We are not suppose to be Warhammer and I really don’t think you are “more heroic” just because you’re more likely to lose. If anything it just feels more tragic.
Warcraft has always been had the good guys win in the end. It is part of the fantasy. Just because the good guy are going to win does not mean it will be easy/wont have sacrifices/won’t have the tension of potential loss.
Just some guy in armor with a halbred, who wouldn’t look out of place at all in actual medieval artwork, standing up to a 20 foot tall demon is some heroic ish if you ask me.
Is that any more heroic then a bunch of footmen guarding Khadgar as he destroys the dark portal to save their world, even though it means they are potentially trapping themselves forever?
Or Varian leaping to one shot a fel annihalator and managing to kill a bunch of felreaver even though he dies in the end?
No they dont. Theyre just there. Thats you adding something thats not there.
To be fair, Stormgarde, appears to be it’s own kingdom and Danath Trollbane is the new lord there. Gilneas is a nation in exile and it still exists so long as it has a people and a common culture. So we have Stormwind, Dalaran, Stromgarde, Kul Tiras and lastly Gilneas in exile.
Alterac and Lordaeron are no more. 5 of the 7 are still around, Lordaeron maybe reborn should the undead and surviving humans agree to reforming the nation under queen Calia Menethil.
where has that been stated? I mean great if it has and that it is idependant of stormwind but I haven’t seen that in game at all.
So in other words absorbed by Stormwind until blizzard ever decides they need to do something with them.
It will however, be a nation of the Horde along with their traditional ally, Quel-thelas.
Oh, they do exist. For about an expansion or two. Then they get a heaping coat of white-wash.
They haven’t been since Vanilla. I would say the Horde once had that “privilege” in between all the superweapons and villain-battling. Their problems, just like Stormwind’s national identity, has been magically fixed by the Wrynn’s and subsumed by the bland Alliance identity.
Its far more heroic if you ask me. The odds are more stacked against said illiterate peasant with a polearm than plot-armored clown like Varian who doesn’t fear death until his story arc is complete. There without a choice, fighting demons that his Empire has long denied the existence of under pain of death, struggling against a sanity-crushing, chaotic being of primordial emotion whose mere presence drives people irreversibly mad. All the while knowing at the back of his mind as the whispers of madness claw at his consciousness that he will probably be killed by the same empire he protects to keep the knowledge of such evil secret. Hell, even the Sigmarines are more heroic; they give up their very identity to fight the horrors that threaten their people.
And shocking enough, the peasant with the polearm sometimes wins. You won’t find such grim darkness in a Blizzard title outside of Diablo I and II. Its part of why Diablo III was a disappointment.
Also stop asking about giant rats in the sewers. They don’t exist.
Varian participated in it, but not as a deliberate show of solidarity IIRC. He was just there at the time. I also don’t consider the contribution of irregulars to be a direct contribution of forces as the landing of troops in Darkshore for deployment in Ashenvale would be.
The Barrens I look at more cynically. It appears to have been something done to expand Theramore’s power base, and to colonize the area - not expressly to help the Night Elves - and were I to be even more cynical, I would ask why Stormwind is building a logistical dagger to the Night Elves’ underbelly in Ashenvale. Why they’re favoring a port that the Night Elves can’t interfere with. Machiavelli had a few things to say about this kind of thing.
Keep in mind, during this time, the Night Elves WERE directly contributing forces to Stormwind’s defense. They did it in Vash’ir, which, if it fell, would have, in the words of the troops on the dock, meant the end of Stormwind.
Varian also failed to dismantle the Horde, and while doing so, he strongarmed Tyrande into giving up Azshara under the assumption that this would lead to peace. We can see how that turned out. How many of those super-long range nuclear catapults were built from wood culled from that region? The world may never know.
Then after Teldrassil, Anduin refused time and time again to fulfill the obligations that members of the Alliance have towards each other - protecting the core territories and the people who live there being at the top of that list. Troops could have been funneled through those portals, giving the Night Elf military that extra bit of time they needed to land. But Stormwind contributed nothing in the way of military assistance during the conflict - which is kind of notable when we start to think about how things may have been different if Anduin, Genn, Tyrande, and Jaina were on the ground during that invasion, along with a battalion or two of Stormwind troops. Instead, Anduin diverts all efforts to the seizure of Stormwind’s geopolitical interests - like Lordaeron, Arathi, Kul’Tiras, and Zandalar - including the diversion of the Night Elf military. Then when the time comes for Stormwind to honor its commitments as an Alliance member, Anduin refuses. He not only wants to destroy Zandalar’s navy (something that now is in his power), he wants to invade their capitol to make a point, even though with no navy, he could have just bypassed them.
Anduin caps this off with a “peace treaty” that fails to address the reasons the Horde went to war in the first place, and leaves the Night Elves dealing with a historically volatile and genocidal power in their immediate vicinity. He claims to do this because he believes the Horde has changed - but Anduin himself is a pretty pisspoor judge of character, to the extent that Sylvanas repeatedly surprises and runs circles around him on the basis that she does things that Anduin doesn’t expect. Why should it be different with the rest of the Horde? When has Anduin been accurate for that matter with any member of the Horde save for Baine? Why further, should anyone believe that the council will be able to restrain the Horde’s ideology and impulses any better than Vol’jin or Thrall did?
Stormwind has repeatedly demonstrated that it is using the Alliance to its benefit, and that it’s either unable or unwilling to assist the Kaldorei. It won’t even act in respect to the risks that the Night Elves face. In either case, their membership in the Alliance is therefore something worth questioning.
RIght you realise that the Night elves are on the other side of the planet right? takes time for the alliance to mobilize and move forces to support.
Where was the Night elves support when Theramore was being attacked? That was stormwinds only foot hold on Kalimdor and the night elves didn’t ever help secure it, or assist in securing the barrens during cata.
The Alliance has sent fleets multiple times to help defeat blockades at kalimdor, where was the Night elf support then?
You complain a lot about the other races in the Alliance but don’t hold the Night elves to the same standard. The fact the Alliance has to dedicate resources to the Night elves to help them secure their lands on the other side of the planet is a huge ask. If the night elves simply relocated closer to the rest of the Alliance we could protect them far easier.
But said relocation is them abandoning their homes, and frankly, joining the Alliance makes them an easy way to get at the humans, as Sylvanas did during BFA.
If you want to argue that the Alliance can’t do anything to help the Night Elves, then that undercuts the core reason why the Night Elves should want to join the Alliance in the first place. They observe no benefit, and instead take on the liability of being a convenient method to hurt the humans.
Your not wrong, but perhaps the Night elves should stop expecting miracles from the rest of the Alliance. If they decide to leave and face off against the Horde alone I doubt they will last long. I think is the only reason Tyrande hasn’t quit because it would mean her peoples extinction, as lost as she has become in her wish for vengancec she isn’t that stupid.
In usual conditions, they’d have geopolitical advantages that would make defending their territory pretty easy - but the War of the Thorns was not waged on the basis of the Night Elves bringing the brunt of their capabilities to bear. Instead, Tyrande and Anduin agreed to move the overwhelming bulk of the army to secure more of Stormwind’s interests - and that bit them hard in the end.
This is before we consider that Sylvanas attacked Teldrassil purely to get at Stormwind in the first place.
Yet the night elves were the one who fell for that ploy and had already moved their forces to secure Silithus. They couldn’t even keep eyes on the Horde army on their own land and some how expect Anduin to do it from across the other side of the world.
The Night elves were played by the Horde, they can’t blame the Alliance for that. Even though Anduin made alot of bone headed moves along the way.
The Attack on Lordearon was not a bad move as it went after sylvanas directly and the back bone of her support. It also secured the Alliances other lands from similar attacks.
I do agree however after destroying the Zandalari fleet the Alliance should have focused on Kalimdor And helping the Elves out. blockading the Horde on kalimdor with its fleets would have easily won them the war from there.
It was a joint decision. I don’t absolve Tyrande of making the wrong move in a Mexican standoff pin, but she did it to assist the Humans in securing their geopolitical objectives, and she got burned hard for it. Then the Alliance via Anduin failed to even try to compensate her for that loss, or to try to retake her core territories. That’s an extraordinary betrayal.
If we are talking about when he was Logash yes, he didnt know at the time but that doesn’t change the fact even without knowing himself/the night elves he still lend a hand for a cause he did not have anything to gain from.
In Wolfheart he went to the night elves defense even when he didnt have anything to gain(while the rest of the Alliance requested some concession from Tyrande)
Both of these contradict each other. The night elves did not send a direct contingent to Vash’ir as far as I recall. Also, the fact we have a hero’s call quest asking for anyone who can help to help the night elves further weakens your argument it was not a direct contribution.
Do you honestly think Jaina pre-cata cared one bit about expending her influence? Especially at the cost of the lives of Alliance and Horde soldiers? I think your head canoning too much these days.
And if Varian did attempt to dismantle it how many Alliance would have been killed in the effort? How likely would the world have stood against the Legion when they inevitably returned? Also, Varian talked to Tyrande, he did not strongarm her and Tyrande was the one who made that decision.
Where were the night elves when Deathwing burned the Park District? The fact is there is only so much any individual member can do.
Except ever mage was using their power to EVACUATE the citizens of Darnassus. Simply sending troops without the logistical means of keeping said troops armed/supplied would have been disastrous
You mean all those zones that would direct keep the Eastern Kingdom safe. Which minus the draenei had the ENTIRE CIVILIAN population of the Alliance, including the night elves.
1.He tells Tyrande to have some PAITENCE. That he would have helped her after the attack on Zandalar and considering as per both side the Alliance was literally weeks aways from winning, would have made taking back Darkshore that much easier. I’d also point out the Alliance was sending troops to Ashenvale(as per the various mission boards).
Considering the world was busy dealing with an Old God trying to destroy the world there was little that could be done. Both sides were spent and short of going back to war of annialation there is not much more than can be done then force the Horde to leave night elven lands.
What benefit? Stormwind has literally been sending its sons and daughter to die just to try and keep everyone safe. To the point Genn said they might have to recruit farmers next.
Trolla are racist and hostile but for a reason. Almost every race that they encountered was there to take their land and push them out.
Literally right inside Theramore, fighting under Shandris. Baine and Vol’jin remark on being dismayed by their presence. The only reason they didn’t die in the blast, was because Shandris left early with Vareesa to go hunt Thalen.
Every race have bad and good examples…
Bad - Garithos , Kael , Sylvanas , Garrosh ,Tyrande / Malfurion …
but races like Draenei have dark sides too - how they threatened the Broken . And so on .
Considering the lack of sources in these responses, seems like there’s no clear canon answer.