Both were major ports for transporting Alliance troops and supplies. Yet the Horde never gets to hear the end of it.
Meanwhile the Alliance attacks (or attempts to attack) the Valley of Trials, Orgrimmar, Mulgore and Sen’jin Village and we never hear a peep about it? Are you only a bad guy if you succeed?
They were.
At no point was that contested.
What ‘was’ contested was when it evolved beyond taking out a port to dock at to killing non-combatants.
Theramore, I’d say is a little different given that it is a military fortification and anyone living on the premise knows full well that they’re in danger close or are fair game if they’re actively apart of the maintaining of the facility (stone masons, woodworkers, engineers, smithies, what have you).
Southshore was a little different because it wasn’t just a military fortification and a dock for the Alliance to boat in, there was active peasantry who were just people of the land.
If, say, the fields were salted and the Orchard fouled so that nothing could grow, and the militia/alliance outposts were blightbombed, it’d be a lot less morally abhorrent. At that rate, it’d force the inhabitants of Southshore to leave by boat and become refugees in Stormwind.
Anyone who sided with the militia and picked up arms was fair game, though. I wouldn’t be shocked if there was even a plan for citizenry to take up arms in the event of an invasion.
EDIT: I want to specify- the exact way that Southshore went down is still up in the air. We don’t know if non-combatants were allowed to flee, we just know there were some, who fled to Fenris Keep and became Worgen because they feared the Forsaken onslaught.
Ultimately, yes. According to WoW logic.
I’d go into details, but as soon as I did the whining on both sides would start, so just that; yes, the attempt is forgivable, but the success isn’t.
Was it? Last I recall it was pretty much a fishing village and port town that annually got stink bombed because they were butts to the Forsaken. Adventurers from TM and SS were mostly the ones doing the fighting, using them as staging grounds.
Sigh … they are (outside of Southshore, that one is questionable). Its mostly a matter of the type of framing Blizz chooses to operate off of between Horde and Alliance losses like this. When its the Horde that takes a “Valid Military Target” hit, its very rare for Blizz to focus on the tragedy of it. They will bury the perpetrator of it under a mountain of justifications or excuses; have the Horde reps themselves handwave it away, or just ignore it; or both. All left within the confines of “The Horde is deserving of it, so its fine”. Its always sort of subtly portrayed as if “Tragedy” is not something the Horde is allowed to really experience or even act off of.
The Alliance “Valid Military Targets” though? What Blizz will do is focus heavily on the victims of such an event, and the fallout of it. They’ll also make it flashy. It doesn’t matter if its a place like Theramore that was hyper involved in the Alliance War effort by the time it was attacked. As valid a target as it was … its not focused on; and the characters it effects aren’t forced to just look the other way. You’ll have entire books written revolving around such tragedies, and they will be allowed to serve as constant validation and motivation for Alliance characters choices and actions for years following them. That isn’t something you’ll find on the Horde.
Some people are biased enough to claim any action from the contrary faction totally black no matter what.
Besides the dumb writers are in their side and very un love with human potential.
My only issues with Southshore was the way it was done. In an expansion where Alliance quest hubs usually ended up either destroyed or on fire, to see one of them being destroyed explicitly by the rival faction came across as a low blow. Especially since we were originally told Southshore would be destroyed by a tidal wave which, while sucky, could just be accepted as is because it was a small town by water. After such great examples like Andorhol, Southshore just became another example of Cata leveling feeling like it was just one kick to the gut after another for Alliance.
Theramore (for me, because I know this is a hot topic) I thought the issue was always how it was done. Garrosh marched a army to Theramore and had them break themselves on it’s defenses, when he could have leveled the city in an instant and lose not a single Horde soldier. It makes him come across as corwardly because instead of sacking the city by the superior might of the Horde, he used a super weapon, and THEN used it after breaking his forces on their defenses for almost no reason because as mentioned earlier, he could have wiped out the city any time he wanted.
Because Blizzard dosen’t understand what neutral means. They were legitemate targets. They also seem to have forgotten the attack on Sen’jin.
It is in War Crimes. Theramore (and Southshore I think) is brought up in his “the wanton destruction of cities, towns, and villages not justified by military or civilian necessity” charge constantly.
Jaina hops from “neutral”, to war and Alliance aligned in that book like crazy.
While I would agree Theramore was an acceptable target, I’m of the personal opinion that Southshore wasn’t.
Horde will probably disagree with me about this and that’s fine, but I just never saw Southshore as a legitimate military target.
It wasn’t some walled off strongpoint or springboard for an invasion into Forsaken territory, it was just a fishing village with a couple of guards for protection. Sure there was some harassment of the nearby Forsaken controlled Tarren Mills, but they did the same thing back just as frequently and such harassment hardly constituted some existential threat to the Horde much less the Forsaken.
It wasn’t even important from a strategic standpoint. Like I said, it really just amounted to a quiet fishing village that mostly kept to itself.
It only constituted a threat when the Forsaken outright invaded the region as aggressors because they wanted to exploit the chaos of the Cataclysm to expand their territory. And even then it hardly constituted a major one, but that didn’t stop the Forsaken from all but genociding the entire population with a ridiculously excessive use of force in the form of plague bombing.
They went so overboard in fact that it made the whole area inhospitably toxic to everyone, even them.
They didn’t have to destroy it, they WANTED to destroy it and they went to such a wasteful and vindictive extreme that they couldn’t even use it for themselves afterwards which largely made the entire exercise a wasteful overindulgence of the pettiness and unnecessary brutality that came to encapsulate the Forsaken and later the entire Horde under Sylvanas’ toxic leadership.
Theramore might have been a “legitimate target” but intercepting ships full of non-combatants feeling from Theramore, capturing them and torturing them / forcing them to kill one another sure makes the point completely irrelevant.
Ah we all know that was just to make the raid seem more valid considering it straight up contradicted earlier lore bits. Hell it’s not even brought up at the trial, they only state Theramore wasn’t a valid target. The fact is Jaina is just one of Golden’s favorites, and as such she gets to be a perpetual victim who does no wrong.
In fact it was exactly that. Well not a “stronghold” or anything. But it was used to fight against the Forsaken. Not going to disagree hard or anything, but I wanted to mention it. Well like you did yourself.
To be fair that was likley to show how too far gone Garrosh was at this point and was a thing we saw during the rebellion and so on. No the point isn’t moot. Every castle has civilians in them.
The civilians had been captured way before the rebellion began. And no you just can’t handwave it away by saying “Oh it’s just to show how Garrosh was bad.”
Horde players don’t want their faction to get villain batted anymore but can’t even accept that what their faction did in the past was villainous. You can’t have it both ways.
I wrote we saw it during the rebellion, which I’m not even sure is true (or if it was only in the book War Crimes later on).
It doesn’t have relevancy to the question, if Theremore was a military target. Torturing the civilians was bad and wrong, that’s out of the question. It’s strange how it could’ve happen though.
I don’t have any problems with villainous things in games. But you are mixing two things that don’t interact. Most military targets have civilians in them.
Most military targets don’t get nuked the crap out of them without warning.
Since when? Why should you warn an enemy? Would you be ok with Horde troops storming the city? Is there a difference? Does it change the fact Theramore was a war supporting stronghold? Thermore was also warned.
By Baine who went behind his commanders’ back.
Since it was literally the first instance of it happening in-universe?
Yes, if I’m to expect they would spare non-combatants anyway, something that’s I’m very doubtful about.
Not exactly the same, but when humans were first taught magic a group of them summoned a firestorm that killed literally tens of thousands of trolls. It was an invading army, but magical nukes have been well known for awhile. This was just a new form.