Perfectly fine to make the Alliance morally grey by having them obliterate every member of the Horde.
The only thing I would retcon is Malfurion’s survival. The burning of Teldrassil made for a great story, but it would be even better if Tyrande’s wrongheaded attempt to save Malfurion had been for naught.
Retcon: Yes. A few assumptions:
Prelude: Tensions in Silithus goes sideways.
Step 1: Lordaeron is attacked first in an operation spearheaded by Stormwind and Gilneas. Participation from other nations/states would be contentious, particularly after the campaign against the Legion. If they really want, they could foreshadow Lightbound by having them start appearing and supporting this assault.
Undercity is caught unawares, and suffers damage and results in a retreat on the side of the Forsaken with much of the city evacuated.
Step 2: In retaliation, Sylvanas lays siege to Teldrassil, being the closest Alliance stronghold to the greater population of the Horde. War of Thorns plays out. Sylvanas gets to Teldrassil, and burns it for revenge.
Night Elves, being one of the races that were not keen on another conflict after the Legion suffer heavy losses in battle, but manage to evacuate a good chunk of the population on Teldrassil. Their characters actually react, and are shown reacting.
Additional Notes: Night Elves are angry at Stormwind and Gilneas for starting this, and causing them collateral damage.
Alliance not being unified? Check.
Contention in the Alliance? Check.
Alliance acting first? Check.
Horde given a reason to attack the Alliance? Check.
Sylvanas being right about her conflict with Humans of Stormwind and Gilneas? Check.
Morally grey? I guess?
Bonus: Introduces the Lightbound as a viable threat, rather than a throwaway side baddie.
I don’t know, that’s all I got, and this assumes that both Teldrassil and Tirisfal Glade is still being bowled over.
I’ve previously argued that characters like Malfurion are real story problems because they are so powerful that they should be able to solve almost all of our problems without breaking a sweat. So the writers either needs to figure out a way to get them out of the way (trapped in the Nightmare…again!) or suddenly and inexplicably depower them (an axe in the back…his kryptonite!).
This is why Thrall got exiled and summarily depowered. It’s why Tyrande, even after her power-up, is barely stronger than Nathanos. And it’s why Jaina mysteriously vanished from the Broken Shore.
No.
But assuming Sylvanas doesn’t have a secret reason for doing it, I would have made Undercity happen first.
I’d have kept it and the destruction of the Undercity.
But I’d have kept how it happened a mystery. The Horde was occupying Teldrassil and something went horribly wrong. The Alliance blame the Horde while the Horde claim they tried to burn it to end their armies on it.
Its a big mystery the whole expansion that’s in the back of your mind the whole time. That’s what I thought they were going to do and in my mind that would’ve been more interesting.
Going to tweak this a bit.
The Horde catches them while they’re still depopulating the tree. Resulting in 15% population loss.
Saurfang does his damn job and kills Malfurion. This way Tyrande can still do her Night Warrior thing.
Why would Anduin, the guy who has done everything in his power to avoid war, start one?
Honestly … no, but I would have changed the context quite a bit. The idea that Burning happened isn’t really the problem on a basic writing level; its HOW and WHY it happened that takes this tragic event and makes it so damned frustrating (its also Blizz’s MASSIVE neglect to make it an important part of the motivation of so much of the story that compounds this issue several times over). However, the premise could have worked with several slightly altered steps:
1) Handling the Absence of the Draenei and the Vindicaar:
Shockingly easy to deal with, and frustrating as hell that Blizz did not do this. Place the Vindicaar and the majority of the Draenei (Lightforged or otherwise) in Outlands (like Thrall); attempting to recover Tempest Keep, The Genedar, and what remains of their people and Naru from that broken Twisted land. For the first time in thousands of years the Legion is no longer a threat, and the Draenei have a working Naru Ship … of course they would jump at the chance to recover what they can and bring it home; directly post the fall of Sargeras (thus, they left before this conflict even began).
2) Handling the Burning Itself:
Another relatively easy thing to alter to make it more … nuanced, and all it takes is merely tying it into the Azerite subplot. Azerite is a substance we still know very little about, but canonically (in its raw form) its apparently extremely unstable (which is why the Vulpera, who scavenge everything, refuse to gather it). With the material popping up everywhere on Azeroth, you could change the tone of Teldrassil drastically by simply having the Tree’s roots unknowingly tapping into a surfacing vein of Azerite.
The war still happens; the Burning is STILL the Horde’s fault; but when attempting to INVADE the city, Teldrassil’s absorbing of nutrients from an extremely unstable material made for FAR more of an explosive situation than either side predicted (its not the first time a World Tree was tainted by its roots reaching into a highly magical ore). Essentially, the WoT still plays out as it had and IT was intentional; but the goal was still conquer the Tree (not destroy it) and THAT event was unintentional.
3) Other Stuff:
Granted, I’m fairly certain that it will be revealed that Sylvie’s decision to burn the tree will ultimately be in service of her own “True Objectives” (and not in the service of the Horde in the slightest, making Saurfang’s sparing of Malf more of a moot point than it already is in that event); but if you used the above two things, you “could” have adjusted the plot that we already have in tone and substance just enough to make it have at least more “potential” than what we currently got.
The Alliance STILL has an impetus to invest heavily in this conflict with Teldrassil (that the Horde is responsible for, even if it was not intentional); and the Horde has more of a reason to coalesce around Sylvanas (who genuinely WAS attempting to do what she thought would benefit the Horde, but it backfired due to God Blood)… and now the Horde needs to unite or get destroyed by what they would see as the Alliance’s RIGHTFUL attempts at vengeance.
There are other ways, but with these few alterations you could actually take the story we mostly had at the beginning of BfA and make it work to some degree for a “Faction Pride” Faction Conflict expansion. Granted, you’d still have to figure out a way to balance out the absurd power-imbalance between the Alliance and Horde; Focus FAR more on Tyrande’s story than we’ve gotten; and actually devote the ENTIRE expansion (outside of “maybe” the very end) to the Faction Conflict story-thread as the A plot (with Azerite being plot B) … but … it “could” have worked.
Aren’t you convinced that Sylvanas is evil? Why wouldn’t he attack first with all of the evil things she’s done?
I am convinced she is evil, Anduin, the guy who tried to redeem Garrosh certainly didnt think Sylvanas was irredemable until after Tedrassil.
Didn’t he start thinking that after Arathi?
My mistake, even when he thought Sylvanas was irredemable Anduin was still the sort of charactef that considered war a last resort.
Hm… I actually feel that A Good War and Elegy did a rather good job of subverting this. The novellas showed that as powerful as Malfurion was, he actually couldn’t stand up to an army that size all by himself even with putting all of his efforts into trying to do so.
Really, A Good War and Elegy were well written up until the part with the axe and the catapults. I’m not sure what happened with those two points. Now, the axe could have been written better and could have been made more believable. But with the axe and the catapults, it felt like they were bullet points the writers were given and they just followed orders but didn’t really put the effort into like the rest of the novellas.
One thing I just can’t believe is that the draenei didn’t even send a small contingent to help out the night elves! Seeing a few vindicators on the front lines and then maybe some shaman in Teldrassil attempting to put out the flames would’ve been awesome, and quite easy to do…
Blizzard forgot about them. Again.
Another thing that is supremely vexing, if for whatever reason Teldrassil had to be attacked/destroyed, Blizzard had the perfect set piece that ties into this Expansion that wouldn’t make the Players hate the game and their own factions.
Teldrassil is a big ole tree out in the middle of the sea full of Night Elves.
Who lives in the sea and really hates Night Elves and is one of the main antagonists for this expansion?
I like the story as it’s progressed, I just wish it would have been made more clear that Sylvanas had to burn down the tree once holding it became impossible re the survival of Malfurion.
If I retconned it away, I would have had Saurfang kill Malfurion, and the Horde occupy the tree as planned. Still kill a bunch of Nelves, raise them for the Forsaken, etc. but less catastrophe. But I’d like to keep it since it’s such an iconic moment and scene… I’d love for Sylvanas to raise Malfurion and the Darkshore elves, and then march on Darnassus, and after a long guerilla war in the tree, Tyrande attempts a botched evacuation of the Tree and burns it down herself as a last ditch effort to kill the Forsaken intruders, and so that remaining night elves turn to ash rather than be raised into undeath. And then blames the Burning on Sylvanas in her report to the Alliance.
But the biggest reason I’d want to retcon the burning away is because lore-wise it doesn’t really make sense that normal siege fire could burn a World Tree blessed specifically to withstand such a circumstance - even more malicious fel based fire magic. Make it an experimental Azerite weapon that malfunctions and showcases the destructive force of such technology, and it would be fantastic.
Although, I disagree that Teldrassil is in any way a “genocide” given the scope of IRL military history, and that even actual genocide justifies the “complete obliteration of every member of the Horde.” But, I’m not about to argue about it again.
Perfect, this is great.
Wait, why? What’s his motive? Does he know Sylvanas wants a war?
See, this is the kind of character layering that would be so easy to show in questing and that would add depth and meaning and direction to the story. Yet for some reason Blizzard decided to make a defining moment of the entire story a half-baked time-gated quest line involving almost no real story beats.
smh.
I would still have Teldrassil burn down, but have Azhara be responsible for it since she really needs a stronger role in this expansion. With so many azerite wounds opening up I’m sure there are plenty in the ocean and Azshara decides to test it power on her enemies. She sends an army of azerite infused naga and weapons to Darkshore to take revenge on the night elves and the Alliance ask the Horde for help. However, Sylvanas refuses because she won’t send troops to die against enemies she doesn’t know everything about (being infused with azerite), distrusts the Alliance since they tried to assassinate her in Stormheim, and sort of hopes this could kick the Alliance off of Kalimdor for good, allowing her full access to the azerite in Sillithus.
Alliance makes a final stand at Teldrassil and Azshara decides to burn them all alive just to have them suffer. Alliance relations with Horde goes far south because they abandoned them again (first time being the Broken Shore) and leave the Horde to fend for themselves during the Battle of Undercity, which would also be done by Naga since Azshara wishes to bump off Sylvanas to cripple the Horde. Having Azshara take down two capital cities would emphasize to players unfamiliar with her just how dangerous she really is and she would leave a mark on the world. Rather than a faction war, BFA focuses on the Alliance and Horde gathering azerite and building their forces to fight off foes that also have become empowered by azerite as well as try to heal the world, but will fight over with the opposite faction because they do not trust them with its power.