So, I’ve played a bit of the Beta. And I must say, I feel really out of place as a Horde character. I know we’re technically not at War with the Alliance at the moment, but it still feels weird that 90% of the main cast is Alliance heroes and a bunch of characters we have no relation to at all.
Moira and her son Dagran seems to play a large role in this expansion, and as someone who have mostly played Horde and only briefly dabbled into the Alliance on occasion. My only knowledge of these characters is that one of them used to be a Dungeon Boss back in Classic WoW and then we helped her in some Scenario during Mists of Pandaria. Other than that, no idea who she is, didn’t even know she had a son and who is he?
Then we have Anduin and Alleria who will both obviously play large roles thoughout this expansion. These characters we atleast know a bit about as horde, but it still doesn’t give horde much reason to care. The Alliances missing king and the Elf who is considered a traitor by our people.
Then there’s khadgar who have mostly been a neutral party because of Questing, but is his alligence is to Dalaran and the Alliance.
And finally, we have Thrall, who’s there for… Reasons? I really don’t know why Thrall have suddenly decided to take an active role again, instead of going back to his family. He honestly feels like he’s just there as a Token Horde Character.
I agree. Whenever there is no faction conflict, they don’t seem to have any idea what to do with the Horde or its characters. They seldom get closer than “elf content is Horde content, too”. I guess this is only 11.0, though, so there might be more Horde stuff coming. There are theories based on datamining concerning a goblin raid, for example, and Gazlowe was sold as a main character this time as well… but we’ll have to wait and see on that.
To Dalaran, yes, to the Alliance, no. Dalaran rejoining the Alliance was basically a dropped storyline. They started it in MoP, did nothing with it, in WoD Khadgar already ignored faction alligance to work with the Horde, and at the start of Legion it was officially neutral again. He is a human, though.
That said… I thought Khadgar didn’t have a role beyond the addon intro? Do we have more with him now?
Let us all not forget that Erevien will continue to play their game despite the fact that the story team made it clear that they don’t care about Horde characters.
Oh, I haven’t played that long, only a few hours worht of quests on the Isle of Dorn. I just expected he would play a bigger role, considering what happens in the intro
I must admit, I’m honestly “terrified” about this. Blizzard have heavily hinted that Silvermoon is going to get an overhaul during Midnight, what I’m personally afraid of is that they’re going to turn the city into a Neutral location, so the Void Elves can access it for RPing, instead of giving Horde some cool and unique locations for RP.
I’m also still a little Salty that the Void Elves got access to Blood Elves skin colors, because with the addition nearly everyone that wasn’t a Paladin transfered their Blood Elves to Void Elves.
Well, the rumor was that he wasn’t in a position to play any role at all after that.
Perfectly understandable. I don’t particularly enjoy the idea of friendly undead RP in Ironforge and Stormwind, either. But I am quite certain that if it happens for Silvermoon, it will happen for all the capitals. The new versions Bel’ameth and Gilneas are already there. Here, take your “we are watching you”-debuff, so it’s all fine and dandy, ain’t it?
The entire reclaimation of Gilneas felt so out of place. Of all the races they could ask for help, they request the aid of the Forsaken, like what?!
I literally helped Storm their city, murdered their citizens and drove them from their home. Eh, water under the bridge, forgive and forget, now go have a cup of tea with Grandma Wahl.
What’s a bit of genocide and chemical warfare between friends?
We have to fight Monty Python’s Scarlet Inquisition! These guys are bigots, that’s definitely worse!
Concerning. But quite unsurprising to be frankly honest.
I haven’t played Beta, so I will feel the gravity of the situation in good time because I personally don’t enjoy being in the early-access kind of crowd, but I am honestly not surprised the Horde focus is little-to-nowhere to be found. Much as I absolutely hate to admit it… what is there for the Horde to even do in this first iteration?
Yes, yes, I know about Midnight and its wealth of potential hopefully towards Blood Elves and their RP scene but as has been pointed out here already, there are fears even there.
Quite a lot of it.
On the character front, I honestly don’t want to even recommend any Horde characters anymore as a highlight. They run the risk of becoming a villain or have been nefariously plotting something from the start that will inevitably culminate into yet another ‘plot’ for faction-war-but-not-really ideal. Even now I am shuddering at the thought of Baine having been sat AFK as him actually plotting a Tyrannical Tauren Supremacist plot that just doesn’t make sense at all.
The Scarlet Crusade may have been misguided but they are a perfectly logical reaction to the sheer horror inflicted first by the Scourge and then by the Forsaken.
It’s really rather silly how it is being presented as ‘racism’ and ‘bigotry’ for the undead to be discriminated against. They are unnatural abominations that have proven in many cases to be unworthy of trust and even the ‘better’ undead are at risk of going feral and losing their already addled minds completely.
As for the Scarlet Crusade itself, it’s clear able to recruit significant numbers to its cause - and though it obviously makes sense for the Forsaken to oppose them and by association the rest of the Horde as well, it makes decidedly less sense for the Alliance to be doing as much.
void elves should have access to Silvermoon and Quel’Thalas, but they should have to grind rep to have the possibility of interaction with NPCs. Maybe start at unfriendly and grind up to friendly to be able to do stuff.
The elf population is already highly damaged and elf leaders need to have some foresight.
Honestly, this feels like world scale issue. We think that Forsaken and scourge have control, but judging by the size of Scarlets I’d say that it’s only due to the game that we think like that.
Even in W3 I don’t think Arthas spent a lot of time pacifying the region since he beelined from Lordaeron to Quel’Thalas to Dalaran, and then a lot of the Scourge went to Kalimdor.
In Frozen Throne he also did some purging but he got recalled to Northrand where Sylvanas took over and did the whole rebellion thing which was mostly infighting.
So yea, there might be quite a lot of people up in Lordaeron surviving in one way or another.
If they don’t actually have characters of note, and actually interact with the player factions in an interesting way, does it mean anything, though? As they have been treated pretty much since Cata, it doesn’t matter if there is just one Scarlet or millions. They are just filler trash mobs anyways. And Blizzard has never been shy about producing those out of nothing, no matter if it made much sense or not.
People wanted the Scarlets to build on ther cool background and to interact with the Alliance especially since vanilla. I guess it’s not impossible to do it now, but kinda… too little, too late, no matter what they do. That dead horse isn’t moving through kicks, and even the best necromancer won’t make it seem lifelike now.
This, I really hate Alleria and she has also made clear that she hates us, so it felt really odd to go quest with her like nothing happens between her and any Horde character.
Like “ma’am you threatened me to kill all my faction, yet I’m here helping you with your marital issues”…
Thrall is there so we have a reason to be there too I guess?
There’s another elephant in the room. Her people were subjected to multiple attempts to wipe them out completely. So it makes very little sense for her to be tolerated for running off and breeding with a human.
The Arathi make it even worse - as they show that if humans and elves breed in large enough numbers, both parent races are snuffed out entirely over the course of multiple generations.
It’s a form of soft genocide but the nutters aggressively pushing race mixing in both the real world and in fantasy settings very rarely acknowledge that.
