let me tell you what you can do with your "lore column"...

[sodzilla]

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/11/12/beginner-roleplay-choosing-sides/#continued Anne Stickney is at it again. This time, she's making a choose-your-race guide for RPers that is, shall we say, not up to my exacting standards.



Now, granted, I can agree with her statement that the Alliance are the "touted" heroes of Warcraft. This is, in fact, in my mind, one of the major problems with lore and one of the reasons behind the supposed "Horde bias" of the story team. The thing is, the Alliance may not have been founded in blood the way the original Horde was, but it certainly hasn't remained a simple defense pact. From the Internment Camps to the treatment of the blood elves to the vengeful aggression of Varian Wrynn, which helped spark off the current war, the Alliance has repeatedly shown itself to be as morally ambiguous as the Horde. In fact, prior to Cataclysm and Garrosh Hellscream's ascension*, I would have said the Horde had been steadily climbing toward redemption from its warlike heritage, while the Alliance had suffered an equally steady decline from its original noble goals.

So, while I'll freely admit that most of the unambiguously heroic characters of Warcraft have arisen from within the Alliance - Tirion Fordring and the other original paladins, Jaina Proudmoore, Bolvar Fordragon, Darion Mograine before his death, and so forth - the Alliance as a whole is hardly, any longer, the faction of "good guys". The problem is that this is almost never acknowledged. The Alliance as a whole is presented as a perfect union with no internal clashes that aren't immediately smoothed over** and while bad things are done here and there (Southern Barrens, anyone?) the overall image still contains very little in the way of consciously presented moral ambiguity.

Which is kind of boring, and as a writer, I can see why the Horde characters and their internal politics would be more interesting to work with. I'm still not convinced that there is an actual Horde *bias* (one might just as well say that there's an Alliance bias in that they're presented as good guys) but the Horde does seem to get more attention.

Anyway, lengthy digression over, back to the ways Stickney pisses me off. Points in order.

• The Alliance are "the native races of Azeroth", defending their world from invasion? Gee, Stickney, I'm sure the tauren, trolls, goblins and blood elves - not to mention the Forsaken, who were, in the main, originally *humans* from Lordaeron - are just delighted to find they don't count as natives of Azeroth. BTW, as you yourself mention, the draenei aren't Azerothian originally - so in fact there's one bunch of off-worlders in each faction.***
• The Alliance was originally the human kingdoms, and it wasn't until the Second War that they brought in the dwarves and gnomes? Uh, *no*, Stickney. The Alliance didn't in fact exist until the Second War; the First War was between the humans of *one* kingdom, Stormwind, and the Horde, which then consisted solely of orcs and a few ogres. Granted, in later lore Stormwind seems to have subsumed or dominated all the other human nations anyway... but it's an error I'm a bit dismayed to see a lore columnist make.
• ...the humans are fresh from a tough fight against the Lich King? Yeaaah, them and everyone else except the worgens and goblins. And the humans who actually made victory possible are not, by and large, Alliance citizens but neutral members of the Argent Crusade, Ebon Blade, and Kirin Tor.
• The gnomes are focusing on retaking Gnomeregan? Sure. Now if only something would actually happen with that, 'cause last I heard the operation was pretty well stalled.
• [Wolfheart spoilers] I agree that the worgen's admission into the Alliance didn't go smoothly, but now they're all the good little dogs of His Awesome Wolfness Incarnate King Varian, so surely they don't still "deal with mistrust from their allies"? Especially since Varian was pretty much the only reason why they weren't immediately voted in in the first place?
• The Horde are underdogs? Really? I'll give you that they were originally conceptualized as such, but Cataclysm has pretty much been about the Horde advancing on all fronts - and considering their current leadership, I'm not willing to give them the sympathy vote that's usually inherent in the "underdog" designation, even if they actually were at a disadvantage.

* = These days, the opinions of my characters of either faction re: most of their leaders can be summed up as "fuck your noise, I'm joining the Argent Crusade".

** = How the hell have the dwarves not raised a stink over Varian threatening the life of their sovereign ruler, whether or not they like her? Oh, I forget, because the story team actually have no idea of how international politics work.

*** = granted, the orcs are the founders of the Horde whereas the draenei are the blue-tentacled stepchildren of the Alliance, but even so, characterizing the Horde as a whole as "invaders" - especially considering that most orcs now alive were born on Azeroth - feels more than a little gross to me.