Krainz made a decent post in the sylvanas thread that there's a lot of overlap between what's wrong with the Darkspear and other factions in the Horde's leadership, so here we go, a thread to specifically discuss the handling of the warchief role and other characteristics of the Horde leadership from the writing angle.

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Maybe I'm racist, but an elf warchief feels so wrong.

Pragmatically, are you Horde players having to treat Orgrimmar and Undercity as two halves of a single capital?

Sylvanas's fleet departs from Durotar, so Orgrimmar likely remains the capital.

Agreed, they didn't do nearly enough buildup for anyone to believe Sylvanas would be obeyed as warchief.

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The problem is that Blizzard never really settled on what the Horde was supposed to be. Are they fallen people searching for redemption, or the out-and-out villains of the early Warcraft games? WoW tried to have it both ways, and failed.

Vanilla, they mostly stuck with the redemption angle, with the exception of the Forsaken. It was a problem, but not too severe.

Then came Garrosh, and suddenly the Horde was back to its Second War self, more or less. And Horde players were supposed to cheer this on. Some did, but some didn't, since they'd been attracted by the earlier interpretation of the Horde. This is actually a big part of why I quit WoW, since the Horde was no longer the faction I'd signed up for.

And then Garrosh got kicked out, and Vol'jin came in, and it was back to the old days, sort of. Now with Sylvanas, I guess we have another villain in charge.

The Horde, at this point, comes off like a perpetually backsliding alcoholic.

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Yep. Not allowed to be "good" for more than one expansion at a time now, it seems.

The decision to kill off Vol'jin still baffles and confuses me. I don't know why Blizzard thinks Horde players enjoy being villains or working for them. You'd think they learned that lesson already, but I guess not. I don't even know who to blame at this point. Kosak? Afrasiabi?

There are some Horde players who enjoy that. Regardless, Blizzard should have picked an interpretation and stuck with it. The back and forth is more annoying than anything else.

Plus, even the good Horde had enough gray areas that you could play a more villainous character if you were so inclined.

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The situation with the Horde is that a faction within Blizzard regrets WC3 (beyond some exceptions). This faction has done all it could to bring the Lore closer to the pre-WC3 days, at least when it comes to the Horde.

Of course, we could blame having faction PVP to begin with. It apparently requires the Alliance and Horde to eternally be at each-other's throats.

Do you know what's my biggest gripe when talking about the Horde?

It's because often the majority of partakers in the discussion are Alliance fans who think the Horde should forgo a core leader in favor of a Council. While yeah, the Alliance keeps their High King. A stupid role switch, in which the Horde was the faction that originally had the core leader.

And do you know what? Their reasoning is always something along the lines of "having a Warchief is what got the Horde into problems".

Fuck. That. Shit.

Every iteration of the Horde has had problems and we don't give a shit.

Blackhand's Horde was full of problems. It was savage and great.

Doomhammer's Horde was also full of problems. It was more cunning and also great.

Thrall's Horde was the problem (past-wc3). It gave birth to the biggest shit problem dick thing.

Garrosh's Horde was... I don't even have to finish that.


I don't care if we have more Garrosh Hordes. Garrosh's Horde was as much of an OG Horde as any Horde could be in that specific timeframe. In a space-time context of heavy geopolitics, treaties and diplomacy, he went full racist genocidal and got shit fucked.

If you want faction war, you want some kind of Horde and Warchief like Garrosh. A Horde full of problems - and arguably those problems are given birth by the sole stupid idea of wanting to endlessly wage war in the current space-time geopolitical context of Azeroth.


And do you know what? Sylvanas' Horde is pretty close to that. I can easily see her becoming Blackhand redux or Garrosh in a dress.


On the other hand, if you don't want faction conflict, you will want a leadership on the hands of Thrall, Vol'jin, Cairne/Baine or even fucking Lor'themar.

That Horde would be peaceful, wouldn't be "great" on the terms of Blackhand's, Doomhammer's, or even Warcraft III Thrall's. And adding to that, it wouldn't even make fucking sense and will have absolutely no reason to exist, because there will be no faction conflict.


Everyone here knows Blizzard. They will bring more faction conflict to feed the playerbase's mouth. And that's a mouth only Sylvanas can feed right now.

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See, I don't buy the PvP excuse. The two factions being in a cold war still brought plenty of opportunities for PvP. It wasn't unbelievable for the factions to avoid war while still killing unannounced Horde/Alliance visitors within their borders. Likewise, you could interpret the battlegrounds as proxy conflicts.

Like, say, the Stormpike Army (or whatever it was called in AV) was actually a private army funded by wealthy dwarves. Thus, attacking the Frostwolf Clan is not technically an act of war on the Alliance's part. Personally, I find that kind of skulduggery a lot more entertaining.

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Remember in MoP when they took Lor'themar (the most underdeveloped faction leader), fleshed him out well enough that a few people seriously considered the possibility of him as Warchief, and hoping they'd give the same treatment to other faction leaders and their race?

I miss that hope.

The state of WoW in 2017.

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I wish Oma or someone could give us some insight on what their reasoning is or... something.

It'd be nice to understand wtf they're thinking.

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The Legion and the Void are the biggest threats and everything else isn't as important.

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WoD tanked hard so they went full fan service to get people back. Everyone named Wrynn got their fistpumping moment, people complained Jin'jin was boring so they replaced him with a fan favorite, also Illidan is back in his shirtless glory as a good guy. Also Legion, and elves, and Naga! And Vrykul!

Have Alliance fans ever wanted/enjoyed a High King? I've heard the term "blue warchief" with scorn.

Quite.

The fact Blizzard have moved away entirely from this sort of storytelling in favour of nothing but Comic Book/DBZ level garbage is truly sad.

Nope. Never desired, never enjoyed, and absolutely furious they've stuck with the thing.

Retarded as all fuck, it always was.

Eh, AV can't really be interpreted as anything but a direct battle. Most quests that reference it treat it as such, and there is a very broad representation from both faction there. It was like the one place in Vanilla where the Alliance was actually doing allied stuff, and the horde forces were the warchief's clan.

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Sure, but it's still easy to present the battlegrounds as proxy conflicts. That lets you have PvP without the noxiousness of a faction war.

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It's definitely a battle but it's a localized conflict, not something that necessitates open war on other fronts.

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I don't think I've ever seen that idea put forth by an Alliance fan. In my experience Alliance fans have felt that the Warchief is a Horde thematic, while the Alliance should have a ruling council of equals. That's why there's so much hate Alliance-side for the High King position.

Isn't Sports72xtrm a fan of the idea?

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I've seen some Alliance folks want leaders 'more like thrall' In vanilla but that generally just meant more likeable / more respected / more active.

Thrall didn't leave his capital any more than other characters in Vanilla but it felt like he gave more quests, he was actively spying on the burning blade, he had Rend killed, etc...

There was never anything like that for the Alliance. No buff for killing the false warchief, if memory serves.

So instead of bringing in Varian and making everyone fall in line behind him, they should've developed the existing leaders more and had varian interact with them.

And Varian shouldn't have been an orc gladiator, that was stupid.

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I would not mind a council, but I'm not an Alliance fan exclusively.

Basically, you'd have a Red, a White and a Medicine Chief. C'mon, you've all seen their WC3 teepees! You know where I'm coming from!

I still think it was a mistake to even have faction leaders play such a direct role in the game.

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