My birthday was a couple weeks ago and my parents know I enjoy Warcraft, so as a present they got me Exploring Azeroth: The Eastern Kingdoms. Reading the first page, I was reminded of the previews we’ve seen so far for Exploring Azeroth: Kalimdor. Both books have introductory letters giving the ambassadors their mission, which are similar but have different goals in mind. For the Alliance they are to get artifacts, while the Horde is looking to see what damage has been caused. Anduin’s tone in the letter seems optimistic, as seen in this excerpt:
Our openness to the Horde, and their acceptance of our request, could be instrumental in creating a world where days of war and suffering become so rare as to be the stuff of tall tales told to future generations.
This contrasts with Rokhan’s letter, which seems more cautious:
The blood war be silent now, but you and I know the silence doesn’t keep. The Horde needs to heal, but we need to know where we hurt first to heal right.
From Rokhan’s point of view, he seems to see war as inevitable. Seeing both letters side by side, it makes me wonder if the Horde, after healing, intends to attack the Alliance. The only attack from the Alliance I can perceive is from the Night Elves, which I don’t think the rest of the Alliance would support. If the Horde still wants war with the Alliance I think they should stop the facade of being cordial and instead have intentions be known.
To quote Varian to Jaina during the War Crimes novel in regards to Horde-Alliance relations: “We are always in conflict! Somewhere, someone is doing something to cause strife.”
Anduin’s more optimistic that the armistice in the wake of the Fourth War, could help pave the way towards true peace between the Horde and Alliance. Rokhan on the other hand appears to be more cynical and/or cautious, having that understanding that while the Horde council and most of the Alliance leadership want peace, that doesn’t mean everyone does.
After all small embers can gather into the fires of war.
Will conflict erupt? Of course, this is warcraft. The question has always been “when”. One of the biggest issue I think with BfA is it was too soon after MoP. I honestly expect a faction war maybe after 4-5 expansions after it, not just two. Two expansions do not allow the time for people to repair/make destruction more impactful.
As for the topic at hand. Honestly, it is probably going to depend how long World of warcraft last. I recall back in MoP, Ghostcrawler once said they had a vague idea of how Warcraft would end. Part of me thinks if Titan/Overwatch had remained an MMO instead of become a team shooter, WoW might be being sunset right now. Obviously that didnt happen and now Blizzard seems to want Warcraft to continue for the foreseeable future.
Having said that I don’t think the devs. will be that interested in another faction war considering they are still dealing with the backlash from BfA/trying to find a way to end it. But who knows, if they run of idea a new faction war will always spark some degree of interest in Warcraft.
Trust me.
Looking at it logically, no Horde race aside from potentially the undead and to some degree the orcs would have supported Sylvanas’ war either.
Even though Garrosh and Sylvanas could have fairly good reasons for their invasion, atleast I personally think they did, their continued offensives would have cut any support from the other Horde members immediately. Garrosh’ initial push to take more territory on Kalimdor, thumbs up, the orcs were starving and the Alliance stubbornly rufsed to make trade due to incidents they blamed on the Horde. Sylvanas’ intention to push at Teldrassil, to occupy it and use the Teldrassil population as hostages to make the Alliance submit on the Horde’s terms, slight thumbs up - hostages and slaves will only work for so long, at some point they’ll gather enough courage to rise up and then you either slaugther them all and suffer war regardless, or you pull out and suffer war regardless.
“… conquest is the easy part. The true challenge begins once the dust has settled - quenching the glowing embers of animosity and maintaining a semblance of peace. This requires the conqueror to treat the conquered with dignity, and the conquered to let bygones be bygones. A difficult feat to achieve.”
I have extreme doubt over this line. The alliance is a family now, remember? Also, if one of your allies gets into a war, I think you kinda have to support them because leaving them out to dry means weakening your own military alliance, making you look less trustyworthy about future agreements, and it’s also a passive acceptance of what your enemies are doing. If the night elves decide to go on the offensive, the alliance is going to help.
The Horde already drove them to near extinction and took their zones a few years ago. The Night Elves also can’t recover through some mass revival because their souls are obliterated.
The Night Elves aren’t able to attack
The Alliance did it before with Daelin. Just because the Alliance is family doesn’t mean it will suddenly tolerate stupidity.
It is not acceptance of what the enemies did. It however is rebuffing being dragged into unnecessary wars and knowing that the Alliance isn’t the kind of organization that will go to war just because we have some grudge but will do so if it truly means protecting those we care about.
If that’s the case, then I’d feel that the rest of the alliance not supporting the night elves would be implying that they no longer care about the night elves enough to protect them. Otherwise they’d join in, if just to keep their overall casualties lower.
That is the issue. A war of protection is something the Alliance would be more then willing to participate in. A war focused on revenge/fuel by some imperialistic motivation, less so.
Does it really matter why the war would start? Once it happens, refusing to participate means leaving the night elves to fend for themselves, suffering more casualties than if they got assistance.
I would like to think if something like this would happen the Alliance would be more then willing to reinforce the night elven borders so the Horde would not attack them/their civilians, but not participate in sieges/outright attack Horde lands.
Could it cause a second “Kul Tiran like split”? Sure, but again, the Alliance had little pity for Daelin launching an assault on his own authority and outright refused to support reprise. Why would they treat the night elves differently? Especially considering such foolish actions would cause their own kingdoms to suffer greatly.
The Alliance already stopped caring about the Night Elves after the war of thorns since they refused to aid them.
I mean it’s understandable if you consider that the only thing left of the Night Elves are a handful of refugees in Stormwind, but still…
The Alliance also didn’t care enough to help the Night Elves reclaim Ashenvale and didn’t push for it in the peace treaty, letting the Horde just keep the entire zone.
I thought the quote was “as a nation, if not a people” implying that they weren’t extinct; it’s just that their way of life as they knew it was cracked open.
Not that Teldrassil wasn’t bad, but I don’t think the story was trying to go that far.