With some help from Hackbrew, I finally tracked down where this comes from.
Both Elegy and A Good War agree that Horde forces outnumber the NE defenders by a ratio of 8:1 in the War of Thorns. Page 31 of Elegy has this:
And page 25 of A Good War has this:
But then page 57 of A Good War has this, when the Horde forces are in Astranaar (emphasis mine):
So that’s where the 8:1 kill ratio comes from. It does include Malfurion, of course, not just the skeleton defense force.
First off, thank you for the follow-up on this Pellex.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this quite gets us there, and I erred slightly in my recounting of this, because the KD ratio that was passed around was 4:1 (otherwise the Horde would have completely wiped the invasion force). But, I’m not seeing here where that figure was established.
I get that we are establishing that more Horde would be killed (perfectly expected given the defender advantages and the complimentary terrain that the Night Elves were working in), but the precise numbers I think have been assumed for years. I don’t know if this is 4:1, 2:1, or 1.1:1.
Fair, but at least you see where the idea comes from.
I think the overarching idea it was meant to represent still holds.
I admit it was erroneous to say that the NE inflicted an 8:1 kill ratio in light of this information. However, the original point was to highlight that the Night Elves didn’t roll over and die for the Horde - that even as undertrained and overwhelmingly outmanned as they were, they still inflicted more losses than they received. While this might reasonably be expected, it doesn’t paint the Horde as some unstoppable, all-conquering juggernaut.
Rather, I think it accurately portrays the obstacles that had to be overcome in order to pull this operation off. A lot of things had to go right for this to (just barely) work.
I’d just want to point out the Garrosh paved the way for this conquest. Without him Theramore would still be standing and could reasonably be expected to have sent enough support to preveng the Horde from winning quick enough before the rest of the Alliance could help.
Heck, Sylvanas even predicted what would happen if Garrosh did a full scale night elf invasion and she knew Undercity would be the target of Alliance reprisal.
We don’t even know that Sylvanas would have pushed for an invasion of Darnassus if Theramore was still a thing.
Never had an issue with the kaldorei losing the War of Thorns, to be honest, just how it came about and that it happened at all. I have more problems with the tactics the Horde was portrayed to have than any losses the kaldorei incurred.
Sylvanas could tame some more Magnataurs if plot demands 
Just like those cross continental Horde catapults, that managed to burn down Teldrassil. They had such range only when Sylvanas was close by. During Brennadam world quest, those catapults forgot that they had such range, and the Horde had to push them 2 close to the city, where Alliance players could destroy them.
That is my point. The sheer irony that ultimately Sylvanas was just finishing the plan Garrosh started. A plan she was opposed to because it was going to bite her/the Forsaken.
Does it matter when in the end, the kill ratio was something like 100:1 favouring the Horde?
It matters in the sense that killing defenseless people doesnt make you a warrior. It just means you are a butcher.
It matters when you’re talking about whether the defenders are bad@ss or not.
The books do this, the visual presentation does not, and as I’ve stated many times - this point matters quite a bit. You can SAY something as a storyteller, like when JK Rowling casually stated in a tweet that Dumbledore was gay, but if you don’t put in the work to incorporate that into your main body of work, it looks insincere, and the audience doesn’t buy it.
Still, the thread here was to get the citation for a commonly-passed-around figure.
Indeed. In-game, however, the advance is still stopped twice by the Night Elves. That is a visual presentation of the Night Elves putting up a defense.
I am aware the point was to get the citation, and I do appreciate that it was cleared up (I had misused the figure myself) but the point I was making is that this does not disprove the original argument it was being used to make.
Yes, but not on the scale that the books portray or that people are trying to use to get us to feel better about what was a pretty brutal scenario to put any playable race community through. If you ask me, the Night Elves’ best defensive moments were in Ashenvale, which the game intentionally chose not to portray.
I think it’s more accurate to say we are pushing back against your assertion that the Horde won some massively crushing victory in the WoT that made all Horde players feel amazing about how soundly they kicked NE butt.
Nobody is saying that you have to feel good about the WoT, but just because you felt bad about it doesn’t mean it was automatically awesome for us.
My issue with this argument, and I realize that this is getting somewhat out of the scope of this conversation - is that this is frequently used as a reason for why the issues dredged up by the War of the Thorns should never be fixed.
Blizzard shouldn’t have made you do it, but this stuff gets interpreted through the faction rivalry, which ends us up with sentiments like this:
That took me less than a minute to find. The rivalry is very much there, and we need a real reply to it.
Might as well post on my Night Elf, join the crew.
Tewdee btw.
It does, if only because it shows how the narrative did everything to try and soften the blow.
It’s reaffirming that Night Elves lost because they’re a token force holding off an entire encroaching army and despite their significant number difference, they’re capable enough that they’re able to hold them off and still kill more.
In retrospect, it shows how hilariously inept the Horde is and foreshadows how Sylvanas and her plan to fracture and divide the Alliance didn’t matter.
Sylvanas wanted to divide the Alliance onto multiple fronts by using Teldrassil to splinter their unity, which works in 8.1 by having Tyrande leave and go to Darkshore with the Worgen.
What she didn’t account for is that the Horde still can’t win vs a divided Alliance and until 8.2.5 decided Sylvanas was winning, the Horde narrative was clearly portraying them as incapable of winning anything outside of their initial surprise attack against a token force.
This particular plan was presented with the presumption that the Alliance would fracture from within because Genn and his people would be outraged the Alliance would favor reclaiming Teldrassil over Gilneas baked in. Instead, Genn and the Gilneans Joined Tyrande.
Add on top of that whatever power boost the legitimate Kaldorei army got when it became the army of the Dark Moon, and the fact it seems the majority of the Wardens joined the battle? It makes sense there would be a stalemate with an army that favors Guerilla warfare and has the home field advantage.
It is also worth noting that to some degree it is likely Sylvanas had anticipated this sort of outcome. Remember she actually saw the Horde as “beasts howling for war”. She presented an opportunity for war and glory the Horde with its martial-based culture just could not pass up, knowing that it would become a meat grinder when she burnt Teldrassil down.
And I do think she from the start intended to burn it down. Capturing it does not make sense for her actual goal of causing as much death as possible. She did not really care about winning the war she was starting.
Why exactly is wrong with those sentiments within the context of the game? The first two comments seem to be weak attempts at making light of plot elements no one likes and the latter comment seems to be a complaint about tone deaf game mechanics.
They aren’t personal attacks on Night Elf players, nor are they an attempt to refute any changes those players might like to make to the plot.