I disagree, the Night Elves have no Ho Chi Minh trail, they have to resupply by sea for their gurrelia war where the Horde does not. Plus if we’re running on Vietnam logic, and I am, a little napalm and blight can go a long way. The Night Elves also do spend resources on the magic needed to fix the blight and the burnt trees, and their entire battle strategy is based on these trees giving them the cover they need.
The raid on Zandalar merely upgrades Darkshore from ‘suicide’ to ‘We might get a foothold.’
That’s because it is. A logical narrative would’ve been Forsaken vs. Human in Arathi and Orc vs. Night Elf in Darkshore. But Blizz is absolutely obsessed with Orcs vs. Humans, so we get the weird disconnect of Forsaken fighting for a piece of land that has nothing to do with them.
I think a better word would be “plagued”. The Forsaken like Tirisfal because it’s a plagued land, like them. That’s why that one Forsaken NPC was so angry that the Argents and Cenarions were healing Western Plaguelands. He preferred the land to continue being plagued. Blight, otoh, just reduces everything to a poisonous sludge.
They themselves are the resource that’s being drained.
The Gilnean and NE forces are a resource that is relied upon by the Alliance, and as long as their bogged down and invested in what appears to be a deliberate swamp of a conflict halfway across the world … those forces aren’t going to be of much use to the Alliance (worse, if the Alliance does try to reinforce them its going to be far more costly for them to do it).
Also, don’t equate winning a few battles as winning the war. The Alliance being ahead in 8.1 is actually a bigger red flag than anything else that the war will turn ruthlessly in Sylvie’s favor down the road (maybe not by 8.2, but definitely by 8.3).
Alternatively, they get all of it back, and the Horde is routed!
That’s the thing with Warfronts and the story: right now, it’s Shrodinger’s narrative, with two mutually exclusive states being simultaneously true and untrue!
But one thing I want to add is that I really like the original zones being updated and used in the story. Even if I don’t like the story that is being told.
Ain’t gonna be that many dead if the Night Elves have to confront the Forsaken on open ground with no forest to protect them, and they start out the battle with Darkshore already in this state. The Night Warrior is what tips the scales in their favor, but had Tyrande not invoked it’s magic this battle likely would of been a disaster on all fronts.
Still could be a disaster even, we’ll have to wait and see.
The worst part about BfA is trying to contain my excitement out of respect for certain awesome NE fans that hate seeing their favorite race homeland get demolished.
I’m the same. I’m grinning as I actually play these zones, but I have to restrain myself when I actually post these findings.
Now when we actually get to fight the HUMANS ill feel a lot better, just because I will feel like i’m not putting limiters on my enthusiasm while playing the story.
So from the perspective of a Night Elf player, what exactly is supposed to be the endgame, here? Am I supposed to just be satisfied that we are getting Warfront, and therefore the privilege of getting routed off of our own land twice a month? Am I supposed to just accept this as water under the bridge, once the Horde leadership changes? Or am I supposed to be perpetually angry, lusting for revenge, but knowing that I will never have it so long as the horde is a playable faction? What is Blizzard thinking?
I love how this clarifies that the Horde were really only against the Legion because they wanted to do the blighting and world destroying themselves.
This feels like The Battle for Hyjal all over again. Only the stakes are higher because this time “Archimonde” succeeded right away in destroying the World Tree! Oh, and there’s never going to be a satisfying conclusion because Archimonde’s stand in is now a really popular playable faction leader whose fans demand there be no recompense.
They’re apparently thinking that the Faction Conflict expansion actually comes with consequences it seems; rather than being treated like a sport where players put on their red/blue team jerseys for a day and then go back to status quo after.
Its this expectation that nothing will change with the Faction Conflict (and its just meant to serve as a sport-like distraction) that has made me so sick of it as a story over the years. Unless the writers were allowed to write “losers” (as in, “people who suffered losses”) within an actual War story … then it would have been nothing more than a worthless excuse for PvP.
Since the NEs and Forsaken where always the one’s most at risk in a Faction War scenario with actual stakes, it may very well be that they are the ones with the most lasting consequences by the end. Who knows … its still only 8.0, there is still plenty of story to tell.
I don’t necessarily disagree that the Faction War should have consequences. I accepted that Teldrassil was a goner when they announced the expansion, and I actually enjoyed the War of Thorns. It made me feel more invested in the Night Elves, and my character’s identity as a Night Elf, then I had ever felt before. However, I accepted these things with the understanding that there would be some sort of emotional payoff. I mean, if war has consequences, then this level of criminality and immorality should also have consequences, right?
But that hasn’t happened. Instead of having some sort of catharsis, we instead get Delaryn and Sira, back from the grave, so that we can relive the abject humiliation of the Night Elf race once more. We get locked into a stalemate, desperately fighting to reclaim our land, but never able to hold onto it. I don’t even really want revenge any more, because its not like Horde player’s are getting a good time either. I’m just upset, and tired, and angry.
Playing Alliance through Cata, we already got to experience this. I already had this lesson. After Cata and losing territories - whether to war or natural disaster - we got the intro to MoP which told us we hadn’t stopped losing. And then mid MoP we learned we were still losing through a delightful mechanical cat quest. And then at the end of MoP? We won because the Horde took out their trash and said it was over.
Alliance players are intimately familiar with the idea that Blizz writes “losers” who “suffer losses”. This is the first time they’ve done something close to tit-for-tat on a patch by patch basis, actually. So if anything my expectations have almost been exceeded! With the upcoming raid in 8.1 we’ll have won something for once. Kinda.
This is the primary problem of this story. The narrative could potentially justify the wisdom or logic of almost kind of attack with the right exposition, but as long as it always frames it as cartoonishly evil, that’s how it’s going to be interpreted. We can try to impose reasons into the decisions the characters make all we want, but that’s just headcanon.
Cut down the trees all you want, or burn them down if time is of the essence, but don’t blight the land and make it unusable by the rest of the Horde.
It’s probably going to be interpreted that way for sure. That said they emphasize how much blighting the forest and burning the trees cripples the Night Elves ability to wage war judging by the dialogue. Ruin the land and you ruin the Night Elves, they need forest for cover and to draw magic from for their druids.