[00:02] that is old news cuz today we talk about what horde. By which I mean this horde, Grommash Green charging Mannoroth, Putress at the Wrathgate, Vol'jin's revolution against Garrosh, the organization forged in the blood of the
[00:18] innocent, redeemed by Thrall, and fighting world-ending threats ever Blizzard through the mud here, but there's a world where the Horde actually played a role in Midnight. Yet, Blizzard chose a different path. They've only got
[00:32] so much space to tell a story, right? It's an MMO. But, when Silvermoon was attacked and its first line of defense, the Lights' Vanguard, were sucked into the Darkwell, the natural choice would have been to call the Horde. Instead, we
[00:48] the Kaldorei. To some, it felt a bit weird. And yes, wells going wrong is a very elvish problem. But, many did ask, "What about the Horde? They've arrived to help with other world-ending threats. And where the hell even is the Horde?
[01:03] Why haven't they arrived?" And the answer from Blizzard may as well be, "What Horde?" So, let's see what's went so weird, and perhaps so wrong, in faction politics. Why things have went down this way, and what it tells us
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[02:46] And we didn't just lose the battle, we also lost the Vanguard of the Light. And by then, after everything was stripped from Silvermoon to fight Xal'atath, Lor'themar was effectively left with nothing. But Alleria had a plan, and
[02:59] that plan comes from a quest called The Kaldorei, which should give you a hint tells us we need to retake the Darkwell. He says we need an army. think about the Horde. It's got a big army.
[03:12] He says that more than an army, we actually need many armies. Well, the Horde is made up of multiple factions. They're in a big defensive alliance, and one of their home cities has just been attacked. You'd think that they may be
[03:24] but they're not. And then he goes a little bit off the rails. He says we should go to Bel'ameth and ask the Kaldorei, the night elves, for help. So, not the Horde, but a faction that has been, well, brutally antagonistic to
[03:38] the Horde and to blood elves for about as long as we've been playing the game. in the last 10 years, you may not actually know loads of that. So, the night elves infiltrated Eversong with spies. This is way, way, way back in the
[03:52] of the well. The night elves also shunned the nightborne, forcing them into the Horde. That's why they're there. Now, for their part, the blood elves fueled Garrosh's war with weapons of mass destruction and then took part,
[04:06] at least partially, in the burning of Teldrassil. A small little massacre to sweep under the rug. I'm sure long-time Horde players just sat back and asked themselves, "What the hell is going on?" I don't think Alliance mains can really
[04:19] deal with this, either. Why the hell should a night elf go and help the blood elves, given all of their history? But, that's the sort of thing we've been building since the War Within's epilogue. And we deep dived that in this
[04:33] video. But, no matter how well grounded all this is in Midnight, it still feels strange because Midnight happens in Azeroth. Azeroth has history. History that we remember because we've been playing games set in it for, some cases,
[04:47] 30-plus years. But, before we get into why this is strange, let's take a shot at a good-faith interpretation. Let's steel man things and see what Blizzard are trying to build before we perhaps tear it down.
[05:03] During the World Soul Saga's reveal, we were promised a reunification of the Elven tribes. That sounded cool. And in subsequent interviews, Maria Hamilton work. She explained there were centuries of trauma between the elves, so it
[05:16] wouldn't be simple bringing them together. Yet, all it took, it seems, was about 15 minutes and Alleria's winning smile, plus another world-ending threat. She quipped that most players don't even know the lore, and I think
[05:30] would have been another great opportunity to teach us, to explore all of the bad blood between the various Elven tribes. So, clearly, at one stage, Blizzard put a lot of thought into that. Let's meet them halfway. So, Silvermoon
[05:45] needs an army. The [snorts] first step is Balameth, then perhaps Undercity. And partial logic aside, Balameth is on the Dragon Isles, so it's fairly close to where the blood elves live. Then there's Suramar, a [music] powerful city-state
[06:00] with very solid portal logic, and besides some saboteurs, was always going to come to Silvermoon's aid. Then the Silver Covenant, a somewhat nomadic army that only recently resettled in the borders of Eversong. There was no doubt
[06:14] they would eventually step up to defend the Sunwell. And then you have the small but elite forces of the void elves, who, besides the whole being banished from Silvermoon because of the void thing, don't have much reason, or as much of a
[06:27] reason, to hate the blood elves. All that makes sense, and it gives Arator the army that he needs. Now think about the Horde. Exhausted from decades of war, scattered under a council that seemingly can't
[06:42] Heartlands or Wrathgate crisis, Thrall was able to just take command of the Kor'kron and send them to Kezan. We saw it took them weeks to arrive in [music] ships, but that, again, was an intentional storytelling decision. And
[06:56] it gave us time to delve into Kezan with a sense of impending Nerubian doom. That all makes sense, right? But portals to one side, say it's actually difficult to need the power of something like the Sunwell to do that, and I guess it all
[07:10] does make sense. But it doesn't feel very good. And I sentiment. Those storytelling constraints were put in place because it made sense. So, let me take a stab at what we, the
[07:24] players, the Alliance, but mainly the Horde, seem to feel about all this. Look at this guy. This is how we feel. It's Old Man Marvyn. He was once
[07:36] Executor Marvyn of the Forsaken military, a grim sentinel sent by Sylvanas to protect and the Ghostlands. He put his blood, sweat, embalming fluid, and whatever other fluids the Forsaken have into
[07:50] saving Silvermoon. Then, when the Scourge was gone, he was forced into retirement. But, he didn't return to the Undercity. He stayed in Tranquillien. He Undercity. He stayed in Tranquillien. He lives there, and you can meet him today.
[08:03] The Forsaken did not marshal their armies here, and it's an omission so great, given the linkage between those two peoples, that I initially felt like we were being gaslit. You see, pre-launch, Blizzard treated us to this
[08:16] amazing, outstanding animation of Liadrin going to Terrokar and asking for aid. And sure, the Undercity ain't what it used to be, but Liadrin literally asked the Forsaken for help before Xal'atath attacked.
[08:31] Yet, there was not a whisper of the Death Guard mustering, the apothecaries experimenting, or the stalkers infiltrating. They just didn't show up. That's just the Forsaken. Take another character, Gazlowe, still solidifying
[08:45] his position as Trade Prince. You could maybe say he's too busy chasing Orwenna through Razorfen Downs. You've got the Tauren. They had some central figures randomly teleported to the Sunwell, like Tahu Sage Wind. You have the Sunwalkers
[08:57] appearing there. So, the Tauren absolutely knew something was going on. Yet, there was no sign of the Tauren even wondering what happened to those people. Other characters, Gee, Gaara, Thalanj,
[09:10] they are stuck in Horde Council stasis, where it seems, well, actually, it's have a better word. They're just doing nothing. And with all that said, the is the Blood Elves, but that one's fairly easy. They've been a backbone of
[09:24] the Horde since the Burning Crusade, literal [music] titans of the modern Horde's war machine on every frontline. They have been pushing the Horde's interest. They're owed. They've contributed to that alliance. That's why
[09:36] it's strange for them to not reach out and strange for the Horde to sit back and do nothing. Now, those are all the logical reasons we feel the Horde should be in Midnight, but they're not. Not because they're too
[09:50] busy or because it would be too complicated to bring them to Silvermoon. It's actually for a very simple reason in our estimation. And it's that Blizzard chose not to use the Horde in this story. They made a choice. They
[10:03] decided the Horde was not a worthwhile storytelling unit, and so they went a reunification of the Elven tribes. Something that, within the context of 12.0, might have taken about 20 minutes of campaign. And the thing is, all that
[10:18] clear Blizzard does not know what to do with the factions, what to do with the legacy of the world that they have built, and what to do with that particular brand of Horde storytelling. That's a brand of Horde storytelling
[10:31] that brought, you could maybe say, about half the player base to World of Warcraft. Those are the kind of stories with hard edges, with death, with loss, So, I'm going to do two things. First,
[10:45] I'm going to show you the set of events that broke the Horde. Not in game, but as a thing Blizzard could use to tell stories. And then I'm going to explain what they're doing instead. Because if you think neither the Horde nor the
[10:58] Alliance factions dominate the A plots, you're wrong. You know, it's ironic that Sylvanas returned to save the day in a story that put the final nail in the Horde's coffin. And that's because it was
[11:12] place. You could say it happened long before. That Warcraft has always been putting faction politics aside for the greater good when it really counts. It could have started at Molten Core or after the
[11:26] disaster of Wrathgate. The factions failed. The Argent saved the day. You can even say it's when the Alliance and Horde rebels united to fight Garrosh, or the pinnacle of faction agnostic storytelling during the third and final
[11:40] Legion invasion. But even then, the Forsaken were blowing Alliance airships out of the sky, setting up, of course, the true villain of our story, the Fourth War. At the time, it made its own kind of sense. Sylvanas was a brutal
[11:55] war chief, worse than Garrosh in many ways, but many thought she had her people's interest at heart. She would just go to absurdly extreme lengths. And with Azerite, we had a literal arms race, one that the Horde got the initial
[12:10] leg up on. So, we launched into a war that we quickly discovered was pretty much the most brutal, yes, a true world war on Azeroth. Stormwind lost so many soldiers it needed to conscript farmers from Westfall. The Horde, their armies
[12:25] and fleets were thrown into one engagement after another, the kill count constantly rising. And before the whole thing kicked off in earnest, Teldrassil and many of those within were literally torched. But it made sense, right? It's
[12:39] the Alliance and the Horde. They don't trust each other. Sometimes they hate each other. And this is the natural conclusion of two decades of tension. next, it no longer made sense. In the
[12:52] count was so high because Sylvanas was funneling anima into the afterlife also she could juice up the Jailer's pawns to rewrite reality, or something, because as we all know so well, a cosmos divided
[13:06] cannot withstand what is to come. But what that story did is it made the sacrifice of the factions feel totally pointless. We weren't fighting because of decades of tensions, not because of the cycles of hatred. It was actually
[13:20] all because Sylvanas needed souls, and she was basically lying to everyone. The Fourth War was a failure both in game and out of game. People no longer wanted Alliance versus Horde because the time we really got it committed to, it
[13:36] was awful. And that realization, I believe, gave Blizzard the fear. Clearly, faction tension was too hard to land for the modern Blizzard writing team. Metzen was out and the new guy,
[13:49] Danuser, wanted to bring the franchise perhaps in a different direction. But then things began happening in Blizzard HQ. Rumors of improprietary, of immoral behavior from staff going through the past, and when it exploded
[14:02] [music] into the public with the now famous lawsuit, Blizzard hard pivoted feel uncomfortable. And that pretty much meant the Horde was out. You can't have the honor without the strength. Blizzard was not strong
[14:17] enough. The most damning piece of evidence is, obviously, Eitrigg. We've done a whole video on that, but in short, he no longer says, "Strength and honor." Like, I get it, man, but in terms of how
[14:31] we've experienced your story in game, there's no reason for you to suddenly say that. I understand the lore. I understand the backing. But what matters is the story that
[14:43] Blizzard tells. And they did not tell the story of him getting to that place. And that feels like the soul of the Orcish people finally being gutted and sacrificed on the altar of Blizzard's modern
[14:57] young adult fantasy ambitions. It's what they seem to be. And what those are are the final dying grasps of the Horde that we grew up with. No longer relevant, no longer useful, no longer having a place in the world.
[15:12] tell you what Blizzard are doing instead. This is the splash art from Warcraft 3. It's one of the most iconic pieces of art from this franchise, and it was pure faction antagonism. And this is Hope
[15:28] Rises key art for Midnight. Look how similar they are. Two factions in a desperate struggle. And that's what I'm about to explain, that the Alliance and the Horde may be dying on the vine,
[15:41] but factions aren't. Factions, at their core, are kind of platforms to be greater than the sum of our parts. And that's essential in a world like Azeroth. A single orc can't face down Argus, the Lich King, or Ragnaros, but a
[15:56] brightest did. That goes for the factions are still important. [music] Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to beat the threats that are coming our way. It's just that the factions in question
[16:09] have changed, and that's the sad bit. Midnight alone has two post-Battle for Vanguard of the Light, >> [music] >> a kind of rerun of the Argent Crusade in Northrend, but with a spicier, amped-up
[16:23] They were sucked into the Dark Well, and so far have been failure. Then, instead of reaching out to the Horde, we hammered [music] together another de facto faction, the elves, the reunited tribes.
[16:36] In a way, very cool stuff. I do actually mean that. We've been asking for some of >> and it opens up loads of storytelling opportunities. Think of a lore-driven focused faction of humans and forsaken, a pan-troll faction securing their
[16:51] ancestral lands, the children of the Titans, humans, dwarves, gnomes putting together to explore Northrend. That's the type of post-faction future that we are marching into. And in some ways, it looks bright, and
[17:07] it can allow us to explore cool themes, cool lore. But the problem is, when you totally ignore one of our fundamental driving forces [music] for playing the game, the Alliance and the Horde. When you cut out
[17:20] 20 years of player experience, people are going to feel bad. put just a little more effort into explaining why the factions aren't involved in this post-faction storyline, perhaps we'd all just nod and go to save
[17:36] the Sunwell alongside the elves. But no. Instead, Blizzard chose not to use the Horde. Not to really mention them. Forcing us to [music] ask with every lore reveal and with every raid, with every new Xal'atath-caused crisis,
[17:51] >> are the Horde? So, How does it exist? And the thing is, the core of this world's [music] storytelling, one of the things that has
[18:06] defined it, has been these two grand coalitions of different peoples. And it's the interaction of those peoples in Warcraft 3 that truly built out what Azeroth is,
[18:20] what this setting is. And if [music] you look at vanilla World of Warcraft, essentially set amidst slightly rising tensions and a little slightly rising tensions and a little bit of a sort of Cold War situation,
[18:33] well, that quite literally defined the Azeroth that was put together. It's the origin point of the game that we're currently playing. never change. But when it forgets what it is,
[18:48] its players will begin to feel like the thing they're playing is no longer in alignment with why they're playing. And what's perhaps most sad to me is what the Horde represented for so
[19:02] many players and why so many were drawn to it. Yeah, there's a lot of strength, honor, high testosterone [music] stuff. But there's also them feeling like outcasts. A lot of people saw something in the Horde. Saw
[19:17] something in the underdog, the misunderstood. That's one of the things that made Warcraft stand out, and that made so many people fall in love with it. And it actually goes deeper in that. And look,
[19:30] this right now, this bit's unscripted. I'm This is just me talking. entered my head. Whenever you look at the Alliance, right? You do sort of feel this sort of
[19:42] Anglo-Saxon Tolkien-inspired sort of thing, right? this neck of the woods, we're all just like completely familiar with. on the Horde that actually felt different, that
[19:58] actually felt like it was bringing something to the fantasy genre that wasn't done so much. And you know, in a way, growing up not in America, right? When we think of America, you do think of, well, the people who
[20:14] did end up saying, "Yeah, the king." So many people from so many parts There's a sort of positive story to that. Obviously, I can think of, say, Irish immigrants ending up in America.
[20:29] immigrants ending up in America. And I think some of that just felt reflected in the Horde. It felt like, essentially, a really cool and like American, in a good way,
[20:42] take on on that sort of slice of the fantasy genre. And as Blizzard just went away [music] and away and away from that, more and more they've lost some of what made them
[20:54] out, and some of what drew a load of people who wouldn't have been super into the nerdy elf into this big MMO that we all love. I
[21:08] just think that in losing that they have abandoned abandoned really what made their world stand out against many other fantasy worlds. It's a sad thing.
[21:21] I really hope they change their mind. I don't want another Battle for Azeroth. guys, just look at what you did in vanilla. You pretty much did it perfectly. It was a bit of a cold war. It wasn't some ridiculous we're going to
[21:35] the Undercity, we're going to kill everyone. No. It was a world full of distinct peoples with political alliances, defensive alliances
[21:49] and different goals. And those stories didn't have to be big, huge things involving cosmic forces that are hard to understand. It was things as simple as the night elves really, really, really like
[22:01] But the orcs, like they need some wood to build stuff with. And the Barrens doesn't have that much wood. That leads to Warsong [music] Gulch. That's the kind of thing that makes a
[22:14] world feel real. And that is the kind of thing they have just lost. Okay. I hope you enjoyed the video and end. Maybe you think it's interesting. I'd love to know what your take is on
[22:28] this. And if you want to see Midnight's essentially perfect microcosm of this issue, I implore you to watch this video next.