BFA Horde are doing lots of pure black evil things. Teldrassil, Brennedan, etc etc etc. Much like Garrosh, Sylvanas isn’t personally doing ANY of these things, they are being done on her orders. But unlike Garrosh who only had “less than half the Orcs” joining him in evil, every race in the Horde seems to be joyfully committing war crimes for Sylvanas. Trolls, Tauren, Blood Elves, and even a few “moral” NPCs like Rexxar are jumping at the chance to slaughter Alliance civilians.
So if Sylvanas falls, can she be blamed for her “war crimes” without sharing perfectly equal blame with the entire Horde, and a lot with every Horde player too? For Meta gameplay reasons, we know the Horde and especially the players can never really be punished for it.
That’s a very “thin ice” type argument. You’re pretty much describing the conflict of every army in the history of Earth. There will always be soldiers who disagree with the leader, but you follow the “country” the leader fights for.
Your alternative is joining the enemy, or going neutral, and risk being destroyed by the enemy or your former home.
Rebellion can be a hard fire to start. Sometimes people refuse to throw their bundle of wood on until they know the fire is already raging.
Ignoring the question of whether or not the soldiers themselves bear any burden of guilt, Sylvanas is the de facto head of state; The brain of the Horde, as it were. Nothing gets done without her say, or at least not without resistance.
That only works with the rank and file though. Baine and Saurfang hold significant power and influence within the Horde and could easily ignite a rebellion or at least get their respective peoples to outright refuse to follow orders. Lorthemar is in a more difficult position, but he can strike up a deal to rejoin the Alliance if they need protection. The Nightborne are a powerful force all their own, as well as the Hightmountain, and they can both easily pull out of the Horde without becoming targets of the Alliance due to how little time they’ve spent within the conflict. The Goblins and Darkspear are probably the most vulnerable, but a united front with the other Horde races would give them the strength if they wanted, and this last applies to every other racial leader as well.
No of course not. Sylvanas is guilty for the things she ordered absolutely. But the people she convinced to do them with her, like Saurfang, are also guilty.
At this point the story needs to be reframed away from the sole perspective of Alliance morality because the direction that takes us is incompatible with the game format.
I kinda indirectly set up theramore for the bomb, which i felt kinda bad about ever time I saw jaina. With the war of thorns, darkshore, derek, ect… sparing someone, putting on a gas mask, and choosing the “right side” hardly makes up for everything else.
Although Sylvanas are guilty for the horrified acts that she did…that doesn’t mean the rest of the Horde get a ‘free out of jail’ card…pushing all evil acts on an individual does not dilute the vicious & evil acts the whole of the Horde had did to the NE and Alliance…
Just look at Germany after WW2…there was forced labor by the POWs and the CIVILIANS.…which was called ‘reparations labor’ or ‘enforced labor’…
Crime of this magnitude must be met with the same magnitude of reparations that ingrain into the Horde that warmongering is not to be encourage in the future…
Not actually new, just waiting for my new warlock to get an avatar. As far as Sylvanas goes, i think we can blame her for all the horrible things she did before BFA in addition. Its only a big deal because its in the spotlight now. Andorhal, Felstone, Undercity experiments, the Silverpine quests, treatment of her troops in Howling Fjord, and I guess even the Wrathgate now. She deserves a good killing.
This is honestly something I’ve been pondering since prepatch. I don’t want to hold the whole Horde culpable, but apart from Saurfang’s actions and Baine’s occasional tantrum, I’m not seeing enough dissention. With Pandaria, there was a gradual degradation of the Horde’s loyalty to Garrosh;
Kelantir and Frandis at odds with Garrosh and Malkorok in Tides of War. Vol’jin’s attempted assassination in Dagger in the Dark. Gob Squad infiltrating Ragefire Chasm, while Grizzle Gearslip is denied pay. Lor’themar pulling you aside to discuss at the onset of the Isle of Thunder to discuss his concerns over Garrosh… you saw Garrosh lose more and more support overtime.
Sylvanas doesn’t have that, and part of that is because A) the other races apart from the Forsaken aren’t getting as much attention, and B) too many recognizable Horde faces are gone now. Granted, we’re not even in 8.1 yet, and we’re basically getting Dagger in the Dark 2. We got the first DitD in 5.1. I’m willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt and assume they’ll make more strides to “redeem” other parts of the Horde for what they could be held accountable for.
Still a sodding mess though.
I wasn’t sure what you meant, so I looked it up… welp, another log for the morally grey pile.
I think its generated more than enough dissent among the player base, however Sylvanas is infinitely scarier as a warchief. Garrosh may have allowed taverns to be firebombed if anybody without his full support were inside, but Sylvanas didn’t even need a reason to turn a large amount of her own troops into mindless skeletons (and I’d imagine more outspoken Horde members that did have “Racial Leader Protection” could expect alot worse in the recesses of Undercity, or now Tarren Mill.)
As the Felstone family incident suggests, Sylvanas doesnt mind killing off anyone that might promote solidarity between her people and their former families (and the Alliance.) So how many more rediculous things has she done that we haven’t heard of? I feel like shes been killing off dissenters for a while (unlike Garrosh, who took his time to develop that attitude.)
When you have authority over people and tell them to do something bad, you’re accountable if they do it. Of course they’re still accountable, but you are just as accountable, if not more so than they are because you’re the leader.
Sort of like when you conspire with people to do bad things. If you sit down and plan to murder somebody, and you give your friend a murder weapon and drive him to the location where the murder is taking place… even if you don’t do the murder yourself, and feel bad about planning it as you drive off, you’re still a dirtbag and may as well have done the crime yourself.
As for burning Teldrassil, that’s mostly on Sylvanas, Nathanos, the artillery officer, and maybe the shamans and artillery operators.
Brennadam on the other hand… it looks like everyone seems to know what they are doing. Sylvanas’ orders don’t seem to lie- they point out that Brennadam “might” start supplying the enemy, and that is all that seems to be the justification for the attack.
I have a feeling that none of it is going to matter though, and the story will side-step the issue and the ‘war crimes’ will go unaddressed.
She can’t hold all the blame, sure she ordered most of the stuff to happen. But read about the Nuremburg trials after WW2, a lot of high ranking German Officers and some soldiers where executed for warcrimes. So ultimately the underings are also responsible as well as far as I’m concerned.
As a former blizz employee, i can confirm that the original end of BfA was -roughly- a mix of the kerrigan, illidan and draenor is free scenario
However! due to player backlash (an angry playerbase is more profitable than an apathetic one, has WoD has shown, but we honestly didn’t thought people would react this badly to being saddled with virtual genocide) it was decided to pin everything on sylvanas and move to old god content as quickly as possible.
Whats that? what about the horde merrily rampaging through nelf lands, brennandam + all the blight and necromancy + coming back to nelf lands to finish the job?
shhh… have this million dollar cinamatic and dream about SilverfoxFang piledriving you for not being honorable enough
welp, another log for the morally grey pile.