If you think that the Forsaken have a way of life that doesn’t involve murdering people to bolster their ranks, or using Blight to wipe out territory they want, I don’t know what game you’ve been playing. Sylvanas or not, their culture has been grounded in the notion of “death to the living”, and I really don’t have any faith in Blizz to write them out of that rut in any sufficient manner - as much as I would love it.
The Forsaken have been sorely in need of decent writing for ages. BFA was just as much a slap in the face to their players as much as anyone else.
Also wrong. Saurfang’s goal was to capture and secure Teldrassil and night elf lands. The massacre that happened was all Sylvanas.
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It really wouldn’t matter if his goal was to chew bubble gum with the elves and sing kumbia around a campfire; he planned, executed, and personally led the invasion of an entire third of a continent and slaughtered all the civilians they could find from the Barrens to the tip of Darkshore.
You cannot plan for a war without knowing full well that civilians are going to be killed enmass. That is on Saurfang, and by every account, it has gone unpunished. The Alliance didn’t get justice for that: Sylvanas got a petty kill count for ‘cool’ points in the writing room. No part of the War of the Thorns was meant to be for anything other than more bloodshed, regardless of what their end goal is.
Seriously. The WoT was ridiculous because, I mean come on, look at every conflict in the history of Azeroth that featured the Alliance, and name one instance where the defeat or set back of their forces didn’t result in them unifying even more.
Sylvanas or Saurfang genuinely believing that the Alliance would splinter for even a minute depends:
- on the writers having enough common sense to write such a masterful plot (which I’d of loved to see, to be clear),
- on Sylvanas and Saurfang ignoring every scrap of the Alliance’s history in war and how they respond to threats, and
- on wholly disregarding that the Horde and Alliance have been out for each other since day one, and that no soldier is going to forget the atrocities done to one side or the other.
The Horde bred and trained generations of soldiers to rampage and conquer, and we’re supposed to believe that Saurfang expected them to approach the war of the thorns with a modicum of rationality, sensibility, and restraint? The woman leading it has been highly unstable since her ‘awakening’; that should have been the first red flag.
What they want is to erase history, and let terrible people get away with the unspeakable, all while the victims gain no peace of mind or justice.
Truly and honestly, based on the in game history of the story, can you give me any reason for an Alliance civilian to believe that the Horde won’t, again, massacre an entire Alliance population center, wipe a city from the map, or outright commit genocide?
Every scrap of evidence known to the characters in this world (hero player characters aside) points to peace being unattainable. The entire history of the Horde and Alliance is predicated on the state of perpetual war between the factions, even if there are pauses to handle common enemies.
I get what Blizz is doing with this, btw; MoP had Garrosh to lead us into WoD - WoD had Gul’dan to lead us into Legion - Legion had the Sword to lead us into BFA - BFA has Sylvanas to lead us into SL.
My issue with that is, more and more frequently, they’re not writing a sensible resolution to the story we’re in. WoTLK had a great conclusion, and they used Ruby Sanctum to introduce Cata. That was WONDERFUL. Cata had a really sensible and smooth transition into MoP. And in each of those, truly, we had a good conclusion, with some loose small threads to bring us along to the next chapter.
BFA was entirely focused on the faction war, and the character responsible for all of it still hasn’t been brought to justice. That feels wholly incomplete, and should have been settled in this expansion.
This would be like Star Wars: A New Hope ending just before the attack on the Death Star. “Oops, gotta stick around folks!”
Teldrassil was meant to be avenged, not forgotten. Thoroughly disappointing.
I do provide plenty of constructive feedback and criticism on plenty of posts; that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to voice complaints and dissatisfaction though. I’ve never been in the business of habit of complaining without offering suggestions and feedback, but I’m not going to derail a thread with my own wishlist of things in detail.
You’re right that discussing things we’re unhappy about isn’t going to contribute anything, but nothing will contribute anything in the long run. We’re all just spinning wheels here because Blizzard has stated, officially, that it does not listen to player feedback on story when it doesn’t suit their vision.
So the point is moot, as much as I respect your level headedness on that point.
I mean, she is “vengeance incarnate”; if she stopped killing for the sake of vengeance it would… kinda entirely negate her embracing the dark side of Elune?
What is there to gain through peace for her? She and her people have suffered at the hands of the Horde since their arrival on Kalimdor; now it’s person.
So what if a few more Night Elves are killed in the process (from her perspective, to be clear) - if it means wiping the Horde off of Kalimdor to secure her people’s future, that’s more of a certainty than trusting the Horde not to be monsters again.
Sad retweet.
Of which I’m well aware. The problem with this is that there is zero consistency with who has what kind of power right now; so we really don’t know the fine details of it.
One week they’re minutes from victory, the next they barely have enough to scrape beans out of a can.
Anduin has no intentions of picking up the fight again; his whole journey this expansion has been drilling that into our heads. He’s signing an armistice to attain peace, and it’s ridiculous.