If you haven’t heard, World of Warcraft’s next expansion was revealed at the recent BlizzCon event, it’s called “Battle For Azeroth”, and it’ll feature a reignited war between the Alliance and the Horde. Many fans are absolutely giddy over this, as this classic matchup has been a staple of World of Warcraft since the beginning. Even when they were working together, like in the recent Legion expansion, fans still had loyalty to their side, and now, that loyalty is going to be brought back to the forefront. But, is it coming at a cost?
In the mind of Redditor 3kool5you, it is. Mainly because it appears as though the Horde are being portrayed as the “bad guys” again, and that doesn’t ring true for them. As they note in their post, the faction has been depicted as “morally grey” to flat out evil, and has constantly, and consistently shifted back and forth between that depending on the expansion.
dotageeks.com
As noted above, the Alliance and the Horde worked together to fight off the Burning Legion in the recent expansion, yet that appears to be getting washed away so that war between these two can happen again, with The Horde once again being in the “wrong” in this case.
Is that fair? They don’t think so, even going so far as to cite Warcraft 3 as a great example of showing how the “evil” characters can be portrayed as something more, something more undefined, instead of just “evil.” Now, it’s true that Blizzard is trying to go back to its roots with Battle For Azeroth, but are they reverting too much if it comes at the cost of character and faction development?
The other thing they don’t like is that it gives Alliance characters the ability to flaunt their “moral superiority”, which can understandably be a bad thing. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being the bad guy, but does it have to come at the cost of losing all the progression they’ve made along the way?