My main issue with the burning of Teldrassil is how blizzard marketed this whole “You won’t believe who does it”, and like the “Who will be Warchief after Garrosh”, the most obvious answer ended up being correct, even though blizzard continued to say “None of you will get it”.
Shock value for shock value only is a sign of terrible writing.
Fine sentiments and all but facts don’t care about your feelings. Indiscriminate slaughter of combatants and civilian men, women, and children alike, that focuses on a religious or ethnic group is genocide. The end. Yes, this does mean IRL militarily speaking there have been lots of genocides through history despite the word being coined for a particular event in the early 1900s that we won’t name so as to avoid triggering people averse to real world comparison making.
Ooh ooh I love how low can you go! I’d retcon everything after “There must always be a Lich King” by having Tirion straight up ignore that and killing off Bolvar and destroying the helm. Then some time travelers from our doomed timeline can get shuttled to this AU Azeroth to destroy Deathwing while he sleeps so we can avoid Cata too. Taking things from there we can have the wild undead be an ever present threat both factions have to contend with and a weary Alliance who struggles to see the line between those undead and the Forsaken and harbor resentment toward the Horde for both the Wrathgate and the Broken Front.
So the Alliance gets to be the Team America style antagonist Vanilla-Wrath set them up to be and the Horde can chill the hell out and be the long suffering defenders of paltry land holdings and their way of life that Vanilla-Wrath set them up to be. Give the Forsaken a spin on the redemption arc instead of Frieza-esque flat villain arc they’ve been on in this timeline and BAM.
Also in this version of WoW LFD, LFR, sharding, and CRZ never existed. We can keep transmog, Mythic+, and the LFG tool though. Those fix actual issues without breaking the world.
I would have the Alliance attack first, in a preemptive measure backed by firebrands like Genn and Sky Admiral Rogers after news of azerite technology development had been centralized in Undercity where the ever paranoid Sylvanas would have near total control and oversight. The official goal would be to destroy the Azerite development labs, with an unofficial one of reclaiming Capitol City for humanity if possible.
When things begin to go south Turalyon orders the Vindicaar to purify the first wave of blight sylvanas unleashed over the objections of Romuul that testing of the new azerite fuel source is incomplete. The blight is purified but use of azerite as a fuel proves damaging to the Vindicaar’s systems, rendering its weapons inoperative until an extensive overhaul can be completed. Jaina comes in on her Magic Flying Psychological Ghost Galleon and breaches the gates. The rest of the fight plays out as it is in cannon; the Forsaken loose the Undercity, but as a contingency plan activate the citywide blight bomb in a very sylvanas style scorched earth tactic.
To keep Azerite out of Alliance hands The War of Thorns occurs, but the official goal is to destroy the Port of Rut’theran to cripple any shipments of Azerite, with an unofficial one of then capturing the world tree and holding its citizens hostage to prevent any further alliance intervention in Horde affairs.
Invading the Kaldorei lands is far more difficult than Sylvanas ever expected, with the horde having to resort to untested azerite weaponry to break through the Kaldorei defenses with sheer brute force. The Kaldorei navy arrives and makes trying to get across the channel to Teldrassil basically impossible. During this time Teldrassil is evacuated as a precaution much as Undercity was.
Unwilling to give up Sylvanas orders experimental long range Azerite artillery to be used to bomb Rut’theran right over the top of the fleet. Unfortunately there is a large shipment of azerite in the port, which promptly explodes. The azerite infused flames instantly incinerate the port village and ignite the aspect blessings upon Teldrassil much as the ones on Nordrassil were. The tree almost seems to spontaneously combust much to the shock and/or horror of everyone.
The Horde claims this was never intentional. The Alliance refuses to accept this. War begins.
Personally, I have no problem with the destruction of Teldrassil. I actually believe it was a great way to illustrate that this new war between the two factions held significant consequence.
My issues are more towards the execution of its destruction, and the aftermath.
On the execution point, a cinematic of catapults throwing balls of fire at the thing is just so… plain, illogical, and boring? Why not show the Horde working together to destroy it? I would of liked to have seen Blood Elves and Nightborne opening multiple portals for the balls of fire to pass through; portals that hold strategic parts of the tree on the other side. That’d fix the disregard for distance issue away. I’d also show Tauren lifting the balls on, goblins igniting them, and forsaken firing them whilst Orcs held the line to protect them all in the background. Instead we got… basic catapults throwing balls of fire towards a tree that was so far away that it’d be realistically impossible for it to actually be hit.
Silly and lazy. A real missed opportunity.
As for the aftermath, Tyrande has “had her revenge”? Really Blizz? She killed x1 valkyr. That’s it? Redo Gilneas as part Worgen, part NE! Show us more than them hanging about a farm in SW! Something cool would be awesome.
There’s still time to fix this, but I have a feeling we’ll have NE without a home and in an SW farm for expansions to come. Blizzard suck at closure. The only time they did it right was in MoP. The Timeless Isle was a fantastic way to show finality for all that had transpired in MoP.
Much of the forum seems to treat it like it is. I have no illusions about the literary quality of Warcraft or who it’s meant for tho. My comment still stands.
My opinion on the whole thing is like… if you’re going to inflict such a travesty on a playable race… you need to let that race get revenge. Forsaken and Blood elves got their revenge in Wrath. But Worgen and Night elves haven’t gotten their revenge yet. That’s not very fair, is it?
Honestly, I do think that part of the reason Teldrassil execution (both the act and the fallout) was SO poorly implemented is because its very clear that BfA is an extension of Sylvie’s story. This is likely due to whatever her “True Objectives” are being something that will push us into the next expansion (which is why there are so many strange writing decisions that parallel the strange writing of WoD) … but it does hurt the story potential in some major ways.
Instead of focusing on Teldrassil; its effects on the Horde; its effects on the Alliance; especially its effects on the NEs; all of these things are stalled out (or just waved away), because Sylvanas needs to be allowed to do what the writers want Sylvanas to accomplish in this expansion. The Horde leaders that should be most up in arms due to that travesty, sit on their hands waiting; the Alliance leaders with the most at stake, are overwritten by moderates who handicap the Alliance effort (for the sake of ensuring the Horde faction still exists by the end of BfA).
Even Azshara is being used not as the legacy Villain that she is; but merely a side-step and “tool” of Sylvanas’ personal narrative and “True Objectives”. Its sort of bizarre seeing an entire expansion (when broken down to its basic writing decisions) devoted to the allowance and advancement of a single character’s plot (with other characters getting side-stories that rather clunkily tie into it: like Jaina, Tyrande, Anduin, Genn, Vol’jin, Saurfang, Baine … etc…)