Morgan added what I felt was the most interesting view I’ve heard from any developer when it comes to Sylvanas: “With the Sylvanas aspect, there are two sides here: People in the Saurfang / Baine camp and the people who are with Sylvanas.”
“Put yourself in the shoes of someone in the Horde. They’ve known nothing but conflict for over 20 years. They believe that Sylvanas is the person who will bring an end to this. She’s the one who can unite the Horde in ways it’s never been before. You can see how people would want that. They might think, “I would like to know peace, please. Sylvanas will get us there.” The people know what Baine and Saurfang and Thrall lead to – it’s just the same conflict they’ve seen. Sylvanas is bringing something no one’s ever brought before. So it’s interesting to see different sides of that. She has a plan.”
I can’t provide links, but this interview is from mmorpg dot com.
So apparently, Thrall, Baine, and Saurfang represent never-ending conflict to a significant portion of the Horde, whereas Sylvanas represents peace.
HOW?
During Thrall’s reign as Warchief, the Horde enjoyed an unknown era of peace and prosperity. The faction conflict was primarily a cold war with a few proxy and border skirmishes.
If Baine was Warchief he and Anduin would most likely accomplish peace on Azeroth, considering their mutual goals and friendship. Baine has had so much success getting the Alliance to cooperate with him, he actually got Jaina to house his loyalists during Magatha’s coup and pay for mercenary ships to help retake Thunder Bluff. He repaid this effort by supporting Garrosh, sacking her city, and continuing to participate in the Horde’s war efforts against the Alliance - and she still thinks he’s honorable.
While Saurfang does have a world view comparable to Thrall and Baine that can tolerate the existence of the Alliance, he’s willing to war against them to establish the Horde as the world’s sole superpower. He actually constructed the first phase of the BFA war the Horde’s population is apparently in support of - and, unlike Sylvanas, he managed to win.
Which brings us to Sylvanas. All conversation of morality aside - even if she wants to establish peace-by-force, she is a failure. Sylvanas’ and Saurfang’s original plan for Horde-dominated world-peace involved capturing Teldrassil and using it as a bargaining chip to negotiate with the Alliance from a place of power - severing their allegiances and forcing them into submission one by one. Saurfang managed to defeat the Night Elves, and Sylvanas responded by burning the Horde’s only win condition in a oncoming global conflict. Does no one outside of the Horde’s leadership see how this is moronic? How destroying a port city full of wealth, resources, and hostages would only encourage an unrelenting assault from the Alliance and jeopardize “peace?” Not only did Sylvanas destroy the Horde’s best chance at a swift, conclusive conflict, she is losing the prolonged war she ignited, on seemingly every front. How is this some revolutionary and acceptable vision to the Horde’s populace? This is comparable to Garrosh’s war, except the Horde’s doing exceptionally poorly this time.
So how does Sylvanas represent “peace” to any character? What she represents is the Horde’s failed attempts to establish supremacy over the Alliance.
That was one line totally disconnected from the depiction of the Horde we’d previously seen, and obviously, the Horde was a flourishing society because it went from being a collection of weak, unestablished slaves and tribes into one of the world’s two competing, global superpowers.
Maybe someone in Orgrimmar was hungry, but no one would say the situation of the Orcs, Darkspear, Tauren, or Forsaken were better before Thrall’s Horde.
The Orcs were slaves or hunted survivors. The Darkspear were being eradicated by Kul Tirans and Naga. The Tauren were being wiped out by the Centaur. The Forsaken were previously enslaved to the Lich King and, once freed, had no allies in their fight to secure a sanctuary.
Blizzard: “The citizens of the Horde know that Saurfang and Baine will bring them WAR ETERNAL. The tired civilians just want peace, and that’s why they are all supporting Sylvanas.”
The angle they’re trying to take is “Saurfang/Baine/Thrall will fail to end our conflict with the Alliance,” which has been rather tame outside of Garrosh’s arch, and “Sylvanas will end this conflict by asserting our supremacy over the Alliance,” which she is failing to do because she’s losing the war.
You know, the Horde story in this expansion, and a lot of things devs have said, would make at least 80% more sense if they would actually portray the Alliance as an intractable enemy that won’t give us peace.
My hope is the fact that these people that gave these answers are not part of the story board, and maybe they just have no idea what they are talking about.
Maybe they want us to think the Alliance will let us off the hook again.
Maybe Orgrimmar will ring the bells of surrender shortly after SoO 2.0 starts.
And maybe then, Anduin riding atop Wrathion will hear the bells and decide to torch Orgrimmar to ash instead. He wanted to play the peace card, he wanted the Horde to love him, but if they will not love him, let it be fear then.
Saurfang walks into the Orgrimmar orphanage. All the little orc children come out of hiding. One of them, braver than the rest, steps forward and says:
“Master Saurfang, there’s too many of them! What are we going to do?”
Saurfang, knowing what needs to be done to achieve peace with the Alliance, lifts up his axe.
Absolutely, we’re all of conflicting thoughts and opinions of Sylvanas, but I think it’s pretty much unanimous that Sylvanas is absolutely not the peace type in comparison to Baine.
The short she was in is called WARbringers for god sake.
In the end, what has Azurite even been useful for? It can make tanks that get destroyed by Anduin farting on them, and we use our necklace to free N’zoth.
We literally have control over the giant sword plunged into the ground spewing azeroth out like a river the alliance has nothing like that. It’s a massive plot hole.