As exemplified by Warcraft 3. Though it was about everyone banding together against the Burning Legion, it blew Warcraft 1 and 2 out of the water so completely that players just accepted it as the definitive version of the setting going forward.
As for Dragonflight, my opinions on it are nuanced and I’ll need time to do them justice. I see more positives than negatives about it, though.
Well duh, clearly if you don’t want to pay your debts you’d go Horde!
Wow, so when Blackguard is disrespectful and irate, it’s all fine and the new races join anyway, but when Tyrande is disrespectful and irate, the Nightborne immediately join the other faction. 
Classic Horde bias at it again!
Personally I didn’t understand the doom and gloom until I realised it’s meant to be one of those Zereth things. I’m still not really going to doom and gloom until I know more, because I have no context in-game for this. What if it’s just idk, in-character PTSD quest where you re-live your worst memories and one of those is Shadowlands where you get jumped by those spiders. 
It’s in true Blizzard fashion to basically do everything in extremes. If there’s a theme, it’ll just be that. DF thus sometimes deals with themes of loss and grief rather heavy-handedly and/or resolves those problems too quickly. And there’s a lot of those stories, though granted - after all these years the people probably do have a lot of unpacking to do especially when given the chance to process everything.
I do find it funny that this is a criticism levied against DF, but similarly inundated themes from other expansions don’t. Like, the entire Warlords of Draenor expansion was 'look how savage these orcs!!! these guys just got gibbed lol!!! #justwarlordthings ’ on repeat ad nauseam.
In the end, storytelling is not Warcraft’s forte. They’ve tried Horde vs Alliance way too many times unsuccessfully, which simply has led to extremely toxic tribalism between the players. I don’t want another Blizzcon to hear Horde chants about how Alliance are slurs, tyvm.
I would consider BFA far more guilty of ‘this feels unearned’ than DF, tbh.
“Hey folks, remember how you just worked together to finally put an end to this millenia old threat, which has had its claws in multiple races on both sides suffering over the years, how you came together and used all your skills, your legendary weapons and triumphed, closing off an arc so long in the making, even more triumphant than putting down the Lich King together?
Yeah, uh, we’re gonna need you to start another faction war right after that. Lol. Yeah, we know everyone is tired, out of resources, wounded, etc etc. Trust me, it’s all guchi. Lmao.”
I mean, one of the starter zones in Legion kicked off with the Alliance trying to assassinate the Warchief.
Legionfall or not, not really surprising that there’s a bit of bad beef there.
-Narrows eyes, and starts reaching for the Nelfposter™ gat…-
Don’tchu do it, Ner… Don’tchu dare.
And this would have been a much better angle to go into BFA with! Anduin, forced to take up the reins of the Alliance, while Velen is (understandably) catching a break and helping his people come to terms with Its Finally Over, while Genn is egging him over how much a threat The Banshee is, you can’t trust them, they’ll stab us when our guard is down, strike now while- etc etc.
But no. Instead we got ‘Horde Bad Lmao 2.0’, with none of the narrative preamble that made SoO good the first time.
They made overtures at it. It certainly could’ve had more attention but the whole “The Alliance will never accept the Horde” isn’t a difficult argument to understand when - in the middle of the massive Legion invasion that is a threat to all life forever greater than the Scourge etc. etc. - the Alliance still found time to attempt their leader-cide.
BfA for me started the trend of expansions that just happen because people in charge of the story thought it would be cool. However, with Horde breaking the armistice in Ashran, Genn going aggro at Sylvanas and Forsaken, and then Alliance attacking Horde in Silithus, the seeds for another faction conflict were there.
The issue was that this faction conflict was then started by the Horde rather than the Alliance. Blue team had all the reasons to do it: Horde broke the armistice first, Alliance felt betrayed, Genn had ton of influence over the new, inexperienced king, and, unlike the Horde, Alliance actually had ton of territorial claims against the other faction. After MoP, all of southern Lordaeron (and Gilneas, depending on the mood of the person making the newest patch) was under control of the Horde even though its population survived the Scourge invasion. Alliance going at it and invading Lordaeron would have been perfect and would also allow Blizzard to create a peace story where “both sides” argument actually makes sense because both Alliance and Horde would have started a world war between the factions once, instead of Horde cosplaying as Austrians.
However, with how the story went in BfA, friendship and magic that we see in DF just doesn´t make sense and feels extremely jarring. It´s as if we skipped expansion or two where we dealt with all the consequences of BfA.
Even more so/better, Genn was the driving force behind all that.
BFA could have been, absolutely should have been, the Expac where the Alliance had a less than stellar rapsheet, where Genn’s quest for vengeance came back to bite everyone, where Anduin’s inexperience in the face of the stuff they had to deal with and having to butt heads with Genn and Tyrande-
They had a great setup. And they fumbled it so hard it was basically an own goal.
It could have also played perfectly into the Old God/Void stuff, if they’d had half a mind to play off of that angle. Frankly, BFA should have been a big ‘whodunnit’ and shouting-match arc, before Azshara swans in at the end, all smiles and murder, and goes “Well done, peasants, you played right into my hands” and everyone has to come to terms with the fact they kinda-sorta lost?
Edit: Azshara and Nazjatar being such an end-of-expac throwaway was criminal, and yes I’m salty about that. Been brewing since WC3 and you fluff that? Shame. Shame!
I think what really annoyed people is that this is basically what they advertised initially. The hints that Lordaeron was before Teldrassil and the Alliance might have been the reason behind the war was quite prominent without explicity stating it in the promotion and teaser materials leading up to the actual quest-line and PTB.
It was then flipped around on its actual release as was the whole narrative with Sylvanas. The most telling was how they spoke of her on the Blizzcon pre-BfA(which mirrored her portrayal in Before the Storm), as uncertain of her role, but she would step up for the Horde and her people.
Compared to the Blizzcon mid-BfA which has them open the warcraft section with saying “As Sylvanas dark evil plans for the Horde continues…”
I will never not be Big Mad they just outright slapped Sylvanas with the villain bat, for no good reason.
It wasn’t even a new bat, it was the exact same bat they used on Garrosh, only older and more broken down.
Utter waste of a good character. Terrible writing. Like, I wasn’t/am not even a diehard fanboy or anything, it’s just that undoing the entire character arc from WC3 to present day, and dumping the entire Forsaken race/setting into the sewage for good measure, is abominable writing and I cannot stand that.
Considering the big marketable names that are still in play are mainly alliance because all of the horde ones were killed off or quietly left, its not hard to see why the narrative is having more alliance in the story.
Cairne, Garrosh, Sylvanas, Vol’jin are all effectivly dead.
Chen Stormstout, Rexxar and Rokhan are barely ever used.
literally non of the hordes allied race leaders matter currently. (although I did hear some of them make a return in TWW)
Meanwhile all the alliance have lost over the years is Varian, just Varian.
you still have all the other marketable big names like Anduin, Jaina, Dadgar, the dwarf brothers, Velen, Moria, a windrunner sister, etc.
In that same meta commentary the first ones are the Devs while the Void Lords are events that threaten the continued existence of the game (such as the many scandals), because if they win we will all be set free from the Devs programmed reality.
Agreed. BfA could have feel earned had they played into Genn, given the Alliance the more aggressive role (and acknowledged it). It could have been a good expansion.
The problem of DF is that this friendship and stuff would have felt in the right place after Legion but now you got BfA in between and it does need to be adressed. It was terrible writing. But it’s not a draft you can edit and change back as if it didn’t happen, they can’t swap it under a rug because then it’s jarring.
But bordel, what a waste of an expansion it was…
And now factions no longer matter, so the Horde isn’t going to receive any other big marketable cool characters.
The best that we’re going to get is Thrall, Baine, Lilian and Lor’themar making cameos and standing on the sidelines.
I never liked the trajectory but she had an arc up until it turned into a conspiracy with zovaal for the dumbest reasons dragged out across several expansions of horde driven narrative ending in a squeaky fart of “I will never serve”.
You had a decent, dramatic irony going with her becoming Arthas and facing that fact could be interesting for good or ill.
I read that as fart. She should have faced a fart after the previous squeaky one.
We are also getting Gazlowe, although he isn’t getting his own model.
it really says a lot about the state of the horde lore characters when they dive down into the barrel and fish up the mag’har leader and Gazlowe who was made the leader of not only his own little town but also all of Bilgewater because thrall couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of any other goblin I guess.
Boss Mida be seething.
Boss Mida very smart; Big Bosses tend to get offed, replaced, have their positions coveted.
No one aims for Number Two.
Besides, she probably has all the details on the Accounts.
I think the best narrative would be:
Switching BFA and Legion
Splitting BFA into 3 xpacs as suggested by Desartin above
Splitting Legion into 2 xpacs
With this, after WoD there would be: