Killing the Warchief to appease Alliance players is a terrible idea from a lore and community standpoint. There are better ways to give Alliance players a sense of turning the tides of battle that Cataclysm set forth than killing a Hellscream.

Like what? Make Pandaria reverse-Cataclysm?

No.

I kinda felt this coming a few weeks back, but I was WAY wrong about who was going down. I thought for sure we'd be going after Sylvanas in MoP. This would have served to tone down some of the lunacy on the Forsaken side, while also giving the Alliance the major victory it needed.

Hell- they could have re-claimed Lordaron and pushed us back into Tarren Mill or something.

Taking out Garrosh is a very odd place to go. I am intrigued to see how we get there...

Taking out the Warchief -on its own - is only a good thing for the Alliance only if we act without the rest of the Horde's help, and we leave Orgrimmar a ruined shell whose fate will only be spoken of in whispered choked with dread.

Otherwise, it's not *our* story.

You seem to forget that you, as an Alliance character, are killing Garrosh the restore the almighty Go'el to his rightful place on the throne. Indeed you will have pride in being a client state of the Horde.

And in these comments, right here, is what's wrong with the Alliance QQ Brigade.

Anything short of utterly destroying the Horde and depriving whatever percentage of players who are Horde any sort of involvement in and advancement in the game is Horde bias.

Do you guys ever READ what you post? Do you realize what you sound like?

"Hey, Alliance, you're going to get to help overthrow the Horde's warchief while your king goes on an epic journey to become a Supreme Bad Ass!"

"HORDE BIAS! We only exist to move the Horde's story along!"

I've been patient with you guys because the Alliance did have some issues in Cata in terms of storytelling. The Worgen story ending in a Horde racial starter zone is terrible. The differences between the Horde Twilight Highlands and the Alliance TH are absurd. But you've gone massively overboard with the complaining now. You're not helping your cause and you're being silly.

What you want is EVERYTHING to go your way. Know when that should have stopped for you?

When you were about four years old. Now turn this comment black, I know you will. :D

Keeping Garrosh as Warchief would be better, if you are looking for something to give Alliance players a sense of pride.

Part of the problem the alliance has had over the past couple of expansions is that that Alliance had the Scumbag Varian to look up to while the Horde had Good Guy Thrall. It looks like Varian is getting a bit of a redemption in MoP, and it would be nice to have a Good Guy Varian be balanced out by a Scumbag Garrosh.

Now, Blizzard is painting themselves into a bit of a corner. If Varian is truely redemmed how do the maintian the conflict with two decent leaders at the head of the two factions? If Varian isn't redemed then its just the same old story in a different day.

I didn't actually hear anyone shouting the HORDE BIAS thing here. Hence, who is actually the one ranting?

However, just as Anne herself admitted in a recent podcast, playing through the Alliance storyline, right now, is a bummer. The creators have not done a good job with the Allies, just haven't. Even they have admitted the shortcomings so YES, I have hopes for this to change and YES for us to have something to be proud of, for once.

No I don't think that that should be us becoming as blood-thirsty or morally questionable as the horde often is.

Jaq:

1. Except, yeah, Horde bias on the part of Blizzard and/or Metzen. We're doing Thrall's dirty work for him, getting the angry pretender off the throne so Green Jesus can reclaim it.

2. Varian's problem is that he's ALREADY bad and an ass. He doesn't need to become more so. Frankly, he's a bit of a tool and I think a lot of Alliance players would be just as happy to see HIM gone too. Let a race other than the Humans (and the Orcs) lead for a change.

(FWIW, I play /both/ sides.)

Well, Jaq, the thing is that if the raid on Garrosh turns out like this, then yes, Alliance is only there to advance the Horde's story:

We see THRALL, standing before a determined looking group of Tauren Braves, Troll headhunters and Orcen Blademasters. The demonic fires of Orgrimmar, a city corrupted by the newly ascended Dread Lord GARROSH HELLSCREAM, smoulder in the distance. Small bolts of lightning crack through the air around the DOOMHAMMER as THRALL begins to speak:

THRALL: Today, every Tauren, every Troll, every Elf, every Goblin and every Orc stands united against demonic corruption. Against the mistakes that darkened our past. Today we take back our city! Reclaim our destiny! Restore honour and pride to the Horde!

For a brighter future, warriors of the Horde! Loktar Ogar!

Lots of banging of weapons against shields, we see Orcs next to Elves, Tauren next Trolls, a united Horde.
In the meanwhile, THRALL wanders off to the side and the camera pans over to a group of Alliance soldiers, battle-ready, assembled behind HIGH KING VARIAN.

THRALL, in a conversational tone: Also Varian, we're going to need you to create diversion. Why don't you go over there and bang at the front gate? Okay? That'd be great. Thanks!


----
If it turns out anything like this (and right now, I can't see any reason, why the Alliance would help to install Thrall, or any other warchief that is not a patsy for the Alliance), then that means that the Alliance is only a tool, and in the end a dispensable tool, needed to propel the Horde storyline forward.

You can complain about 'QQ' all you want, but don't act like there isn't a legitimate point to be made, relating to to the way Blizzard has handled Alliance story advancement so far.

@fudge

That's not really fair and you know it. You're speculating on something based on nothing but a few sentences that's three patches and a whole expansion away. I can play the baseless speculation game too:
The Alliance walk into Orgrimmar torn by civil war, civilians slaughtered in the crossfire and the majority of Horde forces in disarray (Garrosh has to have some forces loyal to him).
Perhaps Varian takes the moral high road (like that interview with Metzen suggests he will) and realizes that even his old enemies don't deserve this slaughter, and that it might actually be in his own interests to have someone in control of the Horde who isn't a raging warmonger willing to sacrifice his own people for personal glory and unnatural power.
Perhaps Thrall is racked with guilt and anger, seeing his own city destroyed by someone he put in power, perhaps Thrall is in need of rescue or serious help (he always was pretty trusting). Perhaps Thrall, when all is said and done, refuses to take the mantle of Warchief, guilt-ridden over what Garrosh has become, or furious with those who were loyal to him, or because his own family must now take precedent over a Horde that didn't much seem to mind that he was gone.
Perhaps Varian knows that the Horde won't follow a puppet leader and aids Voljin to becoming warchief, logically picking the much lesser of two necessary evils.
Perhaps the Alliance walks out proud, united, and morally justified, while the Horde has to sit back and wonder how the hell it dropped so low that the Alliance had to come in and save it.

Jaq is exactly right that the Alliance have room to complain after Cata, this can't possibly be argued. And then Blizzard came out roughly 100 times and said "we hear you, we understand your complaints, we recognize that you are right, and we're going to address this in MoP", and yet people still complain about content that doesn't exist yet.

@N-train
You seem to have missed the word "If" in fudge's post. Several times. IF this is the outcome, THEN the Alliance is only a tool.

Just once, I would like to see an Alliance QQ post that acknowledges that, for years, the game tilted pretty heavily towards the Alliance. In fact, until the Cataclysm the Alliance controlled 50% more zones than the Horde, with the result that the Horde leveling path was totally borked. And Blizzard has been very open about the fact that when the game launched, they had put far resources into developing the Alliiance simply because they hit a deadlines crunch and (correctly) felt that the Alliance would be the far more popular faction at launch.

Do I think Cataclysm has favoured the Horde? Yes. But much of that is precisely because Blizzard made a point of evening out the leveling paths, which meant a bunch of zones had to move into the Horde column, just so they would be almost the same (the Alliance still controls one extra zone).

Vanilla favoured the Alliance, both in quest progression and content. TBC is more Horde. Wrath, more Alliance. Cataclysm, more horde. MoP looks to be swinging Alliance in a pretty heavy way (you take down our warchief in our freaking capitol!). It would be pretty boring if we just had stasis.

Finally, the argument that the Alliance taking down Garrosh is somehow just "more Alliance advancing the Horde storyline" is STUPID. I mean, I suppose it is advancing the Horde storyline, in the sense that WW2 was just the Allies advancing Hitler's storyline. But I think most sensible people would see a glorious victory by the Alliance in the heart of their enemy's stronghold as advancing their own storyline.

@Deatailbear,

The "if" makes the comment anymore sensible?

It's still QQing over stuff that hasn't happened yet, and isn't going to happen, unless he has some sort of miraculous psychic powers. The "if" just underlines how weak his point is.

**rescued from a miss-post, sorry**

Just once I'd like to see someone acknowledge that complaining about perceived Alliance QQ is QQing in it's own right. Yes I'm been cheeky here. Please see it as humor.

MANY people can express their dissatisfaction with aspects of their faction's storyline and it's not necessarily QQing. It's become very popular to label it as, "the usual whiny Alliance temper tantrums." I've shared complaints with the likes of Anne and Rossi, by my reckoning they are in a group of people capable of thoughtful critique. That's good enough for me.

I agree that the Alliance being the ones to take out Garrosh on their own isn't necessarily the best idea for giving us some pride but I don't blame Throm for being cynical.

Plus for many of us it isn't about the quantity of story or a perception of how many of people from our races turn out as raid boss'. It's got to do with HEART and heroes we can be proud of.

@N-train: I will freely acknowledge that we have heard Blizzard say that they've heard us, and will address the issue, if you will freely acknowledge that we have heard that before and nothing came of it. A few months ago, I pointed out that this has become a trust issue with the secs at Blizzard. I'm not going to bother repeating the well-documented litany of examples. I'm only going to say that when all you hear is "wait and see", and then what gets delivered is more of the same, it is more than understandable that we'll respond to promises of improvement with skepticism.

I'll put this to you, personally, though. I will be playing Mists when it comes out, and if Blizzard was serious about improving the Alliance's *in-game* experience, then I will be calling that out loud and long. But if we get in there, and it's just more of Andorhal, more of Southshore, more of getting pushed back while we just stand there getting beat up, more half-baked sequences like the opening of TH... then are you going to stand with us in calling it out, or are you going to be an apologist, and tell us to wait and see some more?