Evil horde narrative

Source? Because it would seem, based on the Hordies expressing sadness for killing Alliance… that is not the case.

We talking characters or people? Because no character in the warfront campaign has felt sadness for killing anyone yet. Besides Varok and we don’t really know what his problem is besides lack of honor.

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Both. Varok very clearly thinks Sylvanas is wrong, and it would be silly to think he is the only one.

Every major character is on board. This is what matters. It’s only with Derek being raised does this change. Whether you think no seen, no name character is on board or not is quite meaningless if it is not presented.

Varok was with the war until she bombed the tree to ash and even than he still was ready to fight the Alliance. It was until “reasons” he decided to turn his back on the Horde. He has never expressed sadness for killing Alliance.

All the major characters are in disgust with the raising of Derek.

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Reluctantly. Baine is defiantly not supportive of Sylvanas.

Yet he’s still part of the war effort until Derek. Not being supportive of Sylvnas != not on board with the war.

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Eh? What are you smokin?

From the Alliance point of view, this has always been the Horde’s narrative.

But yeah, I understand. From the Horde’s point of View, that wasn’t the case and with another seemingly civil war on the horizon, it makes playing Horde characters a tad touchy.

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No, Sylvanas tells you flat out before the War of Thorns starts that killing Malfurion is a necessary part of the plan.

“The Warchief Commands”

The night elves will fight us at every step.

The kaldorei will defy our occupation… unless we break their spirits.

We must inflict a blow that will show them what is at stake. They need to lose something… someone… in whom they have absolute trust and faith. A symbol of hope.

Malfurion Stormrage must die.

Not alot of room for ambiguity there. Malfurion is a symbol of hope. He must die. Said to the player immediately before the war starts.

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But we’re not talking about the in-game quests. You specifically cited A Good War in your post, which has no mention of Malfurion being part of the plan till the very end. The book even goes out of its way to stress how killing Malfurion isn’t part of the plan.

I agree that the in-game text is explicit regarding Malfurion. But, again, so was the book. And in A Good War, it’s stated rather explicitly that killing Malfurion or Tyrande was NOT the objective.

Which only goes back to my earlier point. That this specific part of the War was handled sloppily.

We’re talking about the lore. And specifically whether Sylvanas was ‘triggered’ into destroying Teldrassil, a position still supported by nothing more than a few players trying to interpret the visuals in a cinematic while ignoring text explanation.

As for A Good War, it mentions hunting Malfurion, I assume not for the sake of cuddling him.

And then foreshadows Saurfang not being fully aware of Sylvanas plan.

The look in Sylvanas’s eyes gave Saurfang pause. She was more annoyed than he would have expected. If the Horde managed to kill both Tyrande and Malfurion, yes, it would be a great victory that would weaken the Alliance, but the objective was supposed to be conquering the World Tree. That wedge would split the Alliance no matter who ruled the night elves.

Saurfang considered, not for the first time, that Sylvanas wasn’t telling him everything.

There is no contradiction in the lore. Saurfang was right, Sylvanas wasn’t telling him everything.

Killing Malfurion was always her plan because she always believed it was necessary to the goal of occupying Teldrassil.

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Which makes the fact she didn’t tell him (leader of the offensive) questionable, but directly tells us. More-so when she even trusted him to strike the killing blow.

It’s blindingly obvious to me that Blizzard was dead-set on Teldrassil burning (and burning before Undercity was attacked), and they never really came up with a compelling reason why it would happen. They probably kept changing their minds during the process. So the cinematic implies one thing, the novella says another, and the game says a third thing. It’s a messy narrative, and I’m not invested enough to do their work for them in trying to reconcile the different versions.

There may well be a fourth explanation whenever they do the big reveal about Sylvanas’s true intentions that they’ve been hinting at.

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Yeah, not saying it’s not weird. But she clearly intended to kill Malfurion herself, spent the bulk of the campaign trying to do precisely that while Saurfang lead the forces, and when it mattered she did tell Saurfang point blank to kill him.

Not sure why she kept it a secret from him, but the lore is that she kept it a secret from him, then told him to finish the job and then decided to burn Teldrassil after she learned that Malfurion was allowed to escape for reasons made crystal clear to players even before War of Thorns started.

I’m befuddled that I’m still seeing the “triggered Sylvanas” fan theory being floated around as if it were fact.

But the cinematic never implied that. We inferred that and spent a solid two weeks unable to do anything else but infer that because the short story that actually explained what we were seeing was a pre-order bonus that wasn’t made available. Plus alot of us were so disgusted by what we saw that we weren’t thinking about it.

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You choosing not to accept Lordaeron as a victory does not change the fact the Horde were unable to defend it and retreated.

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Probably because of a few things.
Firstly, to my understanding, the text where she says ‘Malfurion must die’ is gossip text and not part of the quest text itself.
Secondly, the weirdness with her both lying to Saurfang randomly and his rationalizing it differently than was even her goal, which is odd.
Thirdly, the cinematic (if you didn’t know killing Malfurion was always the goal from the text or got thrown by how the story went) makes it seem emotionally driven.

Horde got to go “Well if I can’t have neither can you!” and then blighted it all to hell. Because even when the Horde “loses” they only lose on their own terms and it’s as soft and meaningless as possible.

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Yeah, I guess those were good reasons for, like, the first month. But by now hasn’t this topic been talked about back and forth enough times that it should have evolved past these kinds of fundamental misunderstandings?

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That is still you choosing to not accept the fact that the Alliance beat us on the ground and we ran away as a victory because they didn’t win in the exact way that you personally envisioned.

Also if we’re going with an objective-based approach in deciding whether were counting these battles as wins or losses would you care to remind us what we went to Teld to do vs what actually happened?

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I assume you mean it does not imply that Sylvanas burned the tree because she wanted to teach Delaryn a lesson about losing hope. How does it not imply that, if you take the cinematic in isolation?