Despite being the leader of World of Warcraft’s Horde, Sylvanas is currently on Horde players’ shit list. The reason? Earlier this week, she did too big of a murder. Now another major Horde character has turned against her, and players are demonstrating in-game to show solidarity.
In a cinematic released yesterday, legendary Horde warrior Varok Saurfang had a crisis of conscience over Sylvanas’ torching of night elf stronghold Teldrassil, the World Tree.
“There is no honour in this!” he bellowed at Sylvanas as she watched the tree burn. “They will come for us now. All of them!”
Later, while talking to a young troll who’d yet to see battle, he threw off his shoulder armour in disgust at the idea that they’d find honour in the battle to come. Saurfang proceeded to storm off into the night sans armour, toward a big Alliance encampment — presumably to die.
Despite being puny and inexperienced, the troll ran after him and removed his shoulder pads to show solidarity. In the end, he convinced Saurfang not to give up on himself and the Horde.
Now Horde players, still enraged by Sylvanas’ actions and inspired by the unlikely duo of Saurfang and “Zappy Boi” (as they’ve taken to calling the troll), are removing their in-game shoulder armour as a show of solidarity.
Well, they aren’t fully removing it — gotta keep those sweet, sweet stat buffs, after all — but they’re using WoW’s appearance-altering “transmogrification” feature to make their shoulder pads no longer appear on their characters.
A player named Riizu has taken to heading up the “Shoulders For Saurfang” movement with both a Discord and an in-game community. The former, Riizu told Kotaku in a DM, already has 150 members, while the latter has 400.
Like many other players, Riizu has been disappointed in recent pre-Battle For Azeroth developments, but saw Shoulders For Saurfang as an opportunity to express that in a positive way.
“It must be clear to Blizzard that their recent choices with Sylvanas, and the Horde as a whole, aren’t well-received and that perhaps these choices are meant to intentionally incite more faction loyalty,” Riizu said. “The hope is that Shoulders For Saurfang can be a launch point for that. I hope that SFS can provide players a way to positively share their opinions and draw excitement to the expansion.”
He also hopes that this will cut down on some of the “ridiculous” blowback members of the WoW dev team have faced.
For now, things are just getting off the ground, but there are already plans afoot (ashoulder?). Shoulders For Saurfang will be hosting an in-game event on August 7, likely on a role-playing server, that’ll see players march from Horde capital Orgrimmar to Alliance territory Darkshore.
Riizu also noted that even though Horde and Alliance are technically bitterer enemies than ever, Alliance players are welcome to join the Discord and help plan demonstrations, too. He said that he takes inspiration from the most recent Warcraft novel, Before The Storm, which serves as an official prequel to Battle For Azeroth.
“Cooperation and growth for both factions is a major theme,” he said. “I’d love to see SFS echo that sentiment.”
Comments
33 responses to “World Of Warcraft Players Are Removing Pieces Of Armour To Protest Recent Plot Developments”
This is all just a precursor to them making Saurfang the leader of the Horde, right? Like he should have been years ago…
nah, cant have him or baine as warchief or else they end up like Vol’jin. Ever since Warcraft 1 the Horde has always been the Bad Guy, with Chris Metzens even stating that they made the orcs playable because “its fun to play the bad guy”. If anything the next Warchief will likely be Gallywix because he is the only one besides Sylvannus would doing something that could cause a conflict. I honeslty can not see, Baine, Saurfang or any of the other races leaders that would be stupid enought to cause a war.
Even on the Alliance side, Genn and Tyrande are the only 2 people that could start a war, buit even then Genn only hates Sylvannus and not the forsaken as it was shown in the latest novel. Tyrande is more concered about Malfurion and hell, even he is willing forgive the horde for murding Cenarius back in warcraft 3 as shown by not giving a crap in Catacyslm when the horde and alliance last went to war. Velen is all about the big picture and the Dwarves are ruled a Council and the gnomes are more concerned with getting their capital back.
Now Jaina is only ruler left and i cant really say anything about her until once BFA hits and i do full experience on live, but even then she doesnt trust the horde because everytime she bent over backwards to make peace with the horde she had been fucked over. however she is also not stupid and for her to become leader of the alliance, that mean Anduin would have to die/step aside and as we saw from the pre legion comics, he is still in charge 60 years later when we take the fight to void lords
Maybe they could have the two factions working together against a greater threat?
you’d think so… what with us comming together to defeat the burning legion and all, but no, blizzard just has to shoe horn in a fucking stupid faction war that nobody wanted just to justify keeping the faction system
To be fair a lot of people love the PVP (I hate it personally) so they don’t have a problem with the different factions and being at each others throats. That said, I think even some of the PVPers aren’t happy with the “how of the conflict”. Largely because everyone likes to feel like the hero, so they want a better justification to be at war than “hey our leaders a psychopath, just follow blindly”.
“Nobody wanted”.
How about the masses of us who couldn’t give a damn about “The Legion”, “The Old Ones” or “The Whatever Elses” and just want to get Krumpin’ on daft Alliance heads.
This is Warcraft, not Warhammer. Iff youse wanna go an baaz in a few ummie skulls and krump da stunties for shitz n giggz den youse be uzing da wrong game
The whole series is based on Alliance v Horde. You should be going to play a different game if you want the factions to disappear.
Did you forget Thrall? The guy that formed the modern Horde (i.e. the one that isn’t just demon-blood drinking orcs) and is still the longest lasting Warcheif to date?
Thrall is gone because Chris Metzen has retired. That is also why Varian died. also thrall is no longer liked by the playerbase as he once was because all of the issues that the horde is currently facing were caused by his actions and then theres fact that in Cata he was basically Green Jesus and mary sued to hell and back
I wasn’t saying we should bring him back, just pointing out that Vol’jin wasn’t the only “good” warcheif. In reality it’s been mostly good with the exception of Garrosh and now Sylvanas (who likely won’t last long).
Your opinion. Imo Hellscream and Windrunner are by far the best cheifs we ever had. They are the only ones willing to do what needs to be done for our survival.
Not sure if serious or just skipped 90% of the story. Hellscream made tons of terrible choices before he even made it to Warchief – the only reason Borean Tundra was a success was because Saurfang fixed all the shit he kept screwing up, he killed Cairne, he alienated 90% of the Horde by saying only orcs (specifically his chosen few) were capable of defending cities, oh and let’s not forget how he went back in time to get an army to destroy us all with…
Sylvanas… She just threw away a tactical advantage to prove a point, that’s hardly “what needs to be done.” There’s also her next brilliant move (spoilers if you haven’t seen any of the beta)
Plague-bombing the Undercity.She doesn’t care about “our” survival, only her own, and with recent events she doesn’t even seem to give much of a shit about that – she just wants to keep poking the bear.
I’m sorry… But I’m confused as to why they’re mimicking the removal of the shoulder armour from a story cutscene that Blizzard has released, in a protest against the precursor cut scene that Blizzard released (with the intention of showing the following cut scene afterwards). Also ignoring all of that, the story hasn’t even started nor finished, and people are up in arms about it?
If they’re so against the current story, why the f**k mimic a key part of the most recent story cut scene. Or do you think maybe this was Blizzards plan all along and they expected this exact reaction (considering they did a 2nd CGI cinematic for the expansion which hasn’t been done in 14 years).
Far out. It’s stuff like this makes me embarrassed to say I’m a gamer / wow player.
If that is how you react to things you don’t understand, I’m glad you’re embarrassed to tell people you’re a gamer/wow player.
Saves the rest of us being judged for your antics.
Oh please enlighten me oh wise Kasterix who I’m assuming is a horde player.
They released the Sylvannas cut scene. And then a week later released another cut scene (which had obviously been made over the last few months) which showed the more honorable side of the horde. In said cut scene, the character removes his armour to show the lack of honour from the previous actions. This cut scene is still a part of the previous story (in fact a direct link to it).
And all you horde players are whinging about this story arc, even though you’re now mimicking an action from said story arc.
Yeahhhh…. I’m glad that kind of logic is the logic of a horde player. Makes killing you plebs so much more fun.
See the problem is, I was never complaining. Sylvanas has always been ruthless and pretty willing to wipe out cities. People forgot that.
But here you come with the ‘us vs them’ mentality, acting like you really are part of the Alliance… All the while complaining about Horde players doing something similar with what amounts to little more than a symbolic gesture.
You are precisely the type of person you are bitching about.
Ugh.. I feel like you’re 12.
Let’s back it up –
This is an article about Horde players taking their shoulder armour off to protest the current story event. Thus all my comments are in relation to the horde players that are supporting this movement. You’ve replied in defence, thus I’m assuming you’re one of the horde players who is also supporting this movement. For you to backflip and say you have no issue with this makes your initial first comment irrelevant, and you’re just looking for a reason to argue (Which you’ve claimed you’re actually not in this recent post).
My post isn’t about what she did, or how the story is going in game, it’s about the hypocrisy of the players who are complaining about the current story line, while mimicking a character who is from the current story line. Now either you’re one of these players and you’re butt hurt about the entire thing, or you don’t care.
The fact you’ve replied now twice suggests the former. But if you can’t see what I’m pointing out – Which is purely, why the heck are horde players mimicking a character from the current story arc in protest of the story ac – is hypocritical, then there is nothing further to discuss.
Benrenbeard as the right idea.
You come off a bit aggressive but I agree with your sentiment. A bit odd for people to protest the story by showing solidarity with it.
IMO this is only so big because there’s nothing new to do in the pre-patch other than 30 mins of half-assed questing. If we actually had some new gameplay or content, if they’d brought in warfront skirmishes like the legion pre-patch invasions etc then maybe people would treat the story the way they usually do – as a sideline they don’t really care about.
If anything the two vids (warbringers and old soldier) show that Blizz has more coming and likely more development for the Horde as a faction so protesting is kind of pointless and silly to begin with.
Ladies please, you’re both pathetic 12 year olds that was are all judging and hating.
Stop fighting over your stupid shit, and get in a ring together and fight it out.
Probably sumo style if I’m being stereotypical
You replied to the wrong person, good job.
I see what you’re saying, but you went off talking down about people purely because you couldn’t see what others did.
It’s got everything to do with why Saurfang was removing the armour, not just “He took off his armour, lets take ours off!”… He was going to seek an honorable death in order to redeem himself for what he clearly believes were dishonorable actions. Actions committed by himself, and the Horde as a whole, with the burning of Teldrassil under the command of Sylvanas.
It makes a lot of sense as to why people would choose that precise moment to imitate in order to ‘stand with Saurfang’ who was clearly so unhappy with a situation he found himself in. Just because you can’t see it, or you disagree, doesn’t change that.
Above response intened for ruddaga, my bad.
I am a horde player and I personally couldn’t give a rats arse that some banshee burned the “great” tree, although is there proof of her doing it? All I care about is new battlegrounds to fight other players in lol. LOK’TAR OGAR.
I will not sully the sheer awesomeness of that cinematic by referring to that troll by a name as ridiculous as “Zappy Boi”.
Bad enough there’s so many stupid immersion breaking character names in game already.
But I whole-heartedly support the Shoulders for Saurfang movement.
As much as I’ve loved Sylvanas as a character, it saddens me greatly that Blizzard have made her virtually irredeemable.
Then you are in luck. His real name is Zekhan.
At least people aren’t calling him Tusky McTuskface.
not going to lie, that seems like an awesome name for a Troll NPC lol…
That’s a whole lot better than Zappy Boi!
Where the hell did that idiotic nickname come from, anyway?
So it’s basically a slutwalk. lol
Yeah, that’ll sure show Blizzard.
You’re telling your story and not mine, waa waa wah.