So happy to see the new intro being put to use! :D Also I so agree with this video 100%, especially with the Vol'jin & Sylvanas parts. I'd honestly be okay with an expansion more horde-focused to make up for this, and that's coming from an alliance main. Let us elves have a break! :b
Thanks for the awesome intro, Astrale! And I just really think the Horde deserves something after everything. Still throw a bone for Alliance but the Horde hasn't really had proper focus for a hot minute now.
As an Alliance main, I genuinely felt bad for the Horde treatment in Legion, especially the circumstances surrounding Vol'jin's death. While I can understand why someone like Velen and the Draenei as well as the Night Elves got big spotlights in the expansion considering their histories are heavily tied to the Legion, I do wish the Orcs also got that same attention considering the demons were also for them a huge turning point in their history. As for Vol'jin I really can't think of any other character who got fucked over the most so far. Became Warchief at the end of MoP, did pretty much nothing during WoD and then dies in the most anti-climactic way at the start of Legion. When the Horde and Alliance were storming the Broken Shore in the introduction and communicated with eachother, Varian was speaking for the Alliance and Sylvanas was speaking for the Horde, MEANWHILE the ACTUAL Warchief, Vol'jin, is standing right next to her saying absolutely nothing, like ??? It was almost like Sylvanas was already acting as Warchief before even officially becoming Warchief. And then the Legion wipes the floor with them, Vol'jin gets killed by a RANDOM FELGUARD, gets dragged back to Ogrimmar and dies in a chair to poison. It was beyond disrespectful. A part of me honestly blames a lot the Sylvanas agenda that Blizzard were pushing back then because they really swept everything under the rug just to put her in the spotlight. I cried my eyes out at Varian's death (proud girl in blue😭) but his death was fulfilling and a proper send off to his character. Vol'jin's death was the complete opposite and just pissed me off cause they treated him like he was some random background npc. My boy deserved better and I wish he stayed leading. Great analysis btw. 👍
Also the Blood elves, who were not only created by the legion (they are the night elves that abused the power of the Well of Eternity), but were also manipulated by them again at the end of W3 TFT.
@@hillnor6812 what are you talking about? Belfs created by the Legion? they here the Highborne, or High Elves, that were close to Ashara, and aided her in her pursuit of Magic. yes they were changed by th well of eternity, and also from the Sunwell later on.
An alternate timeline where Vol’jin survives and recruits the Zandalari against Sylvanas’ Horde would be so goated. Double rebellion, true preserver of the spirit of the Horde
@ Good question. I think so, yeah. All else being the same and the only difference being that Vol’jin somehow survived, she would’ve still been made Warchief, met the Jailer, etc. and been basically plotting the same things during BfA as in the canon timeline
Sylvanas was a decent war chief in the legion expansion. She didn't really lose her mind until BFA, and in shadowlands you found out it was because Arthur split her soul in half and the evil side of her was living in the body while the good part was imprisoned by the jailer. I want them to bring her back and see what they do with her as a WHOLE character
@@Justicar2503 Kil'jeadan has been manipulating the Orcs before they even had Mannoroth's blood. Mannoroth is basically the Horde's miniboss when Kil'jeaden is the main boss responsible for it all.
@@TimothyWheeler88 Exsacty, back when Draenei were still the little deformed alianse, Kil'Jeaden was literary ment to represent the Devil. He was even characterized this way constantly manipulating and decieving. Puppeteering everything while Mananroth or Archimonde were simply his enforcers. Generals. And Sargeras was very much a manipulated Titan that seemed more mindless bount on destruction then a mastermind leader in comparrison. Who also offered power, but in the actual plotts during WC3 it was Kil'jeaden who actually did most of the actual thinking. Same in TBC as the last secret boss in the Sunwell Planetau.
The horde has lost its identity. Since the death of Garrosh and Saurfang, and the horde trying to move beyond corrupt leaders even forming a council, it feels like the writers don't know jack shit how to advance the faction.
Ain’t that the truth and hell Voljin was the perfect leader for the horde because of what he symbolizes. You know someone whose willing to make peace but will put up with no shit while being a spiritual leader in some ways. So acourse the horde lost its identity they killed off the perfect symbols of its overall identity
garrosh was downfall right there, his horde was pretty much the savage mindless war hungry that so many people claim horde isn't anymore. No need to have demon blood in you to be a war savage orc.
The death of Garrosh was already the point of no return in my book. He could have been a true successor to Thrall, if they really wanted to abandon him as the Horde's leader. Instead they decided Garrosh would be better off as a manical warmonger. And people wonder why I wasn't happy about Metzen returning to the writing team for the Worldsoul saga. 😅
@ I forgot the Garrosh mess was his fault yeah we should have known that Garrosh heel turn would have resulted in voljins short term. Cause yeah I liked very blunt but aggressive Garrosh we had early on, I loved his interaction with sylvanas cause she is a dangerous person when she gained that power to create new forsaken.
Well canonictly it was indeed an orc Shaman who did. Raeghar ? At the end of the expension when you destroy your artifact you see NPC weilding the ogher artifacr they are the canon weilder. I think Liandry weild the Ashbringer
It does make sense that the Horde retreats from the Broken shore - the situation in that battle is hopeless (Yes, I'm a Horde player - the tiny amount of demonic troops the Alliance faced in that battle is literally a miniscule fraction of the amount of demons the Horde faces. There's no chance the Horde can hold them back). The big storytelling mistake is that this is immediately taken as a sign of betrayal by the Alliance leaders, Furry Boi in particular, when in reality every even somewhat capable military leader takes into account that a battle might go badly and they have to retreat - and takes steps to account for that. A single messenger or sign telling the Alliance "We're overrun, we have to retreat. Fall back or you'll be outflanked!" would have solved the entire "betrayal" issue. The way all the leaders, both Horde and Alliance, are portrayed is incredibly dumb because none of them even tries to set up a messenger system...and that in a fantasy world where mages can teleport and speak over large distances. It makes exactly ZERO sense. And none of them seems to have any tactical knowledge at all except for frontal assault against the enemy.
The whole idea that the Horde “betrayed” the Alliance at the Broken Shore is so stupid. I don’t even think they really needed a messager. Blowing the horn and the Horde falling back was a clear sign that something was wrong on their end. The Alliance immediately knew that the Horde was retreating when they retreated. The Alliance claim of betrayal would’ve only had merit if the Horde retreated quietly with no public notice. But the Horde did give a public notice, the horn, and that public notice immediately communicated a retreat. If there was any question as to why the Horde retreated, Vol’jin’s death should’ve communicated the obvious point “oh.. they were being overrun.”
@@ThePastAnalysis Yep, horn signals are one way of a messenger system, I wasn't specifically referring to a messenger delivering something in person. And it would even be historically accurate since horns, trumpets or drums where in fact used for that exact purpose by many different cultures everywhere in the world. That said - in a magical world like Azeroth where mages talk over long distances, teleport or portal everywhere all the time an in-person message would also have been incredibly easy to use.
@@Hauke-ph5ui I see what you mean about mages. It probably would've been possible for them to have a mage send a message via teleport. However, I don't think in the heat of the moment Sylvanas thought about that. None of the Horde expected to be overrun like that. I think the horn she blew followed by the Horde immediately should've been enough. In fact, it was enough to communicate the message because the Alliance immediately realized the Horde was leaving. It's very stupid though for the Alliance to assume the worst case intentions of the Horde in the days after. After Vol'Jin died soon after, it should've been obvious to any Alliance leadership why the Horde left. But instead, dumb Alliance leaders like Genn and dumb Alliance players jumped to "the Horde betrayed us!" What's even dumber though and quite sad is that Genn was then able to go on a vengence mission against the Horde. He took advantage of Anduin's rookie leadership and *no one* later called him out on it. The Alliance didn't even send so much as a formal apology for Genn's actions when he very clearly broke the truce. Instead, that doesn't happen and the Alliance playerbase goes "How come the Horde attacked in BFA?" It's just so stupid.
As someone who came in late into wow who played wc3 because i wanted to play warcraft stuff in order i always felt like what they wanted for the horde in wow and how they portrayed the horde in wc3 always conflicted with each other.
@@cristhianmlr Khadgar? It's not like the Alliance didn't have that equivalent, that still runs in the story to this day. Starting as early as Warcraft 2.
I’ve been thinking about this SO much lately and words can’t even describe how validated I feel to see someone finally address it. Vol’Jin was my favorite Warchief, not for what he did as Warchief (cause obviously we never got to see that) but because of what he did to earn it. He’s truly one of, if not the most honorable characters in all of Warcraft. And what’s crazy to me is how the broken shore cinematics portray Vol’jins death. On the Horde side, you see his death AND Varian’s death, which is portrayed as significantly more heroic. But on the Alliance side, you see Varian’s heroic death and then the Horde running away. The alliance bias is so painfully obvious. Nonetheless, I was exited to see what Sylvanas would do as leader and that ended up…uh…interesting. Also yes, the Doomhammer/Artifact weapon point!! I don’t like the artifact weapons because it’s taking these iconic weapons and watering down the lore. If someone asks “who’s THE Ashbringer?” My answer’s gotta be “uhhhh idk the player character?” I can’t even put a name behind it 😭 and you’re so right. I love Thrall too and the way they made him just run away is a bunch of nonsense. Thank you for the video. You talked about so many things that have bothered me forever as a Horde player and lover. ❤
You're right, the Horde has felt like a complete afterthought to every story since MoP and WoD. it feels like the writers write every story with only the Alliance in mind, and then go "oh right, the Horde" and then just plug them in after, going through the motions, because the HAVE to. As a Horde player I feel the writers just don't like me and my faction, and have to just weather every slap on the face they throw. Vol'jin dying is the first slap to the face, and Sylvanas becoming Garrosh 2 and the Horde not immediately rebelling against her because they would REMEMBER GARROSH, being the backhand that follows after the slap. And god dammit especially Vol'jin. It's always the trolls that get mistreated by the writers. And I don't trust them with Vol'jin's spirit, because that Wild Seed in Ardenweald feels less like a seed, and more like an oblivion box. He's in there, in a side quest of WoW's actual, categorically WORST expansion story of all time, the one we'd all wish wasn't canon. He's THERE. They can just forget about him and use the excuse "well you hated Shadowlands and Vol'jin becoming a Loa is a part of Shadowlands SO." And I recognize this is spiteful thinking, but the only reason I'm having I only feel spite or annoyance towards the Horde coming from the writers. It's exhausting, it feels like the story I like about his game is being neglected, and I'd be lying if I said that it isn't one of the main reasons I don't feel like playing as much lately. I'm only getting my Horde content through RP and my guild, so I only log in to RP and hang out with my guild.
While I try not to get too much into bitter thinking, Vol'jin not appearing during the Darkspear Troll heritage questline despite canonically becoming a loa before that point feels particularly bad.
Just finished the vid. You raise a lot of great points. I came back to the game during the start of BFA, so I missed the legion expansion. But when I got to the Broken Shore cutscene I had the same feelings. Also, absolutely sick intro.
I mean, he was barely even a character in WoW's entire lifetime. He didn't have a particularly major role in WC3 either, but he only ever had minor roles in WoW. He had an extremely minor role in Classic, then a bit more in TBC, basically none in Cata, then we didn't see him until Legion and BfA. He is literally always a side character, what a waste.
Orc fatigue, but never elf fatigue. Of course! We will not have elf fatigue with midnight, but i have elf fatigue! Orc race is the foundation of Warcraft. No orcs, no Warcraft. Like eredar and night elf.
@@sparx0xraps The Night Elves are a perfect example to what happens when an empire gives up the source of their power to become tree hippies. Their great tree gets burned because they don’t have the power to stop a blitz style assault.
As a troll player I was pissed when I learned Voljin died Varians was upsetting but not only did he go out like a Badass like you said his time as war chief was bs though there’s a reason they made him a loa and mostly let varian rest. Cause they realized how badly they fucked up
And all they had to do is write the broken shore plot to the point where Varian and Vol'jin stay back together, have some chat. Teaming up for Azeroth. It would also fit with Varans character growth taking his sons words to heart. That peace is the noblest of aspirations, and how trusting in others is sometimes nessesary. That way we would have booth fight back to back and symbolicly have booth represent them coming together to stop such a great evil.
If they wanted to kill of vol'jin so much they could of had it done so that the poison was taking a slower effect on him due to his regeneration but as the expansion moved onward his condition would get worse. still allowing him to command the horde of even go into another battle only when say... he is about to get the killing blow on gul'dan the Fel poison in the wound would spark wildly, forcing him to retreat or something.
to be honest the horde has been done dirty way before legion, blizzard always struggled to tell a story of the horde because they are either evil with morally grey shades (mists of pandaria, battle for azeroth) or sidelined into a secondary role (legion, dragonflight) to let others shine. The Horde imho doesnt just need an entire expansion specifically built around the Horde, it needs a story that gives it a new sense of identity and not just this usual sphiel of unity and peace, which has become repetative for at least 3 expansions now. Instead, they need to have a theme of why each horde culture is its own creature but still holds together because of their common pact of military assistance and mutual survival, a theme that i kinda hope midnight explores more in depth.
Some friends of mine says " yeah but the creator said horde is their favorite faction. " all I told them was to look at the game developpement for each factions.
SAY IT LOUDER!!! You're so right about ALL of these points. The Horde deserved to have more of a presence in Legion, and I will forever mourn the loss of them in Legion. I played when it launched, and halfway through got so disheartened at the story directions that I literally quit playing. I got so mad too when I played the priest class hall quests and one of them involved healing a patient with fel poisoning from a stab wound, basically confirming that a priest could have just... healed Vol'jin and kept him from dying. Vol'jin's death was so unnecessary. I get wanting to keep the losses equal, but Varian at least went out in an absolute blaze of glory, taking down a fel reaver and then getting killed by Gul'dan himself. That was an epic death, it was at least satisfying. Vol'jin gets killed by TRASH. I'll never not be mad about it. I only came back to Legion when I heard Turalyon and Alleria were finally appearing ingame, as I had read the books as a teen and was hyped for them, but nowadays I have a severe distaste for Alleria for reasons that would be too big of a tangent from this topic. Even though I had come back to Legion, I still felt the absence of the Horde, and I wouldn't feel better until BFA where we got to do a WHOLE lot of stuff. Say what you will about BFA, it was a trashfire indeed, but it was /my/ trashfire, it's my absolute favorite expansion up there with MoP to this day lol I like what you said about Saurfang and Liadrin, that they should've been more involved. You really articulated a lot of points about Legion that I probably wouldn't be able to, and with them, brought up stuff I wouldn't have even thought about. They SHOULD have been more involved. This should've been a time for orcs and blood elves to really do something with the Legion stuff, and you're right about the Forsaken too! This was the time for a lot of reflection and introspective but nope, no one was there. I'm glad Velen was here but of course he's there. He's Alliance. You can guarantee the Alliance will be here anywhere these days. I'm struggling right now getting into TWW because I'm already feeling the lack of Horde over there. This is a rampant problem that I think WoD is semi-responsible for; the "orc fatigue" translated to chopping the Horde off any meaningful roles, and if we /are/ there, it's to play bad guy to some degree, which inevitably gives the Alliance another place to shine. I can't stand it! Anyways, what a longwinded comment, sorry about that. TLDR, I liked your video, you're so right about everything and it's really got me going now lol
Might be a “long winded comment” but 100% accurate nonetheless. Even after all these years, the way things went down with Legion (and some others…) *still* bother me to this day. And just like you said about how they did Vol’jin dirty, “I’ll never not be mad about it”.
Orcs and Draenei should have also been allowed to become Demon Hunters from the rip in Legion. It would have moved the Illidari past the WC3/TBC meta (no pun intended) and allowed an avenue for both races to express their vengeance for their suffering at the Legion's hands. The orcs and draenei, moreso than any other entire species, got dealt the worst blows by the Legion's machinations in general, let alone KJ specifically. It always felt weird that the Azerothian elves were the races at the forefront of the Legion's end.
Yeah, the Horde definitely should have had more of a presence in Legion. Saurfang joining the fight against Kil'jaeden would have been perfect and it really feels like the Horde presence on Argus was there to hint at the Nightborne joining the Horde.
How much ya wanna bet we wont see Vol'jin until the next saga. Denathrius steals his wildseed and runs away into the realms of life. Winter Queen: Moonberry you had one job! Denathrius: Ha ha! Bye.
Alliance player here, and totally agree with you. The rage in combat of the Horde is only showed to us when they fight the Alliance, but not against bigger threat. There is some "Lok'tar ogar" to burn trees, but not against Sargeras x)
What can I say, the devs are the ones to blame for all of this and ever since Shadowlands, factions don't really matter at this point, since we're probably never going to see any major conflict between the two factions and now they are all good friends who work together to beat the next villain. And of course like you said, the main characters are going to be from the Alliance side, since they are the only ones who have barely any interesting main characters left, while (for me at least) none of the current Horde main characters is even remotely interested. The only ones who are meh or ok at best were Sylvanas and Saurfang and one is dead and the other one will probably appear one day in a different light.
What anger me is vol'jin was honorable troll earned only that. He was as troll put hates aside with elf like asking dwaf and elf but both murder each other. And troll(aka dark spear this case) sacrifice stuff to be part horde willing change some stuff. Vol'jin deserved better coming alliance main still think Carine dieing in book annoying wish in-game thing between those two really choose I want vol'jin do more as warchief before his death.
He was also one of the three founding members of the new Horde with Thrall and Cairne, so he was more then just some honorable troll. He was one of the OG's of the horde and the horde was way more personal for him then any ancient empire. So even if that would have made him some much more powerful warlord over some huge terretory, Vol'jin chose his gang over that. He started a rebellion when Garrosh started to destroy the new horde's prineiples and values. And was ready to get in his face to do so. And he had the respect of horde and alliance. As well as some other factions outside of that such as even the Shado Pan. Vol'jin was the perfect Warchief because he was a perfect Bridge, ballanced, wise, spiritual, a hunter and warrior, loa priest and diplomat. Able to inspire and lead. While Garrosh would have been a perfect General and eventually High Overlord when Saurfang had molded him into a perfect honorable Orc.
Always love me some good introspective logic in my veins! Feels good to know it wasn’t just me that’s still bothered by this sh*t all these years later.
Yeah the fact there were almost no Orcs heavily involved in this expansion was odd. While I get it was just after WoD which was very Orc centric, they along with the Draenei and Elves were the most heavily impacted races by the Legion. You'd think they'd be the first ones to wanna board the ship to Argus to defeat the very ones responsible for their worlds downfall, Varok leading the charge against the demonic Titan that killed his brother.
What bothers me the most is that in WoD Draenei still played a very significant role, even while it was a very Orc focused expansion. So why not reverse it in Legion and have the Draenei as a main focus, but let the Orcs play a significant side role?
The artifact weapon debacle gets even worse when you realize we'll probably never see any of those major artifact weapons return since at the end we sacrifice them to...do something... to the sword of Sargeras. Now they aren't totally destroyed. We were able to repower Xalatath after all. But its canon that all of those artifact weapons are presently stripped of their powers. I still love Legion as an expansion. But I totally agree with most of what you bring up in this vid.
Vol'jin was a victim of Steve Danuser. That moron destroyed the lore so badly that Blizzard had to beg Chris Metzen to come back and clean up the mess he left behind!
It's seeing Vol'jin's head hit the ground with an undignified slap that really rams home the message. And then the explanation for his choosing Sylvanas actually reinforced Vol'jin's essential lack of agency, when I think the intent was to try and redeem him in some way.
Wonderfully argued and on point. I loved Legion, but it dropped the ball hard on Horde stories in a way that's become increasingly a problem with each expansion to the point where TWW seemed to forget Horde characters needed be involved in the narrative at all, something that's worrying as they move away from faction-specific leveling campaigns. I get that they have 'stories they want to tell.' But, those stories never seem to be about the Horde. We're coming up on a decade since Vol'jin got shanked and we still don't have a proper resolution to that story.
It's my hope that they learn from this. At least we're seeing a focus on Goblins next. But I dearly hope we see other Horde characters, races, and yes Vol'jin to come back soon.
Is no one gonna mention Ysera Her death brought me to tears one of my favorite characters of all time and being the one to have to kill her was heart shattering. We also lost Tirion Varain And voljin we lost so many to the Legion. Legion was such a emotion roller coaster Such a great expansion and story.
My sentiments exactly. As a dedicated Horde main, I’m still bummed about the abysmal treatment of Vol’jin’s story. He was arguably one of if not the coolest member of the faction at the time. His death feels so shoehorned in. Vol’jin went from his peak in MoP to stagnant in WoD, only to die in a random/forced way in Legion. The side story with Bwonsamdi and of his pending reincarnation, while cool enough, has done little to reconcile the damage done by the initial writing decision. Edit: Now that I know that Vol’jin was originally slated to fake his death and return with the Zandalari later on, I’m even saltier. Imagine hearing him saying “Darkspear Never Die” after being gone for years. 😢
Especially since he is best friends with one of the two Loa of death. He could have legit been dead dead, and be brought back by Bwonsamdi. Wich is the cleanest fake death possebility in wow.
14:16 For real though Shalamayne would have been a much better Fury artifact weapon than those boring Vrykul swords with no lore. Warriors really had the worst artifacts with no pre-established backstory to them; no Shalamayne, no Gorehowl, no Axe of Cenarius just these boring and ugly forgettable weapons. IDK if it would have been disrespectful to the Alliance and/or Human players, they could use a little shaming for hogging all the glory since WoW's inception, ever daddy Blizzard's favorites.
Also could given mages khadgar staff even if was just hidden artifact apprenece. Also since pally got ashbringer shman doomhammer I kinda disappointed that dk got two shard frostmurne make new weapon I kinda wish wield rebuilt actually frostmurne not werid two hand dagger basically gave us. Yes warrior felt like sh. Personally kinda wish gave us more lore weapons or weapons that character wielded for said class
I've always liked Legion for finally giving the worgen some story focus and putting Mekkatorque in a cutscene for the first time (my two favorite races are worgen and gnomes), but the Horde were definitely increasingly left behind as the expansion continued. Initial zones make sense. Highmountain and Suramar had a lot of Horde story, Azsuna and Val'sharah focused on night elf stuff, and Stormheim was mainly about Vrykul but also had a direct Alliance v Horde conflict unfolding. Now even though I'm so sick of elves getting so much focus (so excited for Midnight...) it does make sense they got so much time on the Broken Isles given their history and also relation to the Burning Legion. But then I do think Argus was missing orc characters. As you said many times, the Draenei leading the charge against the Legion makes all the sense in the world. I'd actually be really angry if they'd been neglected. But the two races most impacted by the Legion throughout history were the Draenei and Orcs. Orcs should've been there for their defeat. You could argue orcs already got a push in WoD, but that would be a bad argument because so did Draenei and they continued into Legion. Plus, story-wise, Legion was like a part two for WoD since they feed directly into each other. Also the only reason I'm not more mad about Vol'jin is that he's still here and still has story coming. I honestly expect something from him in Midnight since we'll be in Amani lands. Varian did get much more story before but he's also just completely gone. Vol'jin is still around and I think that's because the writers realized they did him dirty. Also, VERY excited for Undermined! The first patch of War Within was very Alliance-heavy (but I was more happy to see the dwarves have anything to do for the first time since Cataclysm). But our next patch is all about the goblins and Gazlowe!
Absolutely. But about Vol'jin's death the manner in wich it was done still matters, especially for Troll players and fans. Or those who grew up with WC3 and played the whole founding of the new horde. Vol'jin is basicly one of the original 3 and not some side quest npc. Wich made him dying to a random Felguard all the more anti climactic and disrespectful. Especially if you have Varian's epic sacrafice right next to it. So even if he is still around, and will most likely return as a new loa of kings, get a cool new model and some significance in the story it doesn't change the fact how he was sidelined and only used as a plot device for Sylvanas ascention at the time. As pointed out she talked for the horde next to Vol the Warchief. She appeared to command and do more then the actual leader. And Vol'jin was not a personality to act this way. He was couragious enough to backtalk to someone like Garrosh face to face while he was Warchief, yet on the shore he is quiet as he can be. Can organize and lead a whole rebellion and siege, but on the shore utters not a single command. And expecially with future expansions and the Sylvanas plot you cannot unsee it. And can't help but understand that while the idea of him becoming a loa is cool, the execution of this whole plotline was horribly done.
@ oh I agree nothing will fix that actual moment. But I’m just glad his story didn’t end there. Like poor Cairne who died offscreen in a book and has not returned since beyond some cameos as a spirit.
After the Broken Shore, Thrall ran to the defense of the Maelstrom itself. There the elements forsook him (apparently) and he ended up injured. By orcish standards, he really dropped the ball after that. I can understand him getting his family to safety, I can understand him taking some time from the front to heal, but I cannot tolerate him literally abandoning Azeroth and his people to weather the storm without him. An orc fights to defend his people. Saurfang rose up against Sylvanas fully expecting to die, but he took up his weapon all the same. Just a shameful display by Thrall.
@@TrafalgarWaterDLaw-dl5cm He doesn't act that way even with what Blackmoore put him through. It's still out of character regardless of how he was raised because we never see him act in such a way prior.
They really butchered Thrall throughout the years. The icon of the Horde and greatest representative of its values. Saves them from imprisonment and leads them to rediscover their shamanistic ways. Truly an orc with a mission. Only to.. pass the mantle blindly to the biggest fuck up (not sure it would even make much sense in orc society that "this guy is the ruler now"; and also fault of the writers that Garrosh is just big bad evil), and go away to pretty much never again play a substantial role in the society he lead the founding of! Not a character with flaws.. they just wrote him off at some point. Really enjoyed playing Wc3's custom campaign Lord of the Clans (depicting the book). Very fun, and Thrall's a total baddass there!
Another gripe, personally, warrior artefacts, namely the lack of AXE artefact when there is Broxigar's axe of Cenarius in lore that has managed to damage fucking Sargeras himself.
Apparently, Thura (the current wielder of the axe) was supposed to have a role in Legion but was scrapped in the Warrior Order Hall. The weapon was scrapped too because it was "too Druid" silly reasons. But yeah... Legion is Legioning.
@@Skollshorties Yeah, 'too Druid' or too wooden or whatever makes zero sense. Brox was a warrior and I mean, Orcs are renowned warriors too, it would fit with warrior class thematically like butter on bread. The lack of this warrior culture of Orcs in warrior class order halls picking Odin of all things made me really sad.
30:50 It really felt like in Legion they were trying to set up a whole new generation of stories to go in on deeper in future expansions - much like classic WoW had a lot of little lore bits here and there that ended up tying into something much bigger in Wrath or Cata or MoP. The problem is, those original ones happened organically, while the Legion "cliffhangers" felt forced and ham-handed.
Great video! I remember liking Legion’s story and I still do, but it does suck as a Hordie that our faction was such an afterthought and still is. I love War Within but it frustrates me how again Alliance heavy it is. Anyone saying Blizzard is “Horde biased” has their head up their ass.
A double agent player here, I agree with alotta of these. Honestly, the weapon they should have given up, instead of Doom Hammer, would have been Gorehowl for Arms Warrior. Other than that one we got instead.
I can imagine they contrivedly threw Thrall aside for much the same reason they threw Tirion aside: they didn't want previous expansions' heroes to hog the spotlight despite players loving them and wanting to fight alongside them.
Horde gets shafted on story. Same as almost every expansion past MoP. I mean even in the newest one you got Thrall run off to get reinforcements and the entire expansion is just Alliance characters except for one part towards the end when Voss shows up sorta randomly.
At the time, I was okay with it because every expansion did have a lean towards either of the factions. TBC had a Horde lean. WotLK, slight Alliance lean. Cataclysm Alliance lean. MoP and WoD, Horde lean. The problem with Legion was that the Horde set up didn't pay off in BfA.
I wanted to be like Rexxar for years and years on my hunter. Even though he was a night elf. I was so efing mad when they turned survival into a 2h melee. I hate 2h. I love dual wielding melee pet classes and they ruined the opportunity to turn beast master into Rexxar. Instead they changed Rexxar. It was so dumb.
I think the problem comes from trying to be faction Neutral. You can never truly be Neutral when the base roots of Warcraft is "Orcs and Humans" and a faction centric saga.
Yeah I don't think this whole "neutral" focus works either when the characters they decide to focus on aren't exactly neutral either. Or they don't focus on characters who're Horde adjacent.
One last note... Regarding Liadrin: she had already played a prominent role in two class order hall campaigns AND the Suramar storyline. To have her then ALSO take center stage on Argus (even if the spotlight was shared) would have felt weird and a bit like she was everywhere in that expansion or like Blizz was trying to force a minor character into a major role. The elves didn't need much spotlight on Argus as their history with the Legion was highlighted during the entire first patch and the Nightfallen Rebellion and Liberation of Suramar.
Afrasiabi really set up a story of making Horde feel like a bad guy NPCs and it reflects even today when you look JUST HOW ACTIVE all the alliance race NPCs are even today and when hordes ones appear to speak up it feels like... Filler.
TYRATHAN MENTIONED, THIS IS A WIN!! But yeah, I'm still salty on Vol'jin story in Legion, I hope they don't forget he is still chillin in the Ardenweald seed, who am I kidding, they will and one day when they ned a villain they gonna come with "oh, his seed was corrupted" or something u_u
As I say in the video, it really shouldn't matter if you're tired of seeing them. If it makes sense for them to in the story they should be for others. Especially since Night Elves were given focus too. As were humans. But Orcs were not.
@@Skollshorties Orcs were a plentiful amount in Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, and Warlords of Draenor. Though I agree it's annoying that they just had to insert Humans in Legion.
@@sparx0xraps As before, it's not about "we're getting too much orcs so they shouldn't be in the story". If it makes sense for the orcs or anyone to be in the story they should be. Same with the Night Elves.
Alliance main and moreover a paladin main. I truly understand you POV regarding artifact weapons, especially for Doomhammer... trying to convince us that the prophecy was meant for the player all along instead of Thrall, like wtf?... HOWEVER... I do appreciate that as ret pal we get to retrieve Ashbringer because it is such an important weapon in the lore, and since we - as player - are treated as someone who achieved great things along great heroes, I'm happy to know that we are considered enough to wield Ashbringer in the name of Tirion in order to save Azeroth... not to happy bc at the End of legion we sacrifice the power of the artifact (which like, what does it mean? who knew that all those weapons from different times were all considered 'artifact' haha and that you could sacrifice their power to wound a big 'ol sword struck in Silithus????? send help xD ) but yeah sad that they ended up like that... I would've loved a quest at the end of Legion where you return Ashbringer to TIrion's tomb or smth like that, that would've been awesome
I'm so over Legions etc., I want some Horde action now... with Trolls, Orcs and Tauren! Cive me Vol'jin as a Loa, that's most I'd care about! Maybe a stoic, young Tauren shaman or hunter character who follows us and gives us a picture of what is life and stuff for them right now... OR FORSAKEN! A Forsaken who gets allong with the Arathi after some awkward start in Hallows fall with the Arathi... Anything! But please, no Goblins... Edit: Please no more Liadrin. And let Lor'themar some me-time with Thalyssra. Let the bloodelves get some break... *looks towards Midnight* Well...
I don't think you quite understand the Arathi. They are a millitaristic religious state all about the light. They're fascists. They would kill all undead on sight. The fact the priory was using light undead was a heresy to them of the highest order, and those were light undead. As soon as the Arathi notice that the forsaken are a thing it's gonna be a complete genocidal holy war.
Great point about Rexxar in the Hunter campaign. I think I sidelined the Gilnean what's-his-face almost as soon as I got him because he just wasn't even slightly interesting. Heck even Emmarel afaik an entirely new character and the only member of the Unseen Path at the start or Hemet's writer-turned--rookie-hunter Addie Fizzlebog are more interesting with more characterisation.
The main point of that whole section really was to simply talk about how the story and the characters mattered so little in that campaign. And I wanted to gush on what it could've been so much for every character involved.
The whole thing with Thrall was that the at the time Blizzard leadership were trying to push Chris Metzen out of the picture. Hence why both of the characters he voiced (Varian and Thrall) went away one way or the other.
Doesn't add up because Metzen has on record stated he loves voicing Thrall and plans to do so for as long as possible. We see this when he returns in BfA as the role and has been onboard since.
I've played horde for as long as I can remember, and it's really sad to me how they have had almost no good storytelling as of late. I recently asked my guild members (most of whom have been playing for 15+ years) if they could name the current leader of each main horde race and the vast majority got Thrall, and Baine and very few managed to get Lor'themar. This means that a majority of my enfranchised diehard horde guild couldn't even answer who the leaders of the undead, goblins, dracthyr, and horde pandaren are. More people answered Talanji as the leader of the trolls than who even knew who Rokhan was. Give us more good Horde stories, Blizzard.
Man it's almost like the best expansions center around the Alliance. Jokes aside, everything that happened to the horde in legion got us to shadowlands. It's been down hill ever since they got rid of the best warchief. He wouldn't have let the vulpera even step foot on Kalimdor.
The Horde has been failed in all Expansions either we're painted as bad guys, Horde Characters go through Character Assassination (although this has happened to Alliance Characters too) or just watered down. Legion itself can be considered rushed and even done in the wrong order, Legion should've been two or even three Expansions with the First being fighting the Legion Invasion and losing, the Second recruiting new Allies (Zandalari Trolls, Kul Tirans, etc) and going to Argus, the Third could've been about us fighting the Legion on Argus and defeating them.
To this day cracks me up that the Draenei made a kill all orcs on sight rule after Shattrath but less than 100 years later they forgave the Man’ari for the 10,000 years of intergalactic genocide they waged. The writers truly just hate the Horde. It’s not about morality or right or wrong anymore. Nothing the entire Horde has done can ever compare to what the Man’ari did
The Draenei have mostly forgiven the Horde and the orcs at this point. While the Man'ari are still in a harder basis where only their most trusted are allowed to work with the Alliance in secret right now. I'd say most Draenei are far more forgiving with the orcs than the Man'ari in the Lore.
@ at this point yes they have forced the writers into forgiveness for every crime imaginable, but just a few years ago during the Warlords of Draenor Campaign Mar’aad was the first person to urge King Wyrnn to war even though these Orcs aren’t even from the same timeline and did none of the same crimes. In the new audiobook the WoW UA-cam channel just dropped, I know this doesn’t involve Draenei, but Trollbane’s niece was using Arathi and Seventh Legion forces from Stormwind to kill the Orcs in Hammerfall including an attempt to assassinate Thrall. That doesn’t strike me as very forgiven by the races of the Alliance.
@@Skollshorties I don’t know about you but I don’t have a single friend who ever murdered a members of my family, or plotted to kill my entire ethnicity, or had my people in internment camps. I probably would never want to work with somebody like that no matter how sorry they were, and I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Orcs have been getting the shitty end of the stick since they came to Azeroth
This video certainly made me reconsider my perspective on legion. I'm not saying it's still not my favorite expansion. It's just that playing a human Death Knight meant I was eating SO GOOD. The order hall campaign was absolutely incredible. So good that it made itself into The War Within as a hero spec. Gathering a new set of horsemen of the apocalypse felt like winding up a huge punch to knockout the legion. And the alliance bias didn't really stand out because I just presumed there was a horde perspective I wasn't seeing. I can totally understand a horde hunter just not having the same experience I did if fan favorites like Rexar didn't even do anything in their quest line. I think I would've lost it if Darion Mograine just napped in Acherus the whole time instead of helping out with raising the new horsemen. Yeesh.
WoW treated the Horde baddly since the beginning. The Horde was barely controlling Durotar and the Barrens during vanilla and struggled hard to get wood from the elves, and for some reasons, Blizzard decided they should be at war with them to add them to the Alliance, when it would have be more logical to trade the wood (cause they can get an unlimited amount with the wisp, you know). The original zones are all about cleaning Dutorar from the tirassians troops left, fighting against the Burning Blade, Thrall refusing to execute straight away the treacherous warlocks and in general letting warlocks live their life. Add the Forsaken that, for no real logical reasons, and how the Darkspear get rekt from an internal conflict that last five quests in the starting area, and how the Horde seems to split everywhere (with their attention on Ashenval, central Kalimdor, north of the earthen kingdom with the forsakens and Stranglethorn with an outpost) and how you still have a big and roaming dark Horde, with a total lack of consideration for the actual clans existence outside of Warsong and taurens tribes outside of Bloodhoof, and you can already see that the Horde was a second thought. Consider that in the current canon, the Alliance take care of the most dangerous vanilla dungeons and raids overall, and had a better leveling experience. The only redeeming thing the Horde has back then was the Might of Kalimdor being led by Saurfang. Then come BC and how the Amani, one of the classic races of the Horde of W2, were butchered, how the ogres were forgotten, to get blood elves on high substances. BC get some mag'har but most of the interesting orcish characters are fel orc and there is no fel orc redemption arc, so we destroy many clans left in Dreanor with minimal interesting lore. Zul'aman is sack and Zul'jin dead without any mention of their past history with the Horde outside of the trailer, and in the end, areas like the Black Temple are far more interesting for the Alliance than the Horde. The whole Horde part of BC was on the Blood Elves, when you keep in mind that they killed Kael'thas two times in a row. Deception after deception if you ask me. WotLK, now we have Arthas and the Scourge. The tribal Horde doesn't get much outside of Borrean Tundra. Getting even forced to be at the Argent Turnament because... it makes sense for a wolf rider to do some knight stuff, I guess. Well there's some cool things with Garrosh and Saurfang but it's still Borrean Tundra related, and like 30% of the area only. Overall, it's focus more on forsakens and Sylvanas and a bit of Blood elves because they are more Scourge related. For the second time in a row. The Horde lost Saurfang junior, lose the Icecrown battle against the Alliance, Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blades are very focused on humans, as the Scourge is, Ulduar is about dwarfs, gnomes and humans, so most of the expansion feel rather focused on the Alliance than the Horde. Not any chance for the drakkari to do anything with the Horde, they get slaughter. Rip. Wrathgate and Undercity siege are both very negative events of course. We have the end with the darkspears retaking the echo isles and Garrosh becoming the warchief, but Thrall must become a neutral NPC for that and Cairne dies. And Thrall, the hero of the Horde, is now considered like an incomeptent shit by the lore... Great. Cataclysm, and at least some good Horde content. Garrosh launch a global war against the Alliance but unfortunately, his writting is inconsistent, they wanted to make of him a genocidal warmonger but then created the Stonetalon mountains questlines, so our main character is incoherent. At least he is fun. Overall the Horde offensive is a failure, I may add. Durotar and Barrens take heavy damages during the Cataclysm, forcing the Horde to retake control of it after Theramore "attacks" (the lore being wildy inconsistent about the fact if it is Theramore of the Alliance forces coming from Theramore, because the game shows something the book says otherwise). The offensive of Ashenvale is a success until the night elves strike back and retake everything and you have Wolfheart with another failed offensive before that. Stonetalon army is disbanded. Darkspear are after six years a real faction, at least (and it's better to this day that what the gnome ever had). In Earthen Kingdoms the Forsakens are more successful, taking Silverpine, Andhoral, Gilneas and maybe some other areas, but at the price of the global dissension between them and the rest of the Horde. Twilight Highlands' offensive is a failure with the initial air force but at least the goblins are doing a good job at taking control of Azshara and the Horde recruit the dragonmaw, even if they don't do that much. Comes Tides of War and the victory the Horde get on Theramore is at a heavy price and Orgrimmar survived just because Jaina is wet with Kalecgos. MoP and the Horde get it really bad, Garrosh is now a genocidal monster, the Horde invasion on Pandaria is far worse than the Alliance one, attempt to assassinate Vol'jin, rebellions everywhere, the rebels needs the Alliance for settling things with Garrosh, Lor'themar was consiering restoring old alliances with the Alliance, the trolls get rekt in Throne of Thunder, we lose our warchief, Thrall start is journey of "No I'm a pussy I flee from responsibility", but hey, Vol'jin is warchief! Things will go right now. Right? WoD is an half baked expansion. There is some great lore on the orcs and Draenor, but outside of that, it's a disaster. All the interesting old warlords dies quickly without doing much like Garrosh or Kargath, Hellscream's is crazy incompetent, Orgrim is butchered at a level never seen before in WoW, some characters like Saurfang or Utok never get any attention or simply doesn't shows up. The orc, Horde and Draenor lorebuilding is great, the actual writting is infamous for good reasons. The Alliance get the same thing with the Draenei but overall for both it's pretty disappointing, but especially from the Horde side, because it's the end of an arc of rebellion and redemption sort of, and it falls pretty flat. Then Legion to Shadowlands which creates Garrosh 2.0 but far worst in the writting quality and without the redeeming qualities of being both original & fun with Sylvanas and the Forsaken. Vol'jin ded lulz. The lore turn Thrall into a ridiculous coward, Sylvanas in a stupid bitch - of wait no, she is NoT HeRsElF -, the whole Horde goes crazy with characters that seems to not even understanding themselves what is happening, and nightborne, zandalari and highmountain taurens being quite illogical about what they do for the sake of the plot (like yeah, the Alliance just strike the Zandalari thrice, kidnapping their prophet and prince, chasing them, and next killing their king in an assassination attempt, when they were not officially in war anymore and were just discussing with the Horde, the zandalari joined the Horde efforts because of that, but all of sudden, they abandon everything because Saurfang and Anduin decided it? Great.). And in Shadowlands you see why all of this happened : for one of the worst plot ever written with a dumbshit character with big nipples and bald that is a robot in reality. The only good thing is Garrosh suiciding himself to get rid of this dumbshit story. Ah at least there's the alternate Draenor plot that could be... wait no they forgot it actually happened and this whole alternate reallity still makes no sense to this day. And now since Dragonfly, the Horde's themes, characters and tone are sidelined outsided of our favorite green human Thrall. We are the happy friends of the humans that they call when they need some muscles, yes. Half our characters are dead, or have forget who they are, the natural neutrality and violence that described the Horde are nowhere to see. We are good paladins in golden plate like the Alliance too. Just with wolf fur, big muscles and axes instead of shiny armors and swords. Isn't that great? The taurens? Always treated like hippies. Trolls? Almost all deads for those that matters. Forsakens? Now good guys. Orcs? How dare you to judge orcs violents, they are gentle guys with big hearts, well, big green hearts and best humans friends. Elves? Humans with pointy ears. Pandarens? Who? Vulperas? The fuck they are doing here to begin with? Oh you know, it's the Horde, you like cute and funny furry self insert characters bro. Now what about getting some dwarves? What about getting rid of the evil goblin leader to have one who cares about his employees life and well being? Ogres? What's that? Taunkas? What's that? There's no Horde anymore. Legion was the final nail in the coffin, since then, it's only worse each time. To be fair, it's not that much better with the Alliance, 90% of the time it's just human-focused content (which means ME HERO MY PALADIN ME SAVE WORLD AND ULTRA LOYAL ULTRA GOOD CHARACTER) and when it's not, it's 8% of the time night elves getting butchered the exact same way that the Horde is, and the 2% of content left, it's just dwarf and gnomes. And no, not actual story about dwarfs and gnomes, it's Brann talking about some titans shit because that's all the dwarves can do in wow, titans plot. Yeek I forget the Draenei. Now they are accepting demonic betrayers and are led by humans with light cristal sword. Nice. Can we have the Yrel light crusade plz.
yeah basically everything after warlords failed the horde. legion is pointed out here, bfa is basically just ruining the best horde character, like up till the point of the saurfang vs syl fight they could of done somethng but as soon as she turned her back not just on the horde, but the forsaken as well, ruined it. if she had a good reason shown is shadowlands maybe could of worked, but no, shadowlands made it worse. but back to BFA, constant horde Ls with basically no major victories, at least not from what i could remember. and in shadowlands we had the famous Baine just chilling doing nothing. dragonflight basically was night elf o'clock so that was alliance focused and so far TWW is just allyria and anduin power hour. it just seems they despise the horde.
Legion was good but it could had been ten times better from a more story balance point of view on both sides of the coin. Felt like the Horde was just side lined throughout the whole expansion as in the orcs fighting against the legion that corrupted their whole race from the beginning. Thrall, Saurfang, Rexxar, Eitrigg, and etc could had gotten their chance to broke free of the legion once and for all after terrible history of the first war with the Draenei and left a dark wound that never healed on their home world of draenor. Not having any orc characters to join up with Khadgar, Illidan, and Velen against Kil'jaeden and argus was the biggest mistake that the writers have done. Baine could had journey with us to Highmountain and add more character development for him besides us the player character. I agree that Vol'jins death was ridiculous given that he barely had any development at all after Warlords and he just died at the beginning of the legion expansion after the great development during Mists of Pandaria with him against Garrosh Hellscream. Only characters that did got story time was the Forsaken during Stormheim and the Blood Elves in Suramar but other than that it's kind of same page as the Cataclysm but the Blue Side. The Horde as a whole deserved better from legion specially with the orcs given their past history with Kil'jaeden and Vol'jin didn't need to die by a pointless stab from a random felguard.
The Legion end raid included Varimathras and The Coven Of Shivarra, Vol'Jins death could have been a perfect chance to literally have them stab him in the back pretending to be Orc warriors or something. They stab him saying "Vengeance for the true war chief Garrosh" and Vol'jin gets his second wind before death nearly killing them with Sylvannas forcing a reveal, some connection to these raid bosses to the Horde and a more plausible reason why The Horde retreat, they do not know how infiltrated their ranks are. Also orcs were manipulated by Kil'Jaeden pretending to be Ner-Zhuls wifes dead spirit using seemingly unknown magic, i would have happily taken some son Draenor Ner-zhul pulled out into thr Hordes story like Yrel to the defeated Kil'Jaedens spirit as a catalyst to revive Naaru Prime or something.
I might be biased as an Alliance player, but if anything I think this was just the Alliance getting "their turn" after the last expansion and a half had been so horde-focused. Like, the whole story of WoW from the Darkspear Rebellion to the end of WoD was pretty much about the Horde. It might have been an overcorrection, but the Alliance deserved their time in the spotlight after that. Especially given that the spotlight went right back to the Horde with the Sylvanas plot in BfA.
It's important to remember that while the Horde got a big spotlight in MoP with the Rebellion, the Alliance was still ever present for it. That's where that goes out the window in Legion. The Horde wasn't even there. And WoD was not about the Horde it was about fighting AU Orcs and not the Horde itself.
@@Skollshorties The Alliance was present for the rebellion but the storyline was about and driven by Horde characters like Vol'jin, Thrall, and Garrosh. And yes, WoD wasn't technically about the Horde, but I still consider alternate timeline Horde characters who are part of the "Iron HORDE" to be Horde-adjacent. You have good production value though, I subscribed
@@hydromancer4916 I don't really count the Iron Horde as Horde adjacent the closest you've got are the Mag'har who joined after the fact two expansions later. That'd be like calling Arthas "Alliance adjacent". And again, you still had multiple storylines with the Alliance prior in other patches too. That's the main issue here that I'll repeat. If Legion had the Horde in anything close to how the Alliance was placed in MoP, it would be fine.
SYLVANNIS'S book for BFA built her up way better and did nothing. The book for BFA implied she had a mission to save the undead from rotting to death. Then did bull shit in retail with her. She goes evil and serves the jailer.
You say that Legion was supposed to be a neutral expansion... only to then point out the many, many cases where this defenitly wasnt the case. imo, though Legion was awesome, it was heavily flawed. It did away with loads of legends, myths and rumors, the world felt empty afterwards. Then the treatment of the Artefact weapons that lost all their powers to neutralise the Sword of Sargeras... I could go on, but to me, and I played both factions, the tonal shift was obvious: the Horde are now the bad guys in the story. No longer the misunderstood heros from Vanilla. And yes, with Teldrassil, I think we can all agree the Horde turned from bad to simply evil - and yes, I mean it: there was not a single dissenting voice in Sylvanas' army (except Varok, who opted to slink away and once again turn to the Alliance as they did with Garrosh - like, man!, cant you keep your house clean for at least ONE expansion!???). Maybe Garrosh startet it, but Legion build on it and BfA put a nail in it. What a time to be a Horde fan -.-
In my honest opinion: Vol'jins death was made for same reason why Garrosh had 180 degree personality change in MoP, he was simply not popular character. Silvanas was another bad call from writers. Artifact weapons was massive misstep, I never really liked the idea of being stuck with a single weapon for the whole expansion. Warcraft have a problem that many long standing franchises have...writers who are treating the writing of the lore as a job and give zero care of the "world they are effecting" because it is not "their world". I must point out the fun fact of Rexxar, in Warcraft 3...he is actually ranged fighter (he is throwing his axes) XD All order hall stories felt rushed (and yes even Demonhunter order hall...where we have entire class intro on the same world as well), the stories there could have been much much longer...instead we got about 15 to 30 minutes content in order hall. Kil'Jaden ratcon (why are we not surprise at this point
For one, the game has gone much longer than I think they originally felt that it would. Thus, I believe the Horde was always meant to fail. It has always been barely a functioning confederacy. Incapable of maintaining stability outside of warfare. But people do love their Horde. I know I do. But in the expected timeline of the Lore of WoW. The horde liquidates after the events of WoTlK. Thrall really does become a shammy dude and Varroc takes over the Orcs. But eventually the undead break faith forming their own faction. As do the Tauren remaining little more than independent allies. The only ones who'd stick around are the Trolls. But even they aren't a monolith. Many Trolls would join Zandalar. Way back then. Before Cata. I had hoped and Dreamed. That the soon to be Worgan race wasn't going to be alliance. Instead, the game would fragment into two new factions. With the old "Horde/Evil/Misunderstood" being headed up by the Undead, with Fel Orcs, Eradar, Worgan, and "San lane??"vampire blood elves forming around a coalition of darker and seedier intentions. Which would have allowed the games lore around faction warfare to have legs. But nope. They just kept beating that poor old Orc warchief into the dirt. Even after Hy'jal and the Wraithgate. Now we have more elves than you can shake a stick at. Humans who are inexplicable evil. Yet somehow unaffiliated. And no real bad guys. Now Horde lore is basically "That one guy...*snaps fingers*...you know the guy...that one guy...from the thing...he was there...pretty sure."
biggest failure of world of warcraft for me is, they put so many enemies of horde and alliance on the horde side, wrath gate betrayal. shortly after that, garrosh hellscream (my favorite wow villian) and then sylvanas . the horde ends up with the villian being there leader, and then they have too fight there own as a enemy. which kinda sucks cause the horde gets split in two each time . its just bad for the story . imagine if horde was backing hellscream and their raid was on our cities and alliance raid was SoO. everytime a horde villian occurs the horde have too fight them instead of getting a choice.
I had a thought of what could have been when it comes to sylvanas and the valkyr part of legion Instead of making sylvanas just try to enslave the valkyr queen cause "lol evil" why not make it that after meeting the forsakens , Odins seeing their valkyrs decide to just capture them to either enslave them back to him or destroy them if they can't be , Odins in the lore was shown to be kind of a dick so it wouldnt break his character Make it that the forsaken have a special connexion to the valkyrs "i mean more special than what they already have" make it that whenever one of sylvanas valkyrs refuses to bend to Odins will and is destroyed all the forsakens and sylvanas herself feel their death and show it throughout a questline or something , show the forsakens sorrow and show them getting weaker and weaker as their valkyrs are being killed or turned That would give a good reasons for sylvanas going to Helja and capture the valkyr queen to try and break the magic that Odins uses to enslave her and the other valkyrs and to get her valkyrs back and maybe who knows have new ones join the forsakens as well , as a form of gratitude for having been saved from their abuser You can afterward continue with how it went with Greyman where he fucks sylvanas plan and instead of saying "I have taken your future" he says " I taken have your people future" BUT instead of sylvanas just letting him walking away , she fucking murders him on the spot , while his back his turned , one arrow in the neck than another in the back of the skull coming out of his eye socket than after has he drops , you see sylvanas behind him and she lets one of her banshee screams in anger Also yes i am saying Greyman should have fucking died tbh who cares , he has always been a moron and douchebag in lore , he doenst deserve to still be here And then maybe just have an extra small raid for the horde where they just raid Odins place and get their valkyrs back by force idk
I like how people compared Varian's sacrifice in Legion to what Grommash did against Mannoroth in both timelines, but that's not the same at all. The writers had to make the Horde look pathetic and weak in order for the Alliance to look brave and strong and then turn Varian's death look cool and heroic, because according to some blind folks - Vol'jin died by fighting the mobs and Varian died by Gul'dan's hand. Varian was technically defeated by the mobs as well, only killing a few before getting stabbed in the shoulder and then finished by Gul'dan, but who's counting. For the most part, I've enjoyed Legion and the part, which I didn't like was Argus. The zones in Argus weren't that good, the story was boring and predictable and it just felt rushed and unfinished.
While I wouldn't say fail the was huge room for improvement, C- for Horde love. I agree with most of this but some bits you covered that I have some thoughts. I don't really count Khadgar as Alliance as while in WC2 he was since his first sighting in WoW he has been neutral, with the most Alliance thing wanting to catch up with his friends. I find the whole Thrall bringing his family to Nagrand funny as Aggra is seen in the Shaman Class Hall, so if they wanted Thrall to do something he should have been the one to lead the Orcs still and maybe run things in Orgrimmar. As for the Doomhammer I mean since the Shadow Priest Artifact got its focused and I believe so did the Resto Shaman after Legion I can't really see why they can't have us give the Doomhammer back to Thrall. Vol'jin should have not faked his death as that would feel a weird thing to do, but stayed behind to cover the retreat and have gone missing with come BFA we find him in Zandalar, with the Horde not having a Warchief for a time as the current one isn't confirmed dead. For bits missing Baine and Roanauk were supposed to play a big role in the Highmountain Story helping Mayla as fellow High Chieftains, this would make more sense why later the Highmountain are recruited and gives the Horde lead neutral story like the Alliance got with Val'sharah and the Night Elf leaders. Thura having been given Broxigar's Axe and played a role in beating the Emerald Nightmare before, who were secondary antagonist, where was she. I know her weapon was going to be the Arms Warrior weapon, good thing they didn't do that other wise it would have meant her death I bet, but her now being missing the Expansion feels really missed. Bonus a bit of both They should have brought back Theron Gorefiend I mean I have no idea why he was killed in by Horde members in TBC, but one of the Old Horde characters that is a Warlock, who was loyal to the Horde in our universe, and could also work well in the Forsaken. Could have done a story where he knows a secret to defeating Gul'dan we need to bring him back. the old Paladins and first Death Knights were rivals in WC2 so now he and Turalyon (who did fight each other) teaming up on Argus could have been fun to see.
I don't remember much of legion cept my sister telling me how suramar is the worst city ever lmao. As a draenei hunter, seeing them kill of Vol'jin was just ugh. He didn't really get to do anything and he's gone. Rexar is a fave to me too and him not being a big thing for hunters was disappointing. I really do hope with these next few xpacs we get some horde characters stepping up. (and Velen too like I know he's prob busy with new shattrath but I feel like he should be here)
To me this video shares a large amount of gripes I have with Blizzard's overall writing structure. it feels very skewed to one side of the aisle. This structure ultimately caused me to stop caring for Warcraft's lore period. the factions, both the Horde and the Alliance lack flavor now unlike in the past, and this will sound very stupid I am aware. The Alliance overall gets much better treatment than the horde in the story, part of why I stopped playing (small part but a part relevant to this rant). post Mists it did not feel good to be a horde player because you were almost always the bad guy of some campaign, or the party that ended up worse off. Ultimately this is more of a problem warcraft overall right now shares so I will only mention it briefly. The story feels soft and kind of boring, like the writers are afraid to go even slightly in the direction of 'the factions still slightly dislike each other' due to the damage that BFA did. Overall I want the Horde to get better treatment before I am even remotely interested in the lore again. That's just my take though.
Metzen and the writing team objectively messed up the Horde's story in WoW. Most of the great Horde leaders weren't given justice through the expansions. Cairne, the great Tauren chieftain, was killed off-screen in a novel. Garrosh was wasted. Vol'jin was wasted. Rexxar was wasted and forgotten. They wrote Thrall off from Cata onwards and he never achieved the same height after. Sylvanas was messed up by poor writing later on as well. In addition to all these factors, the Horde ended up becoming somewhat "evil" and an antagonistic force in both MoP and BfA, even though it doesn't fit their theme. What is ironic about these facts though, is that while the Horde was very unfairly treated from a lore standpoint, in the actual gameplay they were the objectively better faction for most of WoW's history because of their amazing racials. I still remember how OP Troll racial was back in MoP, basically another DPS CD. Legion had many other flaws though, much bigger than anything related to the Horde in fact. The idea that we can engage the Legion upfront on their own motherworld is just pure insanity. They built the Legion up to be an advanced, never-ending demonic army which has destroyed an innumerable amount of worlds throughout WoW's history. Its unthinkably stupid that a small elite force from Azeroth can straight up overpower them on their own grounds. They also had to conveniently write Sargeras off from the entire expansion to let us win. What's even more ridiculous however, is that we still have no explanation for what Sargeras was doing while covering Azeroth as a fart cloud, as far as I'm aware at least. They still couldn't explain it after 4-5 years later, it was so poorly thought out!
I think they wanted Sylvanas because of her ties to the legion. She had a Dread lord on her pay roll. Most of the horde have ties to specific demons. But less a general legion issues. Also because demon hunters are stereo typed as blood elfs. They might have thought Illdan was enough? I think its fine that vol'jin should died. But it should have happened at the end of legion to hype up how evil the legion are. If im right isnt vol'jin that troll that ninjia dude who killed like a 100 people to save dojo? Also think Sylvanas as war chief is a awful idea. I think a lot of her plot points are cool. But Sylvanas is the high elf ranger general. The Elf's, especially the rangers, are famous for being crafty sneaky and hiding in the shadows. You know. Traits you don't want in a leader. Esspaicy Horde. Btw she worked as the leader for the Forsaken becuase the Forsaken had undead terroist vibes to contrast the Scourge.
It seemed to me like they didn't care for the Horde anymore, now it is just 'Alliance, but red and spiky'. We lost our faction identity. No Warchief, they make sure to add another god damn council. With 80% of them being Alliance sympathizers. Which, this whole koombayah nonsense can go suck an egg as well... I miss the days when it was still WARcraft, where both sides were evil and had every reason to hate each other...
Sorry but i don't relate to the whole doom hammer analogy... There is even more important artifact, like the Ashbringer which tehy took it from Tyrion by killing him in a pretty pathetic way if you tell me. Xal'atath was a priest weapon... I dont feel like getting doomhammer away is an insult to anyone.
A shame they decided to 'burn out' the artifacts (with Xalatah being a "special case") As far as doomhammer? Heh.. The way they went with Thrall he very much should have lost that weapon, while I agree it's a little funky bc that hammer is very horde-centric. Thralls big issue and losing his connection with the elements? He lost his confidence the only real reason the elements don't respond to hesitation and uncertainty if he was less a broken man he wouldn't have problems getting it up
Oooh Legion.... It Nearly borke me How it went... and how it fail and drop the horde storyline here and there... and man... What could been better but Legion really really just Shove Night elf into my face sure sure tuaren is there but... Oh god... Legion is my mostly hated.
If Legion failed the Horde, then by your metrics Warlords Of Draenor MASSIVELY failed the Alliance. 2 years with nothing but Orc storylines (and a selfie patch), Thrall, Garrosh, Gul'dan, Grom, Blackhand and the list just goes on and on. Literally every single zone was Orc themed, due to the Iron Horde dominating everything. Sure we had Yrel & Velen's arc but that ended in Shadowmoon Valley which was the first zone of the expansion as an alliance player, and it ended with, you guessed it, another orc (Ner'zhul) summoning the Dark Star and Velen sacrificing himself (I know it's was an alternative timeline, but still). That was what we got, all done and dusted in the first act of the expansion. From there we had Highmaul an Ogre/Orc themed raid, Blackrock Foundry an entirely Orc themed raid (which was very good i'll be honest, i loved that raid) and finally Hellfire Citadel an Orc/Demon themed raid and once Hellfire came around, i was just exhausted from overexposure to Orcs in every single crevice of the expansion. So while i understand, and to some extent agree with you on certain points you made, you have to realize what came before Legion. You mention "Orc fatigue", and to be honest that was pretty much how the entire alliance player base felt after Warlords.
Orcs from an alternate reality that are not our orcs are very much not our orcs and not a Horde storyline. WoD was about fighting orcs for the most part, and as a fan of orcs and loving their culture I loved parts of it but I did not like the killing of orcs. That doesn't really make it a "Horde Expansion". Especially since on the flip side of things the Alliance were given focus to the Draenei. It wasn't only about the orcs. After the first patch and dealing with Garrosh, both the Alliance and the Horde kinda fell out of the story for WoD and it wrapped itself up quickly. I think people need to realize that they're not tired of orcs themselves - they're tired of fighting orcs (because we'd been fighting them since MoP too). But as I say in the video, just because you're tired of a race shouldn't mean they shouldn't get focused on when the story should focus on them - especially when it's the Burning Legion's final expansion - the very villains that helped create them as they are.
@@Skollshorties I think you need to realize that just because Blizzard invented a time skip to make the story make sense, Gul'dan, Grom, Garrosh, Thrall and all the rest of them, very much is a horde story line. They are literally the foundation of the Horde. Not the Legion. Plus the Horde existed long before they drank Mannoroth's blood and we're corrupted, the Trolls, Taurens, Blood Elves and so on, didn't officially join the Horde until Warcraft 3. Velen, Kil'jaeden and Archimonde we're like "brothers" and a huge part of the foundation of the Legion, so to focus the story around Velen made way more sense to me than the orcs ever would have. And like i said earlier we just had 2 years of nothing but orc storylines and just because they come from an "alternative" universe doesn't change the fact that it's still were all the familiar faces that we know from "our reality". So i don't really buy that. Its true we we're given time to focus on the Draenei, but in comparison it was almost non existent as most of that content was cut. Karabor was cut. Shattrath was cut and basically turned into a rep farm and a (Iron) Horde harbour, where Maraad dies so Yrel could get her shining moment together with... You guessed it, another orc, Durotan. So again, i wouldn't really call that a Draenei storyline per se. What we got was act 1, where Velen dies (kind of) and act 2 where Maraad dies (kind of) - that was it, and it was all just very very underwhelming to be honest, as was the whole expansion really. And the point about the Alliance and Horde falling out of the story after the first patch, does in my opinion apply equally to Legion. I agree that Alliance characters got a lot more attention in Legion than the Horde ones did, and i agree that they could, and should, have handled Vol'jins death better than they did, but i still stick to my guns here that the Alliance deserved some focus after 2 years with nothing but orcs. I can of course understand that is/was frustrating for Horde players with an interest in the lore, but its not like you had nothing at all. Sylvanas had her thing going on (which sadly went nowhere, a bit like Karabor and Shattrath) and Gul'dan was still doing his thing up until the end of the Nighthold Raid, which you could technically argue also was a Horde storyline with Nightfallen going on to join the Horde eventually.
You mean WoD, the expansion about orc genocide and the Alliance power fantasy of getting to invade Draenor? Horde players did not enjoy getting to kill their heroes.
So happy to see the new intro being put to use! :D
Also I so agree with this video 100%, especially with the Vol'jin & Sylvanas parts. I'd honestly be okay with an expansion more horde-focused to make up for this, and that's coming from an alliance main. Let us elves have a break! :b
Thanks for the awesome intro, Astrale! And I just really think the Horde deserves something after everything. Still throw a bone for Alliance but the Horde hasn't really had proper focus for a hot minute now.
As an Alliance main, I genuinely felt bad for the Horde treatment in Legion, especially the circumstances surrounding Vol'jin's death. While I can understand why someone like Velen and the Draenei as well as the Night Elves got big spotlights in the expansion considering their histories are heavily tied to the Legion, I do wish the Orcs also got that same attention considering the demons were also for them a huge turning point in their history. As for Vol'jin I really can't think of any other character who got fucked over the most so far. Became Warchief at the end of MoP, did pretty much nothing during WoD and then dies in the most anti-climactic way at the start of Legion. When the Horde and Alliance were storming the Broken Shore in the introduction and communicated with eachother, Varian was speaking for the Alliance and Sylvanas was speaking for the Horde, MEANWHILE the ACTUAL Warchief, Vol'jin, is standing right next to her saying absolutely nothing, like ??? It was almost like Sylvanas was already acting as Warchief before even officially becoming Warchief. And then the Legion wipes the floor with them, Vol'jin gets killed by a RANDOM FELGUARD, gets dragged back to Ogrimmar and dies in a chair to poison. It was beyond disrespectful. A part of me honestly blames a lot the Sylvanas agenda that Blizzard were pushing back then because they really swept everything under the rug just to put her in the spotlight. I cried my eyes out at Varian's death (proud girl in blue😭) but his death was fulfilling and a proper send off to his character. Vol'jin's death was the complete opposite and just pissed me off cause they treated him like he was some random background npc. My boy deserved better and I wish he stayed leading. Great analysis btw. 👍
No other character was so fucked up like Vol'jin? Cough Tyrion cough cough...
His death was as bad, if not even more pathetic as Vol'jin.
@@Hell000Kaiser gameplay excuse for pally's ashbringer
@@mireish590 It could of been handled better, I'd of rather seen him ragged dolled like loki vs hulk then just spit roasted.
Also the Blood elves, who were not only created by the legion (they are the night elves that abused the power of the Well of Eternity), but were also manipulated by them again at the end of W3 TFT.
@@hillnor6812 what are you talking about? Belfs created by the Legion? they here the Highborne, or High Elves, that were close to Ashara, and aided her in her pursuit of Magic. yes they were changed by th well of eternity, and also from the Sunwell later on.
An alternate timeline where Vol’jin survives and recruits the Zandalari against Sylvanas’ Horde would be so goated. Double rebellion, true preserver of the spirit of the Horde
That would make BFA more interesting had Vol'jin survived long enough to see all trolls united once more.
Would Sylvanas had gone astray if Vol’jin hadn’t been seduced by the corrupted Loa?
@ Good question. I think so, yeah. All else being the same and the only difference being that Vol’jin somehow survived, she would’ve still been made Warchief, met the Jailer, etc. and been basically plotting the same things during BfA as in the canon timeline
Sylvanas was a decent war chief in the legion expansion. She didn't really lose her mind until BFA, and in shadowlands you found out it was because Arthur split her soul in half and the evil side of her was living in the body while the good part was imprisoned by the jailer. I want them to bring her back and see what they do with her as a WHOLE character
@ absolutely, hopefully will happen during Midnight🤞🏻
The whole third act of Legion needed to be a Draenei+Orc tag team on The Legion. Wild that no orc had a hand in the fall of Kil'jeaden
Because the orcs downfall was due to Mannoroth's blood.
@@Justicar2503 Kil'jeadan has been manipulating the Orcs before they even had Mannoroth's blood. Mannoroth is basically the Horde's miniboss when Kil'jeaden is the main boss responsible for it all.
@@TimothyWheeler88 Exsacty, back when Draenei were still the little deformed alianse, Kil'Jeaden was literary ment to represent the Devil. He was even characterized this way constantly manipulating and decieving. Puppeteering everything while Mananroth or Archimonde were simply his enforcers. Generals.
And Sargeras was very much a manipulated Titan that seemed more mindless bount on destruction then a mastermind leader in comparrison. Who also offered power, but in the actual plotts during WC3 it was Kil'jeaden who actually did most of the actual thinking.
Same in TBC as the last secret boss in the Sunwell Planetau.
The horde has lost its identity. Since the death of Garrosh and Saurfang, and the horde trying to move beyond corrupt leaders even forming a council, it feels like the writers don't know jack shit how to advance the faction.
Ain’t that the truth and hell Voljin was the perfect leader for the horde because of what he symbolizes. You know someone whose willing to make peace but will put up with no shit while being a spiritual leader in some ways. So acourse the horde lost its identity they killed off the perfect symbols of its overall identity
@@SuperGamefreak18true that
garrosh was downfall right there, his horde was pretty much the savage mindless war hungry that so many people claim horde isn't anymore. No need to have demon blood in you to be a war savage orc.
The death of Garrosh was already the point of no return in my book. He could have been a true successor to Thrall, if they really wanted to abandon him as the Horde's leader. Instead they decided Garrosh would be better off as a manical warmonger.
And people wonder why I wasn't happy about Metzen returning to the writing team for the Worldsoul saga. 😅
@ I forgot the Garrosh mess was his fault yeah we should have known that Garrosh heel turn would have resulted in voljins short term. Cause yeah I liked very blunt but aggressive Garrosh we had early on, I loved his interaction with sylvanas cause she is a dangerous person when she gained that power to create new forsaken.
This is so true, even as an orc shaman, it didn't feel right to wield the dolmhammer.
Well canonictly it was indeed an orc Shaman who did. Raeghar ? At the end of the expension when you destroy your artifact you see NPC weilding the ogher artifacr they are the canon weilder. I think Liandry weild the Ashbringer
@@Marc0932671We don’t canonically wield our artifact weapons? Then why did they put them in? 👀
@@TheFlyingPilgrim For flavor and as an expension feature, a power fantasy.
She could have met both her sisters in that expansion. That could have been something before the book and shadowlands
That would've been badass tbh.
It does make sense that the Horde retreats from the Broken shore - the situation in that battle is hopeless (Yes, I'm a Horde player - the tiny amount of demonic troops the Alliance faced in that battle is literally a miniscule fraction of the amount of demons the Horde faces. There's no chance the Horde can hold them back).
The big storytelling mistake is that this is immediately taken as a sign of betrayal by the Alliance leaders, Furry Boi in particular, when in reality every even somewhat capable military leader takes into account that a battle might go badly and they have to retreat - and takes steps to account for that. A single messenger or sign telling the Alliance "We're overrun, we have to retreat. Fall back or you'll be outflanked!" would have solved the entire "betrayal" issue.
The way all the leaders, both Horde and Alliance, are portrayed is incredibly dumb because none of them even tries to set up a messenger system...and that in a fantasy world where mages can teleport and speak over large distances. It makes exactly ZERO sense. And none of them seems to have any tactical knowledge at all except for frontal assault against the enemy.
The whole idea that the Horde “betrayed” the Alliance at the Broken Shore is so stupid. I don’t even think they really needed a messager. Blowing the horn and the Horde falling back was a clear sign that something was wrong on their end. The Alliance immediately knew that the Horde was retreating when they retreated. The Alliance claim of betrayal would’ve only had merit if the Horde retreated quietly with no public notice. But the Horde did give a public notice, the horn, and that public notice immediately communicated a retreat. If there was any question as to why the Horde retreated, Vol’jin’s death should’ve communicated the obvious point “oh.. they were being overrun.”
@@ThePastAnalysis Yep, horn signals are one way of a messenger system, I wasn't specifically referring to a messenger delivering something in person.
And it would even be historically accurate since horns, trumpets or drums where in fact used for that exact purpose by many different cultures everywhere in the world.
That said - in a magical world like Azeroth where mages talk over long distances, teleport or portal everywhere all the time an in-person message would also have been incredibly easy to use.
@@Hauke-ph5ui I see what you mean about mages. It probably would've been possible for them to have a mage send a message via teleport. However, I don't think in the heat of the moment Sylvanas thought about that. None of the Horde expected to be overrun like that.
I think the horn she blew followed by the Horde immediately should've been enough. In fact, it was enough to communicate the message because the Alliance immediately realized the Horde was leaving. It's very stupid though for the Alliance to assume the worst case intentions of the Horde in the days after. After Vol'Jin died soon after, it should've been obvious to any Alliance leadership why the Horde left. But instead, dumb Alliance leaders like Genn and dumb Alliance players jumped to "the Horde betrayed us!"
What's even dumber though and quite sad is that Genn was then able to go on a vengence mission against the Horde. He took advantage of Anduin's rookie leadership and *no one* later called him out on it. The Alliance didn't even send so much as a formal apology for Genn's actions when he very clearly broke the truce. Instead, that doesn't happen and the Alliance playerbase goes "How come the Horde attacked in BFA?" It's just so stupid.
Blizzard has failed the horde as a faction since the beginning. The Alliance has ALWAYS been the main faction and the "good guys" in Blizz's eyes.
As someone who came in late into wow who played wc3 because i wanted to play warcraft stuff in order i always felt like what they wanted for the horde in wow and how they portrayed the horde in wc3 always conflicted with each other.
Anyone who doesn't think the writers have an Alliance bias should watch this video.
Anyone who doesn't think the writers have an Alliance bias is simply looking at the things the Horde has that they want on the Alliance but don't get.
Like when Thrall was Greensus in Cata
@@cristhianmlrlike Cata was really the one time the horde kinda got a break and even then Cairne was murdered and Garosh and his mess happened
Filthy greenskins deserve nothing.
@@cristhianmlr Khadgar? It's not like the Alliance didn't have that equivalent, that still runs in the story to this day. Starting as early as Warcraft 2.
I’ve been thinking about this SO much lately and words can’t even describe how validated I feel to see someone finally address it. Vol’Jin was my favorite Warchief, not for what he did as Warchief (cause obviously we never got to see that) but because of what he did to earn it. He’s truly one of, if not the most honorable characters in all of Warcraft. And what’s crazy to me is how the broken shore cinematics portray Vol’jins death. On the Horde side, you see his death AND Varian’s death, which is portrayed as significantly more heroic. But on the Alliance side, you see Varian’s heroic death and then the Horde running away. The alliance bias is so painfully obvious. Nonetheless, I was exited to see what Sylvanas would do as leader and that ended up…uh…interesting. Also yes, the Doomhammer/Artifact weapon point!! I don’t like the artifact weapons because it’s taking these iconic weapons and watering down the lore. If someone asks “who’s THE Ashbringer?” My answer’s gotta be “uhhhh idk the player character?” I can’t even put a name behind it 😭 and you’re so right. I love Thrall too and the way they made him just run away is a bunch of nonsense. Thank you for the video. You talked about so many things that have bothered me forever as a Horde player and lover. ❤
You're right, the Horde has felt like a complete afterthought to every story since MoP and WoD. it feels like the writers write every story with only the Alliance in mind, and then go "oh right, the Horde" and then just plug them in after, going through the motions, because the HAVE to.
As a Horde player I feel the writers just don't like me and my faction, and have to just weather every slap on the face they throw. Vol'jin dying is the first slap to the face, and Sylvanas becoming Garrosh 2 and the Horde not immediately rebelling against her because they would REMEMBER GARROSH, being the backhand that follows after the slap. And god dammit especially Vol'jin. It's always the trolls that get mistreated by the writers. And I don't trust them with Vol'jin's spirit, because that Wild Seed in Ardenweald feels less like a seed, and more like an oblivion box. He's in there, in a side quest of WoW's actual, categorically WORST expansion story of all time, the one we'd all wish wasn't canon. He's THERE. They can just forget about him and use the excuse "well you hated Shadowlands and Vol'jin becoming a Loa is a part of Shadowlands SO." And I recognize this is spiteful thinking, but the only reason I'm having I only feel spite or annoyance towards the Horde coming from the writers.
It's exhausting, it feels like the story I like about his game is being neglected, and I'd be lying if I said that it isn't one of the main reasons I don't feel like playing as much lately. I'm only getting my Horde content through RP and my guild, so I only log in to RP and hang out with my guild.
While I try not to get too much into bitter thinking, Vol'jin not appearing during the Darkspear Troll heritage questline despite canonically becoming a loa before that point feels particularly bad.
@Mooseplatoon YES! I thought they'd bring him back as Loa, it would have been THE opportunity for it! Just give me my Vol'jin back 😢
Just finished the vid. You raise a lot of great points. I came back to the game during the start of BFA, so I missed the legion expansion. But when I got to the Broken Shore cutscene I had the same feelings. Also, absolutely sick intro.
As a long time Rexxar fan i'm glad to learn that i'm not the only one frustrated by his totally forgettable role in Legion.
I mean, he was barely even a character in WoW's entire lifetime. He didn't have a particularly major role in WC3 either, but he only ever had minor roles in WoW. He had an extremely minor role in Classic, then a bit more in TBC, basically none in Cata, then we didn't see him until Legion and BfA. He is literally always a side character, what a waste.
Orc fatigue, but never elf fatigue. Of course! We will not have elf fatigue with midnight, but i have elf fatigue! Orc race is the foundation of Warcraft. No orcs, no Warcraft. Like eredar and night elf.
BFA failed the Night Elves, at the start.
No arguments there either.
It was a bbq party
I think Blizzard was failing night elves since the beginning of WoW, the only moment of happiness and respite they had was in Dragonflight
@@sparx0xraps The Night Elves are a perfect example to what happens when an empire gives up the source of their power to become tree hippies. Their great tree gets burned because they don’t have the power to stop a blitz style assault.
As a troll player I was pissed when I learned Voljin died Varians was upsetting but not only did he go out like a Badass like you said his time as war chief was bs though there’s a reason they made him a loa and mostly let varian rest. Cause they realized how badly they fucked up
And all they had to do is write the broken shore plot to the point where Varian and Vol'jin stay back together, have some chat. Teaming up for Azeroth. It would also fit with Varans character growth taking his sons words to heart. That peace is the noblest of aspirations, and how trusting in others is sometimes nessesary. That way we would have booth fight back to back and symbolicly have booth represent them coming together to stop such a great evil.
If they wanted to kill of vol'jin so much they could of had it done so that the poison was taking a slower effect on him due to his regeneration but as the expansion moved onward his condition would get worse. still allowing him to command the horde of even go into another battle only when say... he is about to get the killing blow on gul'dan the Fel poison in the wound would spark wildly, forcing him to retreat or something.
to be honest the horde has been done dirty way before legion, blizzard always struggled to tell a story of the horde because they are either evil with morally grey shades (mists of pandaria, battle for azeroth) or sidelined into a secondary role (legion, dragonflight) to let others shine.
The Horde imho doesnt just need an entire expansion specifically built around the Horde, it needs a story that gives it a new sense of identity and not just this usual sphiel of unity and peace, which has become repetative for at least 3 expansions now.
Instead, they need to have a theme of why each horde culture is its own creature but still holds together because of their common pact of military assistance and mutual survival, a theme that i kinda hope midnight explores more in depth.
Bruh, nah its not a Horde Problem in and of itself.....us Alliance felt the injustice of Vol'jin and the oddness of Doomhammer
Some friends of mine says " yeah but the creator said horde is their favorite faction. " all I told them was to look at the game developpement for each factions.
SAY IT LOUDER!!! You're so right about ALL of these points. The Horde deserved to have more of a presence in Legion, and I will forever mourn the loss of them in Legion. I played when it launched, and halfway through got so disheartened at the story directions that I literally quit playing. I got so mad too when I played the priest class hall quests and one of them involved healing a patient with fel poisoning from a stab wound, basically confirming that a priest could have just... healed Vol'jin and kept him from dying. Vol'jin's death was so unnecessary. I get wanting to keep the losses equal, but Varian at least went out in an absolute blaze of glory, taking down a fel reaver and then getting killed by Gul'dan himself. That was an epic death, it was at least satisfying. Vol'jin gets killed by TRASH. I'll never not be mad about it.
I only came back to Legion when I heard Turalyon and Alleria were finally appearing ingame, as I had read the books as a teen and was hyped for them, but nowadays I have a severe distaste for Alleria for reasons that would be too big of a tangent from this topic. Even though I had come back to Legion, I still felt the absence of the Horde, and I wouldn't feel better until BFA where we got to do a WHOLE lot of stuff. Say what you will about BFA, it was a trashfire indeed, but it was /my/ trashfire, it's my absolute favorite expansion up there with MoP to this day lol
I like what you said about Saurfang and Liadrin, that they should've been more involved. You really articulated a lot of points about Legion that I probably wouldn't be able to, and with them, brought up stuff I wouldn't have even thought about. They SHOULD have been more involved. This should've been a time for orcs and blood elves to really do something with the Legion stuff, and you're right about the Forsaken too! This was the time for a lot of reflection and introspective but nope, no one was there. I'm glad Velen was here but of course he's there. He's Alliance. You can guarantee the Alliance will be here anywhere these days. I'm struggling right now getting into TWW because I'm already feeling the lack of Horde over there. This is a rampant problem that I think WoD is semi-responsible for; the "orc fatigue" translated to chopping the Horde off any meaningful roles, and if we /are/ there, it's to play bad guy to some degree, which inevitably gives the Alliance another place to shine. I can't stand it!
Anyways, what a longwinded comment, sorry about that. TLDR, I liked your video, you're so right about everything and it's really got me going now lol
Might be a “long winded comment” but 100% accurate nonetheless. Even after all these years, the way things went down with Legion (and some others…) *still* bother me to this day. And just like you said about how they did Vol’jin dirty, “I’ll never not be mad about it”.
Orcs and Draenei should have also been allowed to become Demon Hunters from the rip in Legion. It would have moved the Illidari past the WC3/TBC meta (no pun intended) and allowed an avenue for both races to express their vengeance for their suffering at the Legion's hands. The orcs and draenei, moreso than any other entire species, got dealt the worst blows by the Legion's machinations in general, let alone KJ specifically. It always felt weird that the Azerothian elves were the races at the forefront of the Legion's end.
Yeah, the Horde definitely should have had more of a presence in Legion. Saurfang joining the fight against Kil'jaeden would have been perfect and it really feels like the Horde presence on Argus was there to hint at the Nightborne joining the Horde.
How much ya wanna bet we wont see Vol'jin until the next saga. Denathrius steals his wildseed and runs away into the realms of life.
Winter Queen: Moonberry you had one job!
Denathrius: Ha ha! Bye.
Alliance player here, and totally agree with you. The rage in combat of the Horde is only showed to us when they fight the Alliance, but not against bigger threat. There is some "Lok'tar ogar" to burn trees, but not against Sargeras x)
What can I say, the devs are the ones to blame for all of this and ever since Shadowlands, factions don't really matter at this point, since we're probably never going to see any major conflict between the two factions and now they are all good friends who work together to beat the next villain. And of course like you said, the main characters are going to be from the Alliance side, since they are the only ones who have barely any interesting main characters left, while (for me at least) none of the current Horde main characters is even remotely interested. The only ones who are meh or ok at best were Sylvanas and Saurfang and one is dead and the other one will probably appear one day in a different light.
What anger me is vol'jin was honorable troll earned only that. He was as troll put hates aside with elf like asking dwaf and elf but both murder each other. And troll(aka dark spear this case) sacrifice stuff to be part horde willing change some stuff. Vol'jin deserved better coming alliance main still think Carine dieing in book annoying wish in-game thing between those two really choose I want vol'jin do more as warchief before his death.
He was also one of the three founding members of the new Horde with Thrall and Cairne, so he was more then just some honorable troll. He was one of the OG's of the horde and the horde was way more personal for him then any ancient empire.
So even if that would have made him some much more powerful warlord over some huge terretory, Vol'jin chose his gang over that. He started a rebellion when Garrosh started to destroy the new horde's prineiples and values. And was ready to get in his face to do so.
And he had the respect of horde and alliance. As well as some other factions outside of that such as even the Shado Pan.
Vol'jin was the perfect Warchief because he was a perfect Bridge, ballanced, wise, spiritual, a hunter and warrior, loa priest and diplomat. Able to inspire and lead. While Garrosh would have been a perfect General and eventually High Overlord when Saurfang had molded him into a perfect honorable Orc.
Always love me some good introspective logic in my veins! Feels good to know it wasn’t just me that’s still bothered by this sh*t all these years later.
Yeah the fact there were almost no Orcs heavily involved in this expansion was odd. While I get it was just after WoD which was very Orc centric, they along with the Draenei and Elves were the most heavily impacted races by the Legion. You'd think they'd be the first ones to wanna board the ship to Argus to defeat the very ones responsible for their worlds downfall, Varok leading the charge against the demonic Titan that killed his brother.
What bothers me the most is that in WoD Draenei still played a very significant role, even while it was a very Orc focused expansion. So why not reverse it in Legion and have the Draenei as a main focus, but let the Orcs play a significant side role?
The artifact weapon debacle gets even worse when you realize we'll probably never see any of those major artifact weapons return since at the end we sacrifice them to...do something... to the sword of Sargeras. Now they aren't totally destroyed. We were able to repower Xalatath after all. But its canon that all of those artifact weapons are presently stripped of their powers.
I still love Legion as an expansion. But I totally agree with most of what you bring up in this vid.
Vol'jin was a victim of Steve Danuser. That moron destroyed the lore so badly that Blizzard had to beg Chris Metzen to come back and clean up the mess he left behind!
Steve wasn't in charge of the lore back then, that was Alex.
It's seeing Vol'jin's head hit the ground with an undignified slap that really rams home the message. And then the explanation for his choosing Sylvanas actually reinforced Vol'jin's essential lack of agency, when I think the intent was to try and redeem him in some way.
Wonderfully argued and on point. I loved Legion, but it dropped the ball hard on Horde stories in a way that's become increasingly a problem with each expansion to the point where TWW seemed to forget Horde characters needed be involved in the narrative at all, something that's worrying as they move away from faction-specific leveling campaigns.
I get that they have 'stories they want to tell.' But, those stories never seem to be about the Horde. We're coming up on a decade since Vol'jin got shanked and we still don't have a proper resolution to that story.
It's my hope that they learn from this. At least we're seeing a focus on Goblins next. But I dearly hope we see other Horde characters, races, and yes Vol'jin to come back soon.
Awesome video! And the new intro is a banger :)
Thanks Becky!
Vol'jins death is imo is the worst writing decision we ever got in WoW
CRASH BANDICOOT SPIN SOUND EFFECT!
Great Video Ban!!
It's apart of the domino effect in where we are now. It's rough.
Is no one gonna mention Ysera Her death brought me to tears one of my favorite characters of all time and being the one to have to kill her was heart shattering. We also lost Tirion Varain And voljin we lost so many to the Legion. Legion was such a emotion roller coaster Such a great expansion and story.
Her death was trash.
She shows up with barely a build up. Instantly gets corrupted. Then instantly dies.
I saw that and was like. Wtf?
My sentiments exactly. As a dedicated Horde main, I’m still bummed about the abysmal treatment of Vol’jin’s story. He was arguably one of if not the coolest member of the faction at the time. His death feels so shoehorned in. Vol’jin went from his peak in MoP to stagnant in WoD, only to die in a random/forced way in Legion. The side story with Bwonsamdi and of his pending reincarnation, while cool enough, has done little to reconcile the damage done by the initial writing decision.
Edit: Now that I know that Vol’jin was originally slated to fake his death and return with the Zandalari later on, I’m even saltier. Imagine hearing him saying “Darkspear Never Die” after being gone for years. 😢
Especially since he is best friends with one of the two Loa of death. He could have legit been dead dead, and be brought back by Bwonsamdi. Wich is the cleanest fake death possebility in wow.
I love her new DreamWorks like logo
14:16 For real though Shalamayne would have been a much better Fury artifact weapon than those boring Vrykul swords with no lore. Warriors really had the worst artifacts with no pre-established backstory to them; no Shalamayne, no Gorehowl, no Axe of Cenarius just these boring and ugly forgettable weapons. IDK if it would have been disrespectful to the Alliance and/or Human players, they could use a little shaming for hogging all the glory since WoW's inception, ever daddy Blizzard's favorites.
Also could given mages khadgar staff even if was just hidden artifact apprenece. Also since pally got ashbringer shman doomhammer I kinda disappointed that dk got two shard frostmurne make new weapon I kinda wish wield rebuilt actually frostmurne not werid two hand dagger basically gave us. Yes warrior felt like sh. Personally kinda wish gave us more lore weapons or weapons that character wielded for said class
I've always liked Legion for finally giving the worgen some story focus and putting Mekkatorque in a cutscene for the first time (my two favorite races are worgen and gnomes), but the Horde were definitely increasingly left behind as the expansion continued. Initial zones make sense. Highmountain and Suramar had a lot of Horde story, Azsuna and Val'sharah focused on night elf stuff, and Stormheim was mainly about Vrykul but also had a direct Alliance v Horde conflict unfolding. Now even though I'm so sick of elves getting so much focus (so excited for Midnight...) it does make sense they got so much time on the Broken Isles given their history and also relation to the Burning Legion. But then I do think Argus was missing orc characters. As you said many times, the Draenei leading the charge against the Legion makes all the sense in the world. I'd actually be really angry if they'd been neglected. But the two races most impacted by the Legion throughout history were the Draenei and Orcs. Orcs should've been there for their defeat. You could argue orcs already got a push in WoD, but that would be a bad argument because so did Draenei and they continued into Legion. Plus, story-wise, Legion was like a part two for WoD since they feed directly into each other.
Also the only reason I'm not more mad about Vol'jin is that he's still here and still has story coming. I honestly expect something from him in Midnight since we'll be in Amani lands. Varian did get much more story before but he's also just completely gone. Vol'jin is still around and I think that's because the writers realized they did him dirty.
Also, VERY excited for Undermined! The first patch of War Within was very Alliance-heavy (but I was more happy to see the dwarves have anything to do for the first time since Cataclysm). But our next patch is all about the goblins and Gazlowe!
Absolutely. But about Vol'jin's death the manner in wich it was done still matters, especially for Troll players and fans. Or those who grew up with WC3 and played the whole founding of the new horde. Vol'jin is basicly one of the original 3 and not some side quest npc. Wich made him dying to a random Felguard all the more anti climactic and disrespectful. Especially if you have Varian's epic sacrafice right next to it.
So even if he is still around, and will most likely return as a new loa of kings, get a cool new model and some significance in the story it doesn't change the fact how he was sidelined and only used as a plot device for Sylvanas ascention at the time. As pointed out she talked for the horde next to Vol the Warchief. She appeared to command and do more then the actual leader. And Vol'jin was not a personality to act this way. He was couragious enough to backtalk to someone like Garrosh face to face while he was Warchief, yet on the shore he is quiet as he can be. Can organize and lead a whole rebellion and siege, but on the shore utters not a single command.
And expecially with future expansions and the Sylvanas plot you cannot unsee it. And can't help but understand that while the idea of him becoming a loa is cool, the execution of this whole plotline was horribly done.
@ oh I agree nothing will fix that actual moment. But I’m just glad his story didn’t end there. Like poor Cairne who died offscreen in a book and has not returned since beyond some cameos as a spirit.
After the Broken Shore, Thrall ran to the defense of the Maelstrom itself. There the elements forsook him (apparently) and he ended up injured. By orcish standards, he really dropped the ball after that. I can understand him getting his family to safety, I can understand him taking some time from the front to heal, but I cannot tolerate him literally abandoning Azeroth and his people to weather the storm without him. An orc fights to defend his people. Saurfang rose up against Sylvanas fully expecting to die, but he took up his weapon all the same. Just a shameful display by Thrall.
It was very out of character for Thrall and just felt wrong really.
He was raised by humans, sooo...makes sense. He is not your typical lok'thar ogar type orc.
@@TrafalgarWaterDLaw-dl5cm He doesn't act that way even with what Blackmoore put him through. It's still out of character regardless of how he was raised because we never see him act in such a way prior.
They really butchered Thrall throughout the years. The icon of the Horde and greatest representative of its values. Saves them from imprisonment and leads them to rediscover their shamanistic ways. Truly an orc with a mission.
Only to.. pass the mantle blindly to the biggest fuck up (not sure it would even make much sense in orc society that "this guy is the ruler now"; and also fault of the writers that Garrosh is just big bad evil), and go away to pretty much never again play a substantial role in the society he lead the founding of! Not a character with flaws.. they just wrote him off at some point.
Really enjoyed playing Wc3's custom campaign Lord of the Clans (depicting the book). Very fun, and Thrall's a total baddass there!
We will never get real Horde lore ever again. The studio and game have been way too feminized for genuine Horde lore to ever be put in game.
That into was pretty awesome
Another gripe, personally, warrior artefacts, namely the lack of AXE artefact when there is Broxigar's axe of Cenarius in lore that has managed to damage fucking Sargeras himself.
Apparently, Thura (the current wielder of the axe) was supposed to have a role in Legion but was scrapped in the Warrior Order Hall. The weapon was scrapped too because it was "too Druid" silly reasons. But yeah... Legion is Legioning.
@@Skollshorties Yeah, 'too Druid' or too wooden or whatever makes zero sense. Brox was a warrior and I mean, Orcs are renowned warriors too, it would fit with warrior class thematically like butter on bread. The lack of this warrior culture of Orcs in warrior class order halls picking Odin of all things made me really sad.
30:50 It really felt like in Legion they were trying to set up a whole new generation of stories to go in on deeper in future expansions - much like classic WoW had a lot of little lore bits here and there that ended up tying into something much bigger in Wrath or Cata or MoP. The problem is, those original ones happened organically, while the Legion "cliffhangers" felt forced and ham-handed.
Great video! I remember liking Legion’s story and I still do, but it does suck as a Hordie that our faction was such an afterthought and still is. I love War Within but it frustrates me how again Alliance heavy it is. Anyone saying Blizzard is “Horde biased” has their head up their ass.
A double agent player here, I agree with alotta of these. Honestly, the weapon they should have given up, instead of Doom Hammer, would have been Gorehowl for Arms Warrior. Other than that one we got instead.
I can imagine they contrivedly threw Thrall aside for much the same reason they threw Tirion aside: they didn't want previous expansions' heroes to hog the spotlight despite players loving them and wanting to fight alongside them.
Horde gets shafted on story. Same as almost every expansion past MoP. I mean even in the newest one you got Thrall run off to get reinforcements and the entire expansion is just Alliance characters except for one part towards the end when Voss shows up sorta randomly.
At the time, I was okay with it because every expansion did have a lean towards either of the factions.
TBC had a Horde lean. WotLK, slight Alliance lean. Cataclysm Alliance lean. MoP and WoD, Horde lean.
The problem with Legion was that the Horde set up didn't pay off in BfA.
True, same goes with TWW and I'm not saying oh this expansion is so bad, nothing like that but horde representation is just so poor even in TWW
I wanted to be like Rexxar for years and years on my hunter. Even though he was a night elf. I was so efing mad when they turned survival into a 2h melee. I hate 2h. I love dual wielding melee pet classes and they ruined the opportunity to turn beast master into Rexxar. Instead they changed Rexxar. It was so dumb.
I think the problem comes from trying to be faction Neutral. You can never truly be Neutral when the base roots of Warcraft is "Orcs and Humans" and a faction centric saga.
Yeah I don't think this whole "neutral" focus works either when the characters they decide to focus on aren't exactly neutral either. Or they don't focus on characters who're Horde adjacent.
One last note...
Regarding Liadrin: she had already played a prominent role in two class order hall campaigns AND the Suramar storyline. To have her then ALSO take center stage on Argus (even if the spotlight was shared) would have felt weird and a bit like she was everywhere in that expansion or like Blizz was trying to force a minor character into a major role. The elves didn't need much spotlight on Argus as their history with the Legion was highlighted during the entire first patch and the Nightfallen Rebellion and Liberation of Suramar.
Afrasiabi really set up a story of making Horde feel like a bad guy NPCs and it reflects even today when you look JUST HOW ACTIVE all the alliance race NPCs are even today and when hordes ones appear to speak up it feels like... Filler.
I'll be genuinely surprised if these writing choices didn't have Danuser's grubby hack writer mitts all over them
TYRATHAN MENTIONED, THIS IS A WIN!! But yeah, I'm still salty on Vol'jin story in Legion, I hope they don't forget he is still chillin in the Ardenweald seed, who am I kidding, they will and one day when they ned a villain they gonna come with "oh, his seed was corrupted" or something u_u
And by the time it got to Legion, I was sick of seeing so many Humans and Orcs everywhere and was glad to see more Night elves.
As I say in the video, it really shouldn't matter if you're tired of seeing them. If it makes sense for them to in the story they should be for others. Especially since Night Elves were given focus too. As were humans. But Orcs were not.
@@Skollshorties Orcs were a plentiful amount in Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, and Warlords of Draenor. Though I agree it's annoying that they just had to insert Humans in Legion.
@@sparx0xraps As before, it's not about "we're getting too much orcs so they shouldn't be in the story". If it makes sense for the orcs or anyone to be in the story they should be. Same with the Night Elves.
Alliance main and moreover a paladin main. I truly understand you POV regarding artifact weapons, especially for Doomhammer... trying to convince us that the prophecy was meant for the player all along instead of Thrall, like wtf?... HOWEVER... I do appreciate that as ret pal we get to retrieve Ashbringer because it is such an important weapon in the lore, and since we - as player - are treated as someone who achieved great things along great heroes, I'm happy to know that we are considered enough to wield Ashbringer in the name of Tirion in order to save Azeroth... not to happy bc at the End of legion we sacrifice the power of the artifact (which like, what does it mean? who knew that all those weapons from different times were all considered 'artifact' haha and that you could sacrifice their power to wound a big 'ol sword struck in Silithus????? send help xD ) but yeah sad that they ended up like that... I would've loved a quest at the end of Legion where you return Ashbringer to TIrion's tomb or smth like that, that would've been awesome
I'm so over Legions etc., I want some Horde action now... with Trolls, Orcs and Tauren! Cive me Vol'jin as a Loa, that's most I'd care about! Maybe a stoic, young Tauren shaman or hunter character who follows us and gives us a picture of what is life and stuff for them right now... OR FORSAKEN! A Forsaken who gets allong with the Arathi after some awkward start in Hallows fall with the Arathi... Anything! But please, no Goblins...
Edit: Please no more Liadrin. And let Lor'themar some me-time with Thalyssra. Let the bloodelves get some break...
*looks towards Midnight*
Well...
I don't think you quite understand the Arathi. They are a millitaristic religious state all about the light. They're fascists. They would kill all undead on sight. The fact the priory was using light undead was a heresy to them of the highest order, and those were light undead. As soon as the Arathi notice that the forsaken are a thing it's gonna be a complete genocidal holy war.
Great point about Rexxar in the Hunter campaign. I think I sidelined the Gilnean what's-his-face almost as soon as I got him because he just wasn't even slightly interesting. Heck even Emmarel afaik an entirely new character and the only member of the Unseen Path at the start or Hemet's writer-turned--rookie-hunter Addie Fizzlebog are more interesting with more characterisation.
The main point of that whole section really was to simply talk about how the story and the characters mattered so little in that campaign. And I wanted to gush on what it could've been so much for every character involved.
@@Skollshorties Absolutely, 100% a wasted oppurtunity.
The whole thing with Thrall was that the at the time Blizzard leadership were trying to push Chris Metzen out of the picture. Hence why both of the characters he voiced (Varian and Thrall) went away one way or the other.
Doesn't add up because Metzen has on record stated he loves voicing Thrall and plans to do so for as long as possible. We see this when he returns in BfA as the role and has been onboard since.
@Skollshorties i said trying i didn't say they succeeded
I've played horde for as long as I can remember, and it's really sad to me how they have had almost no good storytelling as of late. I recently asked my guild members (most of whom have been playing for 15+ years) if they could name the current leader of each main horde race and the vast majority got Thrall, and Baine and very few managed to get Lor'themar. This means that a majority of my enfranchised diehard horde guild couldn't even answer who the leaders of the undead, goblins, dracthyr, and horde pandaren are. More people answered Talanji as the leader of the trolls than who even knew who Rokhan was. Give us more good Horde stories, Blizzard.
Man it's almost like the best expansions center around the Alliance. Jokes aside, everything that happened to the horde in legion got us to shadowlands. It's been down hill ever since they got rid of the best warchief. He wouldn't have let the vulpera even step foot on Kalimdor.
The Horde has always for the most part been side-lined in wow.
outside of the Garrosh ERA and I supposed the Sylvanas bits of BFS.
The Horde has been failed in all Expansions either we're painted as bad guys, Horde Characters go through Character Assassination (although this has happened to Alliance Characters too) or just watered down. Legion itself can be considered rushed and even done in the wrong order, Legion should've been two or even three Expansions with the First being fighting the Legion Invasion and losing, the Second recruiting new Allies (Zandalari Trolls, Kul Tirans, etc) and going to Argus, the Third could've been about us fighting the Legion on Argus and defeating them.
To this day cracks me up that the Draenei made a kill all orcs on sight rule after Shattrath but less than 100 years later they forgave the Man’ari for the 10,000 years of intergalactic genocide they waged. The writers truly just hate the Horde. It’s not about morality or right or wrong anymore. Nothing the entire Horde has done can ever compare to what the Man’ari did
The Draenei have mostly forgiven the Horde and the orcs at this point. While the Man'ari are still in a harder basis where only their most trusted are allowed to work with the Alliance in secret right now. I'd say most Draenei are far more forgiving with the orcs than the Man'ari in the Lore.
@ at this point yes they have forced the writers into forgiveness for every crime imaginable, but just a few years ago during the Warlords of Draenor Campaign Mar’aad was the first person to urge King Wyrnn to war even though these Orcs aren’t even from the same timeline and did none of the same crimes. In the new audiobook the WoW UA-cam channel just dropped, I know this doesn’t involve Draenei, but Trollbane’s niece was using Arathi and Seventh Legion forces from Stormwind to kill the Orcs in Hammerfall including an attempt to assassinate Thrall. That doesn’t strike me as very forgiven by the races of the Alliance.
@@Skollshorties I don’t know about you but I don’t have a single friend who ever murdered a members of my family, or plotted to kill my entire ethnicity, or had my people in internment camps. I probably would never want to work with somebody like that no matter how sorry they were, and I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Orcs have been getting the shitty end of the stick since they came to Azeroth
What they did to Sylvanas, for me, was criminal!
I just feel like they currently have no idea what to do with the Horde.
they never had any idea of what to do with the horde vanilla wow alone already started undoing some of the character progress the orcs made in wc3
This video certainly made me reconsider my perspective on legion. I'm not saying it's still not my favorite expansion. It's just that playing a human Death Knight meant I was eating SO GOOD. The order hall campaign was absolutely incredible. So good that it made itself into The War Within as a hero spec. Gathering a new set of horsemen of the apocalypse felt like winding up a huge punch to knockout the legion. And the alliance bias didn't really stand out because I just presumed there was a horde perspective I wasn't seeing.
I can totally understand a horde hunter just not having the same experience I did if fan favorites like Rexar didn't even do anything in their quest line. I think I would've lost it if Darion Mograine just napped in Acherus the whole time instead of helping out with raising the new horsemen. Yeesh.
WoW treated the Horde baddly since the beginning.
The Horde was barely controlling Durotar and the Barrens during vanilla and struggled hard to get wood from the elves, and for some reasons, Blizzard decided they should be at war with them to add them to the Alliance, when it would have be more logical to trade the wood (cause they can get an unlimited amount with the wisp, you know). The original zones are all about cleaning Dutorar from the tirassians troops left, fighting against the Burning Blade, Thrall refusing to execute straight away the treacherous warlocks and in general letting warlocks live their life. Add the Forsaken that, for no real logical reasons, and how the Darkspear get rekt from an internal conflict that last five quests in the starting area, and how the Horde seems to split everywhere (with their attention on Ashenval, central Kalimdor, north of the earthen kingdom with the forsakens and Stranglethorn with an outpost) and how you still have a big and roaming dark Horde, with a total lack of consideration for the actual clans existence outside of Warsong and taurens tribes outside of Bloodhoof, and you can already see that the Horde was a second thought. Consider that in the current canon, the Alliance take care of the most dangerous vanilla dungeons and raids overall, and had a better leveling experience. The only redeeming thing the Horde has back then was the Might of Kalimdor being led by Saurfang.
Then come BC and how the Amani, one of the classic races of the Horde of W2, were butchered, how the ogres were forgotten, to get blood elves on high substances. BC get some mag'har but most of the interesting orcish characters are fel orc and there is no fel orc redemption arc, so we destroy many clans left in Dreanor with minimal interesting lore. Zul'aman is sack and Zul'jin dead without any mention of their past history with the Horde outside of the trailer, and in the end, areas like the Black Temple are far more interesting for the Alliance than the Horde. The whole Horde part of BC was on the Blood Elves, when you keep in mind that they killed Kael'thas two times in a row. Deception after deception if you ask me.
WotLK, now we have Arthas and the Scourge. The tribal Horde doesn't get much outside of Borrean Tundra. Getting even forced to be at the Argent Turnament because... it makes sense for a wolf rider to do some knight stuff, I guess. Well there's some cool things with Garrosh and Saurfang but it's still Borrean Tundra related, and like 30% of the area only. Overall, it's focus more on forsakens and Sylvanas and a bit of Blood elves because they are more Scourge related. For the second time in a row. The Horde lost Saurfang junior, lose the Icecrown battle against the Alliance, Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blades are very focused on humans, as the Scourge is, Ulduar is about dwarfs, gnomes and humans, so most of the expansion feel rather focused on the Alliance than the Horde. Not any chance for the drakkari to do anything with the Horde, they get slaughter. Rip. Wrathgate and Undercity siege are both very negative events of course. We have the end with the darkspears retaking the echo isles and Garrosh becoming the warchief, but Thrall must become a neutral NPC for that and Cairne dies. And Thrall, the hero of the Horde, is now considered like an incomeptent shit by the lore... Great.
Cataclysm, and at least some good Horde content. Garrosh launch a global war against the Alliance but unfortunately, his writting is inconsistent, they wanted to make of him a genocidal warmonger but then created the Stonetalon mountains questlines, so our main character is incoherent. At least he is fun. Overall the Horde offensive is a failure, I may add. Durotar and Barrens take heavy damages during the Cataclysm, forcing the Horde to retake control of it after Theramore "attacks" (the lore being wildy inconsistent about the fact if it is Theramore of the Alliance forces coming from Theramore, because the game shows something the book says otherwise). The offensive of Ashenvale is a success until the night elves strike back and retake everything and you have Wolfheart with another failed offensive before that. Stonetalon army is disbanded. Darkspear are after six years a real faction, at least (and it's better to this day that what the gnome ever had). In Earthen Kingdoms the Forsakens are more successful, taking Silverpine, Andhoral, Gilneas and maybe some other areas, but at the price of the global dissension between them and the rest of the Horde. Twilight Highlands' offensive is a failure with the initial air force but at least the goblins are doing a good job at taking control of Azshara and the Horde recruit the dragonmaw, even if they don't do that much. Comes Tides of War and the victory the Horde get on Theramore is at a heavy price and Orgrimmar survived just because Jaina is wet with Kalecgos.
MoP and the Horde get it really bad, Garrosh is now a genocidal monster, the Horde invasion on Pandaria is far worse than the Alliance one, attempt to assassinate Vol'jin, rebellions everywhere, the rebels needs the Alliance for settling things with Garrosh, Lor'themar was consiering restoring old alliances with the Alliance, the trolls get rekt in Throne of Thunder, we lose our warchief, Thrall start is journey of "No I'm a pussy I flee from responsibility", but hey, Vol'jin is warchief! Things will go right now. Right?
WoD is an half baked expansion. There is some great lore on the orcs and Draenor, but outside of that, it's a disaster. All the interesting old warlords dies quickly without doing much like Garrosh or Kargath, Hellscream's is crazy incompetent, Orgrim is butchered at a level never seen before in WoW, some characters like Saurfang or Utok never get any attention or simply doesn't shows up. The orc, Horde and Draenor lorebuilding is great, the actual writting is infamous for good reasons. The Alliance get the same thing with the Draenei but overall for both it's pretty disappointing, but especially from the Horde side, because it's the end of an arc of rebellion and redemption sort of, and it falls pretty flat.
Then Legion to Shadowlands which creates Garrosh 2.0 but far worst in the writting quality and without the redeeming qualities of being both original & fun with Sylvanas and the Forsaken. Vol'jin ded lulz. The lore turn Thrall into a ridiculous coward, Sylvanas in a stupid bitch - of wait no, she is NoT HeRsElF -, the whole Horde goes crazy with characters that seems to not even understanding themselves what is happening, and nightborne, zandalari and highmountain taurens being quite illogical about what they do for the sake of the plot (like yeah, the Alliance just strike the Zandalari thrice, kidnapping their prophet and prince, chasing them, and next killing their king in an assassination attempt, when they were not officially in war anymore and were just discussing with the Horde, the zandalari joined the Horde efforts because of that, but all of sudden, they abandon everything because Saurfang and Anduin decided it? Great.). And in Shadowlands you see why all of this happened : for one of the worst plot ever written with a dumbshit character with big nipples and bald that is a robot in reality. The only good thing is Garrosh suiciding himself to get rid of this dumbshit story. Ah at least there's the alternate Draenor plot that could be... wait no they forgot it actually happened and this whole alternate reallity still makes no sense to this day.
And now since Dragonfly, the Horde's themes, characters and tone are sidelined outsided of our favorite green human Thrall. We are the happy friends of the humans that they call when they need some muscles, yes. Half our characters are dead, or have forget who they are, the natural neutrality and violence that described the Horde are nowhere to see. We are good paladins in golden plate like the Alliance too. Just with wolf fur, big muscles and axes instead of shiny armors and swords. Isn't that great? The taurens? Always treated like hippies. Trolls? Almost all deads for those that matters. Forsakens? Now good guys. Orcs? How dare you to judge orcs violents, they are gentle guys with big hearts, well, big green hearts and best humans friends. Elves? Humans with pointy ears. Pandarens? Who? Vulperas? The fuck they are doing here to begin with? Oh you know, it's the Horde, you like cute and funny furry self insert characters bro. Now what about getting some dwarves? What about getting rid of the evil goblin leader to have one who cares about his employees life and well being?
Ogres? What's that? Taunkas? What's that?
There's no Horde anymore. Legion was the final nail in the coffin, since then, it's only worse each time. To be fair, it's not that much better with the Alliance, 90% of the time it's just human-focused content (which means ME HERO MY PALADIN ME SAVE WORLD AND ULTRA LOYAL ULTRA GOOD CHARACTER) and when it's not, it's 8% of the time night elves getting butchered the exact same way that the Horde is, and the 2% of content left, it's just dwarf and gnomes. And no, not actual story about dwarfs and gnomes, it's Brann talking about some titans shit because that's all the dwarves can do in wow, titans plot.
Yeek I forget the Draenei. Now they are accepting demonic betrayers and are led by humans with light cristal sword. Nice. Can we have the Yrel light crusade plz.
Legion was the last time I could say i loved wow. Favorite expansion.
I held on for BFA, and the last expansion i bought was shadowlands.
yeah basically everything after warlords failed the horde. legion is pointed out here, bfa is basically just ruining the best horde character, like up till the point of the saurfang vs syl fight they could of done somethng but as soon as she turned her back not just on the horde, but the forsaken as well, ruined it. if she had a good reason shown is shadowlands maybe could of worked, but no, shadowlands made it worse. but back to BFA, constant horde Ls with basically no major victories, at least not from what i could remember. and in shadowlands we had the famous Baine just chilling doing nothing. dragonflight basically was night elf o'clock so that was alliance focused and so far TWW is just allyria and anduin power hour. it just seems they despise the horde.
Legion was good but it could had been ten times better from a more story balance point of view on both sides of the coin. Felt like the Horde was just side lined throughout the whole expansion as in the orcs fighting against the legion that corrupted their whole race from the beginning. Thrall, Saurfang, Rexxar, Eitrigg, and etc could had gotten their chance to broke free of the legion once and for all after terrible history of the first war with the Draenei and left a dark wound that never healed on their home world of draenor. Not having any orc characters to join up with Khadgar, Illidan, and Velen against Kil'jaeden and argus was the biggest mistake that the writers have done. Baine could had journey with us to Highmountain and add more character development for him besides us the player character. I agree that Vol'jins death was ridiculous given that he barely had any development at all after Warlords and he just died at the beginning of the legion expansion after the great development during Mists of Pandaria with him against Garrosh Hellscream.
Only characters that did got story time was the Forsaken during Stormheim and the Blood Elves in Suramar but other than that it's kind of same page as the Cataclysm but the Blue Side. The Horde as a whole deserved better from legion specially with the orcs given their past history with Kil'jaeden and Vol'jin didn't need to die by a pointless stab from a random felguard.
The Legion end raid included Varimathras and The Coven Of Shivarra, Vol'Jins death could have been a perfect chance to literally have them stab him in the back pretending to be Orc warriors or something.
They stab him saying "Vengeance for the true war chief Garrosh" and Vol'jin gets his second wind before death nearly killing them with Sylvannas forcing a reveal, some connection to these raid bosses to the Horde and a more plausible reason why The Horde retreat, they do not know how infiltrated their ranks are.
Also orcs were manipulated by Kil'Jaeden pretending to be Ner-Zhuls wifes dead spirit using seemingly unknown magic, i would have happily taken some son Draenor Ner-zhul pulled out into thr Hordes story like Yrel to the defeated Kil'Jaedens spirit as a catalyst to revive Naaru Prime or something.
I might be biased as an Alliance player, but if anything I think this was just the Alliance getting "their turn" after the last expansion and a half had been so horde-focused. Like, the whole story of WoW from the Darkspear Rebellion to the end of WoD was pretty much about the Horde. It might have been an overcorrection, but the Alliance deserved their time in the spotlight after that. Especially given that the spotlight went right back to the Horde with the Sylvanas plot in BfA.
It's important to remember that while the Horde got a big spotlight in MoP with the Rebellion, the Alliance was still ever present for it. That's where that goes out the window in Legion. The Horde wasn't even there. And WoD was not about the Horde it was about fighting AU Orcs and not the Horde itself.
@@Skollshorties The Alliance was present for the rebellion but the storyline was about and driven by Horde characters like Vol'jin, Thrall, and Garrosh. And yes, WoD wasn't technically about the Horde, but I still consider alternate timeline Horde characters who are part of the "Iron HORDE" to be Horde-adjacent. You have good production value though, I subscribed
@@hydromancer4916 I don't really count the Iron Horde as Horde adjacent the closest you've got are the Mag'har who joined after the fact two expansions later. That'd be like calling Arthas "Alliance adjacent". And again, you still had multiple storylines with the Alliance prior in other patches too. That's the main issue here that I'll repeat. If Legion had the Horde in anything close to how the Alliance was placed in MoP, it would be fine.
What about my idea for future expacs they give us 5 levels and 5 more in a patch?
SYLVANNIS'S book for BFA built her up way better and did nothing. The book for BFA implied she had a mission to save the undead from rotting to death. Then did bull shit in retail with her. She goes evil and serves the jailer.
You say that Legion was supposed to be a neutral expansion... only to then point out the many, many cases where this defenitly wasnt the case. imo, though Legion was awesome, it was heavily flawed. It did away with loads of legends, myths and rumors, the world felt empty afterwards. Then the treatment of the Artefact weapons that lost all their powers to neutralise the Sword of Sargeras... I could go on, but to me, and I played both factions, the tonal shift was obvious: the Horde are now the bad guys in the story. No longer the misunderstood heros from Vanilla. And yes, with Teldrassil, I think we can all agree the Horde turned from bad to simply evil - and yes, I mean it: there was not a single dissenting voice in Sylvanas' army (except Varok, who opted to slink away and once again turn to the Alliance as they did with Garrosh - like, man!, cant you keep your house clean for at least ONE expansion!???). Maybe Garrosh startet it, but Legion build on it and BfA put a nail in it. What a time to be a Horde fan -.-
In my honest opinion: Vol'jins death was made for same reason why Garrosh had 180 degree personality change in MoP, he was simply not popular character. Silvanas was another bad call from writers.
Artifact weapons was massive misstep, I never really liked the idea of being stuck with a single weapon for the whole expansion. Warcraft have a problem that many long standing franchises have...writers who are treating the writing of the lore as a job and give zero care of the "world they are effecting" because it is not "their world".
I must point out the fun fact of Rexxar, in Warcraft 3...he is actually ranged fighter (he is throwing his axes) XD
All order hall stories felt rushed (and yes even Demonhunter order hall...where we have entire class intro on the same world as well), the stories there could have been much much longer...instead we got about 15 to 30 minutes content in order hall.
Kil'Jaden ratcon (why are we not surprise at this point
For one, the game has gone much longer than I think they originally felt that it would. Thus, I believe the Horde was always meant to fail. It has always been barely a functioning confederacy. Incapable of maintaining stability outside of warfare. But people do love their Horde. I know I do. But in the expected timeline of the Lore of WoW. The horde liquidates after the events of WoTlK. Thrall really does become a shammy dude and Varroc takes over the Orcs. But eventually the undead break faith forming their own faction. As do the Tauren remaining little more than independent allies. The only ones who'd stick around are the Trolls. But even they aren't a monolith. Many Trolls would join Zandalar.
Way back then. Before Cata. I had hoped and Dreamed. That the soon to be Worgan race wasn't going to be alliance. Instead, the game would fragment into two new factions. With the old "Horde/Evil/Misunderstood" being headed up by the Undead, with Fel Orcs, Eradar, Worgan, and "San lane??"vampire blood elves forming around a coalition of darker and seedier intentions. Which would have allowed the games lore around faction warfare to have legs. But nope. They just kept beating that poor old Orc warchief into the dirt. Even after Hy'jal and the Wraithgate. Now we have more elves than you can shake a stick at. Humans who are inexplicable evil. Yet somehow unaffiliated. And no real bad guys.
Now Horde lore is basically "That one guy...*snaps fingers*...you know the guy...that one guy...from the thing...he was there...pretty sure."
biggest failure of world of warcraft for me is, they put so many enemies of horde and alliance on the horde side, wrath gate betrayal. shortly after that, garrosh hellscream (my favorite wow villian) and then sylvanas . the horde ends up with the villian being there leader, and then they have too fight there own as a enemy. which kinda sucks cause the horde gets split in two each time . its just bad for the story . imagine if horde was backing hellscream and their raid was on our cities and alliance raid was SoO. everytime a horde villian occurs the horde have too fight them instead of getting a choice.
I had a thought of what could have been when it comes to sylvanas and the valkyr part of legion
Instead of making sylvanas just try to enslave the valkyr queen cause "lol evil" why not make it that after meeting the forsakens , Odins seeing their valkyrs decide to just capture them to either enslave them back to him or destroy them if they can't be , Odins in the lore was shown to be kind of a dick so it wouldnt break his character
Make it that the forsaken have a special connexion to the valkyrs "i mean more special than what they already have" make it that whenever one of sylvanas valkyrs refuses to bend to Odins will and is destroyed all the forsakens and sylvanas herself feel their death and show it throughout a questline or something , show the forsakens sorrow and show them getting weaker and weaker as their valkyrs are being killed or turned
That would give a good reasons for sylvanas going to Helja and capture the valkyr queen to try and break the magic that Odins uses to enslave her and the other valkyrs and to get her valkyrs back and maybe who knows have new ones join the forsakens as well , as a form of gratitude for having been saved from their abuser
You can afterward continue with how it went with Greyman where he fucks sylvanas plan and instead of saying "I have taken your future" he says " I taken have your people future" BUT instead of sylvanas just letting him walking away , she fucking murders him on the spot , while his back his turned , one arrow in the neck than another in the back of the skull coming out of his eye socket than after has he drops , you see sylvanas behind him and she lets one of her banshee screams in anger
Also yes i am saying Greyman should have fucking died tbh who cares , he has always been a moron and douchebag in lore , he doenst deserve to still be here
And then maybe just have an extra small raid for the horde where they just raid Odins place and get their valkyrs back by force idk
I like how people compared Varian's sacrifice in Legion to what Grommash did against Mannoroth in both timelines, but that's not the same at all. The writers had to make the Horde look pathetic and weak in order for the Alliance to look brave and strong and then turn Varian's death look cool and heroic, because according to some blind folks - Vol'jin died by fighting the mobs and Varian died by Gul'dan's hand. Varian was technically defeated by the mobs as well, only killing a few before getting stabbed in the shoulder and then finished by Gul'dan, but who's counting.
For the most part, I've enjoyed Legion and the part, which I didn't like was Argus. The zones in Argus weren't that good, the story was boring and predictable and it just felt rushed and unfinished.
While I wouldn't say fail the was huge room for improvement, C- for Horde love.
I agree with most of this but some bits you covered that I have some thoughts. I don't really count Khadgar as Alliance as while in WC2 he was since his first sighting in WoW he has been neutral, with the most Alliance thing wanting to catch up with his friends.
I find the whole Thrall bringing his family to Nagrand funny as Aggra is seen in the Shaman Class Hall, so if they wanted Thrall to do something he should have been the one to lead the Orcs still and maybe run things in Orgrimmar.
As for the Doomhammer I mean since the Shadow Priest Artifact got its focused and I believe so did the Resto Shaman after Legion I can't really see why they can't have us give the Doomhammer back to Thrall.
Vol'jin should have not faked his death as that would feel a weird thing to do, but stayed behind to cover the retreat and have gone missing with come BFA we find him in Zandalar, with the Horde not having a Warchief for a time as the current one isn't confirmed dead.
For bits missing
Baine and Roanauk were supposed to play a big role in the Highmountain Story helping Mayla as fellow High Chieftains, this would make more sense why later the Highmountain are recruited and gives the Horde lead neutral story like the Alliance got with Val'sharah and the Night Elf leaders.
Thura having been given Broxigar's Axe and played a role in beating the Emerald Nightmare before, who were secondary antagonist, where was she. I know her weapon was going to be the Arms Warrior weapon, good thing they didn't do that other wise it would have meant her death I bet, but her now being missing the Expansion feels really missed.
Bonus a bit of both
They should have brought back Theron Gorefiend I mean I have no idea why he was killed in by Horde members in TBC, but one of the Old Horde characters that is a Warlock, who was loyal to the Horde in our universe, and could also work well in the Forsaken. Could have done a story where he knows a secret to defeating Gul'dan we need to bring him back. the old Paladins and first Death Knights were rivals in WC2 so now he and Turalyon (who did fight each other) teaming up on Argus could have been fun to see.
I don't remember much of legion cept my sister telling me how suramar is the worst city ever lmao. As a draenei hunter, seeing them kill of Vol'jin was just ugh. He didn't really get to do anything and he's gone.
Rexar is a fave to me too and him not being a big thing for hunters was disappointing.
I really do hope with these next few xpacs we get some horde characters stepping up. (and Velen too like I know he's prob busy with new shattrath but I feel like he should be here)
Blizzard and missed opportunities are like Valve not counting to 3. Happens way too often and angries up the fans every time.
To me this video shares a large amount of gripes I have with Blizzard's overall writing structure. it feels very skewed to one side of the aisle. This structure ultimately caused me to stop caring for Warcraft's lore period. the factions, both the Horde and the Alliance lack flavor now unlike in the past, and this will sound very stupid I am aware. The Alliance overall gets much better treatment than the horde in the story, part of why I stopped playing (small part but a part relevant to this rant). post Mists it did not feel good to be a horde player because you were almost always the bad guy of some campaign, or the party that ended up worse off. Ultimately this is more of a problem warcraft overall right now shares so I will only mention it briefly. The story feels soft and kind of boring, like the writers are afraid to go even slightly in the direction of 'the factions still slightly dislike each other' due to the damage that BFA did. Overall I want the Horde to get better treatment before I am even remotely interested in the lore again. That's just my take though.
Metzen and the writing team objectively messed up the Horde's story in WoW. Most of the great Horde leaders weren't given justice through the expansions. Cairne, the great Tauren chieftain, was killed off-screen in a novel. Garrosh was wasted. Vol'jin was wasted. Rexxar was wasted and forgotten. They wrote Thrall off from Cata onwards and he never achieved the same height after. Sylvanas was messed up by poor writing later on as well. In addition to all these factors, the Horde ended up becoming somewhat "evil" and an antagonistic force in both MoP and BfA, even though it doesn't fit their theme.
What is ironic about these facts though, is that while the Horde was very unfairly treated from a lore standpoint, in the actual gameplay they were the objectively better faction for most of WoW's history because of their amazing racials. I still remember how OP Troll racial was back in MoP, basically another DPS CD.
Legion had many other flaws though, much bigger than anything related to the Horde in fact. The idea that we can engage the Legion upfront on their own motherworld is just pure insanity. They built the Legion up to be an advanced, never-ending demonic army which has destroyed an innumerable amount of worlds throughout WoW's history. Its unthinkably stupid that a small elite force from Azeroth can straight up overpower them on their own grounds. They also had to conveniently write Sargeras off from the entire expansion to let us win.
What's even more ridiculous however, is that we still have no explanation for what Sargeras was doing while covering Azeroth as a fart cloud, as far as I'm aware at least. They still couldn't explain it after 4-5 years later, it was so poorly thought out!
i mean, if i were the elements i would be furious at thrall too, bro forced then to do his will, that some dark shaman shit
Legion the last good expansion. Not lorewise, but gameplay was fun
Is the content creator the same guy from WRA who RPs a moknathal?
That's me!
It’s cuz the Horde is booty cheeks and the Alliance Rules!
I think they wanted Sylvanas because of her ties to the legion. She had a Dread lord on her pay roll.
Most of the horde have ties to specific demons. But less a general legion issues. Also because demon hunters are stereo typed as blood elfs. They might have thought Illdan was enough?
I think its fine that vol'jin should died. But it should have happened at the end of legion to hype up how evil the legion are.
If im right isnt vol'jin that troll that ninjia dude who killed like a 100 people to save dojo?
Also think Sylvanas as war chief is a awful idea. I think a lot of her plot points are cool. But Sylvanas is the high elf ranger general.
The Elf's, especially the rangers, are famous for being crafty sneaky and hiding in the shadows.
You know. Traits you don't want in a leader. Esspaicy Horde.
Btw she worked as the leader for the Forsaken becuase the Forsaken had undead terroist vibes to contrast the Scourge.
It seemed to me like they didn't care for the Horde anymore, now it is just 'Alliance, but red and spiky'. We lost our faction identity. No Warchief, they make sure to add another god damn council. With 80% of them being Alliance sympathizers. Which, this whole koombayah nonsense can go suck an egg as well... I miss the days when it was still WARcraft, where both sides were evil and had every reason to hate each other...
I hope blizzard watch this video! 🙏
Sorry but i don't relate to the whole doom hammer analogy...
There is even more important artifact, like the Ashbringer which tehy took it from Tyrion by killing him in a pretty pathetic way if you tell me.
Xal'atath was a priest weapon...
I dont feel like getting doomhammer away is an insult to anyone.
A shame they decided to 'burn out' the artifacts (with Xalatah being a "special case")
As far as doomhammer? Heh.. The way they went with Thrall he very much should have lost that weapon, while I agree it's a little funky bc that hammer is very horde-centric. Thralls big issue and losing his connection with the elements? He lost his confidence the only real reason the elements don't respond to hesitation and uncertainty if he was less a broken man he wouldn't have problems getting it up
Oooh Legion.... It Nearly borke me How it went... and how it fail and drop the horde storyline here and there... and man... What could been better but Legion really really just Shove Night elf into my face sure sure tuaren is there but... Oh god... Legion is my mostly hated.
If Legion failed the Horde, then by your metrics Warlords Of Draenor MASSIVELY failed the Alliance. 2 years with nothing but Orc storylines (and a selfie patch), Thrall, Garrosh, Gul'dan, Grom, Blackhand and the list just goes on and on. Literally every single zone was Orc themed, due to the Iron Horde dominating everything. Sure we had Yrel & Velen's arc but that ended in Shadowmoon Valley which was the first zone of the expansion as an alliance player, and it ended with, you guessed it, another orc (Ner'zhul) summoning the Dark Star and Velen sacrificing himself (I know it's was an alternative timeline, but still). That was what we got, all done and dusted in the first act of the expansion.
From there we had Highmaul an Ogre/Orc themed raid, Blackrock Foundry an entirely Orc themed raid (which was very good i'll be honest, i loved that raid) and finally Hellfire Citadel an Orc/Demon themed raid and once Hellfire came around, i was just exhausted from overexposure to Orcs in every single crevice of the expansion. So while i understand, and to some extent agree with you on certain points you made, you have to realize what came before Legion. You mention "Orc fatigue", and to be honest that was pretty much how the entire alliance player base felt after Warlords.
Orcs from an alternate reality that are not our orcs are very much not our orcs and not a Horde storyline. WoD was about fighting orcs for the most part, and as a fan of orcs and loving their culture I loved parts of it but I did not like the killing of orcs. That doesn't really make it a "Horde Expansion". Especially since on the flip side of things the Alliance were given focus to the Draenei. It wasn't only about the orcs.
After the first patch and dealing with Garrosh, both the Alliance and the Horde kinda fell out of the story for WoD and it wrapped itself up quickly. I think people need to realize that they're not tired of orcs themselves - they're tired of fighting orcs (because we'd been fighting them since MoP too). But as I say in the video, just because you're tired of a race shouldn't mean they shouldn't get focused on when the story should focus on them - especially when it's the Burning Legion's final expansion - the very villains that helped create them as they are.
@@Skollshorties I think you need to realize that just because Blizzard invented a time skip to make the story make sense, Gul'dan, Grom, Garrosh, Thrall and all the rest of them, very much is a horde story line. They are literally the foundation of the Horde. Not the Legion. Plus the Horde existed long before they drank Mannoroth's blood and we're corrupted, the Trolls, Taurens, Blood Elves and so on, didn't officially join the Horde until Warcraft 3. Velen, Kil'jaeden and Archimonde we're like "brothers" and a huge part of the foundation of the Legion, so to focus the story around Velen made way more sense to me than the orcs ever would have. And like i said earlier we just had 2 years of nothing but orc storylines and just because they come from an "alternative" universe doesn't change the fact that it's still were all the familiar faces that we know from "our reality". So i don't really buy that.
Its true we we're given time to focus on the Draenei, but in comparison it was almost non existent as most of that content was cut. Karabor was cut. Shattrath was cut and basically turned into a rep farm and a (Iron) Horde harbour, where Maraad dies so Yrel could get her shining moment together with... You guessed it, another orc, Durotan. So again, i wouldn't really call that a Draenei storyline per se. What we got was act 1, where Velen dies (kind of) and act 2 where Maraad dies (kind of) - that was it, and it was all just very very underwhelming to be honest, as was the whole expansion really.
And the point about the Alliance and Horde falling out of the story after the first patch, does in my opinion apply equally to Legion. I agree that Alliance characters got a lot more attention in Legion than the Horde ones did, and i agree that they could, and should, have handled Vol'jins death better than they did, but i still stick to my guns here that the Alliance deserved some focus after 2 years with nothing but orcs. I can of course understand that is/was frustrating for Horde players with an interest in the lore, but its not like you had nothing at all. Sylvanas had her thing going on (which sadly went nowhere, a bit like Karabor and Shattrath) and Gul'dan was still doing his thing up until the end of the Nighthold Raid, which you could technically argue also was a Horde storyline with Nightfallen going on to join the Horde eventually.
You mean WoD, the expansion about orc genocide and the Alliance power fantasy of getting to invade Draenor?
Horde players did not enjoy getting to kill their heroes.
@ That doesn’t change the fact that it was all orc lore now does it?
@@djbreakfastca It was Alternate Orc lore as well. It doesn't really count when it isn't even our Horde or our Orcs.