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’