Cross-faction friendships may be unorthodox, but they certainly aren’t unheard of. Jaina and Thrall have been friends since before he started calling himself Go’el. Asric and Jadaar are a pair of lesser-known but still significant “friends,” a blood elf and a draenei who seem to love to hate each other. Game mechanics prevent us from communicating with each other and they do an excellent job of keeping us divided. Ignorance breeds contempt and fear, and it’s easier to attack and kill an enemy that is strange and foreign to you. You can see the effectiveness of this when real people actually get together and squabble over faction allegiance. We all want to belong to something, and that puts us in opposition to something else.
So goes the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance; one that’s spanned continents, claimed lives, and will soon sweep a formerly neutral race into our war.
But what do you do when the enemy is known to you? What if those you face on the battlefield have ceased to become a nameless Horde or easily dismissed beasts and become an actual person? I imagine the path isn’t always so clear. It’s not an enviable position. Where do the ties of duty end and those of friendship begin? No wonder it raised eyebrows that Vid and Rades are friends – things would probably be a lot easier for them if they weren’t!
;~; noooooo Rades whyyyyyy. The black & whiteness just makes it sadder ;~;
There’s this parable about the frog and the scorpion. I’m sure you’ve heard it.
The funny thing is, I was just talking to someone about this fable yesterday! It’s one of my favorites.
So when you wonder how I can have living friends in both factions, and yet have no qualms about killing them….
THIS.
IS.
WHAT.
I.
AM.
In the beta, I found the talk with Varian as an incoming Pandaren interesting, and I imagine it is the same with the Horde, where friendships across enemy lines are not tolerated (although I am quite sure this is just a gameplay mechanic to segregate Alliance from Horde).
But how do the lines of friendship intersect with those of duty/conscience? I can understand attacking military targets and strategems, but when those you call friend support a faction that seeks to make war on you or your way of life, and when they engage in tactics that most would call reprehensible, how do friends proceed?
Thrall kept insisting Garrosh was the man (well, orc) for the job as Warchief, and now his friend Jaina has lost most everything she held dear because of Garrosh’s decisions. I can’t help but imagine there will be consequences to be faced on a personal level for Thrall.
No more mercy. No more stupidity. No more turning our back to the enemy.
The Horde will fall, as it should have long ago.
There’s also the blood elf and dwarf paladins, and the female worgen on that caravan in Eastern Plaguelands. They don’t care about each other’s race, and I wish there’d been more of them.
My Blood Elf Priest had a love affair with a Gnome Warlock in TBC. We regularly had picnics outside the Aldor bank. I miss Imnotshort :'<