First, the game isn’t selling us that. They’re telling the Alliance (briefly) that things are getting desperate, but there’s no sense of “OMG our people are dying by the boatload–we need to end this war ASAP!” in the Horde narrative.
And second, it may be bad for his people in the long run, but he’s directly responsible for killing Horde soldiers in the short run, to make a move that directly benefits Jaina and at best indirectly benefits anyone in the Horde.
Like I said, the optics are bad.
Didn’t the Alliance have to throw in a suicide squad just to trick the Horde so the Alliance could kill Rastakhan?
I can’t fathom why we needed to kill him so badly for but there it is.
If the Alliance was so mighty they would not have bothered with all that.
We needed to kill him so Talanji can rise to the throne. It is a move that has been telegraphed since Talanji was released from the stockades.
It is also a way of throwing the Alliance a bone by being allowed to take out a character that blizzard clearly wanted taken out as opposed to say Blightcaller in the Darkshore bit.
The entire thing fails to be meaningful to the Alliance cause Rastakhan didn’t mean anything to us, where as taking out Blightcaller would have been a bigger deal (even if he was rezed by a Val’kyr later) because Blightcaller actually matters.
On a tangent, what is the narrative difference between Tyrande taking out a random Val’kyr as opposed to her taking out Blightcaller and a random Val’kyr sacrificing herself to raise Blightcaller back?
The only thing I can say is at some point some characters on both sides are going to need to make some bad optics decisions to move the narrative out of this quagmire.
BoD would have worked if Rastakhan was holding this super awesome weapon that the Alliance needed and after killing him we would obtain this advantage over the Horde for the War effort.
Otherwise no one really cares about killing him besides Talanji.
Even the Horde players saw the death flags from miles away.
The point isn’t that he might well see fighting for Sylvanas as supporting genocide (that is a problem Horde players themselves have had to suffer from the beginning). The point is that, if he sees it that way, he should have handled it honorably and not agreed to fight.
Except…
Baine isn’t a secondary character in their story.
In The Shattering, they were the supporting characters in his part of the story.
In As Our Father’s Before Us, he was dealing with Garrosh inserting himself in tauren affairs–and proving him wrong.
In Tides of War, Baine’s story was about dealing with Garrosh’s leadership of the Horde.
War Crimes was about Baine being honorbound to defend Garrosh despite his hatred of him. The only interactions he has with Anduin and Jaina there are as witnesses for the accuser.
Baine’s story doesn’t revolve around Anduin and Jaina.
If there is one character that really drives Baine’s story in the novels and short story it’s actually Garrosh.
The only exception is his tiny role in Before the Storm, which was him officially cutting ties.
Except…
There’s nothing “alternate” about it and the narrative makes it explicitly clear.
In Tides of War, you have to ignore pages and pages and pages and pages of Baine butting heads with Garrosh and Malkorok trying to get his points through. Ignore Vol’jin saying all the same things. Ignore Eitrigg and others who all think exactly like he does–Garrosh is leading the Horde to ruin with his plans.
Baine’s entire role in the novel tends to get reduced to two things.
A few sentences about Taurajo.
A warning given to save civilian lives.
But that’s a flaw of the posters, not the writing.
to be fair…the assault on Dazar’alor was to forced Rastakhan to surrender…not to kill him…
but since he choose not to surrender…the order from Genn was to put him down…but since Rasta unable to handle bwonsamdi’s magic…he was in the end put down…
I really dont see how you could force him to surrender when there is help coming very shortly to help him unless we were suppose to capture him and use him as a hostage.
well…we were in his throne room…and if he won’t surrender and reinforcement did come back…he can be used as a hostage…but he choose to fight us and use bwonsamdi magic…thus resulting in his death…
Why do you keep using …?
Just use a period to end your sentence or put , if you want to put a little pause.
![:rofl:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/rofl.png?v=6" ":rofl:")
old habits die hard…![:joy:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")
Before or after aiding in moving the civilians of UC to safety?
A reprisal genocide by the Alliance would be a very real thought, the horde has pushed the Alliance enough that that could be a reality. Remember the Purge of Dalaran occurred after Theramore. So Jaina, Vereesa, Admiral Rodgers, Genn, and Alleria could all be seen as possible wildcards before adding Tyrande, Malfurion, and every other Night Elf to that list.
Saurfang was being very honorable in coming to their defense. As was Baine and Lor’themar. Even after Teldrassil I can understand why they are there.
Saurfang did not seem (to me at least) to start flaking out on Sylvanas until she broke out the blight and necromancy. By then it was clear he had another Garrosh or Blackhand as warchief.
Explain the logical behind making ALLIANCE leaders being the secondary characters supporting the background of the incoming nu Tauren leader. Don´t you think it would gad been more appropiated to make you know… Horde characters the relevant ones in this case, especially as it dealt with a lot of Horde stuff directly impacting the Tauren narrative?
He sure proved Garrosh wrong… when months after, those Quillboar ended up butchering his civilians from Taurajo.
/facepalm
Yeah, and proving to us he rathers sacrifice every man, woman and child Tauren to his utopian ideal of “peace”. Such amazing leader!!!
It IS a flaw of the writting when the writer ends up making him take action thanks to Alliance influence. His examples of “butting heads” with Garrosh et al are the same as with Sylvanas: qq a lot, do nothing.
I repeat: the moment the devs erased the Horde from Baine´s most crucial leadership event (A.K.A. the Grimtotem Rebellion and Usurpation of Thunder Bluff) and forced Alliance leaders to become the heroes of that story, was the moment they condemned Baine to play nothing but the plot device of those characters.
Alternate to the view people were proposing in their posts. Like I said, I realize that it’s the intended reading. It just doesn’t ring true, for a lot of people. I guess I can put myself in that category. Intellectually, I know it’s supposed to be subtle and admirable, but it just doesn’t resonate.
It showed that there were characters on both the Alliance and the Horde willing to help each other in a time of need.
Jaina is a character who had helped the Horde more than the Alliance at that point.
Anduin was just a tween prince, constantly arguing with his warmongering father, far from being a leader.
The factions weren’t even at war.
There were good logical reasons presented for him to go to Jaina for aid rather than one of the Horde races. Under the circumstances it made far more sense to go to Thrall’s bestie than the guy who just killed his father and maybe supported Magatha’s coup. Or risk dragging in other members of the Horde when he wasn’t sure he could trust Garrosh.
I don’t see what’s so offensive about that. Unless you just refuse to accept that anyone on Team Red can have a positive relationship with anyone on Team Blue.
Well, if he hadn’t a significant number of tauren would have left the Horde.
Of course, Garrosh would have died there and we could have avoided Cata, MoP and WoD.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Source?
His father challenged Garrosh and lost.
It would have been dishonorable to challenge Garrosh after his father already had and lost. This was explained in the novels.
He could argue with him, try to advise him or leave the Horde.
He tried the first two, he loved the Horde too much to do the last.
Baine was the hero of that story.
A few bags of gold, a mace and two polite conversations.
That was the extent of Jaina and Anduin’s involvement.
It’s not even remotely subtle.
For the Horde is pretty much Baine’s every other thought in Tides of War.
It’s fine that you don’t like it.
I just object to people pretending that we don’t see inside his head and know his thoughts and feelings about everything.
This is a forum for discussing the lore, but it’s too often ignored whenever it comes to characters/races/factions people don’t like.
It’s irksome.
I refuse to accept Horde being written as logistically unavailable and easy to discard in favor of blue team writer’s pet characters. As I said at the end the ones that reaped the benefit of such a story were both Jaina and Anduin (how so? In the case of Jaina, by proxy of deviating the attention from her owns sins and mistakes related to Cata’s Southern Barrens ofc -she made Taurajo’s possible thanks to her own ignorant take at the word “neutral”, but sure, let’s coveniently make her the hero that saved Thunder Bluff first so Baine can overlook the whole Taurajo in the first place and fulfill the anti-Garrosh agenda. In regards to Anduin, literally the previous expacs show him being ineffective at deviating his warmongering’s father interest from the war, but of course let’s make him the most influential individual in Varian’s life after this last gets magically cured of warmongering -so again, Baine’s choice to support Anduin rather than his people gets coated as the “sane” choice).
Do put yourselves in our shoes… Did you liked it when Velen was summoned in War Crimes just to end up justifying the Orcs’ genocide of his people. No?. Good. Same issue as Baine’s.
I think for me, part of what bothers me about that scenario is because it’s a larger trend. The Horde regularly is put in the position where it needs the Alliance to come clean up its internal issues because it can’t deal with its problems itself.
When the Alliance has an internal issue, they deal with it internally like they do in the book. They aren’t forced to come asking for help from the Horde.
At the time it was written, that was a great point for a story to make. Baine’s presentation is one of a lot of small pieces, each individually fine, but collectively lacking in balance. Each story of Baine choosing non-confrontation and diplomacy and being able to work with his supposed enemies is all right when taken in isolation. But when you look at the overall picture, there’s a huge hole where another important part of his character should be–the part that shows loyalty and agreement with his supposed allies and a willingness to stand up directly for the people under his care. Nobody at Blizzard seems interested in writing that side of Baine, so it functionally doesn’t exist, at this point.
Or heck, they could write the opposite–show (from his own POV, not from the reflections of someone else like Sylvanas) that he fundamentally does not belong in the Horde and wants out. Or that he actively refuses to fight, even for his people. But instead, there’s this big unaddressed void in his presentation, leaving a huge question mark hanging over that part of his character. He just doesn’t feel complete without addressing those issues.
Clearly I’m not stating this very well. I mean Baine’s approach is supposed to be subtle. Far-thinking. Small adjustments with long-reaching consequences, instead of “axe to the face.” I get that. It just doesn’t work, for me, as written.
So basically what you are saying is that your own anti-Alliance bias makes it impossible for you to accept the narrative even when it makes perfect sense for every character involved and you don’t have any sources to back up your insane claim that Baine is willing to sacrifice “every man, woman and child Tauren” for peace.
So instead you’ll just try to “win” by comparing Taurajo to something that is thousands of orders of magnitude worse (where is the highway paved with tauren bones?) and making an assumption about my opinion of Velen.
Sorry.
You fail.
Velen is one of my favorite characters precisely because he is so forgiving.
Nice try.
GG.