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Anduin took a calculated risk in releasing Saurfang for the purposes of splitting the Horde. It turned out to be a successful gambit but it will remain unpopular. It wasn’t just letting him go just to let him go.

Also Saurfang is not blameless in the Teldrassil Genocide. He was definitely an enabler of Sylvanas, even if he was duped by her into it. You listen back to his speech to Garrosh in Northrend and you can see how far he had fallen with Teldrassil (and it’s aftermath).

He faced his “Personal Kil’Jaden” and fared no better than the Orc chieftains had against Kil’Jaden himself.

You are making the common mistake on this board for conflating an armistice with a treaty. An armistice is nothing more than a mutual agreement to PAUSE shooting at each other.

In Anduin’s case it’s a face saving maneuver that acknowledges the fact that at the end of this campaign, the Alliance is in a position where they CAN’T WIPE OUT THE HORDE. IF the forces he brought to that last battle were barely even WITH SAURFANG’S forces, do you really thing the Alliance would have a chance against t he Horde with Saurfang’s forces now added to those who had served Sylvannas?

The point of an armistice is to buy yourself breathing room. Either for a peace settlement, or to repair and rearm.

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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.

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I don’t know if i agree with you on the Forsaken, Before the Storm had a great scene humanizing the Forsaken who were reunited with their lost living family members!

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I agree, but where are they now? That’s my issue. Any writing they get is trashed, almost immediately.

Those characters were designed exclusively to serve as a plot device for Anduin, Calia, and Sylvanas. They weren’t written for the Forsaken, they were written to help move along this mess.

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WotLK:

High Overlord Varok Saurfang: I won’t let you take us down that dark path again, young Hellscream. I’ll kill you myself before that day comes…

MoP:

High Overlord Varok Saurfang: Ah, Nazgrim. A great leader and a fine warrior. He valued his oath to the Warchief more than his life. I tried to tell him… to tell him that Hellscream betrayed us, cast aside a Warchief’s responsibility to his own people. But Nazgrim… too loyal… too proud. Damn Hellscream. His ambition tore our Horde apart.

BfA:

High Overlord Varok Saurfang: “RAWR! Me slaughter and pillage. Kill purple elves cause da warchief says so!”

Yeah I think it’s safe to say that getting rid of Sylvanas, Nathanos, and Gallywix guarantees exactly nothing when it comes to the Horde not being genocidal in the future. I’m amazed people can believe that after getting a story about removing evil elements within Horde for the third time.

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The massacres in Ashenvale are all on him. He is the mastermind of the simultaneous coordinated attack on every Night Elf outpost and settlement in t he region including the decimation of Astranaar.

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I don’t disagree with you here.

But that doesn’t mean the Night Elves have never gotten anything (though, yes, not phased to show anything, but almost no one does).

I was speaking specifically about Teldrassil in this instance. I don’t disagree that all of Ashenvale and Darkshore is on him.

It’s a prime example of poor execution on Blizzard’s part. Horde players are told to concentrate on taking down their guards and minimize civilian casualties in some half-assed “stealth assassination” missing to poison the guards. When Alliance players arrive they see a bunch of dead nelf civilians.

C’mon Blizzard. Pick one already and stop playing pusy foot around the lore just to give one side or the other a “not guilty” approach to the war.

Do keep in mind who attacked who first when the orcs and night elves first met. The orcs move into Ashenvale to secure some lumber and night elves start shooting arrows without attempting to approach them first. Alot of bloodshed could have potentially been spared if things had been handled a bit more diplomatically.

I’m sure Daelin Proudmoore thought the same thing when he usurped command of Theramore for his own little vengeance war. Now he’s considered one of the Alliance’s “regrets”. It’s obvious that Tyrande’s efforts to exterminate the Horde would be doomed to failure so it stands to reason that trying would only lead her to the same platter.

I wouldn’t mind seeing it happen. Like you said, they put effort into her embracing this night warrior aspect of Elune. Plus when it comes to faction wars, Horde starting it has gone beyond cliché. They need to let Alliance be aggressive for a change.

However, effort counts for little. They put effort into post-Theramore Jaina going anti-Horde as well and now she’s back to being a peace advocate. They just allowed the Horde to get rid of their evil leadership and all the peace lovers are in charge now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t make Horde aggressors again next time. It also doesn’t mean Tyrande won’t find her catharsis in Ardenweald and call it good when Sylvanas is dead.

Or even without Sylvanas dying… /shrug

Green skinned, fel tainted monsters from another planet. If a race that barely survived the Legion once before randomly came across such things, I’d say it warrants a shoot first kind of approach. But, I can see where you’re coming from on it.

Agreed.

Daelin was right, though; the Horde keep proving him right every time they wipe out a city.

The orcs knew zilch about the orcs connections to the Legion. All they saw was strangers chopping down trees and decided to start shooting arrows. If humans or dwarves had been there instead of orcs they would have done the same thing.

That’s really not how it works though. If you start a war because you think that the other guys are going to start a war in the future, it doesn’t matter if they do start a war in the future or not. You’re still guilty of starting a war and all the bloodshed that happens is on you. This is exactly the thing that’s being pinned on Saurfang for the War of Thorns.

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Who cares what they might do; they have a storied history of it in their past already. Why run the risk?

The difference between the Horde and the Alliance right now is that the Alliance has given the Horde dozens of chances to not do “bad” things. And each time, the writers have given us crappy stories in which the Horde smack that ‘leniency’ right in the face.

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What the player does and what the NPCs do are two separate things, though. The NPCs can do things the players wouldn’t be held responsible for, but still be events that happened.

To be fair, no one has ever brought this up again. Not even Sylvanas when she was trying to convince Saurfang to attack the Night Elves.

Humans and Dwarves were there, just in a different part of the forest, and the Night Elves killed them later, too.

They’re never brought up again, either.

If only the Night Elves had been nice to the green genocide monsters that reeked of demon piss that were cutting down trees in their sacred homeland with zero respect for the forests around them then none of this would have happened! Those mean Night Elves!!

Seriously can’t even begin to comprehend picking Orc as your race and expecting to be the position of deserving sympathy.

No she would be 100% in the right to not do so. The Horde are genocidal warmongers and can never and should never be trusted. Not a single one of them.

Liadrin is still alive. She’s screw over the Night Elves in a heart beat. So is Voss. Thrall is alive. He’ll pretend he hates it but won’t lift a finger to stop it.

Why should any Night Elf give a damn about defending a world that shows them no love from a force that will end everything? If the Night Elves have no choice but to go down then might as well bring everyone else with them.

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You really didn’t play Warcraft III, did you?

    IconSmall Malfurion.gif Furion Stormrage: So, the outlanders battle against the undead as well? They could prove to be powerful allies against Archimonde and his ilk.

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You really like to Cherry pick don’t you?

Nitpick, but yes.

And you really like to ignore lore that doesn’t agree with you, don’t you?

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It reeks of nonsense though. Players take out the guards as intended and move on to the next target, so civilian deaths imply that some NPC(s) stayed behind and just masacred the civilians just for the gits n shiggles.

That, or from the alliance perspective Horde players killed the civilians.

Would it have been so hard to just have it where civilians weren’t killed? That might have been a good quest for alliance players to rescue them. No, instead let’s just create some outrage and lore inconsistency all at once. GG Blizz.

I guess it stopped mattering somewhere around when Cenarius was killed by Grom. Or maybe sooner when the goblin shredders finished gathering their 10K units of lumber.

A lot could have been avoided if talk was initiated instead of shooting arrows first, yes. That’s kind of how diplomacy works.

Servant of N’Zoth?

To be fair, if Elegy and A Good War are canon then the Horde quest isn’t canon and never even actually happened.