World Of Warcraft

That's less Moral Event Horizon and more you exaggerating Baine's making a decision and telling people who didn't like it "Well, then, there's the door." into a Crime Against Taurenity. It also seems to dismiss the "otherwise suffered no repercussions" part.

Edited by sgamer82 on Nov 13th 2018 at 6:08:42 AM

Exile is a massive repercussion on its own, especially in a tribal society like the Tauren. And what did he do it for, for disagreeing with him or fighting back against an encroaching army of soldiers that have already wiped out two tauren villages and are currently encroaching on their capital

Thinking about all the Tauren defending their loved ones from Alliance soldiers in the barrens, they're all exiled for the crime of defending themselves.. More Fridge Horror ensues when you realize the Tauren player was exiled by that decision.

That Baine is treating Tauren who defend themselves and their tribes just like the Grimtotem is a Moral Event Horizon, especially as Baine is supposed to look out for all the tauren tribes. Imagine being a surviving member of the Stonespire tribe and Baine treating you like that?

Believe me, that moment is widely hated among both the Horde fanbase. The current opinion of the majority is Baine cares more about the Alliance then he does Tauren.

Its also very Character Derailment as his original depiction had him willing to fight against the Alliance and he even had cut dialogue talking about fighting against the Alliance encroaching on tauren land.

Edited by Monsund on Nov 13th 2018 at 5:28:48 AM

The thing is, those Tauren aren't defending themselves. The thing they're "defending themselves" from, the attack on Taurajo, has come and gone. Now they're just out and picking fights explicitly for revenge. Whatever you may think of it, we've seen Baine forego revenge for the greater good, and the majority of Tauren seem fine with Baine's decision.

Edited by sgamer82 on Nov 13th 2018 at 6:31:59 AM

RE: Sgamer

They are.

Alliance Soldiers are literally banging on the gates of Mulgore and firing at it with Ballistas.

Wildhammer mercenaries were flying over the skies of the Barrens and trying to prevent the Horde from using air transportation.

Bael'dun, a giant cannon fortress was slaughtering tauren survivors of Taurajo and planning more attacks against the Horde. This in addition to the fortress being built on land stolen from a tauren tribe who they killed.

The tauren who fought back against the Alliance such as those at vendetta point, were grieving survivors, trying to prevent more casualties.

Actually the majority of tauren NP Cs we meet are interested in fighting the Alliance.

Baine is in serious need of Character Rerailment. I feel there's no way around it.

Edited by Monsund on Nov 13th 2018 at 5:36:39 AM

The majority of Tauren NPCs who were explicitly out there for the chance to kill Alliance were eager to fight Alliance?

RE: Sgamer

Almost every tauren we meet in the Barrens is interested in fighting the Alliance for their actions against them. The Tauren are a Proud Warrior Race, when enemies attack them, they hit back.

Baine even had lines like:

• "Open the gate!"
• "I will not let a single human step past me into Mulgore! My people will not be harmed!"
• "Sound the drums of war! For Taurajo!"

That all got cut in exchange for him being derailed.

And again they weren't out there to kill Alliance but to prevent Mulgore from being invaded by an army of hostile Alliance soldiers. Do note that army of Alliance contained bloodthirsty unrepentant war criminals who had already slaughtered many tauren civilians before the Horde/Alliance war.

Edited by Monsund on Nov 13th 2018 at 5:41:09 AM

All right, so maybe Baine is in the wrong for not attacking back. I'd hardly call it a Moral Event Horizon, at worst it's Baine being too defensive-minded, which isn't all that atypical of the Tauren. They may be warriors, but they aren't nearly the Blood Knights the orcs are.

RE: sgamer82

The original Baine, back when a minor NPC, players including myself liked, captured the Proud Warrior Race mentality of Cairne and the Tauren race.

There it was seen that an invading army of dwarves had illegally entered Mulgore and were overhunting the Kodo, as well as tearing up lands sacred to Tauren shamans.

Baine politely asked them to leave, yet when the Dwarves mocked him and refused to leave. Baine responded with This Means War! and sent the player to kill them, then destroy their tools to send to their base showing the tauren wouldn't tolerate this.

That is a good leader.

Being willing to defend your people doesn't mean being a war hawk. Its fine for Baine to try for peace with the Alliance and have friendships with Alliance leaders, its not good for him to brush off attacks against his own civilians and punish his own people for justifiable self defense against a hostile army.

I still think calling him a "Dirty Coward who is only used to Character Shill Anduin" is a bit much. It smacks too much of that whole "personal hatred of people who don't exist" for me to take as seriously as you do. Especially in light of the more objective descriptions you gave literally everyone else.

The way he's developed I could see an arc where he realizes he's been too timid as a leader. There could be something to that.

When he is exiling his own people who want to defend their home in favor of kowtowing the people who are attacking... then you know there is a huge problem.

RE: sgamer82

Fair enough.

People are just frustrated because this view has been expressed openly mainly times to the developers and they keep making Baine more timid and more distanced from the Horde.

I think Baine can be saved, the writers just have to make an effort. Look at Cairne's characterization, Baine's pre-cata depiction, his cut lines, how tauren were portrayed, ETC.

Perhaps WCIII forged could help remind of how Cairne was.

On a sidenote, anyone else miss the Orc and Tauren Interspecies Friendship? Originally the uncorrupted orcs were said to be similar to the tauren.

Look, guys, Thunder Bluff is the Tauren capital, but it's a very young city, younger than Thrall. It holds symbolism as the seat of the Tauren as a member of the Horde, but it's only one city. The tauren have been nomadic for thousands of years and still are, assuming the current political climate still allows for it.

To me this reads as Baine saying "we can't officially condone these attacks, but we're also not going to arrest or penalize these tauren". They're not expelled from the Horde or their clans; this is just Baine not picking a fight with the entire Alliance on his people's doorstep while Garrosh and the rest of the Horde were busy ignoring the tauren like usual. Your account made it sound like he was quoted saying 'yeah, throw everyone who wants totally justified revenge off the cliffs and then bring me their pelts for throw rugs'. This is consistent with his reaction to Sylvanas's betrayal of Saurfang in BFA - in that cinematic, he's shaking with rage, but he knows that he needs to focus on the people who are still alive rather than charging out the door swinging his totem at the entire Alliance leadership, because that's reckless and stupid.

Besides, you do go help Camp Una'fe. Whether it's as a mercenary or as a representative of the New Horde is up to personal interpretation, but they get their revenge.

Edited by RedSavant on Nov 13th 2018 at 9:29:14 AM

I would hardly call 'Camp Una'fe' revenge, the alliance is killing people running from Camp Taurjo and they are being killed by the plants and you kill Alliance and horde leaders in Desolaton Hold.

The player gets General Hawthorne but no one makes demands to hand over those who actually did the deed let alone those who looted and pillaged and committed other warcrimes. An attack like that should have had the Tauren fully committed to at least kicking the Alliance out of the Barrens minimum if not pushing them off southern EK.

Without that it just cemented the Taruen's position as the Horde's whipping boy that just hides behind a wall.

Edited by Memers on Nov 13th 2018 at 9:08:07 AM

when it comes to my problems with the story, i just have zero fucking interest in even a well written faction war, so thats my problem with the writing.

To avoid jumping into the rest of this mess, I'll just say same to that and let it be done.

I really hope this expansion is the last hurrah for faction conflict, but at this point they're doing work to polarize the factions against each other so hard there's only a handful of ways it can end now.

I don't mind the faction conflict, as I regard it as a Necessary Weasel of sorts. It's a part of the series history and lore, so I'm not sure you could really not have it. Not indefinitely.

So I don't see any real reason to get worked up over it, since it's not going away anytime soon.

Edited by sgamer82 on Nov 13th 2018 at 11:20:40 AM

My problem with the war is at this point its downright getting to a point of being almost unbelievable. How on earth do we still have enough people to farm and craft gear, let alone serve as soldiers after essentially 14 straight years of open warfare either either each other or someone else with practically no breaks>

The problem I have with the faction conflict is that it kind of needs to be an all or nothing situation.

Otherwise you end up with weird situations where you are told you need to fight the very same people you worked with just one expansion prior.

Malfurion is probably the most egregious case of this. In Legion Horde players help save his life, and at the start of BfA they have a mission to help kill him, specifically him.

And on the other side of the coin there's the time Thrall was a neutral hero in Cataclysm, despite the fact his first appearance in the expansion involved him annihilating an Alliance fleet in the Goblin starting experience. Yes he had good reason to do it at the time, but he still did it.

Basically we can't simultaneously hold that "The faction conflict is the heart of Warcraft" and "The faction conflict is an outdated shortsighted rivalry", because that essentially can be read as "The heart of Warcraft is an outdated and shortsighted rivalry". And I think Warcraft can do better then what.

Frankly, I think that the "outdated and short-sighted" faction conflict may be one of the most realistic elements of Warcraft's story. We have only to look to history to see plenty of examples.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 14th 2018 at 10:03:09 AM

However they are going about it in completely the wrong way, those hard to let go grudges are usually deeply ingrained in a culture or counterculture. While here you got 2 people vs everyone else on the Horde side.

Edited by Memers on Nov 14th 2018 at 7:08:12 AM

I'm sorry, but what? Let's build a picture here.

• Faction war driven by decades of conflict, where people on each side have long lists of grievances: dead loved ones, homes and cities destroyed or captured, etc.
• Some leaders trying to escalate that conflict for personal reasons, some leaders seeking revenge for their grievances, and some leaders trying to bring peace. Plus, some leaders passively going along with the conflict-drivers because they lack the will or influence to stop it (Baine), some leaders attempting to profit off of the conflict (Gallywix), etc.
• A series of external events driving the factions to grudgingly work together, with that flimsy unity dissolving once the threat is over.
• Individual people within each faction set against each other because of their particular views regarding that conflict.

The only real difference is that the Warcraft universe is one of heroic fantasy, so you're going to see the ebb and flow of war focused more around those heroes.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 14th 2018 at 10:16:39 AM

Most of which would have been solved if more Horde heroes willing to fight were still alive and getting some focus. Edit: or even new relatives of said heroes. We need a Tauren who survived Camp T to stand up to Baine and support war but not entirely with Sylvanas and stuff like that.

This is where Sarufang the Younger would have been nice to have in the plot instead of being killed off in wrath.

Edited by Memers on Nov 14th 2018 at 7:40:04 AM

Not sure if this might end up being a good thing or not, but the faction war is getting to the level of Status Quo Is God. That the Alliance and Horde are trapped in an eternal war (why does it sound like the Eternal Conflict) with no end, because that was supposed to be the 'heart and soul' of Warcraft. Like what Fighteer said in the third bullet point, if there is a unity, such as the Battle at Mt. Hyjal, it will be destined to be dissolved, so they can go back to the heart and soul of Warcraft, never to grow beyond that. And since WOW is still a huge moneymaker for Blizzard, I'm sure they still want to continue this and will inevitably perpetuate this state as long as it's still running.

Is that supposed to be a good thing to Warcraft fans? I'm usually on the camp that believe they should move on from faction wars and keep getting united as they fight more outer threats. I know people will say it's taking away what made Warcraft unique, but I believe that after we take account of Warcraft's history, I think it will count as a 'story development', moving forward.

The world getting locked in a state of World War is unpleasant, regardless if it's on a heroic fantasy or not.

So, for you guys, is it a good or bad thing that they kept believing that Status Quo Is God? Or should the 'heart and soul' of Warcraft evolve and go beyond faction war?

Edited by ChrisX on Nov 14th 2018 at 10:48:20 PM

I hate it. we've seen what a world war for a few years can do to devastate entire populations and landscapes. imagine the horrors of one that NEVER ENDS

Sylvanas's supposed justification for attacking Teldrassil is exactly this: she believes that the Alliance will eventually seek to destroy the Horde, since there are too many of its members who consider the Horde an existential threat. There is too much pent-up hatred. And certainly there seems to be no shortage of Horde members who haven't forgotten the actions of folks like Daelin Proudmoore and Admiral Rogers. It's all too easy to sell them on the idea that the Alliance is going to come for them and put them in camps again.

I view the faction conflict as the fundamental principle upon which Warcraft is built. Players of the games in this franchise have established a personal identity based on which faction they side with. Take that away and there's no more Warcraft. There may be something else, but it would mark the end of the franchise as we know it.

Put another way, I'm not sure how you can have a successful MMO without some form of player vs player competition, and WoW more or less set the standard for basing that around factions.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 14th 2018 at 10:53:37 AM