A treaty that is only ever mentioned in Ashran, which either isn’t canon, or the Horde is accused of breaking it first.
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According to Ashran, the treaty was actually still active despite the events on the island. Not that there’s proof of who attacked first there anyway.
Besides, Genn fought alongside the Horde at the Broken Shore. While his main motivation later was what happened in Gilneas, it was actually only inflamed and instigated by events at the Shore - Which he was simply wrong about.
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This is my point, yes.
Which Genn might not have been part of at all if Sylvanas hadn’t pushed him back into the Alliance.
Additionally, it sounds as if a treaty might not have covered Sylvanas any way, as while the Night Elves gave the Horde Azshara in return for Ashenvale and peace, this was also specified in those same leader conversations:
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Maybe I should clarify, because the point was that even though Genn hated Sylvanas for Gilneas, not only did that cease to be a valid reason to attack her once he agreed to peace with the Horde, that was also not what spurred on his attack in Stormheim. The events of the Broken Shore are what precipitated Genn attacking Sylvanas then, because he mistakenly believed her responsible. IE, without the Broken Shore, he very likely wouldn’t have attacked.
Some gossip text does not a treaty make. Fact is none of what Varian said came to pass, and so it either wasn’t part of the treaty, or wasn’t acted upon in any way.
Once again, only by this treaty mentioned in Ashran
- Did those mongrels forget that we're supposed to have a treaty?
It looks that way. I think that they fear that if we do find the artifact, we'll end up using it against them.
If they keep attacking our soldiers the way they have been, they might drive us to it.
Which accuses the Horde of attacking first, and thus the treaty already broken before Stormheim.
If Ashran is even canon, what with the Horde’s goal to kill Harrison Jones, while the Horde can also recruit Harrison Jones as a follower.
No, you were right the first time, his main motivation was:
- Genn Greymane: You took my son's future.
Which happened because Sylvanas tried to assassinate Genn.
Some gossip text is the only evidence of a treaty you have.
We actually do have some evidence of it being acted upon, as in the Invasion pre-events to Legion that took place in Hillsbrad Foothills had heavy Alliance forces still stationed there:
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Wh-
Wh-what!?
Why!? Why is chronicles like this!? Neither Edge of Night nor the in-game questing supports this in the slightest! The whole dookdamn point of Edge of Night was that Sylvanas didn’t desire anything about that war and only rejoined it to save her bulwark of loyal soldiers from Garrosh grinding them away.
Why!? WHY!?
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Alex Afrasiabi maybe? He kind of pinned Wrathgate on her, too.
Chronicle over all goes out of its way to paint Sylvanas in a negative light. Another example, World of Warcraft: Chronicle Volume III, Page 150:
- Sylvanas Windrunner. The Banshee Queen urged the Horde's leadership to ally with the blood elves, but her reasons remained a mystery. Rumors circulated that some lingering part of her still sympathized with Quel'Thalas and its hardships. Other stories hinted that Sylvanas had ulterior motives.
To be fair, this one did match up with In the Shadow of the Sun.
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In that very quote, the treaty is referred to as being ongoing. It also doesn’t say the Horde attacked first, just that they have attacked. Additionally, a treaty violation doesn’t necessarily mean a treaty is ended - Obviously, at the Broken Shore and at multiple times throughout WoD, the Horde and Alliance worked in concert.
Again, you misunderstand. That was his motivation, but it was only brought on by the Broken Shore. He probably would never have attacked without the recent events where he perceives Sylvanas betraying them spurring him on.
Which, again, became invalid as an issue once Genn agreed to peace.
On the contrary, we have gossip text after a treaty would have been made stating it exists, which shows that it does. The text you’re referring to in SoO is only conversation to the player from before the treaty would have been made, meaning there’s no guarantee any of what was discussed actually became part of the treaty. We only know it exists, not what it was composed of.
Ignoring the very obviously questionable timeline issues surrounding the invasions, that particular one doesn’t prove your point. Alliance forces present there doesn’t show they were there for anything like what Varian stated during SoO, it simply shows they were fighting the Legion at that place, at that time.
At the point where the desire to darken Sylvanas’ image is contradicting the game’s own extra-narrative fiction and questing at the same time, it just becomes a prompt for eye rolling.
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Wrathgate being her fault sort of makes sense, given how she acted after Arthas was dead.
I like to think its more she knew Valmathris and friends were planning it, but she did nothing about it because 1: If it worked and Arthas went kaput, mission accomplished for her. Time to find a nice, big cliff to practice sky diving from, the Forsaken left to the literal wolves. or 2: It doesn’t work, Arthas escapes, and she can pin the blame on those 2 for everything going wrong at the Wrathgate.
You have to admit, it is Sylvanas’ MO to a T; A plan within a plan.
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My apologies. I missed a line:
- The Horde is growing bolder every day. They attacked another one of our outposts this morning.
Did those mongrels forget that we're supposed to have a treaty?
It looks that way. I think that they fear that if we do find the artifact, we'll end up using it against them.
If they keep attacking our soldiers the way they have been, they might drive us to it.
If the Alliance is specifying a treaty they wouldn’t have attacked first, which makes it so the Horde did.
Edit: The Horde side even paints it as the Horde attacking first:
The Horde states that the Alliance is holding up the truce, and then the Horde declares its going to attack just because the Alliance didn’t ask for help.
Once again, if Ashran is even canon.
Working in concert also doesn’t establish peace between the factions. For example, at Suramar the Night Elves and Blood Elves worked together, yet all throughout the rest of the Broken Isles Sylvanas was ordering the attack on Gilneans holding Warden Towers and Genn ordering attacks on Forsaken likewise.
Which once again, full circle from where we started from, Genn likely wouldn’t have been part of the Alliance at the Broken Shore at all if Sylvanas hadn’t attacked Gilneas.
Indeed this is true. And no guarantee that Sylvanas would have been protected by the treaty, either. With it being Varian’s intention to contain her, there is more weight to my point when you have nothing backing your point.
The Horde cleared out the Alliance forces in Hillsbrad Foothills in their level questing. The Alliance forces were re-stationed there already there before they even expected the Legion Invasions to happen, and there only reason to be stationed there before even knowing about the Legion as far as we know then would have been to contain Sylvanas.
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Holding the innocence of Teldrassil
Hostage as a bargaining chip to force the Alliance to removing their remaining military outposts for Kalimdor would have made a more interesting plot. After either the Horde releases the night elven innocents to the Alliance, Sylvanas could burn the tree as a demoralizing tactic.
There were better ways to handle the prologue to BfA than what we got.
But Teldrassil wasn’t a city, it was a small country. There were several towns within the tree along with the city of Darnassus, so that’s the be token for Darnassus, but would the rest of the tree (which was, again, a country not a city) require a second token?
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Why do people keep saying Teldrassil is a country? The Night Elves didn’t just own Teldrassil, they had Darkshore, Ashenvale, Moonglade, etc.
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And this is why I don’t bother putting much effort into trying to justify the Horde these days. Blizzard seems to make a habit of pulling the rug out from under us, particularly in context to the Alliance. Case in point, in the chronicles they pretty much whitewashed the House of Nobles involvement in the whole Defias thing by saying they were tricked into thinking the work wasn’t properly completed which is why they withheld the money rather than them just refusing to pay the Stonemasons out of greed.
As for Stormheim, I would give more credit to it if it had only been mention once in a Good War and at no other time. Further, even in that situation Genn probably kept the Horde from getting in a war with the Valar’jar. Odyn might not care what we tried to do but if we actually successfully stole his source of Val’kyr he would probably lash out. He is a selfish jerk that way.
This is the thing, even when Blizzard gives reasons to justify the horde’s behaviour, the lore they right doesn’t support those reasons. At best it makes the horde look like it is commiting atrocities because of ignorance. That isn’t much better than just wilful cruelty.
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Didn’t Curse of the Worgen showed Sylvanas wanting the Scythe of Elune to control the Worgen there? I imagine that was her intent.
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Okay, not really related to the topic at hand, so this isn’t a follow up question. But I’m bored so I’ll give this some time. First lets discuss why you feel the need to ask this. An earlier poster asked me why the war started, I provided the reasons given in lore that were provided as justification for this war by the characters who started the war. Your response is to change the subject and try to compare moral standards of the Horde and Alliance. I imagine you weren’t even aware you were doing it, but this says nothing good about you and you may want to think on that. I would suggest trying to get to a place emotionally where you can discuss the motives of people you disagree with, without having to turn it into a competition about who is better.
In your question you have made three assumptions that are both incorrect and fundamental to the point you’re making. The first being that your example, Gilneas is equivalent. The second being that declaring war on the Alliance is somehow equivalent to holding them to a moral standard. The third being that Gilneas shows that the Horde doesn’t hold themselves to this moral standard. Lets begin.
First failed assumption. The Invasion of Gilneas was not an equivalent act to the attack of Stormheim for the following reasons. First, Gilneas was not cooperating militarily with the Horde to stop an extinction level event immediately prior to the attack. and the attack on Gilneas did not end said cooperation or cause the Horde and Alliance to begin attacking eachother, wasting even more resources. Second, Gilneas was not contributing any troops at all to combating Death Wing at the time of the invasion, and there’s no reason to think they would have started. Thirdly, since the invasion of Gilneas happened at the start of the Cataclysm expansion, it wasn’t even clear to the people involved that the Cataclysm was an extinction level event. Garrosh’s air ship strike at the start of Twilight Highlands would have been a better example, it wouldn’t have been a good example but it would have been 1/3 closer to valid.
Second failed assumption, that declaring war on the Alliance is an attempt to hold them to a moral standard. This one is just bizarre and I can only assume it comes from a fundamental naivety on your part. The Horde didn’t go to war with the Alliance to punish them for a moral failing. Wars don’t always happen for moral reasons and bad things sometimes happen to good people. This is something you should have learned by highschool.
Third failed assumption, that the Horde condones the invasion of Gilneas. We have no evidence for this and the driving force behind that invasion was ousted in a violent coup as a direct result of the expansionist policies exemplified by the invasion of Gilneas. Further, the invasion of Teldrassil wasn’t motivated by expansionism, it was preemptive self defense in the eyes of those who started it.
Now this is a logical fallacy called ‘begging the question.’ Where in you try to force acceptance of a disputed point by using it as the basis of a question, rather than discuss it honestly.
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This is the only word that was actually put towards why the Horde are in the situation they are in now, being Sylvanas’ expansionist mentality the instigated her assassination attempt on Genn lead us to BfA now. I already had a conversation with Veloran above about the notion of cooperation between the Alliance and the Horde during Legion. Beyond that, your post was just a lot of ad hominem with little if anything to actually contribute.
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I accept your concession that you were wrong in your previous question and that you have nothing to say in defense of your multiple mistakes.
I’m going to go ahead and take a pass at discussing the cause of the current war with you. I’ve had that conversation with a few people and after your showing I frankly would rather not have it with you. I’m happy that you had a good conversation with Veloran on the topic, that makes me feel better.
I’m sorry that you feel I was insulting when I corrected your numerous mistakes.
Nope. You can’t use savior tokens to hand wave the destruction of smaller towns and settlements. Understand this is for the sake of the forum as a whole, if we started to do that we wouldn’t be able to discuss Camp Taurajo, or South Shore and it would just be a tragedy if we could never bring up those topics again.
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Because it’s far easier to convey its sense of scale by calling it a small country than individually dissecting every Kaldorei holding and then scaling it against that.
Teldrassil, if you want to split hairs, was probably closer-ish to a smaller US state. It was far bigger than just a city, as Darnassus was just a portion of the entity that was Teldrassil.
However, a smallish US state is about the size of a small country, and as not everyone who visits these forums are Americans, it’s far easier to convey the sense of scale with a more universally understood comparison.
TL;DR It’s easier - and quicker - to convey the sense of scale that way.
I was thinking more along the lines of a “3 for 1 dollar” sale, while supplies last type deal, but I see your point.
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