Three Reasons Alliance Should Not Want to Kill Garrosh... Yet.

Actually the title for this post should be "three reasons why it would be better storytelling if the alliance does not kill garrosh immediately and the one reason it can never happen" but it was too long for the title box.

Now on with the show.

There has been a great deal of talk about how the alliance has gotten the short end of the stick story wise this expansion and it really should not come as a surprise.  The writers have been all about the horde for a long time now, but what do you really expect from a company that has a statue of Thrall in front of their corporate office?

So while I do support the people complaining that the alliance has been getting the short end of the stick story wise for a long time I believe they are picking the wrong fight saying that alliance has been left out of the build up to killing Garrosh.  Lets face it, the alliance need no reason to what him dead.  Do you really need a story to build up to killing the enemy?  He is the enemy to the alliance, sha touched or not, right?

Blizzard has done a decent job trying to make the alliance feel as if they were part of a story that they really have no business being a part of.  The horde need a reason to kill Garrosh, the alliance does not.  So give the writers some credit for finding a way to squeeze in some alliance storytelling here and there.  In truth, they did not need to.  The only reason there is any alliance stuff is because they did not want to leave one faction with nothing to do.  It was not added because it was needed because it was not needed.  The alliance already wants Garrosh dead.

So even if the alliance need no reason to kill Garrosh, the question is, should they really kill him the second he pops up or should the alliance wait until the right moment?

This is where I believe the blizzard writers have failed.  It is not because the expansion has had so much more for the horde story because that is how it should have been.  The horde leader is becoming the big baddie, so he needs that build up.  Being he is horde and it is his build up, the story will of course unfold on the horde side of the coin.

The horde is turning on their leader, justifiable or not as you might see it, so they needed to build up the story for them to want to take down their own leader.  The horde needed their story.  The alliance didn't, the alliance wants to kill Garrosh because he is the leader of the opposing army.  There is no further justification needed.  There is no need for some huge story behind it.  The enemy must die.  That is all the story the alliance needs.

So with all the lore "unfairness" behind us now lets get to the point of the post.

Even with the alliance needing no reason to want to kill the leader of the opposing faction I don't think the alliance should have anything to do with the next raid tier, at least not as it is written.  The actual raid tier is where the alliance part of the story should start to be written for the expansion.  The entire expansion has been about the horde story, and rightfully so, so now is the time for the alliance story.  This is where the alliance should shine.

Three reasons alliance should not want to kill Garrosh... yet.

1) The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Let the horde and the true horde fight it out.  Why should the alliance even risk losing troops sending them in the middle of two rabid dogs fighting.  Both the horde and Garrosh's true horde are the enemy.  So let them go at it.

No matter who wins, the alliance comes out on top.  If the horde wins Garrosh is dead and the alliance can come in and wipe out a weakened horde.  If the true horde wins than the alliance would have a fresh army that could walk all over the tired and beaten true horde.

While there are a million and one reasons for the alliance to want to see Garrosh dead, losing troops, massive amounts of troops, is not the way to go about it.  Sitting back and letting the dogs go at it and then cleaning up the mess when it is all over is the way to handle it.

Both the horde and the true horde are the enemy of the alliance and as such, they are also a friend, being they are taking each other out.  Let them duke it out and let the story line be told from the alliance perspective of getting ready to clean up the mess and eliminate the horde once and for all as soon one of the dogs go down.

That is when the alliance should take out Garrosh.

2) The Alliance wants you.

Recruit, recruit, recruit.  The alliance have always had a working relationship with Vol' Jin.  He might be the enemy in the terms that he is a horde leader and his race is a card carrying member of the horde but that does not mean he can not be bargained with.  Alliance or horde side, you can see the influence he has had on cross faction relations. 

Vol' Jin is a good leader, an intelligent man, a brilliant tactician and knows when the getting is good.  So given the option to switch to the winning team is something he might be willing to do.  He owes the horde nothing more, that debt was paid a long time ago, and this turnabout from the true horde should be enough to show him the horde he once knew, the one that deserved his respect does not exist anymore.  The thought of his enemy being more helpful to him than his friends might lead him to think of his enemy not so much as his enemy any longer.

Even with the barrens he sought out the help of the alliance.  Although I could swear I remember reading, while doing the quest on one of my characters, that it was the blood elf leader's idea to seek out the alliance's help.  Really wish I could recall where I believe I read that, horde or alliance side, so I could reference it.  However, if that is indeed the case, that not only is Vol' Jin willing to work with the alliance but others are as well, it could mean more races could make the jump as well.

In the end the other races of the horde could be very agreeable to jumping ship from a horde that turned on them to an alliance that helped them even when they were the enemy.  By drawing out the fight and allowing the horde to lose at every turn their need for the alliance to assist them will grow greater.  Once it reaches the point where they realize that it is jump ship or be destroyed, they would be more than willing to join the alliance.  At least the trolls, tauren and blood elves.  Not so sure about the other races.

Once the alliance has split the horde, or at least some parts of it, then they could put their full backing into the war effort and go in stronger than ever before.

3) Wrathion was right.

Wrathion wanted one faction to stand tall at the end of the current events and he did not care if it was the horde or the alliance.  He did not care what they called themselves.  He just wanted everyone together to face a greater threat.

From a story telling perspective that would mean that wrathions vision would be closer to my previous example.  But going further.  The forsaken would never join the alliance.  Heck, I'd be hard pressed to figure out why they are even with the horde.  So that would mean not only would Garrosh need to fall but so would the dark lady.

While she is around there will never be a completely united front like wrathion envisioned.  This would mean that the alliance would need to get the horde races they can get to join them to join them even sooner.  As soon as possible, so as to make sure they do not lose as many troops as in the previous example where the alliance waited until they were in dire need to recruit them.  If they recruit them sooner that would lose fewer troops of their own and then they could go in to face Garrosh with a much larger force together.  The reason this is needed is because the moment Garrosh falls they would need to move on and finish things which would mean removing the only other obstacle to a true united world.

Effectively this would change the last raid patch into a bit of a surprise for everyone that plays the game.  Garrosh falls and then the combined forces of the new alliance/horde grouping would move directly on to kill Sylvanas.  The new battle for undercity in technicolor raid format.  It would be even more epic than the original one that everyone thinks back fondly of.  Now how is that for a surprise ending setting up a true combined force for the next expansion?

And then the one reason it could never happen.

1) Game play.

While from a story telling stand point all those above options, the alliance destroying the horde, splitting  the horde, or absorbing the horde, would all work out to be fantastic story telling and give the alliance a true fist pumping moment like they were promised and a vibrant story over all it could never happen for game play reasons.

No matter who the big baddie is at the end of each raid tier the true enemy we face is not them but the person sitting at another computer somewhere in the world that is viewing events from across faction lines.  While the game never shows it, the story of warcraft is horde vs alliance.  We might never actually participate in any of that battles but that is what is the driving force behind the game.

Like when Garrosh made such huge advances in Kalimdor before cataclysm.  We never got to take that land as the horde and experience the victory, we never had a chance to defend that land and suffer the defeat as alliance.  As a matter of fact, what we did as players didn't matter at all.  It just changed hands without our input at all and that is kind of sad in a way.

The story telling could not have went the way that any of the three examples I gave showed because we can not dismantle one faction, or even permanently injure it to the point it is a fraction of its former self.  But from a story telling point I personally believe there was a huge missed opportunity.

For the first time ever the game makers could have let us have a hand in the molding of the game.  They could have had the alliance ask for some reparations for the lands Garrosh appropriated while he was in power.  They could have asked for all remaining orcs that were part of the true horde to be jailed or even put to death.  They could have allowed the horde and the alliance players to actually be part of something that changed the face of the game, at least in a shift of power sort of way.

It would have been nice to be a part of the changing events and seeing those events happen instead of just logging in to the next expansion with a notice of "this is what happened when you were gone is the time we are skipping that you had absolutely nothing to do with".  They could have used us as the catalyst for change and let us be a part of if.

It would have given the alliance the fist pumping moment they have been promised and denied the entire expansion.  As I said, I do not see why alliance players complain about things so far this expansion as it was building up to take Garrosh out, so it was a horde story, the alliance story was already told, Garrosh is the enemy, we kill the enemy, that is all alliance needed.  But this, the after killing him, that is where the alliance story should have been.

To have used this content to change the face of the true game, the horde vs alliance game, to let everyone play out a part of something that ended with an exchange of land, now that would have been excellent writing.  That would have been good story telling.  That would have been more believable.

In the end, because of game play, the story took a hit and that could not happen.  The game can never be written too well because to be written well you would need to make sweeping changes and that can never happen thanks to game play.  Game play 1, game player 0.

If you were to say game play be damned, how would have you liked to see the story end?

1) Alliance destroy the horde.
2) Alliance split the horde.
3) Alliance absorb the horde.

Or maybe...

4) Horde turn on the alliance that helped them and kill them furthering the hate between the factions.
5) Certain races splitting factions.  For example next expansion trolls and worgen could choose to be alliance or horde.

Or...

6)  Something else you decide.