World Of Warcraft

Thanks for completely ignoring my post, Monsund. This is why it's pointless having you in the thread, because you consistently fail to engage in any sort of honest discussion, just repeating the exact same complaints over and over.

It's the literal definition of a bad-faith debating strategy.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 26th 2019 at 3:29:14 PM

Post-War Campaign Alliance ambient dialogue is painting an interesting picture. Some Alliance soldiers are thankful the war's over, others believe that they should have continued the fighting since the rest of the Horde was just as responsible for Teldrassil as Sylvanas was. Some Night Elves are embittered by Anduin making peace with the Horde, others just want to move on and rebuild their lives. Some blame the Horde as whole, others acknowledge that Sylvanas was the true problem and are confidant Tyrande will bring her to justice. Anduin mourns Saurfang, Alleria is shown to feel guilty over how many people she and the Alliance as a whole have killed, and Jaina acknowledges that working alongside the Horde after years of bitter anger indeed felt good. Alleria and Jaina both acknowledge that the war ending was a blessing, as now both factions can focus on N'Zoth. Shandris admits that she's going to try to move past her anger and give the Night Elves the guidance they need.

Edited by SomeNewGuy on Sep 26th 2019 at 1:55:16 AM

Fighteer: Moral parity isn't required, but I didn't start this game intending to play the villain faction. WC 3 was in very large part the Horde's redemption story while showing the flaws of the Alliance with Daelin, Garithos and other poor leaders. Then with Cataclysm the story started shifting back to good Alliance, bad Horde and I've always hated it. Even the Alliance leaders who are morally dubious like post Theramore Jaina and Moira aren't portrayed nearly as badly as the Horde's villains.

Honestly, I welcome the idea of Genn and Tyrande being unable to accept the peace. I want Alliance leaders who are wrong sometimes.

You made a choice using incomplete information. The Horde papered over its flaws with Thrall's leadership, but never truly addressed them. What you imagined the Horde to be was part of the magnificent lie that Saurfang talks about. You want the Alliance to be flawed? It most definitely is, but it didn't drink demon blood. It didn't build a road paved with Draenei corpses. It didn't sack Stormwind. It didn't destroy Theramore. It didn't burn Teldrassil. It didn't use the Plague against its own troops. Despite this, the spirit of the Horde lived on in leaders like Saurfang and Thrall, and now it looks like we might finally have a chance to see their visions come to pass.

This is an unmitigated good for you.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 26th 2019 at 7:35:31 AM

Theramore and Teldrassil are completely irrelevant to my point and the other point was what the Horde was seeking redemption for in the first place! No, I don't expect the Alliance to forgive them immediately and it was a struggle, but the point I was making was that by the end of FT the Horde and Alliance were on something approaching equal moral standing. I didn't like when the writers torpedoed that with developments that you now take for granted and retroactively count against them.

The Alliance has plenty of old crimes of its own. Azshara and Illidan, Daelin and Garithos, Blackmoore, Moira etc but they don't get constantly slammed for their actions anymore.

Edited by Arha on Sep 26th 2019 at 9:10:20 AM

It's really not fair at all to use Azshara and Illidan as examples of the Alliance wrongdoings when neither one was ever part of the Alliance. Just because they were both night elves at one point doesn't mean their actions should have any wieght in determining bad things the Alliance has done. It's just like Anduin citing Arthas as a bad stain on the Alliance when most of the evil stuff he did was when he was no longer in the Alliance.

Most actual Alliance atrocities in lore are usually mitigated by some decent, sympathetic reasoning. Things like Camp Taurajo are mitigated on the Alliance side like General Hawthorne going out of his way to let civilians escape and executing humans looters that were defiling the bodies. Daelin's actions, while ultimately wrong, were still partly vindicated by how the Horde acted throughout the First and Second Wars and later on. Even the internment camps, which many people love to point out, were the kindest thing the Alliance could do with the orcs post Second War.

Though, to give the Horde some defense, I will point out that Theramore at least was a legitmate military target that was funneling military support into the Barrens. Garrosh, as a military leader, was quite justified in destroying, especially since this was in the middle of a war, and even allowed all the civilians to leave the city. Sylvanas, on the other hand, fully started the war after the uneasy peace in Legion with her attack on Teldrassil and went out of her way to attempt genocide on the civilian population.

Edited by LoreDeluxe on Sep 26th 2019 at 9:49:50 AM

Fine, let's give the night elves a pass for Azshara. I think it's an arguable point given that she still helps show night elves at their worst and that in the past they've been no better than orcs, but fine, let's not count it since it was long before night elves, humans and orcs interacted. I am still holding Tyrande slaughtering Illidan's guards against her, launching almost completely unprovoked lethal attacks on the Horde and Alliance as well as Illidan consuming the Skull of Gul'dan out of a lust for power. He was still affiliated with the night elves when that happened and all three WCIII races had met by that point.

My overall point is that when WoW started, the Horde and Alliance both had great villains and great heroes. The Horde and Alliance were not villains and heroes back then. That is a later development and one I do not care for. Actions like Sylvanas burning Teldrassil and using the plague on her own troops are indefensible. Garrosh's warmongering in wotlk, Cataclysm and MoP was villainy of its own. Meanwhile, Alliance potential villain threads like Varian and later Jaina turning into extremists or Moira planning revenge on Ironforge don't really go anywhere, meaning the writers chose to make one side the bad guys when neither one had to be or both could have been to blame. But it's not like that. Instead, the side I consider more sympathetic slowly got turned into a bunch of violent thugs.

Anyway, I hold the internment camps as a point in the Alliance's favor. They could have easily killed every orc but instead chose to imprison them and figure out what the hell was going on with them. Some people were even trying to cure them of their bizarre lethargy.

Edit: Very tired and I feel like I'm not making as much sense as I'd like right now.

Edited by Arha on Sep 26th 2019 at 12:20:22 PM

I'm one of those people that really like to defend Garrosh, if only because I fell in love with his portrayal during the Stonetalon Mountains finale. That's who I consider the perfect kind of leader for the Horde. Someone who is willing to punish his own for committing atrocities during wartime, but still be willing to fight for his people out of love and respect during war. He had the potential to be a more ruthless Thrall but still value the honor and respect that exemplifies the most positive aspects of the Orcs. His characterization during Cataclysm is what I think of as "morally gray" that Blizzard always hyped up, but I guess we needed a villain for Mo P.

Gonna be honest here, until about ten minutes ago I had no clue that Jaina kind of brought the destruction of Theramore on herself. I have literally never heard anyone mention that it was an active aggressor and that Garrosh wasn't just being an asshole.

Mhm, so that's one point of villainy I'm willing to take off the Horde checklist.

Edited by Arha on Sep 26th 2019 at 12:30:23 PM

@LoreDeluxe: Honestly, the fact that Stonetalon Garrosh was apparently written off as a writers' misstep is one of the biggest issues I had with everything after Cata, because yeah, there was the potential for a truly great leader for the Horde there. Brutal, but honorable. But they made it clear that that wasn't what they wanted.

Here's a link to the Cataclysm era map of Dustwallow Marsh◊. Take particular notice of that new giant road, called the Theramore Highway, that leads from Theramore directly to the Barrens. It's littered with tanks and other vehicles in game and is the main way the Alliance was able to funnel their military into southern Kalimdor. This is all during the middle of the war so Theramore was a legit military target and Garrosh would have been stupid to leave it alone. Frankly, Jaina has no right to call herself neutral during the war as she was an active member of the Alliance war effort even then.

Edited by LoreDeluxe on Sep 26th 2019 at 10:50:41 AM

Yeah now I'm kind of confused as to why people think Garrosh did something wrong. In that very specific situation. Theramore attacked the Horde, so he blew it up. Man, now I have even more contempt for Jaina. Until this point I'd thought her anger was pretty justified because I thought Theramore was kind of staying out of things, but with Theramore actively sending in troops and supplies they should have expected a counterattack.

Edited by Arha on Sep 26th 2019 at 12:52:29 PM

A few reasons.

It was a drastic example of a shock-tactic overkill, and while a lot of non-combatants did escape, civilians were still caught up in it. One of these was Jaina's new apprentice, a young mage she cared for, who wasn't just killed, her body stayed intact until Jaina was scouring the ruins and touched it, then it turned to dust in her hands. THAT was what caused her to finally have her big pyschotic break. The civilian evacuation also ONLY happened because Baine betrayed Garrosh by warning Jaina something far worse than a simple battle was coming, if he hadn't, everyone in there regardless of innocence or fighting prowess would have been bombed.

It was built by treachery and betrayal of a neutral party. The Blue Dragons' focusing Iris was stolen by a faction of Blood Elves that wanted to prove the superiority of their technology in wartime as a way to curry Garrosh's favor. Also, the reason things happened the way they did was because of a Blood Elf spy posing as a defector, which is why the theft of the Divine Bell lead to the Purge of Dalaran, even disregarding Jaina's insanity at the time, that was the second time showing a blood elf leniency backfired and resulted in someone she cared for being hurt (Theramore being bombed, and Anduin being flatted by Garrosh smashing him into the bell).

Garrosh was leading a march down there of soldiers, as far as the Alliance was concerned, they were about to have a scuffle that was as "Honorable" as one could expect, instead Garrosh surprised them with the mana bomb while most of the soldiers readying for the battle were still in the city.

Garrosh DRASTICALLY underestimated what he was doing. The reason the devastation was halted was because Rhonin (who was acting as a neutral party in this because he knew how bad it would be) committed a Heroic Sacrifice to barrier the explosion in. The destruction was so magically-destabilizing it erased the very possibility of Theramore existing, even in alternate timelines it just... blinked out. Also the explosion would have been big enough that most of that side of Kalmidor would have been turned into a magically irradiated crater, even Orgrimmar could have been damaged by it.

You can't quote me on this because I'm not sure, but I think this was the first time that WoW had a faction use a WMD period, it is a pretty accurate representation of the first time a Nuke was dropped, nobody except the creators were prepared for just what was about to happen, even some Horde were left completely slack-jawed and horrified by it (and, fitting with Garrosh heel-turn to tyranny, were executed either by him or their superiors for "weakness").

Edited by NaraNumas on Sep 26th 2019 at 1:53:24 PM

It was war and Jaina gave the Alliance a port where they were invading freaken Durotar, Ratchet and Camp T... It was completely a military target and used a Fantastic Nuke.

And even called ahead to have them evacuate the civilians. They even avoided Northwatch and the actual frontlines which where the alliance were expected to marshal their forces. The Horde did everything to make sure the city would be empty.

The US didn't even do that when it nuked Japan.

Actually, the US *did* warn Japan before dropping the bombs. We even went so far as to rain down fliers on Hiroshima and Nagasaki telling Japan that their cities would be nuked out of existence if they didn't surrender. They didn't listen.

You know, something that doesn't really add up with this whole retcon that Sylvanas planned the Wrath Gate... why would she sabotage the single best effort that had ever been made to kill Arthas, at his front door? Like, sure, maybe drop the new plague IN Icecrown Citadel, or hell, target the Argent Tournament (though I guess the Tournament was only started because of the re-break in hostilities, but that is still kind of dumb even ten years later). But unless literally everything Sylvanas has done since WCIII has been a carefully orchestrated act and none of her character has mattered... it seems like a needlessly sweeping retcon.

She could of gotten overconfident and thought the new plague would just flatout kill Arthas along with the Alliance and Horde, thus scaring both actions well enough to leave the Forsaken and her alone? I am not entirely sure really.

Sylvanas did actually nearly kill Arthas once before, the only reason she didn't was because Kel'Thuzad saved him at the last second.

Anyway, theorycrafting time:

So we now know that Sylvanas struck a bargain with Azshara to start this war, not on N'Zoth's order (as far as she's concerned he's a means to an end), and that whoever her shady benefactor is, they want a whole lot of people dead.

Meanwhile, Bwonsamdi and his boss wanted her dead. Bolvar doesn't trust her motives either.

What if there's a kind of civil war brewing in the Shadowlands? On the one hand, custodians of the dead who just want souls to fuel their existence, versus a sort of nihilistic 'all must die' being?

The thing is, it's impossible to prove a negative. There is no way to counter the argument that Sylvanas was always just acting and it was always just part of her plan, because she could just have been acting that well all along. So it's impossible to say for sure.

Theramore was an unconscionable act, period. Garrosh could have attacked the city with conventional military force. He could have demanded Jaina cease using it as a military port. As was stated, only Baine's act of conscience (and Rhonin's sacrifice) prevented the mana bomb from killing half the continent.

No, Garrosh was not "justified", any more than Jaina herself was justified in the Purge of Dalaran, or would have been justified by flooding Orgrimmar. That's a grotesque defense of genocide, and I'm not drawing any RL comparisons because that is never appropriate.

Garrosh had reasons for what he did, granted. Those reasons were based in the same lie about the honor of the Horde that Saurfang talks about in the cinematic. Whether he believed himself to be doing right is not relevant.

For Sylvanas' part, it is not necessary that she "planned this all out", nor that she has consistently had the same motivations throughout her history. She's evolved as a character over the years, just as everyone else has. You can make sense of this from a Watsonian or Doylist perspective and it's fine either way.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 27th 2019 at 6:44:04 AM

Huh? The player is involved in several campaigns just trying to contain the alliance let alone go on the offensive. After Camp T the Tauren are in disarray and Baine chickens out walling off the mulgore and exiling any who wish to fight.

Southern Barrens is just a complete disaster. The Alliance northwatch quests show how desperate the Horde are getting there trying to defend Ratchet in the north too.

There is no way a ground offensive was possible. Meanwhile more and more alliance forces just pore into Theramore each passing day.

Was it overkill, yes. Was it unintentionally too powerful /shrug considering what the Mana Bombs Kael used in TBC, probably.

Edited by Memers on Sep 27th 2019 at 4:12:55 AM

Here's another thing that Sylvanas did in Cataclysm: Unleashing plauge bombs on Southshore.

Wait, Sylvanas planned for the new plague to be used in Wrath Gate now?

... Does that mean Varimathras and Lord Putruss weren't working for the Legion, but were ordered to act like it for Sylvanas? Were they really working for the Legion, and Sylvanas knew that with the new plague they'd go rogue? Was Sylvanas also working with the Burning Legion, albeit discretely? And in any instance here, why wouldn't either of them rat out Sylvanas?

I'm not the right person to ask that question, but I thought that had been said at some point in the thread - that Putress was working on her orders and she threw him under the bus. Or at least, that's what it was retconned to. But you'll have to ask someone else for confirmation.