make me go back to this game and enjoy it.
I am addicted to it.

Thank you for providing that answer.
Because, really I tried as you did to RP and ignore it, didn’t work.

I will be honest with the Alliance, their side is all I can dream off as iner peace.
But it lacks the Horde conflict, sorry I am addicted to it as well and you are right, it isn’t much better than Horde, being described as people who forgive everything, isn’t realistic, to say the least.
My condolences, I thought your story was better, I was wrong.

Thanks everyone for your replies.
Cheers.

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128

I love the irony in this sentence. Mr Govenator would disagree however.

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Socialism namely. Castro and Che actually went to meet the US president at the time (after winning their war of Independence), needless to say they were mostly stood up.

This pushed Castro and Che into looking for other allies. The USSR saw this and allied with Cuba (For it’s proximity to the US), keeping the deal sweet by buying Cuba’s overpriced sugar and other crops.

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There is not a human being on this planet, as misshapen as the Human Male Warcraft Model. It’s horrific, By the ‘Governator’ I presume you mean dear old Arnie? Even he obeys the basic rules of human physiology, unlike the Warcraft Human model. I mean he is recognisably a human being, a big, brawny example of it, but a human being. The Warcraft Human Male Model is -not-. Its just… “Nope, nope nope!” all the way down the line… Fun fact, want to know something that looks like a muscular Soldier or an Olympic Athlete? That’s your Blood Elf Male. That’s the body type, That’s -actually- what a peak performance human being would look like…I mean, minus the pointy ears and green eyes obviously :stuck_out_tongue: The Human male would be too slow, lack the articulation, and ability to react to its environment, it would have been an evolutionary dead end for anyone who didn’t get their ideas on Biology from watching damned He-Man Cartoons. Ever wonder why in the cinematics the humans don’t look like the humans in game? Its almost like Blizz got a bit embarrassed and went “Yeeeah, lets…not make a fuss of that”

Exactly my point, Yup. They were pushed into looking for other allies, same as the Blood Elves were, and the Horde benefitted from Lor’themar’s little letter saying “Oh, by the way, Kael’thas says there are still living Mag’har on Outlands”, and lets face it, Solidifying control over the north of the Eastern Kingdoms would have been massively appealing…

That’s my point. It is all things that have happened to more, or less, surreal outcomes within our world, It isn’t inconsistent, it is as crazy or not crazy as our own real world…

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131

I’m not sure if I got your point. You mean DS were in-universe assciated for bad actions or from meta point of view?
Because in neither option it works.

In WC3 Darkspears were attacked by Kul’Tirans simply because they were trolls. The only “bad association” they could have would be with Gurubashi that according to recent lore sacked Stormwind before the Horde did. But they only did it because humans were pushing to their territories and pressing into the jungle. So jungle came to humans.

Darkspears aren’t tied with forest trolls but they surely heard of Zul’Jin as this warlord’s fame was reaching outside of forest troll tribes.

This is why I was annoyed that Amani were so antagonized because DS didn’t meet them, they had no chance to meet them ever since they splintered from Gurubashi so how come they’re “mortal enemies”?

Sure thousands of years ago Amani and Gurubashi had some clashes at the borders.
but they rarely fought.

Perhaps for in-niverse humans it really doesn’t matter if a troll is jungle or forest one, they all see them as evil.

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132

That’s what I meant.

Thanks for further detailing, it was a intesting reading.

That’s why I loved vanilla narrative.

The Horde were trying to establish themselves in Kalimdor and build their life.
Forsaken were the exception, as they lived in Northern Part of Eastern Kingdoms.

There were border conflicts and reasons to hate each other, but not like now.
Where the Horde are described as aggressors, with no respect for prisoners, friendly fire, and bring war to everyone.

One of the saddest aspects of BfA is, had we still have Vol’Jin as our Warchief, all the Zandalari story would be twice more interesting.

Trying to get their confidence.
Saving Talanji and Zul.
Fighting Zul and his rebellion.
And not getting the Zandalari King and his army under Alliance target, just because we are at War with the Alliance, because of our Warchief Sylvanas.

Cheers.

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133

I love when people posts such narrated messages. Even if I don’t support your logic for BfA, I appreciate this narration. Thank you mate.

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Ehh, what can I say, I like to express things at length, and sometimes I really do think about Blizzard’s plots than they possibly do! I’ve always been a wordy soul, and now I’m finally managing to make it pay for me, so all good. Voice Acting. Best Job ever, you’re your own boss, you choose your own hours, you can do it from home, and the pay is not bad at all…

I know what you mean though, I do like to see a good, well thought out post making good, if challenging points, and I really like to see people -think- about things like their characters, or the motivation of NPC’s or the plot in general. I love the theories and rationales people come up with, and hearing their justifications for them. Shows people care about the game. It is the same reason I love reading people’s fiction about their characters and their doings in Azeroth, my Own Guild recruitment thread on Argent Dawn is pretty much literally just a continuing rolling story that has gone on five years now, with a whole host of narrators/guildies telling the tales of stuff we have actually done in game, and sometimes I read it and go “Blimey, I mean I wrote that event, I was there, but they’ve worded it so profoundly!”

But cheers for the feedback, I love writing them, as well as reading them :smiley:

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