It should be noted that the Alliance did “win”; they were just denied the prize from it. Scorched Earth Tactics are a sign that you have failed in defending your territory. You have admitted that you cannot hold your own keep or land, and you simply destroy it rather than allow it to aid the enemy. But doing so doesn’t change the reality that you failed to defend it in the first place.
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It was that or let the Alliance capture it. May not have been the victory the Alliance wanted but it certainly wasn’t a victory for the Horde.
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I agree that Nathanos is a good moment, and for fairness sake I’ll run through the counterarguments you presented.
“It’s too little too late”
I think it’s too little to be called sufficient - particularly when we put it in context of that injury being done during another largely insufficient (although not COMPLETELY flawed) attempt to make things up. That said, you could absolutely use this in support of the idea that better things are planned for Tyrande at least.
“it’s what he wanted all along”
I can’t say I agree. Shadowlands deserves some credit for establishing that death does have permanence, and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of Nathanos since. You’d think if he mattered, Sylvanas would have recovered him. Him saying that it meant nothing I think is his optimism talking, but I don’t get the feeling that Sylvanas is going to make things up for him.
… and now I have Rosenrot stuck in my head.
“Nathanos actually won because he was smarmy to Tyrande”
As irksome as his smarminess is, I disagree with this.
“Now, for sure Blizzard thinks we got our revenge.”
Ardenweald contradicts this. That said, the Shani comment RE: Darkshore is where I think this criticism becomes more sound. There’s a reason my discord has as its icon, a picture of George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech with Tyrande’s head superimposed over his.
“Blizzard still hates Night Elves”
It still feels that way, yes - at least from some corners of the dev team. In the wake of BFA it feels like a more mixed bag overall.
“But we’re never going to get Sylvanas”
At this point I feel that her fate is impossible to predict.
If you agree with that sentiment than no amount of data driven anything is going to change your outlook on the race.
I will quote this directly - but I think this ignores that these things have a magnitude to them. If I lose a million dollars, and get fifty-thousand back, the IRS and every accounting standard setting body on the planet would agree that such is an overall loss. Pointing to a singular event like that (and bear in mind, I disagree that characters are the end-all be all here - see my prior post about how I think MMOs should be constructed for more context on that) doesn’t completely resolve things. Is it moving the ball down the field? Yes, a little, but it’s not a first down yet, let alone a touchdown.
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I can remember when I could count on those three saving my newbie self on the road from Dolanaar to Darnassus. alas they got recoded long ago so that doesn’t happen any more.
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Wait wait wait. Not the alliance destroy the most parts of tirisfal. Uc, oky, i could agree, but tirisfal was sylvanas fault
The reason to be optimistic is that no matter what their situation, the Night Elves will continue to be a key asset to the Alliance and part of the ongoing story. if your optimisim is predicated on a happy ending… that’s not how Warcraft rolls for ANYBODY.
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Right, thats what Scorched Earth Tactics are. Its the defender, who realizes they do not have the power to properly defend their holdings, actively destroying those holdings first so their opponents can not use them. Sylvanas using such tactics may have denied the Alliane their prize, but it was still a sign of loss. Because the Horde could not win at Lordaeron, she simply destroyed Lordaeron.
EDIT: One of the most prolific examples of this happening in history was the Russian’s burning of Moscow in 1812, to deny its resources to Napoleon and his armies.
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Yes, I think so. Seriously.
Looking at the allied races, it’s kind of amazing how many of them took over what was the intended schtick of an original race (Nightborne for Blood Elves in the magic and politicking, Void Elves for Night Elves in the sense of being the edgy ones who hold nothing back) or are basically the original race “but more so” (LF Draenei, HM tauren, arguably mechagnomes). The only thing that’s unusual about the Zandalari taking on a lot of NE themes is that it’s cross-faction.
I think it started back when Death Knights came in and took over themes that had previously belonged to the Forsaken, although that is also an unusual case because they were a class.
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Lordaeron felt at so many moments pointless and stupid. I will not enter or continiu this topic further.
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I really wish we would do the next expansion with everything reversed, roles, loses etc… even if i dont play it it would be amusing to watch.
Good for you that you can think that way.
Ok first of all nobody said anything about a happy ending, i think we all just want a good story, also consider this, my power fantasy is destroyed, why should i care or be invested about that story if i dont see any hope it will get better?
Same thing i feel for the forsaken players that were invested in their race but instead got calia front and center, i dont think thats why they signed up for when they rolled forsaken.
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I think Karserd already covered this, but I don’t see the point in defending the status quo that most corners of the fanbase agree is bad.
Video games at the end of the day are supposed to be fun. This whole experience is not fun. It’s grueling, its demoralizing, and it’s making people cynical. Hence it needs to change.
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I feel like I’m missing entire sections of the conversation that I myself am a part of?
Scorched Earth Tactics are a thing, most famously used by Russians during the Napoleonic War to deny Napoleon and his armies their prize of Moscow … because the Russians capitulated it was a loss before the battle even began and acted accordingly. Thus, Scorched Earth Tactics at Lordaeron follow the same metric. Its Sylvanas essentially admitting defending the city is a wash, and simply denying the Alliance their prize. Its still an Alliance victory tho.
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It is, but it was framed differently, with the ending point being that this was part of Sylvanas’s plan and that she’s still in control. It wasn’t presented as a tragedy, and the game doesn’t really try to get you to care about it as a moment of loss.
… I’m going to try to resist commenting on how bonkers the logistics were for this mess as well. Like, you mean to tell me that Anduin is going to source an amphibious landing from two different corners of the map, no one is going to attack his ships, and they’re going to supply and land an army complete with massive siege towers up there? What was their plan for supplying the occupation force?
Well, I guess that failed…
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if i apply your logic then darkshore+lordanel+teldrassil was an even bigger and bombastic victory, and you guys did all of it, why couldnt we do the same? if it was an alliance victory why did sylvanas blew up the city?
I personally find Lordaeron one of the most unsatisfying and stupid scenarios ever, so I am clearly biased there, because I am biased there, I will let this topic rest as I will never be able to be neutral regarding the Battle of Undercity.
Personally I’m just thankful for the parts of Shadowfang Keep accessible in the overworld. Pretty barren but that’s just an empty canvas if you approach right.
Thankfully my community has been pretty creative playing around with what’s left. But the phasing really knee caps possibilities. Both Gilneas and the Sludge Fields seem almost designed for WPvP what with narrow entry lanes and vantage points with overlapping fields of fire.
But if you’ve done any of the quests associated with those areas, tough luck. Because you’re in a version of it the Alliance has no means of viewing.
As I’m sure any four year old could inform them, a big part of the appeal of a sandbox is making your own fun. And we’ve been successful at that at points. But I think Bizz’s meddling could best be summed up in Arathi where we were trying to do our own RPPvP thing with the Defiler occupied farmstead, and it proved impossible because we could not get everyone on the same shard.
This is a zone where I fondly remember having really epic battles in Stromgarde’s ruins. The place was made less fun by Blizzard trying to turn it into an actual war zone, somehow.
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Did I discuss framing? What are we talking about right now? All I was arguing is that in fact Lordaeron was an Alliance victory. The very fact that Sylvanas defaulted to Scorched Earth Tactics means that by default she’s admitting that there was no way for the Horde to hold the city and it was a wash. It was an Alliance victory, they were just denied their reward for that.
As to your other point. Blizz has never ever portrayed a Horde tragedy as an actual tragedy. Not with Taurajo, where even Horde reps are claiming its a valid military target and more effort was put into absolving the perpetrator of that event than focusing on the event itself. Not the Purge of Dalaran, where to-date the only character to actually beg for forgiveness was the leader of the victims … Aethas.
Blizz never frames Horde “tragedies” as tragedies.
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It was as well - I think what gets lost in these attempts at reframing though is that we tend to take one element and act as though it undoes the other.
The Undercity absolutely was an Alliance victory. It has some asterisks, but it still ends with the Alliance in control in the region (granted, for fifteen seconds), and has that Jainatastic moment where she presses an “I WIN” button and well, does that.
Yet, yes, the Alliance has plenty of reasons to be unsatisfied. Anduin looks like an idiot in full cinematic glory. For the people most affected by Teldrassil, Lordaeron is a giant sideshow, and Sylvanas comes off looking like she got the better of the faction despite losing. All of these points understood: they do not undo that Lordaeron was a victory - and at least showed that the Alliance was able to do this (albeit, on absurd logic and by sheer force of Jaina).
In that same token, yes, the War of the Thorns was absolutely a Horde victory. Do Horde players have plenty of reasons to be unsatisfied? You bet. Very few people are saying by this point that this constituted GOOD Horde content, just content where they were portrayed as getting this big crushing win.
We need to be able to separate and allocate these elements if we are to have a hope of understanding the elements that need to be corrected, because usually these bags are mixed and end up creating lopsided situations that get obscured when we try to do things like raise a relatedness issue to “cancel out” a competence issue.
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The Purge of Dalaran is always strange to me. I don’t really think you can go with “they started it” over an ethnic cleansing.
Whole things weird though. I learned about both the Purge and Theramore’s destruction from the story forums. Because it never came up once while leveling. Theramore is still very much there for me on every toon as I’ve never been directed to do the quest for it.
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I really wish Blizzard would publicly acknowledge how horrible BfA was. The Night Elf RP community is dead. My guild was one of the few guilds still active during BFA, and that activity dwindled to a nearly dead halt by the end.
Even with SLs, not much has changed. With almost every expansion, my guild experiences a massive influx of new members and activity. This is the first expansion since our founding (Early MoP), where that hasn’t been the case.
Honestly, whether we like it or not, BFA will be with us forever. It has left it’s mark on the game and we can’t ever hope to undo it. The Night Elves and Forsaken no longer have a Capitol City, because of BFA. Every time a Night Elf player chooses the black-eye option, that is BFA. Every Allied race we might see running by, that is BFA.
Even moving forward into SL, an entirely different expansion… It’s entire story is built upon the foundations of BFA. And Blizzard is so far removed from the playerbase… We can expect them to double down on plot points they established in this universally hated expansion. We have already seen them do it. The Burn-scars as a cosmetic option for night elves… Which is titled “Teldrassil”. The potential of a Sylvanas redemption story. Danuser even called the end of BFA “Brillant” and he is still writing for SL.
I don’t want to be defeatist or pessimistic, but we really have no reason to expect anything to change or get better going forward. Not until Blizzard acknowledges just how horrific BFA was, and make some sweeping changed to their writing style and staff.
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