Horde PCs and Moral Responsibility

And acted on that desire when Garrosh gave her the opportunity to do so. (And even when Garrosh didn’t give her the opportunity to, not allowing her the plague, and she used it any way.)

See, you know how to play the whataboutism game, too. Lets rally that back to you. You mean like how Sylvanas started a self-fulfilling prophecy by doing everything possible to make the Alliance feel like they have to wipe the Horde out to feel safe? (And even then the Alliance doesn’t even do that.)

And, gasp, you avoid my point:

1 Like

Ordered. She had no choice in the matter other than to gain control of the attack Garrosh started.

As for Daelin, if you were not saying that the actions of the Orcs afterwards proved why he did what he did, then I apologize, I misread that.

Like how you avoid my point immediately prior to that that points out where you were a bit generous with your reading of Lor’themar’s statement?

This line also seems to imply that at least Ji thinks they can still work with the Alliance to achieve what the treaty set out to do if the Alliance doesn’t freak out.

1 Like

Which she was eager for.

It matches up with the descriptions in Before the Storm where the Alliance people believed it was a betrayal and even Anduin didn’t know what to believe until he asked Sylvanas directly. But, a joke I’ve made before, I’m just waiting for Alex Afrasiabi to retcon it so that Sylvanas admits she intended to betray Varian all along.

Which the Alliance technically does, at least the Night Elves and Blood Elves in Suramar. Though, at the same time, Sylvanas and Genn still were going at each other at every Warden Tower they could.

But even then, we know that there was not peace, and Anduin states in his invitation to Arathi in Before the Storm:

    Do not mistake this for an offer of peace. It is only an offer of a single day's compassion for people who were cruelly torn apart by a force that was neither the Horde nor the Alliance.

When this peace was broken is what we are quibbling about, as we do not have any definite answers on what the treaty was or when it was considered broken. If Genn broke it, Anduin kept it broken. Or it was broken by the fittingly named Broken Shore, and then Genn was simply acting on Varian’s words to end the Horde (or at least their Warchief) for not upholding honor in his eyes by putting Sylvanas of all people in charge. Again, Varian said “From here on forward, the Alliance will be proactive. Never again can there be another the likes of Hellscream.” And Sylvanas was worse than Garrosh.

Question at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd-yRVtNBuI&t=34m47s :

    How are you going to differentiate between what Sylvanas is doing and what Garrosh did?

Alex Afrasiabi’s answer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd-yRVtNBuI&t=35m20s :

    If I were Sylvanas and looking at what Garrosh had wrought across the world, I'd see- I'd probably think Garrosh was an amateur.
1 Like

Well, wanted to have the end result. Is there anything that suggests she was eager to take part in Garrosh’s plan?

I’m not arguing that the Alliance didn’t hold the wrong belief that the Horde had something to do with the loss of Varian. But nothing Lor’themar said hinted at an idea that there was any betrayal by the Horde.

And no argument about the retcons, it’s been brutal.

Speaking of threats to the Horde, nothing says good intentions like playing silly word games ‘Faol and his assistant’ to sneak the heir to the dead kingdom that the people who follow Sylvanas came from. Who then goes on to announce her presence and try to stage a coup against her. If they go along the path of a darker Anduin for some reason I would not be surprised to see that brought up as a deliberate provocation.

I’ll admit, I’m not as familiar with the Alliance side as the Horde side, so I pulled up the transcript of the dialogue from one of the wikis, and well, they don’t come out looking too innocent…

From the gryphon ride part of the post intro scenario quest Fallen Lion:
Commander Lorna Crowley says: My father stands with the king. The Forsaken will never see our forces coming!

Nope, it’s pretty vague. There’s some agreement to join forces to fight the Legion obviously, but not much in the way of details. All we can do is look at the things that happened.

Battle at the Broken Shore. Things go bad. Sylvanas gets ordered to get the Horde out of there. She sounds a retreat. Alliance hears the signal and knows what it means. Some of the Alliance decide, possibly as a way to direct their grief over the loss of Varian that the Horde must have betrayed them. Meanwhile, the Horde is busy losing the old Warchief and bringing in the new one. They are aware of some rumblings from the Alliance. Alliance mourns their king, and tries to get his heir up to speed while some among them are already plotting revenge.

Is there anything outside of Stormheim that really touches on that? I mean, the waterlogged journal gets brought up. But the contents are muddied and not clear, plus, more Alliance aggression as the Ally version of the quest that gives that has you killing shipwrecked sailors. I’m not gonna say that’s an exhaustive list, since I don’t feel like browsing all the leveling quest lines. But I can’t really think of much questing that delved into the factions outside of Stormheim in the pre-max level stuff.

Those lines do not say what you think they do. Nothing there states Sylvanas would have moved to take Gilneas on her own, only that she desired it.

It’s reasonable that the Horde and Alliance have different standards of behavior. Why should the Horde not call out the Alliance violating their own standards, even if the Horde’s are different?

You have it wrong here, because you’re the one that needs to prove the treaty was dissolved after the Broken Shore.

It was a treaty between factions, not individuals. You may as well be suggesting that countries have to renegotiate everything every time their leader dies or leaves office, that’s not how it works.

Again, the burden of proof is on your here. You’re the one saying the treaty was dissolved, you need to prove that.

They were wrong.

7 Likes

Only foolish insofar as the Night Elves never should have started trading in the first place. If someone breaks into your house, and starts stealing your stuff, you don’t start negotiating with them to give them your stuff anyway.

3 Likes

Chronicle doesn’t mention Garrosh’s plan beyond the inference to it by Sylvanas convincing him to let her lead invasion instead, which my focus is still on that she was eager for it as opposed to previously portrayed as only forced into it. Though, in concept, one can be eager and forced to act. The two aren’t actually mutually exclusive.

When we first saw the cinematic for BfA and we saw Anduin wearing his terrifying lion helm most of us probably thought we were going to see a completely different Anduin. Along with misleading interview answers about Anduin leading up to BfA, a lot of us thought Anduin was going to go for aggression. And then he took off his helmet and was still the same Anduin we always knew.

People like to say this. People also like to say “It’s obvious” and “What else would it mean?” and other conjecture. But this is not actually a lore fact. The Alliance’s immediate response to the signal was:

    Varian Wrynn: No... she wouldn't...
    Genn Greymane: I knew it! I knew we couldn't trust her!

Yes, the Alliance didn’t see what happened Horde side. And as per Before the Storm there was no communication between the Horde and Alliance to clear this up until Anduin asked Sylvanas directly after he invited her to Arathi, despite the fact that the Horde knew that the Alliance was out for vengeance for Varian (Which you’re right, Lor’themar didn’t use the word betrayal, but he was acknowledging what the Alliance is calling for).

Actually, in that, there is implication (though, once again, no outright statement) that even Anduin believes the treaty is broken. Added emphasis is mine:

    Lady Jaina Proudmoore says: The Horde betrayed your father and left us to die! To fight alongside those cowards would dishonor everything he stood for.
    Prophet Velen says: My people know the price of facing demons as a world divided. It is time to unite our forces and defend our lands.
    Anduin Wrynn says: Agreed. I'm sorry, Jaina, but vengeance must wait.

Hahaha, well I’ll definitely agree with you there, however, in that same vein, after Warcraft III the Horde never should have started attacking the Night Elves in Warsong Gulch again. They should have been allies. So none of any part of any of this should have ever happened.

Genn’s beliefs are irrelevant to whether or not the peace was broken in actuality. Genn was wrong about the Broken Shore.

You don’t get to abrogate an agreement because of a mistaken belief. Imagine trying that defence in a legal case: “Your honour, I’m not guilty of violating the contract because I believed the other party was cheating. Even though they weren’t.”

Vol’jin’s rebellion wasn’t the losing side in SoO. That point is made abundantly clear throughout the Horde narrative. They are, in lore, the co-winners of the SoO.

And they did, in fact negotiate favourable terms with the Alliance, including claiming Azshara.

??? Your argument that Varian’s threat was actually formally written into a treaty is that we don’t know it wasn’t???

Dude, you’re the one making the claim. The burden of proof is on you. You haven’t presented one shred of evidence.

11 Likes

oh simple belf paladin i taryron most moral dk of the alliance say that you may not have redemption!

So, what you’re saying here is that you agree with me that Garrosh was the one who ordered the invasion? I haven’t seen anything that says she did anything more to influence him than to get command of the invasion.

Ok, so they were angry that she sounded the retreat, those responses really sound like they just weren’t expecting the horde to retreat, not a single moment of confusion wondering what that strange horn like sound might be.

You know, when you look at the two dialogues after the intro quest, it becomes really clear who broke any peace after the Broken Shore. The Alliance.

The Horde is clearly more concerned with fighting the legion, and worrying that due to their misreading of what happened that the Alliance will attack them for something the Horde did not do. You look at the Alliance dialogue and the least aggressive one is Velen and he’s only saying “Wait to fight the Horde until the Legion is dealt with.” Almost all of them are calling for blood.

Yes, the Alliance had wrongly decided that the Horde betrayed them, while as we know from having a wider view of the story from the outside, they had not. And so it looks pretty clear that the Alliance broke the treaty on their own, whether that’s just by deciding that it was dissolved or by letting Genn off unpunished for trying to assassinate the Warchief.

5 Likes

Veloran’s point was about Genn’s motivation, which is based on his beliefs. Hence why I brought up what you always bring up as for the Forsaken’s supposed beliefs for their motivation. In this context, what was actuality isn’t even relevent to the conversation.

Your cutscene ends with Varian talking down to the Horde leaders same as the Alliance version.

Horde didn’t negotiate that. Tyrande offered it freely to ensure peace.

The Horde never actually bring what they want out of the treaty. The Horde leaders spend their comments at the end of Siege of Orgrimmar on their reactions to Vol’jin being their new warchief.

This tired line is overused here a lot. This is not how conversation works. We aren’t in a court room. There is no judges or juries to render verdicts on our cases. “Burden of proof” my foot. You, I, and everyone else here knows that we are not here to prove lore or convince people of something or other. We’re just here to discuss things with people, specifically knowingly discuss things with people who already have their minds made up on something that we won’t change their opinions on.

I stand by my point. Those were Varian’s intentions as they are stated in game. There is no burden on me to make you stand by my point as well. Just convenience for you if you want to ignore it to uphold your own desired perspective.

I do agree with that, as that is fact. But you can dance away from the point that it is canon that Sylvanas was eager to invade Gilneas and went beyond Garrosh’s intentions by using the plague all you want, it still won’t change that as fact, either.

And how would sounding a retreat at an opportune moment when the other side did not have an easy means to retreat not be a plausible betrayal strategy? The Alliance couldn’t see what the Horde could. But the Horde could see the Alliance down below. Sylvanas even reflects upon having had to leave the Alliance for dead in Before the Storm. People act as if someone blowing a retreat horn could never have done so to betray someone, which is in no way definitive.

Velen himself works with the Horde all throughout Legion despite the treaty being broken, regardless of whether it was at the Broken Shore or at Stormheim. The Night Elves and Blood Elves also work together at Suramar, which was also after the Broken Shore and Stormheim. Velen carries out his intentions regardless of the state of the treaty. So this is not reflective of who broke the treaty or when if your stance is “The Horde is clearly more concerned with fighting the legion” when three leaders of the Alliance, Malfurion, Tyrande, and Velen were more concerned with fighting the Legion than any other Alliance or Horde leaders proved to be.

Beyond that, your own words apply from an Alliance perspective:

The Horde.

Nope, she had a desire to take over Gilneas. Not an eagerness to attack it. She took over the invasion because Garrosh was basically hoping that he could capture a port and kill off most of the Forsaken at the same time. She employed the plague rather than have her people slaughtered pointlessly.

And all you’re arguing here is that because it might be a betrayal then the only logical thing would mean that it was a betrayal. You keep dancing around the fact that the Alliance’s actions have all been based off of the Legion’s agents in SI:7 (Shouldn’t Shaw have cleared things up that it wasn’t him that scouted the BS by now?) and a want for vengeance on the most convenient target.

Ok, let me just quote the whole dialogues where the leaders of the Horde and Alliance meet after the Broken Shore, let’s see who’s concerned with what.

Alliance:
The leaders of the Alliance congregate in front of the throne of Stormwind. Muradin comes up instead of all three for the Council of Three Hammers.
Anduin Wrynn says: My father was a seasoned strategist, yet his army was shattered on the Broken Shore. How can I hope to succeed where he failed?
Prophet Velen says: You are not alone in this, My King. We stand behind you.
Tyrande Whisperwind says: And with the return of the Illidari, we have a valuable weapon on our side. You were wise to accept them into Stormwind, King Anduin.
Lady Jaina Proudmoore says: Have you forgotten the Horde’s treachery? It’s time to bring them to heel like the dogs they are!
Prophet Velen says: To fight two wars at once would be folly. For all our sakes, we need the Horde’s strength added to our own.
Anduin Wrynn says: Velen is right. We must stand beside the demon hunters and focus on the Legion. Now is not the time to–
Lady Jaina Proudmoore says: The Horde betrayed your father and left us to die! To fight alongside those cowards would dishonor everything he stood for.
Prophet Velen says: My people know the price of facing demons as a world divided. It is time to unite our forces and defend our lands.
Anduin Wrynn says: Agreed. I’m sorry, Jaina, but vengeance must wait. I trust you’re mobilizing the Kirin Tor as we discussed?
Lady Jaina Proudmoore says: Dalaran will help protect the Eastern Kingdoms, but I will NOT allow the Horde to set foot within my city!
Anduin Wrynn says: We must not splinter like this… not now. Please, Jaina!
Lady Jaina Proudmoore says: You disappoint me, King of Stormwind. But sooner or later, you will see the truth. You all will!
Jaina teleports away. The other leaders return to their places around the casket.
Anduin Wrynn says: My father dead… disaster on the Broken Shore… Jaina fixed on revenge… Everything is falling apart.

Horde:

Eitrigg says: Best get to Grommash Hold straightaway, .
Entering Grommash Hold

Lor’themar Theron says: Warchief! The you called for has arrived. We only await Sylvanas now.
Vol’jin says: Ah, , it’s… good ya came. Time be… runnin’ short.
Baine Bloodhoof says: Let me call in my healers, Warchief. Your wound must be tended.
Vol’jin says: Too late for dat, Bloodhoof. Me got one… final duty. Ta see dat da Horde… stays strong.
Lor’themar Theron says: The Alliance lost its king on the Broken Shore. Its people cry out for vengeance.
Ji Firepaw says: We need them focused on defeating the Legion, not focusing on old hatreds.
Baine Bloodhoof says: We WILL find a way to drive back the Legion, Warchief. This we swear!
Vol’jin says: Dat’s good. Azeroth… gonna fall… 'less we seal up dat tomb.
Archmage Aethas Sunreaver says: My contact in the Kirin Tor tells me certain members of the Council of Six are open to inviting the Horde back into Dalaran.
Trade Prince Gallywix says: Blasted demons! Such wanton destruction… there’s no point in it!
Lor’themar Theron says: The Banshee Queen is here, Vol’jin. What is it you wanted to tell us?
After pledging allegiance to Sylvanas outside Orgrimmar.

Lady Sylvanas Windrunner says: I accept your pledge of loyalty, . The Horde endures!
Lor’themar Theron says: Indeed it shall.
Baine Bloodhoof says: Well said!

I understand you really really want the Alliance to be in the right here, and you argue that the incomplete knowledge and biases that they are basing their actions on are the only justification they need. And fine, that’s all the motivation that they need to decide to break the peace and attack the faction that did nothing to harm them. The Horde held up there end, the Horde seems to have taken greater losses than the Alliance, the Horde was concentrating on beating the Legion. And all that it got them was stabbed in the back.

5 Likes

Hence my phrasing “Sylvanas was eager to invade Gilneas.”

So to use your style of phrasing: So, what you’re saying here is that you agree with that Sylvanas broke orders, too?

No, I’m arguing that because it might be a betrayal that the Alliance believed it was a betrayal. I am also arguing against the notion that blowing the horn means the Alliance should not have believed it was a betrayal.

Now when did I say I want the Alliance to be in the right? Once again, as I have consistently pointed out, the conversation is about Genn’s motivation, not his objective correctness.

It is fact (until, as joked, retconned) that the Horde did not intend to betray the Alliance, and we knew this from a meta-perspective. But we also know from a meta-perspective that the Alliance did see this as a betrayal. It is for some reason in the interests of some posters around here to feel as if the Alliance did not believe this.

I understand how posters really really want the Horde to be in the right here, because they’re tired of the Horde being worse. Hence why no one really wants to answer “Why does the Horde hold the Alliance to standards they don’t hold themselves to?” Because they don’t want to acknowledge the Horde is even more at fault.

1 Like

Which is completely unsupported by what you try to use to declare this a fact.

See, this is what you declared the conversation to be about, not what it’s about.

What I’m arguing, and what I believe Veloran are arguing is that the Alliance are the party that broke the peace because they let their hate cloud their logic. And your fact is a little off, should read more as “The Horde did not betray the Alliance” as there were no actions taken that when seen from a meta perception that were in any way shape or form a betrayal.

And no one’s really answered your question because it’s nonsense meant to distract from the fact that for once in the story of the game we’ve had an action where the Alliance is clearly the aggressor and clearly acting on bad information and they haven’t retconned it yet.

There’s so many standards that I’ve seen the Alliance take on stuff like:
Orcs (and humans) doing mundane chores in a land they don’t know is inhabited means that they were knowingly desecrating sacred trees, and so they deserved to be killed on sight with no warning! But, Dwarves invading sacred lands and having the inhabitants let them know that they want them to leave means it’s ok to genocide a whole tribe for the crime of being annoying.

Horde forces under influence of the Sha mistreating Pandaren in an intro quest to show dangers of emotions, obviously pure evil, Alliance forces doing the same? Pandaren are just lazy and of course it was ok to force them to work more than they wanted to.

Horde wipes out a smallish town off screen with blight during zone rebalancing, something that spawns a now B list character and a war crime, Alliance (during that same rebalancing) firebombs a peaceful camSHUT UP ABOUT MAH TAURAJO!!

War gets started at the end of Wrath by Varian gets an in book peace treaty to end it that is broken by the horde prior to any in game events Horde is responsible for the war. Genn Greyman breaks a peace that was put in place to fight a larger foe because of something that happened 4 expansions before? Horde’s responsible for the war.

9 Likes

Supports it quite well when I declared the fact of “Why did Genn try to assassinate Sylvanas? Because Sylvanas tried to assassinate Genn.”

See, this is what I understand about posters who want the Horde to be in the right here. Because they’re desperate for it. I acknowledge that Alliance aggression is for all practical purposes not a focal point in the story telling of WoW, especially not when the aggression of the Horde in general overshadows by significant powers of magnitude whatever Alliance aggression there is.

But that desperation doesn’t actually change that, yes, Genn attacked Sylvanas because of what she did four expansions before. And posters love to run around screaming “unprovoked attack!” and ignore that this happened because the Sylvanas attacked Genn unprovoked first.

1 Like

Yup, if you had been arguing that, it does support that. When you were arguing “Sylvanas decided to invade Gilneas because a book said she wanted that territory” it does not.

Yes, because when you let 4 years pass between the action and your response it changes from being heat of the moment to premeditated.

And again, despite your constant attempt to frame this as being a discussion of what Genn’s motive for the crime was, it is not. It about the fact that the peace between the factions at the beginning of Legion was broken by the Alliance because they were operating based on bad information.

2 Likes

Cool.

This doesn’t change anything I’ve said. Hell, even by Horde standards, four to five years isn’t enough to make something irrelevant, as the recently added leatherworking quest on the Horde side brings Taurajo up, which was from the same year that Sylvanas attacked Gilneas.

This is the conversation at hand. You can keep trying to dance the conversation towards the meta-perspective all you want as that’s where the Horde has better standing, but that’s not what Veloran said, despite his attempts to pivot his intentions now.

You can keep saying this as many times as you want, but it doesn’t make it a lore fact, as, once again, we don’t know what the treaty was or what entailed breaking it. And once again, moving away from the meta-perspective, during the time Genn tried to assassinate Sylvanas the Alliance was acting on the assumption that the Horde had broken the peace first. Were the Alliance wrong? The Alliance did believe wrong that the Horde intended to betray them at the Broken Shore (for now). But the Horde appointed Sylvanas as Warchief. What that act alone meant for the treaty we don’t know, when Varian already intended for Sylvanas to be an exception to the treaty, and Sylvanas is also a person that the Alliance would see as someone who would not uphold honor, which Varian also warned would result in Alliance aggression.

[quote=“Amadis-draka, post:159, topic:157080”]

I think you’re missing a step in this.

Why was Sylvanas able to convince Saurfang to invade Teldrassil?
Because Saurfang realized that the Alliance was a threat to the Horde.
Why was the Alliance a threat to the Horde?
Because of Genn trying to assassinate the Warchief at Stormheim and other things they proved that they will jump to the worst conclusions about the Horde and use that as justifications to attack them.
Why did Genn try to assassinate Sylvanas?
Because he was willing to ignore greater threats to the world in order to satisfy his vengeance.

Sounds like a good reason to think something is a threat to you.

And if this were a single player game aimed only at the Alliance, fine, they had a reason to think that. But we have players on both factions so both faction stories count. In the story we played through, from the Horde perspective, Genn Greymane used the lie that the Horde betrayed Varian as a pretext to assassinate the Warchief and destroy a fleet that was destined to service in the fight against the Legion. The Horde knows that they honored their end of the bargain and were repaid for all the lives they lost in that battle by getting stabbed in the back while trying to deal with the Legion. Alliance can lie to themselves all the want about their justifications, they were the ones who put vengeance over the larger fight.

No. Just no. Point out any indication in the lore that there was a “We get to kill some of your people whenever we want to during the time we will work together, and you just have to deal” clause in the peace or drop this nonsense. There is no indication that anything remotely resembling that foolishness existed, and no way for anyone to prove it as, there’s not exactly a way to conclusively prove that there’s not some small clause in the contract in orbit around Azeroth’s sun somewhere, just a big gaping hole where there’s nothing that suggests that would even be a thing.

11 Likes

“It would be nice if Gilneas was under my control” is not the same as “I plan to go out and attack Gilneas.” You can move easily from the second to the first, but moving from the first to the second isn’t a given. You have to have something extra in there that leads you to act, rather than just thinking about how nice it would be. It’s a logical sequence if Garrosh’s attack is that extra thing in this case.

To paraphrase the Dark Lady: “We dont need no stinkin’ redemption.”

8 Likes