![]() ![]() If we’re going to talk in memes, perhaps David Mitchell’s “ are we the baddies?” is a better example.īut sometimes, letting go of your chosen faction is difficult. But through it all, the jpegs, the joking responses in the comments - there was a noticeable undercurrent of unease on the Horde side. The memes were almost immediate, of course - Sylvanas, the Suddenly Super-Evil. Who wants to play for the bad guys, when the story of the Horde has, for years, been that they were good characters, attempting to survive the warlike stereotypes painted onto them? But the Horde (some of its characters, and especially its players) were reluctant. The community had watched a paragon of realist pacifism complete a heel-turn worthy of a Lich Queen - killing her own troops, raising them as skeletons, committing genocide - as Blizzard encouraged people to fight for the Horde. Watching that storyline play out was torturous, and you could see it not just in the conversations with your WoW-playing friends, but also in the WoW subreddit, on Twitter, and beyond. Sylvanas, for so long, a powerful, stoic character who wanted peace, and to avoid a fate for the undead similar to that of the enslaved Scourge under the Lich King, has suddenly decided that the best “first strike” to warn off the Alliance is to… burn down an irreplaceable ancient tree, and thus the home city of the Night Elves. If you’re Blizzard, it’s by taking your two faction leaders - Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, Banshee Queen and current Horde Warchief Anduin, the pacifist son of his warlike father, and reluctant but passionate face of the Alliance - and mashing them together like action figures. But how do you convince an audience that has moved past a small-stakes, petty war that it’s worth turning back the clock? This time, there’s no force that visibly threatens both factions, in an era where both sides have repeatedly seen the benefits of sharing cities, battle-lines and, as of Legion, class-specific Order Halls. This was a step forward and, to many, Battle for Azeroth feels like a step, if not backwards, at least sideways. ![]() Christos' character ponders the morality of the Horde Blue conflict that has ranged across multiple titles and over two decades. What defined these enemies was their desire for destruction for destruction’s sake - rather than the cheesy, Red vs. Even in vanilla (pre-expansion content) WoW the two factions - initially divided into the problematically savage and scary Horde, and the high-fantasy Alliance - have done endless battle, through player-versus-player combat and quests and overarching storylines that paint a picture of a conflict that only really halts if something threatens the worlds in which these two factions reside.Īs the expansions continued to release, the concept of this overarching threat - Legion’s titular, demonic Burning Legion, or Arthas, the Lich King, master of the enslaved undead - put stereotypes, suspicion and, frankly, lore-encouraged racism on the backburner in favor of dealing with Big Bads. That’s not to say there has never been an inkling of war. No title, however, has delved deeper into the lore of the Warcraft universe than the MMORPG World of Warcraft, and no expansion of the same has attempted to push back down into war harder than its latest, Battle for Azeroth. For many years, Blizzard has formed a sine-wave storyline that oscillates between the lows of factional, even nationalist warfare, and the highs of joining forces to face larger threats. ![]() ![]() Hopefully Gates of Hell fares better.Īt least we have MoW:AS2 eh? That game is game of the year for me.The lore of the Warcraft universe is singularly focused on the divide between the Horde and the Alliance - or, if you’re older than a lot of its audience, orcs and humans. The only thing I dont think they do is coordinate, I dont think the AI is aware of friendly AI and they coordinate, i think the AI just functions independently. They have a high radious of awareness, they will attack, retreat, and there seems a sense of self preservation about them. Its bad because MoW:AS2 - its AI is actually really good. I mean theres a fire fight going on and the AI that are say 100 yards away will be blissfully unaware.? The AI just dont seem as aware at all compared with MoW:AS2. They have a 5 second memory, and will often engage in a fire fire fight and and duck behind cover or retreat, then after a couple of seconds casually walk back to there placement spawn forgetting there is someone shooting at them. Ive been playing the Editor and I am gonna move on to Gates of Hell Beta. ![]()
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