A special look at - the alliance (part two) & the horde (part three)

Once again welcome to Ramses Reviews. I finally decided to finish my look at the factions. The original intent was for this to be two separate posts, one for each faction. However, the more I wrote, the more it became clear how much the problems of the two factions were intertwined.

The Empire of Stormwind

But first, a story of personal taste. I've said before that, of the two factions, my favorite is the horde. However, I was recently also asked my favorite race. It was actually a rather tough question for me, since I like almost every race in the game. In the end, it was actually humanity that won out, because I really dig the seven kingdoms.

Okay, bit weird to have your favorite race not in your favorite faction, but perfectly possible. Either you really dislike the other alliance races, or have all the horde races in really high regard. Then I thought what my second favorite race was; the night elves. Third; the dwarves. Fourth; the draenei. And yet, the alliance still isn't my favorite faction. The hell is the deal with that?

Well, I kinda touched upon it in my first look at the alliance, but I don't think I gave it enough emphasis. The idea behind the alliance is that they're separate nations, banding together to stand against outsiders who could overwhelm the individual nations. Their leadership and militaries coordinate together, with a very open sharing of information. In the highest level of government, this means coordination and trust between kings and generals. On the lower levels, it means that the nations of the alliance share information that could strengthen each others' armies.

At least, that was the intent when the alliance was formed back in warcraft II (though you can argue it goes back all the way to the conjurers in warcraft I). Nations remain separate entities, even as they strengthen and defend each other. It's a noble affair, though it brings with it the inherent problems of trust, either with ineffectiveness coming from nations not trusting each other (Gilneas pretty much being an in-name-only member of the alliance) or their trust being betrayed (Alterac selling out the alliance in the hopes the horde will spare them).

So, we can basically boil the alliance down to two things: “Independent nations” and “united against common enemies”. The former is why I'm a lot less hard on the night elves joining the alliance than the forsaken joining the horde. Sure, they're equally different from the factions they're joining, but with the alliance, a big part of the appeal is to see very diverse nations stand side-by-side.

However, the problem lies with the second one. There is no common enemy that the alliance is forming a united front against. Each of the various nations is busy fighting unrelated stuff. Stormwind is dealing with the defias rebellion, the dark horde, the black dragonflight and itself. The night elves are busy with the corruption overtaking their lands and the dark forces that would ally with it. The dwarves and the gnomes are the only ones who have common enemies, dealing with the troggs that were freed with the opening of Uldaman and the Dark Iron Dwarves.

And well, there you basically have the problem. The alliance is defined by nations uniting against common enemies. They are not doing so. For the entirety of Vanilla, the alliance did not exist. They were just some relatively friendly nations. Okay, that's a slight hyperbole. There is actually a single location where the alliance did exist, and I mentioned it in part 1 as well. I just don't think I did justice to the sheer insanity of the idea that the alliance only acted as an alliance in this one single place: Alterac Valley.

Think about that. The dwarven lands being infested by underground monstrosities, with the entire gnomish capital being lost and their population nearly driven to extinction? No action. The night elf lands being corrupted from the inside-out and tainted monstrosities taking over most of it? No action. The entire human kingdom of Stormwind falling apart as orcs overrun the east, bandits overrun the west and start on the center, and the south is abandoned to hordes of undead? No action. A territorial misunderstanding in a remote, strategically-uninteresting corner of the world? Full support! Humans, dwarves and night elves must stand together to help these archaeologist invade and wipe out the frostwolf clan, for surely there is no greater threat than reclusive primitives that misunderstood the intention of explorers. Surely, there is no cause greater than exterminating an entire clan in the name of dwarven imperialism? Not even the alliance can do this alone, for the cenarion circle must also forsake its neutrality and send an arch-druid. Truly, there is no greater threat to the natural world, no greater aberration to the natural order than... SHAMANISM! Because lord knows that the horde doesn't use shamanism anywhere else.

To be fair, it's not like the other battlegrounds made any sense either. Warsong Gulch requires Thrall to be acting completely out of character and everyone to overlook every single other source of wood ever. Arathi Basin has the forsaken invading Stromgarde territory because they need the resources there, despite the fact that it's at the other side of the continent from where they operate. I'm entirely willing to entertain the idea that the original vanilla battlegrounds were just the developers trolling the lore fans. I actually kinda prefer it over the idea that they were genuinely trying.

Anyway, back to the point I was originally making; After warcraft III, blizzard had no real solid plan what to go for with the direction of the factions, and both are kinda left meandering for both vanilla and TBC. As much as I hate to say it, Wrath of the Lich King really was the first expansion to legitimately give the alliance a well-defined role again, even if that role was a terrible, terrible idea.

You can argue that TBC was a little better than vanilla. It did indeed add one more quest hub, Honor Hold, where there was a sense that the nations of the alliance were actually, you know, allied. Still, it was too little, too late, with the rest of the continent again being all about the various nations doing their own unrelated stuff before being forgotten in favor of the naaru.

I honestly don't get why the writers seem to have so much trouble with writing the alliance. I realize I'm only talking as a backseat driver here, but it really seems like it wouldn't be so hard. Pick a main enemy, pick a few randomly selected alliance armies (remember, nations can have more than one army. It's a good opportunity to establish some variety within a single nation), have representatives from these armies stand in a single room to plan strategies, give the armies bases in zones that seem the most thematically appropriate (don't be afraid to have two different armies near each other, or even building their bases side-by-side), have them assault nearby bases of the main enemy and have multiple armies working together whenever appropriate. Frankly, it's not exactly a complicated formula. And yet, it never seems to occur. Instead, the alliance either acts like a bunch of non-allied, but friendly nations, or like the stormwindian empire of stormwind, serving stormwind for the glory of stormwind.

And yeah, the alliance in Wrath of the Lich King becomes the latter. Both in- and out-of-universe, it's rather disturbing. Apparently, the idea behind the radical shift in direction was that they were planning to introduce some sort of Thrall-like figure for the alliance in the form of Varian. And completely missed the mark. That's something that actually happens surprisingly often with Thrall. The basic idea is understandable. The horde had a focal figure in the form of Thrall, who was able to speak for the entirety of the horde. So they wanted a focal figure for the alliance, who could do the same.

Thing is, they kinda got things in reverse. Thrall can't speak for the horde because he is its leader. Just because you have formal leadership of a faction doesn't mean you can accurately represent all of it. Thrall is a leader, because he has learned to speak for the horde. Thrall is very much a diplomatic character, and is always portrayed as having a large circle of friends and advisors. Thrall can speak for the tauren, because Thrall has spent enough time with Cairne and Muln to actually know what the tauren would want. Thrall can speak for the darkspear, because Vol'jin is one of his closest friends and he knows what he'd want. Thrall can speak for the orcs, because he keeps enough of an eye and ear on his people to know what they actually want. You'll notice that you never see Thrall speak for the blood elves or forsaken, because, get this, he's not close enough to them to speak for them.

Varian is written in the exact opposite way. He doesn't need advisors or input from other nations to lead the alliance, because, as leader of the alliance, he naturally knows best how to lead it. Whenever Varian has a problem with leadership, it can only be because of outside influence by dark forces. Without leadership from the Wrynn bloodline, all the lands under his domain fall into chaos. Only if the Wrynn were allowed to lead again could those lands be restored. Even the divine forces of the universe make it clear that Varian, or others of his bloodline, should be in charge.

Now let's talk on real life writing and philosophy from the late middle ages. Back then, it was a common claim that royal families had been selected by God himself to serve as leaders of men. Because of being blessed by God, they were naturally better rulers and it was only right that they lorded over the lower classes, who didn't possess the natural ability to lead. Without the leadership of the king, the land would fall apart into barbarism and anarchy.

Anyone else seeing a weird parallel here?

Yeah, Varian is basically a straight import from the late medieval era, though I doubt it was deliberate on part of the writers. I'm guessing they were trying to use some of the 'true king' tropes popular in fantasy, and used them with such a lack of irony and thought that it just happened to resemble six hundred year old propaganda. It's absolutely amazing how the writers somehow skipped centuries upon centuries of developments in society, morality, philosophy and literature. I'd be impressed if it wasn't for the fact I meant I had to deal with stormwindian empire of stormwind overtaking my favorite races.

Actually, that's being a little unfair. Despite appearances, the empire has surprisingly little to do with stormwind. Sure, they're led by Stormwind's king, carry the stormwind flag, see stormwind as their capital and use Stormwind architecture. However, there is a bit more to the nation of Stormwind than that. I actually feel a bit sorry for how I talked about Stormwind in previous reviews. Oh, it's still the most boring faction in the game by a long shot. But that's only when you look at the kingdom as a whole.

You see, Stormwind does have a surprising number of interesting sub-factions. I'm personally quite fond of the people's militia, a group of westfall farmers who've been abandoned by the kingdom in their struggle against the defias, and who've formed their own military. In addition to the militia, you've also got the Night Watch, which struggles against the horrors of Duskwood, the stormwind marshals, lawkeepers who have to keep the kingdom safe from outside threats now that the army is abroad, and SI:7, the rather shady Stormwind Intelligence agency. Even the stormwind gryphon masters seem to be their own organization, with special uniforms and their own flag, though I don't think we ever got any elaboration on them.

The thing is though, none of these factions show up again. Oh sure, sometimes it looks like they get focus again, like when the people's militia turned up as the westfall brigade in Northrend, or when SI:7 formed the alliance vanguard in Pandaria. But really, it's only the names that re-appear, not what made those factions interesting. The Westfall Brigade is no different from any other generic alliance force in Northrend, and SI:7 is now a multi-national generic rogue organization, rather king-loyal internal security for Stormwind.

So, obviously, we're gonna need to differentiate. The generic Stormwind-themed alliance forces as commanded by Varian Wrynn shall now be known as the Wrynn Empire. It's a term I'm going to need for the next segment.

Alliance Races

One thing most fans of Warcraft can agree on is that the alliance really hasn't had a good record with the newly added races. The night elves have been turned into pale imitations of the glory that made them so popular. The draenei were essentially forgotten after their expansion, and even there, most of the focus was on non-alliance draenei. The worgen are the worst off, as they might as well not exist after their starting zone and Silverpine. Many fans will tell you this is because blizzard is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with these races. That they (especially night elves and worgen) are just not good matches for the alliance.

Honestly, I have to disagree. In my opinion, the night elves, the draenei and the worgen were all perfect new races for the alliance. Sure, they don't really fit the artistic style, culture or armies of the other alliance races. But that should be a good thing. I want to see siege tanks and ancient protectors march into battle side-by-side. I want to see warriors clad in crystalline armor hold the line as savage berserker packs charge in from behind them. That's the entire point of the alliance being an alliance; nations that are different in style banding together for a common cause.

And that's why I think the three races are such good fits for the alliance. Sure, night elf society is pretty much the exact opposite of dwarven society. But nobody is asking them to mingle, just work together. The nations having vastly differing histories and looks is what makes them capable of standing as an independent force within the coalition known as the alliance. There is a good reason that World of Warcraft gave the dwarves and gnomes much more distinction.

However, while these races fit perfectly into the alliance, capable of standing alongside Stormwind, Ironforge and Gnomeregan as equals, they don't fit at all into the Wrynn Empire. Hell, neither do aforementioned Stormwind, Ironforge and Gnomeregan. See, there's the big difference between the alliance and the wrynn empire.

In the alliance, all nations are powerful, independent entities, working together only at the highest levels. This originates all the way back in Warcraft II. The horde was a mass of clans that followed a roughly similar culture. Sure, one clan would chew bones, and one would ride dragons, but the overall framework for the various orcish clans was the same. Even the non-orcish members of the horde were absorbed into these clans.

The alliance however, consisted of independent kingdoms. There was no overall authority, not even really any indication of an overlapping culture. Even the church of the holy light, the closest thing to a thread connecting the seven kingdoms, was treated more like an independent power than a thing to bond over. The contrast is the starkest when looking at the non-human members of the alliance, which maintained their own kingdoms and vastly different cultures. Basically, it's like the immigration debate. Horde is integration, alliance is multi-cultural.

Warcraft III continued this trend. The different factions in the alliance all got different building styles and a lot of the time, you faced only one or two kingdoms at once. Contrast this again with the horde, which had jungle trolls, wyverns and tauren forming a single traveling army under leadership of Thrall in RoC, and form another single unified army along with ogres in TFT.

However, the alliance is not the same as the Wrynn Empire. In the Wrynn empire, there is absolutely no room for races with their own history and culture, because it means that they have different views of the world. An ancient race that stands as guardians of nature? Theocratic planet-hoppers who have been driven to near-extinction time and time again? Cursed Man-wolves? These are not going to hold the same views as your average medieval warrior-king. To have them in the same alliance means that Varian Wrynn is going to have to communicate, negotiate, and occasionally even compromise.

Obviously, we can't have that. It would mean that the alliance was actually about an alliance, rather than Lord Wrynn's personal empire. So, we got increasingly weak excuses to keep these races subservient. Elune revealed that it was her divine will that the night elves follow Varian, offering no real reason. Goldrinn also made Varian his champion, despite him never doing anything that would make him appeal to Goldrinn. Velen suddenly had visions that Anduin Wrynn would be the one leading the army of light, so his support was for the Wrynn family. And the worgen just kinda dissipated into the human and night elf populaces, because they had no religious leader that could suddenly have a vision proclaiming the Wrynns to the best thing ever.

All the hordes

It's been my observation that blizzard really didn't want to move the franchise forward anymore after The Frozen Throne. What they wanted to do was revisit the glories of previous events, and explore completely new peoples and environments. They actually do the latter really well, giving us a lot of interesting new societies. The centaur, the qiraji, the ethereals, the arakkoa, the magnataur, the stone lords, the jinyu and the pandaren are all great additions to the warcraft universe (okay, some were already there in warcraft III, but they didn't really get history and society until they appeared in WoW).

However, it's the former that's causing problems. Now I love warcraft's past stories. Warcraft II gave us epic global warfare, ToD finally showed us the world that's been talked about since the first game, Warcraft III gave us powerful personal stories and TFT explored the darker sides of the universe. But here's the key aspect: World of Warcraft isn't any of those games. It doesn't take place during any of those games. Even if it wanted, it couldn't replicate what made those games good, because it has vastly different gameplay. And there's nothing wrong with that. World of Warcraft isn't any of those games. It takes place in the future, in a time where the outcomes of all those beloved events can be seen and explored.

But no. Instead, all future developments are turned into weak attempts to imitate the past, or are ignored entirely. We've already seen it with the alliance as a whole. Barely acknowledge to exist until Wrath of the Lich King, where the entire faction was now defined by an attempt to combine Anduin Lothar and Thrall in a single character.

Unlike the alliance, the horde got assigned identity from the past right from the start of WoW. However, the problem was that they couldn't just pick a single identity. Instead, the horde has been stuck between four different directions, all of which are throwbacks to earlier games.

1) The Monster Horde (Warcraft I). This horde is a dark force of monstrosities, alien and chaotic. The Monster Horde relies little on technology or tactics, instead preferring to rely on pure, dumb strength. This is subverted only by a rare few individuals. It is through these rare individuals, whether they be warlocks, warlords or infiltrators, that the dumb hordes become a true threat to the planet.

This is the only version of the horde under which the inclusion of the forsaken makes sense, and it shows up in a few quests in Cataclysm as well, like the battle for Northwatch and large parts of the Twilight Highlands.

2) The War Machine Horde (Warcraft II: ToD). Like the Monster Horde, the War Machine Horde is a dark force that will overwhelm the planet. Unlike the Monster Horde, it will do this not through mindless violence, but through large-scale industrialization. For this version of the horde, everything is a resource to be consumed. Massive industries consume wood, metal and oil at an unprecedented rate, spewing forth weaponry, fleets and siege machines. Dark magic is fed into young children, turning defenseless infants into fully capable warriors. Not even the dead are safe, with removed souls, corpses and stolen magic being used to craft the elite core of death knights.

This version of the horde is what became dominant in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, exemplified by the goblins joining and doing what they did to Azshara. The orcs and undead also joined in on the fun, shifting from mundane armies with iconic magic (shamans and mind-control respectively) to armies that are heavily technology-oriented. No longer is the orc an honorable warrior or a monstrous brute. He is but a cog in the war machine.

3) The Rebel Horde (Lord of the Clans, of Blood and Honor, Warcraft III tutorial). This is a bit of a weird one, and I debated whether I should include it at all. It didn't star prominently in any games, and was more of a reaction to a short-term situation than an overall theme. But the more I thought about it, the more it fit. Because while the rebel horde existed only shortly in canon, it did have a big impact on how people viewed the horde.

The rebel horde was the horde formed during Lord of the Clans and persisted until the orcs took off for Kalimdor. It was a time when the orcs were trying to be honorable warriors, but still struggling with the sins of their past. They wanted to be left alone and return to their old culture, but they couldn't do so with their people still in chains. It was a sympathetic struggle, though one could definitely argue the morality of it.

This version of the horde really struck a note with fans and producers. I suspect it's because everybody loves the underdog, and the orcs were definitely in that role. They were a small bunch of rebels, hiding in the hills, trying to free their people, fighting against a massive continents-spanning alliance that, while not actively malicious, certainly didn't give a damn about the wants and needs of the orcs. It was a great situation, and one that I wish the series had explored a little more. I'd have loved it if the battlegrounds were actually old battles from this era, with neither side in the right (“We're freeing all orcs, no matter what horrid acts they committed!” “Each and every orc should be held accountable for the actions of the horde, regardless of what they themselves did!”), nor in the wrong (“Our people are born in captivity and die in captivity. We cannot abide the systematic repression of our people!” “These people endangered our entire world. We cannot sit by and let them do this again!”)

The problem comes when trying to recapture this glory. You see, to recapture this, you need to have the horde as persecuted underdogs. And the other directions make this impossible. The Monster Horde can be a persecuted underdog, but they're all evil, so it's not like that makes them sympathetic. The War Machine Horde has more room for moral individuals, but is by definition not an underdog. Finally, the Settler Horde just wants to tend to their homeland. It's hard to make them a persecuted party without turning the other side into very obvious villains, which the writers (for very good reasons) weren't willing to do.

And to be fair, the official stance has never been one of the horde being persecuted victims. But it does pop its ugly head on occasion, with some isolated quests and developers. I've already mentioned aggresionitis hominum in my look at the lost isles, but it pops up with other races as well. The idea that the forsaken got their name because they were forsaken by their former comrades is a common one as well, adding a sense of persecution as a central theme, despite that being based on absolutely nothing in canon

4) The Settler Horde (Warcraft III). During Warcraft III, the orcs and trolls traveled west to Kalimdor, finding lands left unclaimed (or at least, left unclaimed by anyone we're supposed to care about). While life still isn't easy, the members of the horde now finally have a place to call their own. The horde is family, and together, they will secure a future.

The main purpose of the Settler Horde is to tame these new lands. From the barren wastes of Durotar, to the grand plains of Mulgore, to the monster-infested jungles of the Echo Isles, to the plagued wastes of Tirisfal to the darkened woods of Quel'thalas. These lands are hostile and deadly, but through the horde's strength, perseverance, strong sense of personal identity and bond with the land, they shall be tamed.

Now, I personally prefer the settler version of the horde, both because I just think it's an awesome concept, and because it's what the series left off on in The Frozen Throne. However, while I would have definitely disliked the series going back to the old rebel or war machine hordes, I could probably get over it, as long as it was well-executed.

Obviously, that's not what happened. Instead, the horde of World of Warcraft tries to be all four hordes at once, and fails utterly because the four are utterly incompatible. “We will tame this land through our connection to the natural world! Now go help the monstrous undead create a horrid plague, while we try to claim a land that's easier to tame!” “The alliance settlers on Kalimdor are threatening our way of life! Quickly, start aiding the alliance settlers on Kalimdor!” “The forsaken have a strong sense of individuality. That is why they all uniformly chose to serve the same person” “We serve the will of the elements. Now go help our newest members: people who enslave the elements.”

And mind you, that was all stuff from before Cataclysm, back when the fact that the developers couldn't agree which direction to take with the horde was still hidden in the background. It's only after we started hearing the developers talk about Garrosh in such conflicted ways that it became apparent that, no, the writers really weren't going anywhere with all the contradictory stuff, like we'd assumed. Say what you want about the horridness of the alliance becoming the Wrynn Empire, but at least we knew what was going on most of the time.

Races, hordes and intersections

I wish I had the time and the patience to go into the sheer amount of contradicting, dropped and minimized story directions for the horde. Once you start paying attention to that sort of stuff you'll quickly become overwhelmed. Remember how much it was set up that the tauren were going to the mentor figures for the horde? Or how important individuality was for the forsaken? Or how the entire blood elf race was traveling to outland? Or how the orcs were switching to a theocratic society? Or how the jungle trolls...

...actually, never mind about the jungle trolls. They never really had anything approaching an actual direction, did they? I guess you could count the whole “casting off eviler traditions” from the RPG and the warcraft encyclopedia, but that was never really treated as an ongoing process.

While we're talking about specific races for a moment, let's address the blood elves, because they're a very good example of multiple styles of horde clashing. The blood elves had a long development process to get them to fit into the horde. What did they become? Fel-crazed, murderous anarchists, who will not only reject, but outright attack any spiritual authority, will corrupt and exploit the land and have three-quarters of their history retconned to make them have always been completely evil of their own volition. Basically, they were turned into perfect members of the war machine horde.

Luckily, before TBC rolled around, someone actually seems to have realized that they didn't get around to turning the rest of the horde into monsters yet, so having this version of the blood elves be tolerated in the horde would make as much sense as having the forsaken be tolerated in the horde. And that would just be silly.

So, the blood elves received a pretty major re-tool before the release of TBC. Pretty much the entire RPG was thrown out the window, with the history from TFT largely restored. Usage of fel magic was seriously wound back, with most of the population not knowing of it and instead relying on mundane sources of arcane magic. And the blood knights got themselves a rather poorly executed redemption story, which was coupled with the entire blood elf race now getting holy energy pumping through their veins.

Which becomes a problem again in Cataclysm, because the blood elves from TBC have absolutely no business staying in Garrosh' horde. Like the orcs and the tauren, the blood elves were set up to be primarily concerned with their own homeland, which they have regained. The scourge's hold on the region has been broken, the mana addiction resolved, the internal politics cooled down and even Zul'aman has been thoroughly weakened. The fact that the blood elves stayed with the horde through WotLK is already questionable enough, but supporting a war whose only purpose is to kill alliance and get the orcs more wood? That makes no sense.

Neither do any of the other internal politics of the horde. It's again because of the different directions thing. The writers want the horde to be several things at once, when those things are obviously incompatible. To make it happen anyway, we need to completely ignore several aspects of the setting. Orcish honor and different tauren tribes? These things cannot be explained in a way that makes sense when you haven't decided on a direction for the horde.

Which is why I was so surprised when they were.

A happy beginning... I hope.

To my utter and eternal amazement, after Cataclysm had driven me away from the franchise, I was pulled back in. I'm not going to act like Mists of Pandaria was a flawless expansion, because it wasn't. But it was the first expansion where it really felt the writing was pulling together to at least make for a cohesive experience. I know some people are going to vehemently disagree with me, but for me, MoP was the first expansion that truly felt like it belonged as a sequel to warcraft II and III. It wasn't an amazing sequel or anything, but it actually managed to tap into what made warcraft warcraft.

And yes, this is also true for the portrayal of the factions. The horde finally settles into a single role, that of the War Machine, though with enough elements of the Settler Horde shining through (and eventually, taking over) that I wouldn't call it derailment. The orcs of Garrosh' horde, no matter what else you may say of them, do have a sense of honor. Nazgrim, who the player hangs out with for most of the expansion, is the most obvious. However, even the obvious villain orcs, like Malkorok and Ishi, are shown to be driven by honor. I don't agree with all aspects of the portrayal of orcs, but it at least felt like these things could be happening in the same, consistent universe as earlier events.

The same goes for the other races of the horde. The tauren actually start acting like their own nation, with its own interests to uphold. Dezco is in Pandaria for his own mission, and Baine is not just going to blindly follow Garrosh. Speaking of Dezco, we finally get some acknowledgment of tribal identities through the dawnchaser tribe and the tribe-specific units seen in the TCG. The trolls, for the first time, get some actual direction for their race, as laid out in 'shadows of the horde', and are also finally allowed to react to Garrosh' actions in a rational way. The goblins finally get a consistent feel for their level of technology, rather than wildly fluctuating between useless and deus ex machina, as it did previously. Blood elves get a good show on the isle of thunder and in the siege of Orgrimmar, finally giving the non-magister parts of their race an opportunity to show their worth.

The alliance doesn't quite get the same degree of improvement the horde did. 5.0 was spent trying once again to turn the alliance into the story of the Wrynn's, to the point where the main reason for the alliance being in Pandaria is getting back Anduin. However, the further the expansion progressed, the more they actually seemed to realize what the alliance is supposed to be. The various nations actually start acting like independent entities, pursuing their own interests with their own forces. Dalaran and Ironforge get stories about their own internal politics, while unnamed night elf nation has its own campaigns on Pandaria and gets some acknowledgment of the internal developments that were skipped over almost entirely in Cataclysm.

When the forces do work together, it's no longer at the cost of their identity either, as you can see in 5.1 and 5.4. The alliance forces are no longer the homogenous masses seen at Wintergarde, Highbank and the SI:7 team. Instead, every nation brings its own specialties to the field, strengthening the whole and looking damn spiffy while they're at it. Unless they're worgen or pandaren.

Regardless, it's a big improvement on both sides of the coin. Warlords of Draenor, at least the parts of it that we've been shown, seems to continue the trend in a big way. You can count me among those that are once again excited about the future of the franchise.

That doesn't mean I'll stop snarking it though. See you all next time.

A special look at - the horde - part II

Now for part two, where I discover I have a surprising amount of things to say about TBC.

Expedition to the unknown!

I mentioned before how the orc outposts in the eastern kingdoms (minus Kargath) made little to no sense because the horde should be focused mostly on securing their new homelands. This becomes even more of a problem when it comes to expansions, because both factions need reasons to establish a presence throughout the new zones. For the alliance, this is rather easy. They already have large forces present in both Outland and Northrend, as well as forces present for hypothetical south seas and emerald dream expansions.

For the horde, it's a bit harder. They don't exactly have much of a motivation to send random military expeditions into every new land that pops up. Hence, the horde always needs a specific reason to get involved in expansion content.

And a lot of the weirder story decisions for TBC can be traced back to just giving the horde a reason to go to outland. Magtheridon surviving and being used to create fel orcs? A group of orcs (including the families of four of the greatest horde heroes) somehow remaining uncorrupted? An entire community of half-ogres? A vast community of blood elves somehow surviving on Azeroth and thus needing the help of the horde to reach Outland? The alliance attacking the blood elves despite being friendly with them before? One could even speculate that one of the motivations for Illidan and Kael'thas turning into generic evil overlords between games is to explain why the forsaken don't just tell the horde to go screw itself and join them instead.

And really, it still didn't really work. Sure, we've given them a reason to send forces to Hellfire Peninsula and for Garadar and Mok'nathal village to join the horde, but still nothing beyond that. Why would they establish a military presence in Terrokar Forest or Blade's Edge Mountains? They're not on the offensive against anyone there. Sure, there are guys they dislike, but no one who is an active threat to them. Why not spend those soldiers on the conflicts at home?

The one that strikes me the most though is Zangarmarsh. Seriously, why is the horde there? Even if we accept that the horde simply has soldiers to waste on picking fights with random factions, the zone still doesn't make sense. The naga plans and broken hostility are only discovered during the cenarion questline in the region, when the troll outposts have already been long-built.

Which brings us to other questions. First, why trolls? No, seriously. Why would the darkspear trolls, a near-extinct tribe incapable of defeating a single rogue witch doctor decide “Hey, screw retaking our capital or defending our handful of barely defended villages against local threats. We should really just send our soldiers to another planet to fight people we never even heard of. It makes complete and total sense to have the single largest city we own to be outside our territory.” Second, when exactly were the troll outposts established? Or any of the other new outposts for that matter? For the alliance, all outposts existed before the opening of the dark portal, so it makes sense. However, the horde only got in troops after the opening of the dark portal. So how did they get so much materiel and soldiers into areas beyond Hellfire Peninsula, when demon and fel orc forces were still blocking all access routes?

Looking at the quests, the entire affair makes even less sense. Why are troll scouts investigating missing water? Why is there an entire outpost that only consists of random traders? Why do 90% of the quests have nothing to do with anything, simply consisting of grabbing stuff for random traders and killing animals because they annoy people? No, I'm not exaggerating. There's several quests where you massacre animals just because the local horde forces find their sounds annoying.

And those aren't even the most baffling quests. How about the quests where you are sent to kill the ogres because they're cutting a path to Zabra'jin, despite the fact that the ogres are clearly cutting a path towards the Orebor Harborage? Or the quest where one of the trolls complains that there aren't enough murlocs on outland, and has the player release them into the wild? Did the writer forget the entire backstory for the darkspear tribe, what with them being slaughtered en masse by murlocs?

Zangarmarsh is easily the single most blatant example of a zone only being designed for one faction, with the plot of the other faction being tacked on without thinking for the sake of balance (and considering the existence of patch 5.3, that is saying quite a lot). However, even the quests for other zones feel really half-assed, because the vast majority of them basically amount to the same three things in every zone:

1) Somebody randomly attacked us, now go kill them. Whether it's the Shienor arakkoa in Terrokar or the ogres of Zangarmarsh, the horde seems to attract a lot of rather odd amount of aggression from the natives, who seemingly attack the horde for no reason other than general evilness.

2) Go help our merchants. Apparently, the horde has suddenly turned into a mercantile empire between expansions, as there are way too many quests that are justified by needing to do them for horde traders. Seriously, we're on a military expedition to deal with demons, get blood elves to Netherstorm and find the mag'har. Why are we concerned with setting up trade routes and outposts? If it was just one or two quests from opportunists, I would understand, but it seriously is about half the horde quests on Outland. Guys, we're supposed to be noble tribal barbarians and mana-addicts. Neither of those societies is aimed at the acquisition of wealth. This is the laziest possible way to give the horde quests. Try again.

3) Just kill something. Nevermind about number 2 being the laziest. This one is worse. All too often we have to go kill enemies without any justification whatsoever. My favorite has to be Stronglimb Deeproot however. Apparently, the faction peace-supporting Rexxar has put out a kill order on an alliance ancient for the horrible crime of standing guard.

There are admittedly some similar quests for the alliance as well, but not nearly to the same quantity as the horde. Mostly, it's because the alliance towns actually have a good reason for existing and are in a unique situation, with quests that tie into that reason and situation. Meanwhile, most horde towns are just there because... well, when you have two factions you need to give them an equal amount of content. It's why Nagrand and the Blade's Edge Mountains have by far the best quests for the horde: The population there is actually in a unique situation.

Why do we want this?

While we're at it, let's talk about PvP. Because the world PvP objectives from vanilla were so incredibly popular with the fans (a.k.a. no one did them, even before PvP started focusing on battlegrounds), they decided to add them to Outland as well. Hellfire Peninsula had three small outposts near the back that could be used to stage attacks on the citadel, while Zangarmarsh, Terrokar Forest and Nagrand had old draenei ruins. So, my obvious question: Why the hell are we fighting for these?

The attack on Hellfire is a joint effort by the alliance and the horde. Even with the logical distrust from the alliance side (being stormwind and expedition forces), they do end up actually helping out the horde. So you'd think that, even if they refused to actually work together, reaching an agreement would be as simple as “You guys get the northern outpost, we'll take the southern outpost, and we give the third one to the cenarion guys so we have a buffer and they won't have to sit on a random hill anymore. We all win!”

The other three world PvP objectives make even less sense. Why does the horde care for random draenei ruins? Why are we willing to fight and die for something that has no strategic, monetary, tactical, religious, historical or even entertainment value for us? Plus, if we're trying to steal holy sites from the draenei, shouldn't the sha'tar and aldor be really pissed at us? They are the draenei pantheon and priests after all.

Finally, there was also the new battleground. I don't think the writers even bothered to think up a reason for it, they just wanted to add a new battleground for the sake of diversity. Well, good for them, but couldn't they think of a reason why either the alliance or the horde would want it?

Also related to this is pretty much the entire Blade's Edge Mountain Zone, where we keep getting mentions of and quests related to a local conflict between the horde and the alliance, without any mention whatsoever of how or why. This zone seems like the one where conflict should not be happening at all. The horde is being led by Rexxar, who has been advocating living together with the alliance for decades. The goal of the alliance presence in the region is to restore the nature of the blade's edge mountains, which seems like it would be something the orcs and half-ogres would both want.

And yet the quests treat the two factions as if they were in a state of war, with several horde attacks, including at least one directly ordered by rexxar, against the restored nature of the living grove. Meanwhile, the alliance is planning to permanently occupy the region (of all the regions in Outland, why would you do that here? Go restore the nature near Honor Hold, or some other place you actually already own) and creating a blatant contradiction to justify killing horde wolves by stating that the new horde orcs brought and command the wolves to attack their fey drakes despite the wolves being thunderlord wolves (the thunderlords aren't in the new horde, were in the region for a long time, and died before the alliance even arrived. Plus, the wolves don't seem to be commanded by the new horde at all). Also, why isn't the cenarion expedition of Evergrove, whose goals and methods are the exact same as the alliance night elves, involved in this conflict?
I think this stems from the blade's edge mountains quests being part of an early draft. While it's never been officially confirmed, you can notice that a lot of design conventions here work differently from most other zones. Quest items have a limited amount of charges, important quest items appear as separate objects near the corpse rather than loot, there are some random stealth-detecting generic mobs and the merchants in Ogri'la are largely unnamed. It's likely that the original idea for the expansion was that the arrival of the draenei and them joining the alliance would have set off the war with the horde, as Rise of the Horde, essentially the prequel to the expansion, ends on Thrall thinking that that's going to happen.

As a side-note, while I was speaking of the cenarion expedition, I realized something. Evergrove has several NPCs who are very obviously not druids. It has the same dryads as Sylvanaar. It has a gnome from Toshley's station. It has several alliance-only questgivers, and ties closely into their quest-line. Meanwhile, members of the horde races present are very generic, and could be replaced without changing any dialogue. It also ties in very awkwardly to the questline, with the horde player likely passing through it several times before he's supposed to visit it according to the quest flow (where it comes after Mok'Nathal Village). I'm calling it: This place was originally an alliance-only quest hub, but got changed late into design.

Where mah orcs at?

There is also a weird retcon thing going on where orcish presence on Draenor is being seriously down-played in favor of the ogres, the arakkoa and especially the draenei, to the point where it becomes more than a little silly. Remember the old warcraft II maps?

Good luck finding most of this in TBC. The warsong, bonechewer and laughing skull territories are completely devoid of any sign of orcish presence, instead being replaced by draenei territories. Fortress Auchindoun gets retconned from being a great orcish fortress into being a draenei necropolis in the bone wastes, with a massive draenei temple complex (Shattrath City) taking its place on the map, while Fortress Shadowmoon gets replaced with another draenei temple complex.

Seriously, you're neutral?

Okay, one final point to make. Remember how I talked in the previous post about all the changes made to lore to try and justify the horde and the alliance as counterparts? Specifically, how alliance-themed factions have this tendency to go neutral, because otherwise the alliance would be ridiculously more varied than the horde? Well, as a natural counter-point to this, it also means that neutral quests tend to be alliance-themed, especially at the highest levels.

We already saw this in vanilla, where the most important neutral factions were the paladin-themed argent dawn and the druid-themed cenarion circle. Even amongst the less important factions, the majority really had nothing to do with the horde, but had a long relation and cultural kinship with the alliance. The bloodsail buccaneers were Kul Tiras deserters, the brood of nozdormu were allies of the night elves, the shendra'lar were former members of the highborne class of night elves, the thorium brotherhood are dwarves and Timbermaw Hold was a long-time ally of the night elves. Meanwhile, the only neutral factions that were horde-themed were Ratchet and the Zandalar tribe.

As a result, horde players basically stopped being horde players as early as level 45, instead becoming an off-brand version of the alliance. Again, this is why the horde should never have been a playable faction. There just isn't enough good guy horde culture on the planet.

With vanilla, I honestly didn't mind too much. I like both the alliance and the horde, so I do have fun playing an alliance-lite character. If anything, I wish the neutral factions wouldn't downplay their ties to the alliance as much. Having members of the horde actually work with an alliance faction that isn't trying to kill them fits in perfectly as a sequel to warcraft III. However, I can't say the same for the sha'tar.

There's a couple of reasons for that. First, I don't really like the naaru. Star-beings constructed out of holy energy are a pretty cool idea, but the fact that the naaru are the ultimate good guys is being played up way too much. I generally don't mind having clear heroes and villains in a story, but the naaru take it way too far, going into mary sue/gary stu territory (what exactly do you call a genderless mary sue?). All the good guys love the naaru, even when they don't really have much of a connection and the naaru really don't do anything. Every command given by any naaru is treated as if they are absolutely right, with no good guys questioning it. The only way a naaru could do anything wrong was if he was corrupted by some outside force. Everyone who opposes a naaru is an evil and corrupting presence, and no one questions whether exterminating them is wrong.

Second, I don't like how much the naaru dominated the TBC story. Having a city of refugees was a cool idea, but that aspect of the sha'tar was forgotten way too early, with the lower city only appearing in Terrokar Forest. Instead, all the big engagements of TBC just featured the scryers, the aldor and the naaru themselves.

Now, neither of those points have much to do with a horde retrospective. However, they do lead into a point I'm trying to make here: TBC is the story of the naaru, and their sha'tar. The entire expansion revolves around the way the naaru bring light and guidance to the people around them.

And the naaru are pretty blatantly alliance. And no, I'm not saying alliance-themed here. They are beings of the Light, they are the gods of the draenei, they provided guidance and safety to the alliance expedition, they power the draenei capital, they are the gods of a theocratic alliance society, they live in the city of the aldor, whose highest ranking member is a leader in the alliance, several of their temples are members of the alliance and they have Khadgar as their personal agent.

Meanwhile, the horde is keeping one naaru prisoner, torturing it to fuel a drug addiction, while another naaru is accidentally eating thousands of orcish ancestor spirits.

It's really like they intended shattrath and the sha'tar to be an alliance faction, but when the expansion was nearly ready to ship they realized that they'd either forgotten the horde counterpart or that the horde counterpart just sucked. Some of the quest dialogue feels especially out of place for quests that are available to the horde:

Kirrik the Awakened: If the touch of the blessed Naaru, A'dal, is not enough to bring the arakkoa to redemption, nothing will be.

Ramses: Hold on here. Weren't the naaru unable to cure the broken as well? Maybe if we tried some alternative divine magics..

Kirrik the Awakened: Those who have not given themselves over to the Light are mere servants of evil. They must be destroyed.

Ramses: Dude. I'm, like, standing right here.

Kirrik the Awakened: We cannot hope to redeem those in Terokk's grasp. But we shall deliver them a devastating blow in the name of the Light.

Ramses: Okay, dude. You can just go straight to hell. I'm off to stonebreaker to play grab-ass with the wolf spirit or something. Maybe get a troll/blood elf cultural exchange party involving hookahs and blow going. Try not to have people killed for having a different religion while I'm gone, 'kay?

The Kirrik quest is admittedly a bit of an exception, but I really do get a pretty serious case of cultural whiplash whenever I play TBC. It's just not very hordey, which, considering it starred the orcish homeworld, was very disappointing. Also, small side-note. In Kirrik's caravan, there is also a troll by the name of High Priest Orglum. There is no possible way that his dialogue was written for him. Seriously, he was written as a draenei, and then at the last possible second someone realized that the neutral sha'tar really should have some members from horde races, switching around this guy and a couple of generic mobs in the lower city.

Well, I think I covered everything relevant to the horde in TBC here. Let's just move on to Wrath of the Lich King and...

Blood elves

Oh, right, the blood elves. Completely forgot about them. I'm not even making a joke here. I seriously went through no less than seven completely different drafts of this post, trying to get my opinion out in exactly the way I want. And yet somehow, none of those drafts ever talked about the blood elves. How exactly could I forget about them?

Well, it ties into one of the big problems I have with how the horde is used in TBC. The way I do these special looks is by looking up the major quest hubs for the respective factions, and going over a list of the quests. The horde blood elves only have one quest hub in the entirety of outland: Falcon Watch. And while the quests aren't exactly bad, there's really not much of a story to them.

Outside Falcon Watch, there's barely any horde blood elves at all. As far as I can tell, the only ones are Advisor Faila in Stonebreaker Hold, the four NPCs that appear when the horde conquers Halaa and Yala the Fair, the Eye of the Storm battlemaster in Shattrath City.

Considering just how big of a role blood elves play in the expansion, I was more than a little bit surprised to discover just how few of them there were. And because they're nearly all concentrated in hellfire peninsula, none of them even mention anything related to finding out Illidan is insane or finding out Kael'thas joined the legion. They aren't involved in their own story arc!

No, instead, that's left up to the aldor and the scryers.

TBC seems to have a real problem figuring out who it should focus on during the conflicts. For example, take the naga of Zangarmarsh. Should we focus on the plight of the sporelings, who have been driven to the brink of extinction, their very last eggs under siege? The Kurenai, whose brethren were systematically hunted down and enslaved? The jungle trolls, who lost their chieftain and most of their populace to the naga plots? NOPE! We should focus on the cenarion expedition, whose conflict is strictly about maintaining bio-diversity for its own sake.

Terokk? We've set up this backstory throughout Terrokar, establishing two redeemed arakkoa who have taken it upon themselves to direct the battle against Terrok, and are the ones who first uncovered evidence of his return. But when it finally comes to taking the battle to him, we instead focus solely on the sha'tari skyguard, which has no backstory at all.

However, there is no greater example of this than the scryers. The blood elves of Silvermoon have been suffering hardships throughout the starting zones. They've been divided internally, betrayed by their allies, have seen their friends and family reduced to gibbering madmen and have been rejected by nature itself. And throughout all that, there was only a tiny glimmer of hope. A distant world, a paradise where they could build anew. And then it all turned out to be a lie. There was no paradise waiting for them, only enslavement by forces from beyond the stars. But no, all of that is ignored, with us not even seeing the reaction to the betrayal. The people we follow have suffered none of the hardships. They just fight Kael'thas because a shiny light told them to.

Both the scryers and the aldor were terrible, terrible ideas that should have never made it past concept, though for entirely different reasons. The scryers are just a pale imitation of their silvermoon brethren. They have none of the internal conflicts and none of the tragedy. Hell, even their mana addiction seems oddly absent. They just saw the light one day, and turned a shade of uniform blandness. Even the idea that they're slightly shadier than the aldor is so completely underplayed, it seems more like a left-over from an earlier draft rather than an actual characteristic.

Even during the final battle on Quel'danas, the silvermoon blood elves seem oddly absent. Okay, Lady Liadrin is involved, but she's been practically converted to the scryers by this point. Like I said in my TBC review, the complete and utter absence of the horde in the resolution of any of the blood elf plots creates the rather massive plot hole of the blood elves still being in the horde by the end of the expansion. As a result, I'm somewhat loathe to call the blood elf plot a horde-related plot. Really, the blood elves only have the thinnest of story threads connecting them to the horde. Though those story threads are actually well-handled, they don't change the fact that they just aren't part of the story. In the end, it's a very weak story, both from the perspective of a horde fan as well as the perspective of a blood elf fan.

I think I should also talk about the idea of the blood elves joining the horde. Thinking about it, there actually is a surprising amount of cultural overlap between the blood elves and the horde. Rangers share a lot of their cultural aspects with the tauren. Partying and substance abuse form a nice connection to the trolls. Dark magics and shared history form a connection to the forsaken. And all the red and green coloring makes them fit in with the orcs. Okay, that last one is stretching it a bit.

However, my point remains. Blood elves as part of the horde is something that could definitely work, if you emphasize the right cultural aspects. They still wouldn't be as closely integrated as the orcs, trolls and tauren, but they'd fit a hell of a lot better than the forsaken.
On the other hand, that's not what's being done. The partying was a one-time thing only, and the substance abuse is removed at the end of the expansion. The connection to nature is pretty much removed entirely, with regular arcane magic being emphasized very heavily. The most frequently used colour scheme is red and gold, rather than red and green. And, to put a final nail in a potential great cooperation, the horde and the blood elves barely have interaction beyond tranquillen.

They still fit better than the forsaken though.

Final thoughts

I do feel like I'm being a little too harsh here. There were admittedly some bits of lore for the horde. However, even some of those felt out of place or underdeveloped.

For example, there was the wolf spirit quest in Terrokar Forest, in which the player crafted a magical pelt from wolves to call back the wolf spirit to the forests of Terrokar. Except that's completely contradictory to the way animal spirits are supposed to work. The wolf spirit is quite literally the spirit of all wolves. As long as there are wolves in the forest, the spirit should be there. And if it wasn't, something would be seriously wrong with every single wolf in the zone and restoring it sure as hell would be a lot harder than simply calling for it.

Or the Nagrand quest chain connected to Garrosh Hellscream, in which the player discovers one of the naaru has become a creature of void, and is feeding on thousands of spirits. The naaru, K'ure, is rather regretful of his om-nom-noming, but has no control over it. Instead, he sends the player to A'dal to ask for help. A'dal says he can't help either, but that this other corrupted naaru, D'ore, can totally help. Then the player speaks to D'ore, and he too says he can't help, but that he can at least give the player a mirror to help safe a few spirits.
The player uses the mirror, makes fifteen ancestor spirits ascend, and returns to the Mag'har. And suddenly, everyone treats this like a total victory. Thousands of souls have been eaten by one of the draenei gods, with no sign of stopping. Guys, this really isn't a happy ending. Hell, I was expecting the next quest to be the player being ordered to kill K'ure, stopping any more spirits from being absorbed and maybe even freeing the consumed ones. But nope, apparently the mag'har are fine with their ancestor spirits being eaten by the gods of their enemies. Because everybody loves the naaru!

Wait, wasn't I trying to be less harsh? Attempt number two!

To end on a positive notes, there's actually a few good quests for the horde as well. My favorite has to be Rexxar's quest chain, where he lends you his various beasts in order to defeat the ogre threat to his people. I also like the blood elf starter zone, which delivers a pretty good story and gives you a very nice feel for the new race. It's just a shame that that was all there was.

A special look at - the horde - part I

Due to my, by now usual, tardiness, I'm going to split this post into two. A while back, I did a special look at the alliance, where I mainly looked at the individual factions. The look at the horde is going to be a little different, focusing mainly at the horde as a concept. Why?

Because the concept of the horde is warcraft's biggest problem.

That statement may come as a bit of a surprise, considering I've already outed myself as a fan of the horde. And it's true, I like the horde. However, the problem with the concept doesn't lie with the existence of the horde. It lies with the horde being one of the two playable factions.

Progression of the horde

Over the course of the warcraft RTS trilogy, the horde went through a story arc, though certainly not one that was planned out from the beginning. In the beginning, the horde was simply an army of evil. Warcraft I actually treated the orcs very much like demons are treated in current lore, coming from a cold, dark realm of utter chaos. They were a swarm of locusts, descending upon the world due to the misuse of magic.

Warcraft II added more moral greyness. It revealed that it had been the warlocks that were responsible for many of the darker aspects of the horde, even controlling the first warchief. When Doomhammer killed the shadow council, the warlocks largely lost their hold on the horde. The horde was still evil, yes, but it became a mundane kind of evil, focused more on obtaining land and power then it did on being evil for the sake of being evil.

Lord of the Clans and Warcraft III then fulfilled the story arc. A young orcish warrior named Thrall had grown up amongst humans, isolated from his kin. In an effort to control him, Thrall had only heard idealized tales of his people, portraying them as noble warriors. When he finally escaped, he saw the orcs in the containment camps, reduced to husks of their former selves. He met the frostwolf clan, and learned of the shamanistic heritage of the orcs. He met the warsong clan, and saw the last remnants of the old horde as the noble warriors he envisioned them as. Thrall was blatantly ignorant of the true nature of the horde, but in the end, that ignorance was what allowed the horde to be redeemed. It could hold the horde to an idealized standard that no person with full knowledge of the actions of the orcs could ever hold it to. Unbeknownst to himself, Thrall was the one who made his idealized orcs a reality.

After freeing the camps of Lordaeron, the orcs retreated into the mountains of Lordaeron. Had it not been for a vision from Medivh telling Thrall to lead his people east, they'd probably have been hunted down by either the knights of the silver hand or the rising scourge, like what happened to the remnants of the blackrock clan. Instead, the orcs under Thrall and humans under Jaina were able to overcome their old hatred and unite against a common foe, and gain allies and a land to call their own. The story arc was completed during the battle against Lord-Admiral Proudmoore. We saw that, even when given the opportunity, the orcs would respect the new pact with humanity, and only harmed those who sought their destruction. The character arc was complete.

The problem: What was there to do with the horde after that?

Global Faction, local faction

Warcraft three had ended with there being six notable factions in the world: The alliance, the night elves, the illdari, the forsaken, the scourge and the horde. Each of these six had the potential to serve as a playable faction, as they had a variety of playable races, strong backstory and an appeal to fans. However, thanks to the nature of World of Warcraft, and limits in resources, not all of these factions could make it in.

Blizzard chose the horde and alliance for their playable factions. I can't be certain due to not knowing what happened in design meetings, but I'm guessing they just chose the two because of the history of the franchise. I have never seen any evidence or even heard any rumours of there ever having been plans for other or more factions.

That was where the mistake happened. Let's play game designer ourselves for a minute and make a list of basic requirements for the playable factions:

1) The factions should have some degree of conflict between them. Whether it is all-out war, a cold war or conflict through proxy nations, some degree of conflict is necessary. If there is no conflict, what's the point of isolating players into factions?

2) The factions should be roughly evenly matched. As established, the factions need to have some degree of conflict. However, if the factions aren't evenly matched, it would mean that any conflict would be quickly squashed by the superior side, which doesn't really make gameplay fun for the inferior side.

3) The factions should control roughly equal amounts of in-game territory. If not, players of one faction get screwed content-wise.

The horde and the alliance break all three of those rules.

Horde vs. Alliance, round one

That wasn't always the case though. The ending of warcraft III had the factions in a perfect spot. Each of the races in both the alliance and the horde had suffered a near-extinction, and had only just started rebuilding in Kalimdor. The horde had more established territory by this point, but there was unexplored territory in southern Kalimdor to compensate for that. Conflict is a bit harder, but still possible. For example, what if the alliance refugees had found out that Jaina was the one who gave the horde the information needed to invade Theramore? Some of the veterans of Mount Hyjal might have understood, but you can bet your ass that most of the alliance survivors would have called for her head.

Unfortunately, there was an RPG. Conflict was made nearly impossible by showing Thrall and Jaina having no real opposition as rulers of the horde and the alliance. Balance was also destroyed, by having Stormwind, Ironforge and Nighthaven (the night elf capital at that point in lore) all survive the third war relatively intact and joining Theramore. This also destroyed the balance of territory in a very major way, as the alliance now matched or even exceeded the horde's terrain in Kalimdor, and controlling even more in the eastern kingdoms, where the horde didn't have any presence at all. Let's pull out the old warcraft III world map and color it in a bit to demonstrate:

And that's being very generous. The Barrens probably shouldn't be listed as horde territory, as it was really under the control of the quilboar, the centaur and the harpies. The terrain of the alliance is also a bit on the conservative side. Aerie Peak, Stromgarde and Southshore also had a big chance of surviving the scourge, and it is likely that Stormwind retook the territory that was horde controlled in Warcraft I (so the Stormwind and Nethergarde territories would be connected).

Population-wise, let's also try to make a guess to the strength of the horde. The orcs that came with Thrall are all either from the frostwolf clan, the warsong clan, or freed from the internment camps. The frostwolf and warsong holdings are described in lord of the clans, with the former having a single village, and the latter staying in a bunch of inter-connected caves. Neither clan could possibly be more than a few hundred people (which fits with their portrayal in warcraft III). The internment camps are similarly small, containing a few hundred orcs each at best. The amount of internment camps didn't seem to be very high either, maybe one or two dozen. So let's be generous and say that Thrall's initial horde was eight thousand orcs, about the population of a large medieval town or a small medieval city. It couldn't really be any more, as they were able to fit the entire horde on a bunch of stolen ships from a small naval outpost.

On their way to Kalimdor, they met up with the jungle trolls. The jungle trolls had only a few small villages, no big towns at all, and were so low in number that they were losing a war against another small alliance naval outpost, even with the advantage of home terrain and voodoo. Then the murlocs attacked and imprisoned the jungle trolls, killing many of them. In the end, the isles sunk, the few surviving trolls joining the horde on their fleet. Let's again be generous and put the number of survivors at a thousand, which is a very large medieval village or a small medieval town. Any larger number couldn't fit on the boats.

On Kalimdor, they met the tauren, under the command of Cairne Bloodhoof. The tauren seemed to be even lower in numbers than the jungle trolls, just consisting of a single small caravan that couldn't even stand up to small bands of centaur marauders. 750 seems a good guess.

The horde was also joined by a single ogre clan, the stonemaul, who were brought in by Rexxar. Like the tauren and the jungle trolls, the stonemaul were a isolated bunch, occupying a single town. Let's once again be generous and put their numbers at 2000.

Factor in all the war losses the horde suffered, which included a large portion of the warsong clan (which lost in battle against the small naval base and was captured, and much later on was corrupted, with Jaina and Thrall killing a large portion of the clan to get to Grom) along with Samuro's entire village, and we can put down the final population at a solid 11000 people. Again, that's being very generous in all departments. 11000 people is a nice basis to start a new nation with, but it's not exactly a global super-power. It's not even a single large city. As a frame of reference, Venice had a population of 115000 people in the year 1500, and wasn't even the largest city in Europe, let alone the world.

Now, I don't expect WoW to really keep track of population numbers. Actually, I do, since, y'know, the RPG was planning to list them. But aside from that, this is just to give a general idea of relative sizes. The horde has the population of a mid-sized city. The alliance has the population of an empire. Obviously, those don't make for very balanced conflict, even with the physical advantages (greater strength for orc, tauren and ogre, regenerative abilities for the trolls) of the horde races.

We've covered point two and three. Let's cover point one now: conflict. From a storytelling perspective, the conflict between the alliance and horde was done. It already had the highest possible stakes and an interesting conclusion. From an in-universe perspective, conflict was still possible, but not in a way that would have fitted gameplay. None of the leaders of either the alliance or the horde on Kalimdor was going to provoke the other faction without it being utterly necessary. The horde has relatively crappy lands, but they have a lot of them, only have to support a very low population and they're used to living in such areas, so a big enough resource shortage to cause a war seems unlikely. Plus, the horde would be utterly annihilated during a real war, even without a resource shortage to weaken them.

So how about aggression from the alliance side? Well, some of the eastern members of the alliance probably still want the orcs dead. However, considering that she allowed her own father to die to preserve the peace, it's rather unlikely that Jaina would stay in the alliance if Stormwind or Ironforge were to attack the horde, and might even try to protect them. Without Jaina, the night elves don't really have any connection to the alliance either. So, an attack by the horde is going to be hilariously short-lived, while an attack by the alliance should make the alliance fall apart. That's not a good setting to have PvP with.

Also, before people say that you don't really need conflict outside a select few battlegrounds: Lemme stop ya right there, ya young whippersnappers. The original WoW was aimed much, much more at PvP outside the battlegrounds, to the point that it barely happened inside them. Tthere were no cross-realm battlegrounds, and the only way to enter the battleground was to actually walk (Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley had no flight master near their entrances) to the in-game entrance and queue there, meaning that it usually took several hours to get enough people for a battleground. To still have some opportunities for PvP combat, PvE and PvP were much more tightly integrated. There were tons of quests that had you engage NPCs of the opposing faction, triggering a PvP flag. Hell, the questgivers were disturbingly casual about ordering someone to waltz right into supposedly allied territory and kill people. TBC and WotLK, despite there actually being a war between the alliance and the horde in the latter, turned down the random inter-faction conflict considerably.

Balancing it out

But blizzard decided to go with it anyway, taking various actions to ensure there was at least a degree of balance and conflict. Let's play spot the differences with the setting before and after world of warcraft and see if it made any sense.

First, the number of orcs was increased through what someone more professional than me has dubbed a “voodoo shark”. Basically, it's an explanation for a series of events that is so stupid that no explanation could possibly explain it. The voodoo shark in this case is the idea that other orcish clans sailed to Kalimdor to join Thrall's horde. The obvious questions:

-What clans? All the active clans of Azeroth and Outland are known, and none of them are unaccounted for. Blackrock got captured along with Doomhammer, Stormreaver and Twilight's hammer were destroyed at the tomb of Sargeras, the Black Tooth Grin retreated through the dark portal and became servants of Magtheridon, the Bleeding Hollow Clan survived the second war but was captured after fleeing from Draenor, the Dragonmaw was captured in Day of the Dragon, the Burning Blade destroyed itself, Warsong and Frostwolf already teamed up with Thrall, and Shadowmoon, Shattered Hand, Thunderlord, Laughing Skull and Bonechewer were still on outland when the dark portal was destroyed. While the shattered hand exists as an organization in the new horde, it has never been confirmed whether it is the actual clan or just an organization named after the clan. No other clans have been confirmed as joining the horde either, because any established clan joining the horde in an organized capacity would be a massive plot hole, and any new clan would need a very elaborate explanation as for where they'd been in the second war, which would require delving into more plot holes.

-Where have these orcs been? It's been about twenty years since the second war. How did these clans stay undetected for such a long period of time? If they're remnants of the old horde, their bloodlust should have made it impossible for them to just stay peacefully hidden. And if they aren't remnants of the old horde, what the hell are they doing on Azeroth?

-These orcs were able to come to Orgrimmar of their own free accord. That means that they weren't imprisoned. So why is everyone acting like the vast majority of the orcish race suffered the indignities of the internment camps when it was really only a tiny portion?

-If there are so many of these free orcs that they turn Orgrimmar from an average city into a global superpower, how was the second war ever over?

The answer to all of these is questions: “There is no answer, because it was a half-assed handwave.”

The number of tauren was increased in a similar manner, through the introduction of more tauren tribes. Unlike the example with the orcs, I wouldn't exactly call this a voodoo shark, since the existence of more tauren tribes is rather logical, and them joining the horde is certainly a possibility. That isn't to say that the introduction of these tribes was done well. Like the orcs, the only thing we ever heard of these tribes is that they just decided to join the horde. And like the orcs, that causes a giant yellow question mark to appear over my head, though this time for only one question:

-Why are the tauren tribes suddenly united under the bloodhoof? If they'd just joined the horde, I would have accepted it blindly (there's new enemies and the horde offers protection. Seems like a pretty sensible choice), but the extra addition of the tribes placing themselves under the leadership of Cairne Bloodhoof is what baffles me. Why would they ever do that? The bloodhoof tribe was portrayed as incredibly weak. I've heard it suggested that the other tribes joined the bloodhoof because the bloodhoof had retaken Mulgore (it's also on the wiki, though unsourced), but that doesn't make sense either. When Mulgore was mentioned before in warcraft III, the problem wasn't with retaking it, but with reaching it. In fact, the very reason that the tauren were trying to reach it was because there were no enemies. Plus, if retaking it was so significant, why didn't any other tribe ever do it? As I said, the bloodhoof were an incredibly weak tribe.

And like the orcs, the answer is: “There is no answer, because it was a half-assed handwave.” However, with the tauren it's even worse. With the orcs, we at least know something of the history of its members. For the tauren, that is not the case. Seriously, tell me anything about what happened to the tauren between the war of the ancients and when they were found by Thrall. Tell me something about the various tribes, like where they lived or how they interacted with one another.

Three, the horde started founding random strongholds outside their territory. Why do places like Bloodvenom Post, Grom'gol Base Camp, Hammerfall or Stonard exist? They're not sending valuable resources back home, they're not outposts against known threats and they're too far away from the horde homelands to protect them in case of a war. Seemingly, the only reason these exist is to piss off the alliance, contributing to the conflict that shouldn't exist anymore because we did an entire damn game where the crux was overcoming that conflict and the leader of the horde desperately wants to avoid that conflict. GAH!

Four, the conflict in Ashenvale. By the end of Warcraft III, the horde was led by one of the greatest supporters of inter-faction peace, Thrall. By the start of WoW, the night elves were hippies with giant cats. As you can imagine, it's kinda hard to have a conflict between the two. Blizzard's solution? Be as vague on the specifics as possible. Has the warsong clan invaded Ashenvale, with the sentinels nobly defending their sacred forests? Is the warsong clan simply keeping to the territories they kept from warcraft III, with the brutal sentinels trying to slaughter their former allies at Hyjal because a few trees are more important to them than orcish lives? Was it something in-between, with minor incidents caused by people working independently being answered by organized efforts on both sides? Even now, I still don't have an idea.

Five, dwarves become dicks. While the dwarves were never exactly morally superior to the other races, WoW makes it absolutely ridiculous. The dwarves invade the territory of the tauren twice, blowing holes in sacred mountains while slaughtering an entire tribe. The dwarves also decide that the alterac mountains are theirs, and use a misunderstanding with the frostwolves as an excuse to order the death of every orcish man, woman and child in the alterac mountains. Again, how can you have such major conflicts, but still be at peace?

Six, the alliance was severely weakened. I know, I keep talking a lot about both factions in my special look at the horde, but that is because a lot of problems with the alliance stem from it having to be balanced with the horde. The Night Elves and other human nations in particular were hit with the nerf stick. The elves lost almost all of their natural allies, and there were a few bits of dialogue that implied things had gotten so bad that they were fleeing to Stormwind in massive droves (So yes, I was wrong when I stated that it was never explained why there was suddenly a night elf district in Stormwind. I apologize for the error, though I still think it was a stupid decision on the writers' part. Night elves are supposed to be fierce warriors, dedicated to protecting the forests of Ashenvale. Them running to the other side of the planet is just wrong.). Theramore, previously the last great city of humanity, was reduced to a mid-sized town. Stromgarde was torn apart between games with nary an explanation. And we still don't know what the hell happened to Kul Tiras.

Okay, that last one isn't entirely true. Contrary to what most fans seem to remember, there is nothing in the game to indicate that the forces of Tiragarde are from Daelin's invasion force. More likely, and suggested with the year between Proudmoore's invasion and the arrival of the reserve fleet, is that the reserve fleet was left in Kul Tiras. Which means that the only thing we hear of Kul Tiras is them invading the orcish homeland. That seems like the kind of thing that would be important enough to warrant an occasional mention, doesn't it?

Seven, the alliance was given a ton of enemies that really should be gone (and admittedly a few that made sense). Again, this was another reason why the balance between the alliance and the horde neccesary for the plot couldn't exist. The alliance just had more control over their territory lorewise. The dark horde is probably the single most blatant example of this. Last time we saw the Black Tooth Grin Clan, they weren't even on the same planet any more, with Rend and Maim last seen as fel orcs in the service of Magtheridon, being killed by Illidan during his conquest of the Black Citadel. And yet now they've suddenly returned and are in control of former old horde holdings, with no explanation whatsoever. Seriously, what happened? Were the guys in outland just two people who coincidentally had the same name and similar positions of power? Plus, if these guys were still around and fighting both dwarves and Stormwind, were in control of blackrock mountain and had an army of dragons, I have to repeat my old question from both Day of the Dragon and this review: “If these guys are still around, raiding your kingdoms, how can the second war be considered over?”

The dark horde isn't the only example of this though. The denizens of felwood are another big one, as they were defeated by Illidan and the source of the corruption in the lands was destroyed. Yet by the time of WoW, felwood is still firmly in the hands of demons, and corruption continues to spread, even affecting Darkshore and Winterspring. You'd think that once the games made a specific point of the spreading corruption being stopped, it would actually have stopped spreading, wouldn't it?

Eight, the introduction of fake alliance-horde conflict. Now, I've made it obvious that a conflict between the alliance and the horde just couldn't work. The writers actually seemed to be somewhat aware of this (though not often enough), instead using fake horde-alliance conflicts a lot of the time. Instead of fighting the actual alliance, the horde would fight the scarlet crusade, remnants of Gilneas or the Kingdom of “we're-still-members-but-not-actually-working-with-the-Alliance” Dalaran. Or the fights with the alliance were caused by neutral parties, with the horde players only acting as mercenaries, like with the attacks on Northwatch or that one Theramore tower. Similarly, the alliance fought the dark horde and the grimtotem tauren quite a lot. This way, people who were only vaguely familiar with the lore would get the idea that the conflict was larger than it was.

Nine, neutral factions, neutral factions, neutral factions. The alliance was much more diverse and had a wider cultural spread by the time WoW rolled around. It had druids, mountain kings, rangers, paladins, priests of the Light, priestesses of the moon, wardens, two flavors of shaman, and several flavors of mage. Meanwhile, the horde only had blademasters and a lot of shaman flavors. That's not exactly going to amount to an equally varied gameplay experience. As a result, a lot of unique racial traits were suddenly represented through neutral factions, or were left out completely. Argent Dawn and the Brotherhood of Light became the main paladin and priest of the light players, Cenarion Circle distanced itself from the alliance-aligned other night elves, and about half of the other alliance-unique classes were left out completely. This gets them a lot of flack, but the only real alternatives doing the same thing as the RPG and just giving the alliance more, or adding a ton of people to the horde without any justification.

Which, bringing us to ten, they also did:

The Forsaken

In The Frozen Throne, the forsaken were an interesting development, and one that opened a lot of possibilities. The forsaken were absolutely ruthless, doing anything to further their goals without being hindered by any morals. While not nearly as great in number as the scourge, or even the dreadlord insurgents (three dreadlords who kept control of an army of undead after Arthas broke away), they made up for that through the control of others, either through the magic of banshees and dark rangers, or through trickery.

And that's the entire problem with the relation between the forsaken and the horde. The entire gimmick of the forsaken was controlling others and having no morals to hinder them in that regard. This makes the entire excuse about Sylvanas seeking allies (and therefore joining the horde) moot. If Sylvanas needed more manpower on her side, she would brainwash or manipulate people into joining her. Her placing herself and her faction under the control of a foreign power is both completely out of character, because it is completely unnecessary.

Which is also a problem for the vast majority of forsaken quests, because the solution for them should be the same: Brainwash someone. The gnolls are worshipping the scourge and stealing corpses for them? Brainwash the leader and make them worship Sylvanas instead. The local humans are aggressive against the forsaken? Brainwash the leader, let him lead his subjects into a trap, and use the corpses to build abominations. Apothecaries need murloc parts for a new version of the plague? Brainwash the tribe leader, and have him send you a few murlocs to be quietly killed, and then train the rest as warriors for your army.

There are so many ways to use the forsaken in your story, but you simply can't use them as mere member in a playable faction because there is no way they're going to play nicely, and they have other ways of gaining “allies”. Because of this, the writers had to completely cut the brainwashing aspect from the forsaken, leaving them without their single most defining characteristic. Why even use the forsaken if you're just gonna cut their unique qualities?

Still, to give some credit, the writers did seem at least somewhat aware of the fact that the forsaken were in no way going to play nice with the rest of the horde. Hence, the forsaken conspiracy storyline, which I mentioned in my last post. The forsaken were basically doing everything that Thrall was against. They were aligning themselves with the burning legion, aiding the burning blade and the cult of the dark strand. They were corrupting nature and enslaving the elements, raising the elementals of Mystral Lake and brutally poisoning the druids of the Dor'danil Barrow Den. They brutally capture, experiment upon and kill the humans Thrall tried so hard to make peace with. They did everything the new horde shouldn't.

And that was admittedly a fairly interesting idea, with Sylvanas effectively using the horde's trust of her against them, creating a dark horde of her own (in fact, the comic had them connected to the actual dark horde). However, it was an idea that absolutely didn't belong in World of Warcraft. Why? Because the second Thrall discovered the forsaken were working with the burning legion, the dark horde or corrupting the elements, he would have kicked them out of the horde. Instead, despite all the tons upon tons of in-game evidence to their betrayal (seriously, did Thrall's massive network of spies just never walk into a forsaken town?), he must remain unaware of it for the sake of maintaining this stupid faction-vs-faction conflict that completely goes against the ending of the last game. Simply put, it was a status quo that couldn't possibly last long lorewise, but had to last forever to maintain gameplay.

As a final note, the forsaken really don't fit the horde thematically. The horde are former villains turned good, content to just try and make a new homeland for themselves and live in peace with the land. WoW even added an implied dark past to the tauren to fit with this (check the scrolls on the Elder Rise in Thunder Bluff). The forsaken are former good guys turned amoral, out for nothing but revenge. These are two philosophies that are not very compatible for anything beyond short-term cooperation. To say nothing for the completely incompatible aesthetics of the horde and the forsaken. Could you ever imagine the forsaken trying to live in the barrens? Or the orcs in Tirisfal Glades? They're too divergent to form a horde.