Comments on Profile Post by d.fish

But it makes little sense to just wake up with prophetic dreams of the Horde and have any remote sympathies for what atrocities it commits?

It does make sense if you were someone knee deep in the culture of the horde. You get to have an MC dealing with the dissonance of both having been inside and seeing the Horde as people... and having to defend their life and people against the 'barbarian monsters' that they now actually understand... and 5o some extent care about.

A much better potential story than 'fuck these guys!'

Since some of the forsaken basically just became members 9f the horde and immersed themselves in its cross culture... its completely possible for said person to like the People of the horde and hate the leadership/direction it took.

Beyond that you could use the Bronze Dragons as a plot device here for how and why the dream happened.

You could only get that if you have someone isekai with a fantasy barbarian fetish or an outright Horde player isekai. Like, anything that gets you knee deep in the culture of the horde makes you see the hypocrisy within. Like, I'm not trying to naysay this, but without the Horde, the entire planet wouldn't have been shit, yeah?

No, using the Bronze Dragons as a plot device is silly because they aren't nearly that powerful. It circles around to then them being a force for evil rather than good if they could foresee things like the Pantheon's deaths and not do anything about it; or the failure at the Shifting Sands; or Deathwing's tantrum; etc. etc. We could have a better story than that.

Yes, you can have a story where the MC sympathizes with the murderers of their family and still love their family, but... that's a worse story, not a better one. You'd have to tell that whole tale of why the MC is sympathizing the killers, and that bogs storytelling down too much to maintain any hook.

You realize the Forsaken, outside of fanon, never actually immersed in the culture of the Horde, right? Their introduction is that they are just using the Horde; outside of exceptions who turn out not even Forsaken, there aren't any "honorable undead", except for character that don't affect the story.

I mean, burning down a tree with the trunk as thick as an island isn't a one-man-job, yeah?

Like, if we only show the MC the parts where Thrall stops Archimond, Thrall frees their people, Thrall attacks Deathwing, Thrall helps the trolls, and Thrall saves the tauren... then yes, we could have someone who sympathizes one orc. But those are exceptions, no? You can't expect the MC to care about Blackhand as he literally depopulates a fifth of the continent, can you? Or Garrosh? Or Sylvanas?

Like, I intellectually understand there are "honorable" and "good" people in the Horde. You want that to be the reason for sympathy, yes? But they don't actually do anything that is honorable or good when it matters, no?

I'm just saying, if you want to railroad the MC to being Forsaken, that's possible. I could try to make it interesting. But to have that MC love the Horde? It, through Ner'zhul, caused the undead.

Cairne, Lor'themar, Vol'jin... We can keep saying they are honorable, but if we show the MC all or most of the cut scenes, how can the MC believe that?

"Let's see the Horde as people, as they save themselves at the expense of human lives," is pretty much the best that could be done. The MC could easily notice that everything was about selfish, individual honor; never about helping the whole.

The best we could do is show Saurfang, but even that family is an entire family of mass murderers. Do we forgive Daddy Saurfang for the thousands of draenei children he killed because he feels bad his son died? Or Cairne's reasoning that killing harpies and centaurs is fine because they are "more savage" and "evil creatures" because he was poisoned in a duel?

The Horde invaded and took the land of native quillboars, but that's fine because they are "savage" and "evil" and "without honor", right? We forgive that because the humans put the orcs in internment camps for literally killing almost the entire population of the Kingdom of Azeroth, enslaving Alexstrasza, burning Dalaran, depopulating Stromgarde, killing half of Ironforge?

Like... you literally have to only show half the story, and you have to lie to the MC to make them to sympathize with the Horde.

You know I'm not saying "fuck those guys", right? But you're not giving me a way to justify this.

"Doom is coming to kill everyone I love, but those guys aren't so bad so I'll join them when they come!"

Like, you do realize, in setting, it's weird for people to sympathize with an enemy nation, culture, religion, and species, right? Even in the modern era, that's weird, and this is supposed to be a fantasy setting where that isn't common. So unless there's a really good reason, that's inconsistent, and awful storytelling.

Not going to have a 'horde are all evil bastards' argument on my page... though I'll point out that the point with the quill boars, is basically the same as with the human's the elves and the trolls.

And I'm definately not saying 'And the MC will suddenly be conflicted in breaking the enemy army if they can'...

Especially since you'll notice I'm pretty much a horde player straight through and I stopped playing since the stupid fucking Sylvanus stuff.

I'm pretty much not interested in a 'and then they genocided the evil creatures pouring out of the portals ever after' story. Which means I was thinking of how to approach it...

With a protagonist who'd both work on keeping their people safe, and trying to actually find a way to make bridges.

I get more than enough of the other stuff... pretty much everywhere else.

... I didn't say that. I said you aren't putting yourself in the shoes of the MC, you are imposing your biases and your beliefs upon the MC without regard for in-character logic.

You aren't giving me a reason to have "trying to find a way to make bridges".

I didn't say "refute my arguments", I'm saying, you aren't giving me an in-lore, in-game, OR in-character way to make what you believe what the MC believes. SO unless you want "Horde fanatic isekai", I can't see any way of carrying out what you just asked for.

The only way you've given me so far is "Bronze Dragons", which is equivalent to having an omnipotent being handwave the reason for the MC's motivation.

Can you not see why this is a terrible story in this way?

Ugh... I have the idea of how to make it work... but I'm doing alot of the talking over my phone.

Basically some of the Forsaken don't remember who they were before having risen, which means you can approach that life as a clean slate of interactions which the MC would be remembering. Ie smaller inter personal things happen.

Also while not faction wide, there were definately plenty of forsaken who became Horde loyalists first and foremost. This isn't against canon, it's just they would have been a minority.

Add on top of this the MC having to reconcile both lives with each other while remembering and trying to avoid the Nightmare scenario of the first...

The Forsaken is literally the other side of the continent, and 30 years after the events of the Dark Portal. You'd ignore the First and Second Wars.

You'd basically have to use an entirely different premise.

Bronze Dragons as the plot starter is a bit lazy of me... but it's a place to start that makes sense with WoW's Lore... ie temporal magic being involved that sends the MC's consciousness back. Which could make a subplot with the bronzes eventually noticing ...

And by becoming Forsaken and forcing the MC to follow that path of canon, there's literally no other option. They can't have living family, or relationships like thus. It's canon that Forsaken cannot feel the majority of emotions, and a key reason why so many turn to despising the living.

Ugh... I was thinking of where Stormwind was and brain derping on the Scourge's path thinking that they retraced some of the horde's.

Okay. You're saying you want a time traveling Forsaken who, somehow, loves the Horde. And somehow, sees Gul'dan, Ner'zhul, Blackhand, Cho'gall, or any of the other fel-infused orcs as potential for building bridges.

"A bit lazy" is an understatement. Using Bronze Dragons for anything in Warcraft is already making things minimal stakes, as it infers that "everything turns out like canon".

Actually plenty of them remember enough and feel enough to have family connections. They just have those emotion 'muted'... not gone.

At least not all of them. Its canon that more than a few wanted to meet with their still human relatives... but were barred from doing so because they were basically kicked out by the Humans.

Never said anything about liking Nerzul or Guldan or any of the rest of the big bad squad... many of whom would have been the enemy even after having become Forsaken in Thralls horde. Kinda taking all nuance out of what I proposed and

The Scourge only killed everything in Lordaeron. The Horde killed everything in Azeroth (Kingdom), the eastern half of Ironforge, everything in the Wetlands, everything in Strom, sacked Dalaran, smashed Kul Tiras, broke Gilneas, passed through Alterac, razed the eastern half of Lordaeron, and cut half-way through Quel'thalas.

You're handwaving everything. There's no possible quest choices to take, just minor small options since there's only one direction for the story to go.

MC is unapologetically Horde-loving, believes in the single combat solves problems ideals, is unapologetically selfish, forgets every inconvenient truth, gets to redo their life.

MC can't do anything but to follow Thrall, since the ideals of honor he believes in won't allow otherwise.

MC can't care about his family since he knows this is a poor imitation of the people who went through the pains he did that ended up with death.

MC will not sympathize with any Alliance affiliated races since they were war enemies for over twenty years.

Right know what I'll just write this myself. Then you can tell me if what comes out actually works or not. Cause you're basically talking at me like I haven't followed Warcraft for 15 years + as well.

MC cannot trust other humans, because they rejected the MC once they rose up as an undead.

MC isn't immediately noped out of existence by the Bronze because that would be inconvenient.

Are you upset at me going into more detail when you showed you mistook detail earlier?

I have an idea of how to approach that, but trying to tell it over the phone while arguing isn't exactly working. I'll write it and work out the kinks in doing so.

I'm more upset at trying to get to a proper discussion and being misunderstood while trying to type on this bloody phone keyboard. Its annoying bacause id be able to actually explain what I mean and match/smooth out points of contention more easily otherwise.

No, I know I misunderstood when you initially talked about the Forsaken. That was my mistake.

I haven't worded it well, but of the several problems I have with your new premise is that it's far too contrived for the majority of players to follow and enjoy. It requires that you enforce what the MC is allowed to believe in, rather than allow an in-character or third party conclusion to be made.

Ok I can definately see where you're coming from... I'll probably talk more about this later when I'm at a real keyboard... trying to keep up with you on this phone is murdering my fingers.

The main contradiction between this premise and the earlier proposed premise that I can focus on is that it does not allow for an organic development and introduction of a low-power character in a high-power world focused on familial interaction. When you're thinking of how to help Garona get good with King Liane, you can't focus on interaction with your individual peasant serfs.

What I've been trying to do is, taking into account everything that can and would happen, how to bridge the two premises so that it would work. Thus far, it has been frustrating, because it doesn't seem to work without going "it works because I, the author, say so". I feel that is a problem.

If you think about it, the premise isn't about the big, world changing conflicts, and it's not about the clash of ideals between two differing cultures or systems or factions. It's just about a single person with a responsibility to a group of people as a leader, where their main concern is just "what are we eating for dinner?" and an attachment to a family. These are all low-brow and common motivations.

It's very hard to find a place for "Oh I wonder if that one orc who saved my life by tanking Onyxia's blasts forty years in the future is in this group?" and not have a contradiction with "I hope my mother doesn't get eaten by feral murlocs" and "I wonder if I can pick the berries my sisters like later". One's the thoughts of a player of an MMO, the other is a character living in the world.