Baine ![:clap:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/clap.png?v=6" ":clap:")
is the best of us
And he will also be heavily features in the Tauren Heritage quest!!! Did you hope for more Tauren lore? Little bit of backstory into their spirituality? Well you got BAINE, and Cairne is suuuuuuper proud of him, how cool is that?
I just want Zelling back
Nah, the buildup and contextual storytelling is still way better than Garrosh finding Obviously Evil power in pandaria and applying hord4orcs logic to immediately derp his way into tyranny.
This time around you get to see things gradually spiral out of control as an already Obviously Evil warchief comes out of her shell with lines being drawn. As usual, the Horde gets most of this metanarrative red meat with choices and special questlines stretching back to prior expansions with big names new and old making a splash while the Alliance is just kind of along for the Hordeās wild ride, losing battles and nobly enduring invasions, eventually to be roped into yet another regime change since those always seem to play out so well.
I keep having to say it but the Horde are the true protagonists of Warcraft, their story being one of adversity and self discovery, finding their way in a wartorn world through much difficulty. The Alliance are the convenient foil to serve a deuteragonistic role, often suffering from being on the perpetual defensive as a natural opponent to Horde hegemony. As a result, they almost always react rather than act and are shaped around the Hordeās storytelling needs. It isnāt necessarily favoritism but a natural product of the protagonist needing a foil while still upholding a pretense of faction equality. Horde content is often written first, with greater depth and the Alliance is written around it.
With you in this. Actually prefered Lorāthemarās previous dialogue.
Might be that at least previously it showed the grown appreciation and connectio to the Horde, and a different response to feeling things are being strained.
I had really appreciated the comment about the sinādorei not abandoning the Horde, and the hint at internal struggle of what Horde is their Horde.
Better not lead to another tired āwill belves defect???ā bit.
Is this a parody post?
yeah like the invasion of teldrassil which they nobly endured by first attacking Lordaeron and then following up with Dazarāalor.
So stoic and noble.
Edit: Also they endured it by then accessing a forbidden cursed ritual to power them up to be better at vengeance.
Noble.
iām 99% sure that writing of this kind is banned by the geneva convention
I knew it, peopleād get hung up on ānobly enduringā rather than the larger point. Should I word it differently? No, as the point is that the Alliance isnāt treated as its own thing but is the perpetual āsidekickā and punching bag whenever the Horde needs to have a conflict, putting up with aggression where retaliation would make sense and forgiving the worst of transgressions. The Alliance not ānobly enduringā and demanding revenge or striking back is then treated as this excessive offense in Horde victimhood, as the Horde story as protagonists of Warcraft is one of adversity and redemption.
tl:dr, Alliance isnāt a real faction and donāt get the in depth story that the Horde does, making them a storytelling tool rather than a narrative equal.
You keep saying that but they retaliated a bunch? Like you canāt say people are ignoring the larger point when your point is WRONG. You can throw out all your hegemonys and deuterantagonists to sound smart but youāre just incorrect. Not the first time either.
You can complain about the Alliance not having a larger role in the story (though Iād note that their War Campaign actually accomplished something at all rather than the meandering complete waste of time that the Hordeās was) but that doesnāt mean theyāre not a āreal factionā, nor does it have anything to do with your false narrative that the Alliance is a punching bag.
p.s. Characters reacting rather than proactively acting is a common defining characteristic of Heroes/Protagonists as opposed to Villains. Because characters who tend to go after others for stuff they havenāt yet done tend to be, you know, evil.
#MorallyGrey
Headcanon accepted.
Pretty much, yeah they do. Itās why they constantly lie to us.
Itās not, though. The Horde is the faction that BfA is primarily written for and about. The Alliance is along for the ride, enduring punches like Teldrassil and if you donāt regard the alliance war campaign a meandering mess compared to the Hordeās clear directions then I donāt know what to tell you.
These are actual words with meanings, not me flexing my brain for you.
Yet the Horde isnāt written as a villain, rather being a proud, noble faction beset by difficulty within and without, designed as the actor that accomplishes and changes the world according to its successes; the heroās overcoming of the challenges posed.
There are more layers to it as playable factions, which is why the Alliance is restrained. Characters reacting as a heroic trait is often shifted to a third enemy of unambiguous evil and is a consistent internal Alliance theme but reacting isnāt inherently heroic.
A heroic Horde daring to strike against an Evil Empire Alliance would have a villain on a perpetual defensive but this isnāt the case and heroic horde aggression is part of its larger narrative of securing a home in a hostile world when it isnāt the action of a bad leader intended for the hordeās internal struggle narratives.
All of this is necessarily written with the Alliance as a second hand consideration as a player faction with agency, watching the Horde grow out of control yet again and then going off to build a boat because the writers struggle to make space in the Hordeās ongoing, main story of the expansion in such a way as to give the deuteragonist faction a role of equal gravitas.
Thatās my point; BfA is a Horde story, just like MoP but more in depth and better told but it displays clearly the Allianceās role as a narrative tool rather than a driving force on equal footing.
One of the most powerful characters in the story but also an idiot.
Weāre all Okuyasu Nijimura.
In most cases i agree with you, but right here:
I need to point out that you are sort of implying that hero == protagonist, and villain != protagonist.
It is correct that often a hero is a protagonist - but not all heros are protagonists. Also it is perfectly possible for a villain to be a protagonist.
For example Ebeneezer Scrooge is clearly not the hero - but rather the villain. Still, he is the protagonist, illustrating that the protagonist is often the character that changes the most.
In short: The general definition is that no matter if it is a hero, antihero, villain or most changing, the main character is the protagonist.
(Yea I know. Long post. Over tiny detail. Really not all that important.)
The Horde is the main faction and the Horde PC is the main character. Sadly, theyāre bereft of much agency and personality, adrift by circumstance and narrative necessity.
If Sylvanas is just tricking everyone and letting them all escape then why does the random man (tauren?) that Iāve never heard of see a vision of Baineās death ? She must have no intention to kill Baine if heās baitā¦ Is the spiritman in on it ???
Why does forum-alleged smart man Lorāthemar believe some loserās vision and take it entirely literally and not question its symbolism or the source ?
This patch raises more questions than answers ā¦
What part of āhey lets kill another Warchief and major Horde characterā appeals to the Horde? What part of any of this expansion aside from literally the trailer - and thatās it - appeals to the Horde? Itās not written for Horde players whoāve been some of the most vocal about their problems with it.
Why do you keep saying this when itās objectively not true? From the perspective of a reasonable person and from the perspective of the idiot writers theyāve got who insist that Dazarāalor was them striking back for Teldrassil.
ā¦they absolutely are. Theyāre absolutely portrayed as the villainous faction compared to the Alliance. Theyāve always been the āgreyerā faction in portrayal, even if not in action, to the Allianceās golden glory.
Because itās not just actions, itās narrative. And the Hordeās narrative is that of a Villain, while the Allianceās that of a Hero. Alliance can kill swaths of civvies and itās glossed over as a joke and a pat on the back. Horde do it and itās a major plotpoint about how theyāre monsters.
Alliance wipe out a tribe for no reason and itās literally never brought up again. Horde attack a military fortress and itās a defining āHorde=baddiesā character moment for the central character of multiple novels and questlines - a character who is never criticised for this in lore by anyone - showing writers are happy with that portrayal as correct.
And itās not as if the latest patch or it āall being Sylvanasā changes that. She didnāt burn down Teldrassil herself. The Horde was totally on board with Ashenvale/Darkshore and they didnāt exactly stop when she ordered the burning. Even now they made a point that the ācommon personā of the Horde supports Sylv.
Theyāre on board with her, and her very clearly villainous actions.
So how exactly is the Horde NOT written as a villain?
Baine will die in spirit as he must change how he operates to win what he desires. He stands victorious a changed man. Prophecy fufilled.