I thought about this but didn’t think it was that weird. Very few villains in fiction aren’t incompetent to a certain degree.
The first time probably seemed like a fluke, so they went back and put it on the backburner for 10000 years. Second time they were all ready, they had a new weapon - the Scourge, to be sure.
Somehow it failed, so they get serious about it, trying to secure Outland and summon Kil’jaedan through the Sunwell and so on.
So I went back and watched this again.
The orcs in the 3rd mission are aggressive, and attack first. They make no attempt at parleying, or brokering a truce.
The humans in the 4th mission are very much in the way of the Elves, and deep into Night Elf land. If you encounter a hostile indigenous population, disregard their aggressive behaviours and press further on, you have no one to blame but yourself.
See: the very real, recent incident where the young American man tried to spread the word of the Bible to the inhabitants of Andaman and Nicobar islands. See how it ended. That is how the world works.
Tyrande is a lot of things, among that unpleasant, but she is almost always justified IMO.
They made plenty of attempts in the interim ten thousand years. That’s why the Council of Tirisfal was founded, to combat the demons who were still getting here the same old way, through arcane magic.
They never really change tactics, much. Just open portals, and zerg rush a planet. Kil’jaedan even tried using a large arcane well as a portal for the second time, later on. It just took ten thousand years for Sargeras to get fed up with how good Azerothians are at shutting down portals, and start playing 4d chess with Aegwynn, Medivh, and the Orcs.
And even then, his plan boiled down to, Summon orcs, have them zerg rush the planet.
Yeah. I kind of felt I had to include them in bringing up Medivh. But really, the whole “fake losing, so I can corrupt an unborn child” was the big shake up in the plan.
I wish there were a bot that would automatically add this at the start of every thread or post about how awful or stupid some race/culture/character/character choice is. Just as a reminder.
The Night Elves had already attacked first without any attempt at communication. By the 3rd mission, it is obvious that they are hostile.
And they were within their rights to do so… I am confused! What are you getting at?
What originally spawned this was the position that Tyrande is impulsive or something. Except, in the event of attacking the orcs and humans, she was very justified. Not sure why this forum likes to downplay Cenarius’ murder, and Grommash’s orcs running around rampaging through Ashenvale.
TBH, the only place I have found Tyrande “impulsive” was her affair of freeing Illidan. Otherwise, I find her actions very understandable.
And even with Illidan she was right. The Burning Legion wrecked EK and was now marching through Kalimdor to destroy the World Tree to use the powers of the new well to summon Sargeras.
Tyrande knew Illidan was the perfect weapon against the legion and yes it was a risky move considering how unpredictable he is but the world was literally ending. It was really a matter of using Illidan to stop the legion and then worry for tomorrow and tbh without him the legion’d have won or at least would have been way harded to defeat.
He managed to defeat Tichondrius and close those portals in that were flooding Felwood with endless waves of demons.
When the world is ending right in front of your eyes you don’t stop and wonder possible consequences in the long run because there is the real possibility that there won’t even be a tomorrow to begin with. Tryande made the call that eventually gave them the chances needed to stop the legion.
Even if releasing Illidan backedfired later at least that choice served its purpose and saved the day.
So for me that’s not being reckless or hotheaded, it’s fast planning in a dire and critical situation that demands questionable actions for the greater good (aka saving Azeroth from being blown up to pieces).
The Night Elves were definitely not “within their rights” to start murdering people before even trying to communicate with them. You then allude to a bunch of things that happen after the Night Elves initiate hostilities.
The Orcs and Humans didn’t even know the Night Elves existed at the start of that campaign.
They were and so were the Amani even if it is not what they should have done. Those people were foreigners desecrating the lands they lived and hunted in.
I just watched the Orc campaign video where Cenarius joins the fight. He says “I defeated your kind in ages past and will do so again” and he also said “demon spwaned wretches, you will all die”. The fact that Cenarius related the Orcs to the Legion and its demons is telling. He probably told the Elves with him that he sensed the fel within in them and that they had to go.
Whether or not Tyrande sensed the fel in them or knew about it is irrelevant at that point because they had already killed Cenarius, Night elves and the furblogs.
The fact is that the Orcs were fel tainted and the Night Elves had dealt with that once and refused to do so again. If anything the Orcs slaughter in Ashenvale is a direct connection to their poor choices in the past. Let’s not act as if they hadn’t swen chaos on Azeroth for the last decade or so.
Are you gauging this off of present day Earth laws and customs or something else? If the Night Elves considered a foreign race encroaching on their lands intrusive and responded with violence, who is to say they are wrong? The humans and orcs? Why would their laws apply to the Night Elves?
You are not stating the situation accurately.
The Night Elves attacked without any attempt at communication, when they were not under immediate threat.
This is wrong by just about any ethical system you care to name.
Imagine if I own a huge piece of property. It’s not clearly defined as such - there are no fences or anything - but I definitely own it. Still, to anyone who doesn’t know that, it just looks like another piece of land.
One day, I observe strangers on my land, cutting down trees. I don’t communicate with them in any way. I use my sniper rifle to shoot them.
There is no court anywhere in the world where I would not be guilty of murder. There is no reasonable ethical system where what I did is okay. If you read about the case, you would assume, correctly, that I was a psychopath.
It is not okay to murder people who have no idea, and no way of knowing, that they have even done something wrong. I don’t think this is a difficult moral concept to grasp.
They judged their lands were under threat by observing the actions of the Orcs.
But I wouldn’t expect Canadians, Americans or Australians to care about the idea of a peoples sovereignty over the lands they inhabit! ![:blush:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/blush.png?v=6" ":blush:")
You’re example makes sense only for humans. Any human would know basic laws and ethical issues.
Night elves are a different race with different cultural background. And to top that they based their aggresion on the fact that these orcs were filled with demonic essence so at least Night elves, if mistaken, had a reason to act that way.
Looking at it from the other side of the coin. Why didn’t the orcs try to talk to the elves? Maybe show a white flag and try to expalin they meant no harm. But no they had to go drink more demon blood so they could keep on rampaging anything in their path. They were already in a whole different continect so at the very least they should have considered that not every bit of land in front of them was theirs for the taken.
Perhaps it’s because I’m graced to live in a state with some very generous leeway with stand your ground laws and castle doctrine, as well as an incident a couple years ago where I discussed at length with my local sheriff what I was, and was not, allowed to do with fur trappers trespassing on my land and setting traps along my creek for beavers (because that’s still a thing, apparently?). But, I can honestly say I find the Night Elves to be 110% in the right, by any metric I measure their actions by, legal, moral, etc.
(The Amani as well, as a different example, but I suppose that’s a different thread.)
Feel the amani had a greater right then night elves do to the fact the high elves settled on a holy site, but yeah. I don’t really hold the orcs as in the wrong for entering a forest they didn’t know was inhabited then retaliating when the night elves attacked them (Especially since they dealt with the botani on draenor) though i do hold grom’s idiocy in drinking pit fiend kool aid against him. The Night Elves responding by killing the newcomers before properly scouting them out seems impulsive, but hey, the night elves tend to rush along with things in general, and I highly doubt grom would have left when asked.
For me, i think the night elven scouts are more to blame for the fact tyrande attacked the humans and orcs early on in the night elven campaign then anything else.
It’s really awkward to read those lines again after Knaak’s WotA ![:sweat_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/sweat_smile.png?v=6" ":sweat_smile:")
Cenarius crafted a magical axe for the very same fel tainted Green Orc and Tyrande was fond to him in partilucar, even kissed his arm to heal him. Then in Stormrage novel, Tyrande also gets teary-eyed when his name is mentioned.
But WC3 Cenarius’s dialogues are like as if he never met an Orc before. It should be really hard to forget that fel tainted big green creature who sliced Sargeras. I wonder if Reforged will change those lines for Knaak’s canon or just ignore them.