User blog:Allose/Storm the Portal!

Or should we?

I'm not going to lie, I'm not entirely fond of Warlords of Draenor's main antagonists, well known as the Iron Horde. It's unimpressive and rather impractical, and it's just ridiculous and silly after Blizzard's incredibly formulaic "Age of Iron" trailer. Then again, Blizzard has a habit of making and taking things that are lacking in whatever they're intended to have and boosting them up to that stature (I suppose we're to assume the Council of Six is highly intelligent?).

However, I'm eager to see what role-play comes up. I came onto the Wiki and my old guild site on the day the expansion was dropped, eager to see what stories were cropping up. I've read stories related to the Iron Horde with genuine interest, over a few days, when I stumbled on a problem. A lot of guilds seem to have "stormed the portal".

I haven't played the current, up-to-date game, but I did play the beta, and noticed a lot of NPCs clad head to toe in solid raiding gear. Now, that raiding gear used to be something used by NPCs on multiple occasions, but now our raiding gear on an NPC generally comes up only in a reference to our roles and our characters, especially considering that our sets no longer have a particularly fitting theme for those NPCs to use.

So what does that mean? Obviously, the Azerothian Heroes have been summoned by Khadgar to handle the threat once and for all. Surely, it's a really cool thing to fight alongside those heroes, especially considering their reputation. However, let me recall the Age of Iron trailer (Seriously, why is this a thing).

After the beta gameplay with all those named NPCs, I suspected they were of importance enough to be named something other than a name along the lines of "Useful Tagalong". Age of Iron ascertained that suspicion. The trailer soon revealed these were the Azerothian Heroes summoned for a special, elite mission using a small amount of powerful people.

Meaning we role-players never go through the Portal.

Yep, it's all on the Heroes. The guilds don't get that chance, because Khadgar and his Azerothian Heroes are the backbone of this operation of entering Draenor. They are the ones who go through and take down the Portal. As much as I'd love to have or see an event of something like a collective force of guilds taking down the huge Portal, it's obvious that only the small force of heroes takes it down, otherwise we'd all be able to pin down Hellscream right then and there and make him cry for Garrosh to bail him out of trouble. Again.

So obviously, we can't be there for the Portal to be brought down, or for the glorious appearance of Grommash Hellscream. All we can do is be those reinforcements that are summoned later. Unfortunate, but that's the reality of the matter.

It's not my intent to just spit on everyone's role-play with this. In case my last blog post didn't hint this before, I take genuine interest in reading every new page on the Wiki, analyzing every edit, and monitoring the activity of role-players all the time, especially my old guild (Yes, I'm watching you. Big brother is here), both out of interest and to ensure that I can appropriately respect another person's writing with my own. However, this is an issue that is more than just a mistake, but actually contradicts what should be both canon and fanon lore.

I'm not sure how many people will take the time and effort to make this revision out of the request that this post has been implying. However, it's something that I suggest people do if they can. It's not too much of a revision; this does not mean you won't be part of the battle, it just means entering in a different way.