Spoilers if you haven’t done Battle of Dazar alor***
So in Lost Honor, Genn clearly states that Alliance is running out of soldiers.
When the quest line for Darkshore begins, Anduin tells Tyrande that the Alliance is “facing dwindling resources” and doesn’t want to spread the faction too thin.
And then after the Battle of Dazar’alor, Nathanos states that reports from “all outposts” say that the Alliance is winning.
???
Numbers don’t matter.
Pendulum effect.
Right now, Alliance seem to have an advantage. Working fleet, pressing the offensive in Darkshore, and gaining ground.
Horde leadership is further dividing, rebellion is likely, naval ops are hindered, and at the Alliance’s literal mercy.
Pendulum might swing back, especially when the wild card naga get involved, but presently it favors team blue.
Alliance is by-far Winning but I don’t think it’ll stay that way. It’s strained to the bone.
The Russians “won” their front of WWII, but lost several million people in the process. Not every victory is clean.
I’d say the Alliance is winning but not overwhelmingly. They’re winning by using everything they’ve got.
The Horde took some pretty massive losses at Lordaeron too. Had there been a Lost Honor style cinematic from the Horde perspective, it’s likely you’d see Nathanos say they’d be calling up Peons next.
Not to mention that numbers are completely and totally arbitrary, and gaining or losing the upper hand in the war can change with nothing to do with dwindling resources or forces. Reintegrating Kul Tiras back into the fold, gaining the boon of the Night Warrior, or blowing up the Zandalari fleet all need to be taken into account as well.
I somewhat disagree with this assessment. The way that the battle for Lordaeron is framed makes me believe that by and large, the Horde did not suffer nearly as many casualties during the siege. They might have if they just stood their ground, but by the looks of things it appears that the Horde slowly began to withdraw after the destruction of the Azerite war machine, evacuating their army which was outnumbering the Alliance by a large margin in the inner city before the Void Elves came in to try and even the odds.
Warfront attack orders matter, or at least Blizzard emphasized that they matter. Darkshore starts off with the Night Elves first to emphasize they are on the offensive, Arathi did the same thing with the Horde at the expansions start to do the same.
Hence why Ion bounces between UC being a loss and a Pyrrhic victory.
As far as I can tell from the way the story is being told, the Alliance have the upper hand with their recent victories, but are spread incredibly thin. They’re one bad turn from going back on the defensive, and right now they really dont have the resources to muster a decent one. If the Naga focus on the Alliance more heavily, it could topple them
… this is yet another reason I’m silenty raging at the whole “lets give the grieving Horde a break before pressing further” BS after Dazar’Alor. Its been made clear you dont have the resources to prolong this war further than it needs to, and yet you’re… prolonging the conflict… because… feels…
It also doesn’t help that the Horde can apparently just wololo dead Alliance troops to their team. Which I mean… I think I should be glad that they’re not calling attention to it in this aspect, but then again they’re calling attention to it in other aspects, so just…
… really all I want is consistency.
Right? They started the Expansion emphasizing that the Horde is led by someone who can raise your fallen soldiers to fight against you. Even if they are just mindless zombies… that’s a huge advantage. Prior to Duex Ex Jaina, that move pretty much ended the Battle of Undercity.
… so naturally we’ve hardly seen any of it since Undercity, with exceptions like Amalia and Zelling.
The world quests in Arathi are confusing, not only can they do that to the Alliance, but they can apparently do that to about anything. When you kill a major NPC whether it be a human or a giant Ogre, Nathanos comments that we should call in the Val’kyr to raise it.
The worst part of that is that undead ogres would actually be awesome.
Until some guy screams “ALLIED RACE!!11!!”
The sad thing people over look is. The horde had farmers fighting from the start of the war. Women or men, this was mentioned the book before the storm.
THIS.
Nathanos needs to put up or shut up. I need to see a plethora of newly raised multi-racial Forsaken or he needs to stop saying it over and over again.
Ya the story can really use some consistency.
Especially when it is not really clear what is happening. It can be assumed the Horde is losing in Arathi and Darkshore (I do believe leaks comment on the latter), and some vague notion there is rampant Alliance activity in Kalimdor and Horde activity in some Alliance areas disrupting things, but these are table missions with unclear canon. Horde breaks down the gates of Boralus in an incursion, but I haven’t heard of anything that points to this going anywhere or being canon. I do think people saying “winning but suffering” are probably right.
We are outright told by Nathanos that the Alliance is currently winning.
We’ve also heard from a developer that Sylvanas does something to swing the pendulum back in the next patch cycle.
I don’t get too fussed about any of it since we all know that it is going to come down to a draw in the end.
i think that having a pendulum to decide victories is a horrible idea.
such as faction war.
it feels so… pointless.
I have seen a few people mention this occasionally, but I might have missed an interview somewhere. Does anyone know what the developer quote or where the source of it is?
I think the fact that she finds that Dagger alone is what mainly implies the swing. The Alliance is only “winning” until she has her chance to unleash whatever fresh purple hell is locked inside that Dagger.