A big deal was made about how the burning of Darnassus was justifiable with the Horde. Like, there was even a short story about it that I found quite good. The whole argument was akin to the Allies in WWII: cause massive devastation now to prevent more in the future. Even if we felt squeamish, it was still understandable.
But now, we find out that the Dark Lady did not even believe those reasons and just wanted to murder people. So, instead of a justifiable action, we ended up with the Horde committing mass murder for a crazy lady in an obvious retcon that makes no story sense and contradicts an expansionâs main driving elementâŚ
âPay no attention to the man behind the curtain!â
It will be even funnier when Sylvanas gets redeemed and her actions glorified.
Then the Horde still followed and celebrated an undead hitler without knowing her intentions, so the Horde will forever be evil and no amount of Sylvanas whitewashing or glorification will change that.
Honestly the fact that the entire Horde was on board with genocide for that long is just bad writing.
Either the writers are really stupid or they think that their players are really stupid, but Tauren Druids willing to commit genocide against Night Elf civilians and burning a world tree? Yea no⌠thatâs totally out of character. And that goes for most Horde characters besides Sylvanas and some other black sheep.
As for your point about justifying genocide, Iâd rather not have that.
Well, the term âgenocideâ is overused and inaccurate. Genocide implies that it was racially motived and targeted. It wasnât, at least at first. Not sure what the newest retcon says honestly.
Well the Hordeâs goal was to end the Night Elves as a nation and as a people, just like securing Kalimdor. They didnât fully achieve the latter, but they even targeted the Night Elf civilians and killed all of them so it definitely was a genocide targeted against the Night Elves.
The story wouldâve been different if the Horde attacked and destroyed Exodar ⌠and the Alliance Silvermoon. The both zones will never be updated at least we wouldnât had a reason to ask for it .
Youâd maybe have a point if Blizzard themselves didnât use the word to describe the event.
Ah yes, the faction whoâs notorious for starting almost every single conflict and going on a rampage every few years gets to cause ââmassive devastationââ in order to stop themselves from going on another rampage a few years down the line?
Thereâs no retcon here. Sylvanas was never a good person and never had the Hordeâs interests in mind, at least not since the start of Legion. The Horde were just the useful idiots to her ââmaster planââ.
Well the original plan was to occupy Teldrassil to use it as a bartering chip to secure Kalimdorâs azerite supply.
A logical if ruthless idea that actually had me hyped for BFA. It seemed like Blizz was making good on that morally gray idea. But then Slyvanas firebombed a city specifically designated as defenseless and ready for occupation and at the time it seemed like she did it in lieu of a snappy comeback for the dying Kaldorei ranger.
And of course it turns out she just wanted the highest body count possible. Which I wouldnâtâve have guessed because regardless of how well SL goes a villains motivation being basically;
âI just want to kill as many people as possible to appease Satanâ
Would be a lame background for an 80s Slasher villain. It being the motivation for a long standing playable faction leader was idiotic and BFA suffered immensely for that. I hope SL is great but it cant retroactively make any ot this less stupid.
Keeping a city full of civilians hostage (reminder that hostages are killed if demands are not met) in order to harvest the lifeblood of the planet to create weapons of mass destruction is not ââmorally greyââ. It just appears like it compared to outright slaughtering thousands of innocents.
At the time the idea was Azerite was going to change the face of Azeroth forever. Itâs technological possibilities, particularly for war machines, was quite literally earth shattering. War with the Alliance over it would be an inevitability so the Horde might as well strike first and strike hard if it wanted to forever ensure it had a place in this world.
But as it turned out Azerite could make a handful of large tanks, some glowy gunpowder, and uhhh. Think thatâs about it. And by the end of BFA it never even comes up again. Did we hoover up enough of the stuff? Or is there enchanted yellow cake uranium just sitting around everywhere right now?
Bah. Reading posts like this really makes me want to know what the heck went down with the BfA story someday. Howâd we get from a giant sword stabbing the planet and making it bleed a super-catalyst to just⌠pretending itâs not even there?
You might want to check the short story again for some details.
Sylvanas lied to Saurfang from the very beginning. Her plan was always to burn the tree. In A Good War, way before Saurfang spared Malfurion, before the Horde even reached the southern border of Darkshore, when the Horde were just getting to Astranaar in Ashenvale, Sylvanas had an internal monologue:
The kaldorei knew they were outnumbered. They knew their homeland was lost. Maybe a few of them knew in their heartsâjust as she knewâthat Darnassus would one day burn to ashes.
Genocide is also completely accurate, as Sylvanas also covered in her final internal monologues in A Good War:
This battle was not about a piece of land. Even Saurfang knew that. Taking the World Tree was a way to inflict a wound that could never heal. Losing their homes and their leaders would have ended the kaldorei as a nation, if not a people.
Using a genocide as a tool for even further purposes is still genocide.
The problem with even the initial plan was that it was actually pretty morally⌠not grey, in all honesty. Itâs overshadowed by the actual Burning being that much worse, but the initial battle plan for the War of Thorns, crafted by the âHonorableâ Saurfang, had all kinds of âwatâ in it.
Attacking the one Alliance race the Horde has a treaty with, and the one that hasnât left their forests to attack the Horde except when Garrosh was doing Garrosh things.
Carve a path through Ashenvale, killing many nelves anyway (so many that thereâs an entire river of wisps sent through to Darkshore).
If everything had gone according to plan, one of the nelves spiritual leaders and heroes for the last 10k years would have been killed, but again this makes little sense. Malfurion is the one with less ferocity than Tyrande, if anything she would need to die, or both of them.
Teldrassil would have been âheldâ. But Teldrassil canât be held by a conventional force⌠itâs a self-sustaining ecosystem and since it was cleansed, literally every living thing on there could be called to fight the Horde guerilla style.
Assuming it was held, as weâve see, the Horde do not treat nelves very well at all⌠sure theyâd have been fine with Saurfang there, maybe, but the moment he left all the prisoners would have been treated horribly, and likely starved until the Alliance caved.
Basically the âgoodâ plan still say a TON of night elves being killed, one of their leaders killed, them suffering under the boot of Horde occupation for weeks or months, and then exiled from their homelands for all time, because of the reasoning of âwell, they might attack us laterâ. Logically speaking they can never trust the Horde again.
You just have to accept that the Sylvanas/Jailer plan was absolutely not written yet at the time of the War of Thorns, because it was very clear then that burning Teldrassil was just another one of Sylvanasâ classic impulsive decisions made on a whim because a lone elf ranger called her out on her failures.
Teldrassil doesnât work with SL because it wasnât written to. We just have to come to terms with the fact that these stories are not written in advance like they tell us, and try to deal with it.
Blockquote Even in this dark hour , they would say, *Elune still watches over us.
And that was almost certainly true, wasnât it? Elune had intervened. Perhaps she had even stayed Saurfangâs killing blow. And she wouldnât be the only force beyond the Alliance to oppose Sylvanasâs true objective.
Hinting even then that Sylvanas had another motive that others besides the Alliance would oppose.
Iâm pretty sure this is my coping mechanism for this mess. Itâs all the equivalent of âdoing homework the night beforeâ and hoping for the best.
This reminds me of the âMan in the High Castleâ series where N*zi Germany won and occupied America with the Pacific States held by Japan.
Eventually, it became unsustainable to hold it, and civil wars broke out that led to the liberation of the states. But the colonizers were very much evil all through the way even though they believed they were maintaining peace.
And yes, thatâs exactly how I saw the Hordeâs plan play out. And I think it is an apt, if touchy, comparison too.
Allies were attacked in WWII they didnât start a proactive war. If you are referring to the nuclear bombs there was still military forces in Japan.
"Youâve already won. Only innocents remain in the tree.
For Horde it was a proactive war to gain strategical advantage and dictate terms not to cause massive devastation. After Teldrasil the war was escalated to a war of annihilation. That was Sylvanas plan not Hordes.
âThere was no honor in that. They will come for us now. All of themâ
Honestly, Iâm surprised the same exact result didnât happen to Exodar, when the Legion demons invaded it. Yet a bunch of flaming rocks brings down Teldrassil? Ridiculous.
