I dunno, I don’t see an issue with murdering a bunch of undead who would plague bomb an entire innocent population the first chance they get
Which the forsaken have a long history of doing.
And mind you, I’m not against both sides working together, but as Aviala said, long as a genocide hangs over the story, it’s just going to fall flat otherwise. And blizz does need to retcon the worst of it to make any future developments work
this was before they had done anything even close to this. at that point their only crime was being undead, unless you count Garithos’s death, which I don’t lmao
Garithos deserved his fate. 
But what’s the source?
Only one I know of says it isn’t clear what happened to the ambassadors.
Basically how I feel.
I don’t like the faction war. Never have and never will. But the burning of Teldrassil was like, 6 years ago in universe? That wound is way too fresh. Even if there is peace now no night elf should be okay with the Horde going near their home after committing genocide only 6 years ago, especially when the only reason this new home needs to exist is because of the Horde in the first place.
I like that the NPCs are neutral and there’s that debuff for Horde players saying we’re being watched, but ideally we shouldn’t be allowed in at all. There is no way citizens are okay with us just walking around this place. Give it a couple generations and sure, but this soon?
How many years before we can move on from it? I just want to know what time skip I should be pushing for.
I don’t know, but not single digits. That’s practically yesterday.
Yeah, agreed.
Largely terrible character writing on Blizzard’s part because they were uninterested in writing anything substantial.
Agreed.
Well that’s kind of my point by saying we can’t just paint a large overarching idea of every single “Horde race” as being responsible for this.
There can be hatred of particular Orcs/Undead/etc., what I don’t think there should be is continuous warfare and KOS policy on people who happen to be of those races walking into Bel’ameth.
I largely agree with this.
I was never really arguing the veracity of this as a good way to settle a plot that involves ‘genocide’, mostly that it makes vaguely enough sense to happen story-wise.
…and that having Horde visit or pass through Alliance-controlled cities or settlements isn’t a big deal.
Feel like atm the more unrealistic thing is that I as an Orc hero and adventurer can’t just visit Stormwind.
Like, literally why not.
We’re not in active war, so there’s no real issue with an adventurer visiting Stormwind who just happens to be born a particular race.
I’m struggling not to draw real world parallels with this because of how charged these subjects can be.
But countries which have been established as a response to genocide have happened within a smaller timeframe, some of them with positive relations with the nations that perpetrated that genocide (due to regime change or what have you) or at least a relationship wherein they’re not in active or total war with that other country.
So the six year timeframe isn’t all too unrealistic for this, honestly.
If I’m veering to something too charged to talk about I’ll delete the post, but I just wanted to quickly make this point.
It is weird to me how people want WoW characters to be racist. Which is what it certainly seems like.
“Two basically neutral tauren and a (insert Horde race) adventurer who has literally done more than Malfurion to help the night elf people these last four years than Malfurion are allowed into a city as suspect visitors? Nope, that makes no sense at all whatsoever!! The actions of a person matter less than what race they are born into!!”
Yeah, that’s generally why I’m fine moving on from it now. I don’t believe it’ll ever be soon enough to move on for people that have that issue. It is just this ephemeral amount of time.
That said, I’d be totally fine if Blizzard did a ten year time skip so we’d be at 16+ years.
The Horde player directly contributed to the burning. We followed Sylvanas every step of the way through Ashenvale and Darkshore. This isn’t just guilt by wearing a red tabard.
Tbf, not if you just… didn’t do that questing experience lol.
I’ve tried to avoid bringing up real world examples too, both because of the charged topic as you say, and because I’m sadly underinformed about it. I think we should be careful when broaching real world topics so I don’t want to get too deep into it, but I think there’s a difference between having peaceful ties between nation-states and German soldiers visiting as tourists in Warsaw a handful of years after.
Again, treading carefully here lol.
It’s less ‘German soldiers’ and more ‘ethnic Germans visiting Warsaw’ in this scenario.
Not every member of the Horde is a soldier, and not every Horde player character participated in War of Thorns or the war during BfA.
And because factional membership is based largely on race and ethnicity in Warcraft (which I hate btw) that would seem to be the more apt parallel, since we’re dealing with the idea of allowing “”“horde races”“” into Bel’ameth not necessarily a Horde military presence or Horde soldiers.
Like, keep in-mind that the player character is most often an adventurer/mercenary type rather than being an actual general or soldier within the Horde or Alliance’s military apparatus (particularly within Dragonflight as an expansion, wherein your character acts as more of an adventurer and independent agent more than we’ve typically seen in past expansions).
In the case of non-soldiers I really don’t have a problem. I don’t take issue with Hamuul and Bashana being there, and I think Hamuul’s dialogue is actually quite nice.
My issue is really when people personally involved in the inciting incidents are being allowed in. In the player’s case, we can say “well not everyone did the War of Thorns quests” but the game generally does assume you do every quest. So when someone so key to the Horde’s advances in that can just waltz into the new city it doesn’t feel good to me.
(for the record I also hate WoW’s “if you’re this race you’re this political group, no exceptions”)
I feel like, with what they did here in Bel’ameth with Horde being allowed to walk around but they’re being ‘monitored’ is a fine enough compromise for players who both didn’t and did do the war campaign questline and accommodating both gameplay/roleplay experiences in a way that’d make enough sense.
We also need to think realistically here, right. I don’t think Blizz assumes that your character has done every quest, which is why they came up with this as a compromise.
This is a roleplaying game after all, the game should cater to how your independent character has experienced the world and have the reactions of the world make sense from that experience.
They also can’t realistically cater to both people who did and didn’t do the storyline by giving them their own unique experiences here and somehow needing to monitor whether a character has done that questline or not.
And as a compromise for both gameplay and story purposes, it works well enough imo.
Okay, sure. If we’re going to go down that road, we can. If we’re going to attribute all the possible in-game actions to every character, then yes, they did contribute to the burning.
They also saved the world from the Burning Legion. From three Old Gods. From an alternate timeline orc army. From Deathwing. From Garrosh and from Sylvanas. From Zovaal. The Horde adventurer helped save Nordrassil as well.
The Horde adventurer did help in the push through Ashenvale and Darkshore, that is true. But they did so under false pretenses; the Alliance, we were told, was planning a first strike and had spies in Orgrimmar to back that supposition. We were led to the beaches of Darkshore under the belief we would occupy Teldrassil to prevent an Alliance strike with Azerite McGuffins. We were clearly misled.
And as soon as a resistance against further atrocities occured, we became Schodinger’s Horde; both turning against Sylvanas and also still sinding with her. It was a very weird time, and I still feel like I’m in a superpositional state from all that.
But. On a more personal level for the all-encompassing Horde adventurer and their many deeds.
We’re clearly someone well-liked by Malfurion. In Hyjal and Val’sharah, he asks for our help without reservation. And the Horde adventurer is clearly fond of Malfurion as well because we always willingly give that help without a second’s thought. When we was captured by Xavius, who was it that braved Darkheart Thicket to rescue him? Yup, the omnipresent Horde Adventurer. Who braved the Emerald Nightmare with him? The Horde Adventurer.
And when Tyrande was ready to explode from Night Warrioring a little too hard, who was there for her? The Horde adventurer. When night elf souls were stuck in the Maw, was it Shandris who rescued them? Tyrande? No, it was the beacon of nobility and honor, the Horde adventurer. This same Horde adventurer who readily answered Tyrande’s call to save another world tree, as they did when her husband made a similar call in Cataclysm.
The Horde adventurer has saved Teldrassil by virtue of stopping the entire world from ending at least four times before they unwittingly assisted in Sylvanas’s atrocity.
I think it makes sense that Tyrande would want such a powerful, respected, beloved hero of Azeroth to feel comfortable around her and her people.
After all, it’s only a matter of time before she needs their aid once more, while Malfurion is like… Napping in Ardenweald or something.
I think taking an “I’m not touching you” approach to quest canon is a pointless exercise. The story is there for your character to be inserted into. Those story beats need to be expected to happen with what you’re capable of involving yourself in, or else the game can’t have a consistent canon at all.
It doesn’t matter if someone put up a worthless boycott of either BFA’s prepatch or the expansion itself; the story plays out as if you had, and so you’re damned for it.
Fair enough, to both of you.