It was Genn who said it, actually. But unlike what the Sylvanas loyalist players saw, we never actually saw said farmers called upon. Just those Night Elves growing pumpkins in Stormwind instead.
Stormwind, a single kingdom, hold the entire Horde for 4 years until Garona betrayed King LLane. Said Horde had the help of Deathwing/Old Gods, preventing the other kingdoms help.
Alliance didnât exist until the conquest of Dun Morogh, and even the entire Horde never took Ironforge or Gnomeregan.
And you should read the novel: the Horde never âswept across Lordaeronâ. They tried and failed in Hillsbrad, suffering heavy losses. Doomhammer retreated to Hinterlands were he lost half of the horde, and had heavy losses again trying to destroy Silvermoon.
When the remainings of the Horde tried to take an unprotected Lordaeron, King Thoras Trollbane sent an army to Alterac Mountains, blocking the passes and traped Orgrimâs reinforces. And when Doomhammer had almost destroyed the gates of Capital City, the Alliance army arrived and crushed his rear.
As i said, the Horde lost every battle.
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Not achieving total victory is not the same thing as loosing.
The Alliance succeeded (whether it was from a Mary Sue moment by one of their heroes or not, it was a success) in destroying the economic and political center of the Forsaken and driving them out as refugees. That is, by any reasonable standard, a win.
They might also have had the goal of occupying it, and even if I find that debatable (were they going to live in the undercity with it toxins?), I will repeat not achieving every goal is not the same thing as loosing.
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But the means in which you achieve this victory matter in the long run of a war.
A pyrrhic victory is as bad as a defeat. In an endeavor like ye olden warfare (and, again, to a lesser extent in modern warfare), if it costed you too much to obtain, it has wounded you in the long run. In this, they did manage to turn a defeat to victory, but at such an immense casualty rate that conscription had to began.
That is very bad. Especially at the beginning of a conflict.
There is a reason why many sieges werenât waged in battle, but rather by starving out the populace. They were extraordinarily lethal.
You can win plenty of battles, but lose the war if the battle costed you nearly everything in manpower and resource. In this, the armistice was met in fairly neutral terms. The Alliance isnât in a position of strength to make demands, the Horde has no interest in resuming the war and just about all assets on call were exhausted between the two.
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My point doesnât betray me. Because be that as it may, that Sylvanas and Nathanos want as much death as possible, that includes the enemy as well. Grinding their own forces down until they couldnât defeat the opposition would be counter-intuitive to the whole plot of attempting to kill everything.
In the good words of Bane, long may His sweet mask reign; âTheatricality and deception. Powerful agents to the uninitiated.â
ignoring the BS godlike lore characters on the alliance side(because the horde doesnt have any now)
a united horde would crush the alliance.
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Sylvanas and nathanos lost you know.
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The alliance needed the horde military to fracture so they could join up with them just to have a chance to fight the other portion of the horde. The alliance is usually on the verge of losing until the horde fractures, it happened in SoO, it happened in 8.2.5 and it happened in WC2.
The alliance may have the numbers, but they are usually written as insanely incompetent and weak. They didnât even know the forsaken would use the plague at undercity, and they werenât able to scout a gigantic army in the barrens until they basically lost ashenvale.
In terms of who should be stronger realistically, itâs the alliance, in wow itâs the horde because the alliance is too stupid to even be able to tie their own shoes, and their powerful characters never make an impact in these fights.
Yeah, sure. Thats why after the Alliance victory on Dazarâalor is stated by both factions that the Alliance is winning in every front and could have got total victory in weeks⌠Thats also why Baine suggest to open negotiationsâŚ
Source?
Half topic has been debunking that.
Pleople should read the novels before say something about it. Again, the Alliance won every battle in the Second War, as has won every major battle against the Horde in all the wars.
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Yeah, but there is no evidence it was a pyrrhic victory either.
I mean, yes Jaina turned the tide to victory, but âclose foughtâ doesnât make it pyrrhic. And, for that matter, Sylvanas had to kill her own people to get the advantage that Jaina waved away with her hand. A lot more like the Battle of Buldge in WWII (desperate attempt to turn the tide in an otherwise loosing situation.)
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They needed the Horde military to take Orgrimmar. The had no problem besieging it. But you need superior numbers to take a fortified position. Significantly superior numbers.
This is as well that i can interpret, like sure, the alliance is often written as more incompetent and recurring to pure force, but they donât really need to do atrocities to get the advantage (minus probably the suicide mission).
Meanwhile the horde needs:mana bombs with the focusing iris,beast from northrend intercontinental catapults, attack first to get the upper hand, kill civillians in mass, chemical weapons like the blight kill their own people, get old-god superweapons, make deals/work with some of the worst criminals on azeroth (Zul, ashvane, azshara,nâzoth).
Meanwhile the alliance only needs⌠demigods who can one shot armies like tyrande,malfurion or jaina.
and they didnât even used any of the others they had like alleria, what would have happened if alleria was in dazarlazor? Probably horde players would be dead.
Havenât looked at this thread since earlier on. Glad to see weâre neck deep in real world analogies.
Iâm still of the opinion that worrying about it at all doesnât matter, because the factions will, at least as long as WoW represents current lore, forever exist over time in a fixed stalemate in practical effect, even if a snapshot of the story leans one way or another.
That said (and there ARE mods out there, but it just isnât the same), if Blizz would let Creative Assembly make a grand strategy Total War: Azeroth game? Man, would that ever be fun.
Then we could play out all our head canon scenarios- not that it would mean any more than than the outcomes in the existing Total War games reflect reality or canon of whatever game is in question. But we could do it.
You could have your formations and your artillery, and your sieges and your industry. The stuff that we daydream about with our head canon, as the MMO and the Blizz-style RTS genres just donât⌠reflect these sorts of things particularly well.
Hell, who wouldnât love to replay Arthasâs attack on Quelâthalas, but this time, directing the strategy of the Blood Elves and see if you can beat him back if you did things differently? They could even make a vulnerability to agents to reflect DarâKhanâs actions that you would need to react to.
Or use attrition effects to impact Alliance expeditionary forces in the Barrens, like Repanse de Lyonesseâs mortal empireâs campaign. Not so easy to roll all that Alliance steel across Kalimdor when you have to maintain water supplies or face debilitating losses due to attrition effects as it was in your head, was it?
Alright, Iâve achieved my ramble. Now I have to do relevant things.
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Youâre correct. The Horde has the bigger military force betwixt the two by a considerable degree, but I doubt that Blizzard will care about that for long.
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Caedmun wins the thread again.
In actual medieval siege warfare you need significantly more, but this isnât that, not even close. In a world with magic and flying ships and fire that can burn stone or catapults that can launch things miles that is not the case. Sylvanas herself can just rip gigantic pieces of rocks out of walls and launch them at high speeds without much effort, Jaina can just blast walls apart herself as well.
The alliance didnât even fight the horde at Dazarâalor, they tricked the horde to go somewhere else so they could fight the Zandalari who werenât in the horde at the time. Yes, the alliance was losing before the seige, winning after the siege, but then risking everything in 8.2.5 as Anduin, the high king of the alliance and controller of the combined militaries, said.
Garrosh at the time had old god powers, if it wasnât for the horde rebellion giving the alliance a chance to attack. Thatâs why whenever the alliance âwinsâ against the horde, itâs usually with the help of the horde. The alliance, especially in wow, does not win against the horde, the horde loses against itself after they split. When they are united they are usually just destroying the alliance until leader makes them fracture then the alliance has a chance. Itâs the cycle of wow writing, because the horde can never actually lose, but the alliance can enjoy all the devastating defeats.
Well, in fact it is true that powerful beings often swing things around. But then why even bother with debating the power of the military forces?
Other than powerful beings, siege warfare in wow is currently pointless because of flying. In wow you donât need significantly more people to attack a city. Heck you can burn down an entire zone (teldrassil being more than just Darnassus) in a couple minutes as we saw in WoT without the defenders even being able to do anything, or you can just drop a WDM on it as we saw at Theramore.
Iâd say âTotal Warcraft! How can that miss!â but then I remembered that Total War: Warhammer isnât called Total WarhammerâŚ
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Every time I hear about that dumb ship it gets stronger and stronger.
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