Not to mention Rastakhan was an amazing character with a lot of potential and hes being replaced by a terrible one.
His daughter is so cringe…who’s writting all her stuff it’s so bad
Well, for myself, I would like the Alliance to have one unequivocal win. Not the pyrrhic victory of Undercity (which Sylvanas snatched any sense of triumph over), and not “punching the face of the guy standing next to the guy who knifed me” victory, which is what the raid is going to be.
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Gorgeous? You look like a more fit version of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Yeah, like, a week later when Undercity was destroyed.
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This sort of thing only further confirms my previous post’s suspiciouns!
Remember, Vespero, the War of Thorns was 100% pure satisfaction for the Horde who all loved it, and the destruction of Undercity was not at all an Alliance victory because Sylvanas smirked at them. Only when she cries does it count, and only if her mascara runs even more.
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I don’t think it’s possible for the Alliance to be able to do something at the same level as Teldrassil because the lengths they’d have to go to just don’t fit the Alliance. Even if it was not an MMO. And that’s ok.
The Alliance would never purposefully annihilate Orgrimmar or Thunder Bluff. And that’s what it would take to equal it. They might try to disband the Horde, but none of the characters on the Horde would go as far to actively wipe them out.
I’m excluding Silvermoon in this discussion because the Alliance’s goal there is to force them back into the Alliance. And that’s an active goal. (Though they’d consider it liberating it. Would actually make an interesting plot line.)
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Teldrassil had the Alliance unprepared, with hundreds or even thousands of civillians burnt to death and was supposedly a huge blow to elven population, according to Tyrande.
Meanwhile Sylvanas was fully prepared for the Siege of Lordaeron, successfully evacuate all the civillians and then set a trap that almost beheaded the Alliance.
Those two really don’t compare.
I suppose a “morally acceptable” way for the Alliance to get payback would be successfully capturing Silvermoon and then holding the population hostage, exactly like Sylvanas initially planned for Teldrassil
Of course, if Velen somehow fails to kill Liadrin in order to kill all the Blood Elves’ hopes, Anduin is gonna have to torch the city. Sorry, that’s just how the game works.
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Most importantly imo, the Alliance was NEVER going to destroy Lordaeron. Now what they would’ve done with theoretical captured civilians, who knows, but the city itself would’ve been fine.
That would NEVER happen with Silvermoon because the High Elves consider it rightfully theirs. Alleria muses about wanting the city to rejoin the Alliance.
There’s not a chance they’d come anywhere near to destroying it.
A VERY fit Carl.
Heeeeeyeahheh!
#flex #selflove #takeyourpillsandsayyourprayers
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No-one is excusing the writing team. They’re under scrutiny from everyone.
To say the Horde doesn’t have it nearly as bad, if not exactly as bad, is naive.
Before I go any further though, do you play a Horde character? Do you follow the narrative? If not, I’ll try to fit it into an example.
.Genn Greymane, while having plenty of reason to want to wage war, has more or less kept a lid on his questionable decisions, from the past and until now- and he’s even been given a role of leadership as Anduin goes off on a spirit journey, or abruptly dies! Out of left field, after the world slowly climbs up from its knees after being humbled from the infinite army, Genn Greymane launches an attack on Undercity. To his personal agenda, they are the main source of power that stops the Gilneans from reclaiming Gilneas full-stop. To Muradin, he pitches that the Horde abandoned them on the Broken Shore and that Varian must be avenged. Muradin agrees and wages his war as a general, as well as sharing blueprints of tanks and artillery pieces with Genn’s craftsmen to help mass manufacter the needed weapons. Ironforge fields its forces in the Wetlands, sends half to Menethil Harbor and the other half to the Arathi Highlands. From there, they cut a bloody path to Hillsbrad, then from Hillsbrad to Tirisfal Glades. From Deathknell to Brill, they fight an alarmed force,
The battle is at its fiercest, where Genn and Nathanos square off. This part is mute-worthy because the Horde doesn’t have any mutually respected characters prior to BFA, except for perhaps Baine, but he’s in Kalimdor. Muradin feels a ping of doubt when Genn orders Muradin to finish the job. Muradin can’t bring himself to, as despite the Alliance & Horde’s history over the past, they did contribute to fighting the infinite Legion. Eventually, Sylvanas creeps up on the two, Sylvanas holds Muradin at bow point, giving him a long winded lecture about how quick the Alliance is to bite the hand that has come a long way to paving new roads after the fall of the previous tyrant that ruled over them and calls him honorless. Muradin shows regret but lets Sylvanas take her hearthstone and teleport away with Nathanos.
All that’s left is the Keep and the people that live within, both good and ill, as the range of the Forsaken often run in. Belmont, defeated, looks Genn straight in the eye and asks him ‘why, was the fall of Lordaeron not enough for you? Do allegiances mean nothing to you, just as it did after the second war?’. Genn gives him some calloused, apathetic spiel about how he remembers a fall, where he sees the Worgen curse spread throughout his populace.
‘You can kill us but you can’t kill the hope of a light-forsook people who seek a better life.’ says Belmont, setting himself up for the ultimate punchline.
‘Can’t I?’ says Genn, turning to Muradin and Tess, yelling ‘Collapse it.’.
Muradin looks stunned.
‘COLLAPSE IT!’ and suddenly, Muradin’s tank convoys and artillery teams open fire on The Keep. Eventually, the munitions cause the walls to collapse and they do not cease their firing until the Keep collapses- and when the surface can no longer bear the weight of an entire Keep coming down on top of it, debris begins to fall in, compromising the sewer system and starting a slow total block-in. Almost everyone is dead. The good, the bad, it doesn’t matter.
‘You just killed everyone inside, Genn! Innocent, accursed bastards that hadn’t so much as lifted a hand against us! And for what?! So you’d kill a handful of military assets that’re still left inside?!’, Muradin begins with a reprimand, now that the deafening fire has stopped.
. Fast forward, Saurfang and Baine find this act abysmal, for the Alliance to have attacked the Forsaken and the Warchief’s home, no less, after their aid in the invasion of the Legion. They wage war and all forces push on Darkshore, arriving by shoreline. The battle is an attrition and the bodies pile up. The Horde fights on valiantly but after destroying their Azerite war machine, Genn yells out to blanket the field in artillery, to which Muradin protests but Genn silences him and carries out the order. “They’re blowing away their own troops…” Baine comments as he commands his troops from afar, pitying, then looks at the camera as if to say; ‘that’s bad!’. But suddenly, as the battle looks to be lost, a giant flying ship with a golden goblin mast pierces through the clouds, twists the ship sideways and barrages the treeline with cannon fire to knock the night elves out of their defenses and remove their places to hide. The Horde fights on to breach Darnassus. Muradin, conflicted with himself, is unable to bring himself to fall in line with Genn, who committed such an atrocious act and vehemently disagrees on the artillery fire on fronts where there were still Alliance combatants, he goes off to fight his own battle and Genn mocks him, telling him that if he isn’t on the side of the Alliance, he can flee to the far corners of the world and become as deaf to his people as his brother Magni did. Or, worse, tell him that he can even join the Bronzebeards that came before him in death, if he’s so willing to throw his life away. Meanwhile, Tyrande might concede that it’s time to evacuate Darnassus once she sees it’s an army against her and her husband, who, while great warriors in their own right, cannot hope to survive that many bows, rifles, spells and throwing spears pointed at them at once. Genn obliges to set a trap, to kill the Horde’s leadership in one swift cut. Muradin holds the Horde off in some massive war machine of his, before it’s disabled and he’s subdued. Saurfang and Baine approach, saying how Muradin was a constant companion of the Alliance and embodied the upstanding moral fiber that the Alliance aspired to be across the board. Muradin, having fits of shame, denies it and seeks death. Baine does not permit it, instead taking him into custody. The Horde comes upon Genn, who gives a long winded spiel about how it was only a matter of time before the Horde struck again and implies that if he didn’t strike first, they would have (let’s pretend BFA never happened and we would’ve never known for sure if the Horde would’ve immediately started a war with this stuff popping up. There’s plausible reason at this point to believe that Saurfang, Baine Nathanos and Lo’themar can feasibly reel Sylvanas in from doing something stupid.). “Surrender yourself and face justice! This battle is won!” Saurfang yells out, setting himself up for another punch line.
“You’ve won NOTHIIIIING!” Genn yells back, kicking a plunger hidden beneath his seat to start setting off all the bombs that he had lying in store as a trap. Malfurion swoops down and snags Genn off his feet as a giant owl. The two watch on from their respective airships as the isle is blown to sunder and a large portion of the tree’s front support is blown away. It begins to groan and sag forward, wilting like a dying flower. Can it be saved by druid magic? Is it doomed to collapse on itself? No-one knows yet!
.Genn decides that to win this war, he needs allies. He looks to Kul Tiras. Despite their departure from the Alliance, their hostility with Jaina Proudmoore for both Theramore and abandoning Daelin in his time of need makes them an uneasy and unlikely alliance. To help ease slights, Genn has Tess Greymane and Shandris Feathermoon saddle up a rescue team to break into Orgrimmar’s Prisoner Holds. In there, you find Muradin and offer him freedom, though he denies it, saying that Genn has turned the Alliance into a bunch of rabid honorless animals and that it destroys the history of the Alliance as he sees it, and, in the long run, may destroy the Alliance itself with its incessant warring. He refuses to go back to the Alliance and attempt to steer it back to the vision he had always seen it as.
The Horde looks to the Zandalari for allies, meanwhile. Things are going well in Zandalar. The Horde helps it out with its problems of rampant crime, brings the blood troll threat to heel, ousts Zul as a traitor and tidies up the G’huun problem, or at least shelfs it to visit it as a raid later on. All is going well.
The Alliance, meanwhile, experiences nothing but tragedy, as the Coven problem in Drustvar is impossible to bring to heel, and instead the Waycrest family is laid low and Gorak Tul is sealed away, but his agents persist upon the open fields and harass the Kul Tirans to break down the seals that keep him from passing into the material realm.
In Stormsong Valley, the Alliance experiences as a brief victory, as they’re able to oust the influence of the Deep Ones and they experience a slight staple of stability against an enemy that was compounding the problems of Drustvar.
While the muck in Tiragard Sound might be cleaned out, the Ashvanes has their hooks in /deep/ and Katherine signs a pact with a great noble house from nearby shores who will honor their agreement to lend their resources for the Lord Admiral, but ultimately their agenda is to get in deep with the Proudmoores and wrap them around their finger, puppet mastering the Kul Tirans to do as they see fit. Their price for their service to Kul Tiras is Katherine’s hand in marriage, to become the patriarch of the family in Daelin’s absence. She makes the agreement and the great noble house of the nearby shores assigns all of his assets to empower the Proudmoores. Ashvane’s siege is brought to an end thanks to this great reinforcement, but its damage on Kul Tiras is beyond repair. The Lord find this to be in his favor, as now the Proudmoores find themselves dependent upon them more than ever if Gorak Tul ever gets himself free.
.Meanwhile, the Alliance war campaign consists of not actually winning any significant battles, or setting up the Alliance for winning in the battle. No, the agenda is to capture the local talent and torture them relentlessly for information. Velen objects, saying that this is abhorrent and the suffrage is without warrant. Tyrande, while furious over Darkshore, finds it cruel, just as it would be to let an animal die a slow death.
Eventually, the Alliance finds the Tidescepter, lost to them from the cultist influence in Stormsong Valley, revealed to them by a former cultist who hopes for a home to one day return to, for both him and his family.
The Horde campaign consists of setting up the Alliance for defeat as part of an incursion on Kul Tiras. Just the same, they steal the Tidescepter from the Alliance and replace it with a fake, invalidating the entire Alliance storyline.
.Muradin breaks out, but only as Baine hypes him up and tells him that he can save the Alliance from its dishonorable course. Muradin totally buys it and reveals that he abandoned his post, as well as spare him, as he had hoped his forces would kill Genn and bring this war to a close, dashing the good image of himself as an honorable, loyal and capable warrior and making him look like a patsy to the enemy. He flees Orgrimmar, the Alliance gets a storyline where Genn sends the player out to Durotar as word has reached his ear of his escape and that the enemy will still want him in his hands, despite those who question his loyalty. They begin by searching Durotar, then the Barrens, where under disguise, the Alliance discovers that Saurfang personally turned all attention away from Muradin to ease his escape to Ratchet, where he could take a boat ride back to Stranglethorn Vale and from there, return to Stormwind, where Genn currently resides as High King.
The player sees that, immediately, Genn is setting Muradin up to be assassinated for treachery and they see the dangerous choice of blowing the whistle on Muradin’s location and plucky accomplice, or letting him get away and start a civil war while the Alliance is in the middle of a war. This adds fuel to the fire, providing opinions that the Gilneans are warhawks over a singular slight, against an enemy they deeply wronged and provoked during Warcraft 2 when they abandoned the Alliance and in Warcraft 3, where they denied any survivor of Lordaeron at Greymane’s Wall before it ever even reached Silverpine Forest. Many are quick to ask; “The Gilneans abandoned the Alliance a long time ago and under the same leader, why should they be apart of the Alliance again?” with comments on how Genn started the Stormheim conflict. Some side with Genn out of spite, because they don’t want a civil war that can hurt the Alliance while it’s in the midst of fighting a war.
.Round two of the war campaign starts. The Horde prepares itself to distract, separate and defeat the Alliance at Kul Tiras. The Alliance does only one thing, where they kidnap Princess Talanji.
But wait, it gets worse.
.War time continues for Tirisfal Glades. The Gilnean Brigade that pushes to completely lay claim to all of Lordaeron’s territories and make the push for Gilneas is set under attack by Sylvanas and Nathanos. They go on guerilla killing sprees. To make matters worse, she’s enacted a dark ritual that allows everyone the banshee curse that she’s permitted to her Dark Rangers and Nathanos. We’ll call them the Crimson Covenant and they’re here to kick (profanity) in a place where they’re logistically at a disadvantage.
It’s not enough that they fight on just that front, they’re also fighting in Kul Tiras too, despite the losses in Darkshore. The city is crushed. Katherine dies when her new husband sees that he’s in mortal peril and flees. Tandred is left to fill in big shoes, who is flabbergasted and displaced, whilst the new father of the family, who proudly boasts Tandred will be the leader Daelin will be proud of, while doing more or less nothing as now there’s no-one left in the Proudmoores to stop him from looting their family wealth and using their assets to his own interest.
Genn approaches to offer simple condolences, while Tess approaches Genn to tell him that the war is being lost on all fronts and the Horde is on the verge of unconditional victory in a matter of weeks. Genn insists that the war is far from over and begins preparing putting his resources on call; the recently acquired Talanji. It isn’t enough to just torture her for information. Genn reaches out to a court magus to dominate her mind and program her as an assassin to kill her father.
Meanwhile, Velen’s on a spiritual quest, where he seeks out the ghost of Varian. He tells him that Genn strains the virtues of the Alliance that joins them together and asks why he was made High King. He goes on to explain it was no rational decision from Anduin and that it was Genn who manipulated Anduin to put himself in this position.
Velen returns, learns of what’s happening and approaches Genn, saying that he’s going too far. Then, Velen secretly slips her under the radar, dispels Talanji and sends her home.
Genn is furious, asks for who did it and then Velen openly admits himself. He thanks him for his honesty, has him quietly arrested and, abruptly, kills an acquaintance that Velen had met during his quest in Zandalar who had fond character progression until now.
The Alliance is about to lose something that is essentially a war of extinction and no come-uppance is in sight.
If this sounds ridiculous, out of character and un-fun for you, it’s because it’s more or less what’s happening to the Horde right now, minus some ad-libbing that had to be done to fit the parity example. It’s essentially the same (profanity) though.
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Genn Greymane would be proud of the wall you just made!
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Ah yes. Horde players feeling the War of the Thorns wasn’t “100% pure satisfaction” because The Dark Waifu acted in character (To the surprise of all, the murderous monster who has consistently invaded and melted people for over a decade got control of the Horde and invaded and melted people!) is completely valid but the Alliance players who feel underwhelmed by their retaliation amounting to the story telling them it was an ambush where they lost more soldiers than the enemy and were mocked as they barely made their escape? They just don’t know how bad the Horde players have it these days!
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Imagine forcing a major Horde power out of its base of operations, and leaving only Silvermoon as the sole Horde stronghold in all of Eastern Kingdoms, and then say it’s not an Alliance victory.
Can I have whatever wonder drug these Alliance pessimists are taking?
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Yeah, like how the War of Thorns has had no repercussions on the Horde. Absolutely none. No one important quit over it and is starting a civil war that is tearing the faction apart once again, or anything like that.
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So…you invaded the zone, succeeded in wiping it out, defeated the Horde in a matter of hours in one of their heavily fortified capitals, foiled the last-ditch attempt to assassinate your leadership…but it was all just ruined because Sylvanas flipped you off while she ran away.
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You’re ignoring the blatant dues ex machinas required for said “victory,” carm. I don’t think anyone would be satisfied with that much narrative hand-holding.
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