That’s been a major contention of mine concerning the Faction War since Cata. The game isn’t going to wipe out the opposing faction, or have the alliance come out the superior faction. So instead every crime the horde commits needs to be either ignored or sweeeped under the rug so both sides can co-exist.
At this stage, peace amongst the factions should be impossible. If individuals want to be friends, that’s fine, but the alliance should clearly hate the horde for what they did during the WoT. It should’ve the event that broke the camels back and made people realize peace was never possible.
And it suck’s because I genuinely do like the horde and what they used to represent during WC 3 and early WoW
I find it so mind-boggling that the Horde player sees all these loyalists being led away in chains, while the Alliance player doesn’t hear a peep about it. I feel like that plot element would benefit the Alliance player more than the Horde player.
Ok, let’s say you have a point, in reality, people take longer to forgive or to move on, do you really want to see this plot point being touched on and on again? This would dilute the kaldorei in general as the guys that suffered at teldrassil. Every kaldorei npc being hostile to horde, or not having connections or not talking, in terms of story and videogame, this doesnt work, arcs, sagas, need closure, and we can’t close this story without an endpoint of “Now we are good”, and Bel’ameth is this point, now the story is over, and let it be over.
I just hope blizz doesn’t pull the same crappy stunt with Gilneas. Because if they do, I defintly will be angry and won’t let it die.
But Rainaa does have a point, it’s too soon. At least let the Kaldorei enjoy their new tree and let them actually grieve in peace before letting the horde have access to it. Doing one nice thing doesn’t erase what they did
Realistic would be feasible if the reason for that grief wasn’t bereft of logic to begin with. The lore the writers had to ignore, or twist, or outright retcon for the sake of the War of Thorns even happening means that trying to reconcile it with a more complex or longer term reconciliation is extremely difficult, and ultimately it needs to be looked at from a meta perspective. The War of Thorns by itself broke the themes and story of a ton of races, not just the nelves.
Maybe if the stuff that resulted in the lawsuit hadn’t happened, and if Covid hadn’t happened, they would have been able to bring to bear something a bit more realistic, and drag it out somewhat more. But at this point it’s been nearly six years trying to clean up the narrative decisions of people who aren’t even at the company anymore, and the more they work away at it the stranger and more stretched it gets.
So they can be frenemies with the Horde again, sit in their pretty new tree, and pray Blizzard doesn’t do a faction war story for at least until The Last Titan is done.
What is far more wacky to me is Belmont is left as a leader of the forsaken. Not even a slap on the wrist. Just a ‘I pinky promise not to spearhead any more genocidal blightings, honest’.
Honestly, I don’t mind that. I’m fine with there being members in each faction that the other faction considers a criminal/unforgiveable - in fact, I think that’s a good way to show the factions’ different motivations and why they’ll never fully merge even if they will work together.
If Belmont is completely unrepentant about the whole murder thing but makes it clear that he was always acting for the Forsaken and the Horde’s interests rather than Sylvanas’, then I’m fine with the Horde keeping him in place even as the Alliance/night elves are seething to have him face their justice. …I just want the story to show the latter part, and also not condemn them for it.
Sorta like how Talanji had a whole section about “I will not forgive Jaina for her invasion and my father’s death, but I will not restart the war over it” and will hopefully keep a rivalry with Kul Tiras, I’m happy with the night elves ending this story in a position of “most of the loyalists are gone, but we still hold many current Horde members guilty even thought the Horde refuses to punish them” while the Horde’s response is “yeah, whatever, we did enough”.
Game-wise, I’d like some future War Mode questgivers to be night elves - normal members of night elf society, not outcasts or fringe groups or something - whose quest text says they have not forgiven the Horde and are paying adventurers to kill more Horde. That shows in-game that not all night elves went for Renewal™, doesn’t drag in any players who don’t already want faction conflict, and allows the topic to be referenced often in-game without demanding a PvE resolution.
The fact that miss “I-giggle-while-murdering-necromancers-with-purple-magic” is saying this is … yet more proof of how she’s clearly been replaced with a body double. Or maybe a more sensible and empathetic dreadlord.
Personally I find it hard to care about the calls for Belmont’s head because really, the main reason why people want him dead so much is that he was unfortunate enough to be the name some random quest developer pulled out of old content when they were trying to placate night elf fans the first time around in BFA.
I don’t know how to feel about him, personally. I feel like he’s tainted because of BFA association, but who isn’t at this point. But it’s like, the horde roster got ravaged enough recently and it’s frustrating to hear that more gets demanded.
Tyrande did talk with Thrall as they fought against the Primalists. Thrall says: The Horn of Cenarius! Tyrande Whisperwind says: It has been too long since we fought side by side. As we did against Archimonde. Lady Jaina Proudmoore says: But this tree shall not be sacrificed.
Meanwhile during the celebratory party on Amirdrassil, Thrall, Baine, Mayla, and Voss were at the table she sat at.
Now when it comes to the topic of forgiveness itself, I will say that forgiveness is ultimately a choice. Some forgive because they need it to help them, others forgive because they feel that the person who wronged them it or as recognize that they are actively changing from who they were, and others don’t forgive and that’s okay.
I think Taurajo is third at best—maybe jointly with the bombing of Theramore, since they usually get brought up in the same argument. I’d say the Purge of Dalaran is ahead of both of them on the “perennial forum grievance” meter.