I wonder if that Worgen is fine.
That's nice. Now do the same for forsaken that didn't escape the Alliance destruction of Lordaeron.
for the Wrathgate, Sylvanas not the Horde./quote]Sylvanas didn't do Wrathgate.... That was just some misunderstanding cleared up half a week after. She ordered the creation of the Blight, to be used on Arthas. That's all.
Casual reminder that the horde committed yet another act of genocide and Blizzard has no plans to make anything meaningful of it. Just wasted blunder for a failed expansion.
Well Blizz, I hope you're paying attention.You really had no idea what your player base was like and brought out the genocide deniers. After staging the genocide yourselves, of course. The alternative is that this is an outcome you'd actually intended, so I guess I'm being generous. Still I want to believe nobody read the room in 2018 and thought "wow US domestic politics is somehow getting uglier let's make our expansion's launch event a 9/11 analog!"I can't imagine how you thought this will appeal to new players or that they'll want to play in your "fantasy epic" of endless race war and archaic mechanics or even would be good for your existing clients. Do you hope offline hatred will turn into online arena queues? Did you cling to some antiquated notion that the Horde and the Alliance playerbase respect each other like rival sports teams or cooperating actors in a grand production? To be fair that expectation makes sense as that's how leaders and notable NPC's operate -hell, that's how merchants get to work. Thrall or Jaina or Baine needs to run to an enemy capital to plead for cooperation and sanctuary? They're welcomed and protected. Players exist on a stage that doesn't get them a polite greeting from a visiting mortal racial enemy. But Saurfang? Let's make him welcome. We know his "honor" precludes an escape attempt, never mind being tried and sentenced for his many crimes. We know that punishing him would have been a mistake later but it still would be actual justice at the time.(I maintain my stance that WoW's plot masters secretly dislike how their stories have to be distorted by the necessity of including "the heroes" in events at all. We make their storytelling messy. Wouldn't it be nicer if we were a passive audience? Maybe Blizz should make more movies and get out of the mmo business forever.)As for the content itself I'm glad to see something done though the perversity of meeting spirits of the extirpated who aren't that upset about being murdered is remarkable. I'm inclined to interpret this numbness as Blizz urging players to "get over it/see things aren't that bad" like Malf said -while you could still taste the incinerated on the wind. Maybe I should watch that "victory speech" cinema from 2018, try to remind myself The Queen of the Tree Elves Tyrande's justice was transforming into The Night Warrior.Who knows. Maybe it's just rushed production. When you're trying to judge results without knowing means a few sentences lacking context can certainly appear vapid. Maybe there's a scene where the dead Kaldorei shriek in echo of the horror of their deaths, plead for Elune to save them, and frantically cry out for loved ones slaughtered in the flames.You know, kind of like the dead trolls in Bwansomdi's sanctuary in the Blood Swamps. Those quests where you brought the dead to Bwansomdi were actually feel-inducing. We'll see if the Kaldorei dead get comparable voices.I've seen accusations that demands for the Horde be made to atone are "toxic." This is laughable, and not just because those accusations are fraudulent, but because player toxicity was never regarded as a problem before. Pardon me but why should it matter now? The cancer isn't in the patient, the cancer is the patient. There's a quote around here somewhere that Night Elf 9/11 was repayment for the "Horde going through warchiefs like Christian Grey something something," and it struck me how demonstrative that perspective is, that the Horde player's attitude is very zero-sum. Anything "bad" that happens to the Horde is good for the Alliance and vice-versa. That events don't have meaning by themselves, they have to be weighed as how significant they are in the great background conflict, the death-struggle between not just rivals but competing species and that this battle is crucially not just for survival, but for dominance. The parade of slain warchiefs are an insult to the majesty and might of The Horde and signs of the Alliance being favored ...and certainly not plot twists that will, or were at least intended to, work out for the best eventually.(Notable this also feeds the "genocide is basically okay" Horde narrative that considers extermination a war tactic, not a crime against life itself. If you believe every Night Elf is or will be your enemy slaughtering them is pre-emptively saving the lives of your own soldiers. When every racial rival is a mortal enemy every innocent death is a necessary/inevitable outcome. Something Blizz is apparently essentially okay with given that while the Horde is required to learn from it's mistakes and change for the better (Thrall's path) that never comes with atonement (Sylvanus' leadership). The Horde may make mistakes, but the Horde is never wrong.)You'll notice this isn't really a problem the Alliance has. Nobody really defended Varian the same way Sylvanus is lauded. Some people liked him, others thought he was pushy ^&*!@#bag. He died well and for a while gave "for the Alliance" some actual punch but his reign inspired as much indifference as anything else. Poll a 100 Draenei on Azuremyst isles and get 80 shrugs. Velen's their man, Varian's High King like Mekkatorque is High Tinkerer and Tyrande is High Priestess. The point of being an alliance after all is that you have common interests, not common cultural commitments or really a sense of shared destiny. The rest of the Alliance has rather notoriously failed the Kaldorei during BfA -even the faction with the spaceship that's one short boat ride from Teldrassil itself. I am not impressed by the idea that they negotiated a ceasefire without actually involving justice for the innocent murdered.The Horde on the other hand, bit more intense about collective honor and glory. Bit more shouting and long red war banners and fervent expectations that the struggle must involve total victory or utter extermination and that every slight and setback is the denial of their necessary-for-survival supremacy.So, yeah. I hope you're paying attention Blizzard. None of this is good for WoW, or for you.
^Ah, bloody fantastic. Take my phantom upvote, Lithillya.As for Alliance mercy don't forget the Trial of Garrosh where Anduin foiled Valeera poisoning Garrosh ...which created the Iron Horde.Whoopsie-doodles.It's rather pathetic that the Alliance has to be "the nice ones" while also attacking the Zandalari and Vulpera without initial cause.M O R A L G R E Y N E S S apparently means the Alliance decides to act the like Horde and the Horde does what it always does.As for the Why, the tl;dr imo is that they meant to soft reboot Alliance versus Horde and thought a big shock event would do the job. Well, they succeeded themselves out of a couple million subscriptions so golf clap I guess.
I loved Astarii in the novel (the part where she sings... heavy stuff, to say the least). Glad to see she gets to escape the Maw.And Ilthalaine... his dialogue tugs at the heartstrings.