Maybe the Forsaken are another kind of psychic vampires but rather than get anything out of suffering per-se, they instead get things out of the perversion of the act. It doesn’t matter what they’re cannibalizing as long as it’s extremely grotesque.
They are animated by void magic after all, and that’s the kind of force that reacts strongest to abstract things like repulsiveness.
What’s the maximum absorption range of suffering, anyway? Could a modern DK subsist off of internet trolling? 
Presumably.
You joke but there does seem to be a sizeable portion of the Forsaken, at least in Vanilla and Cata, that are prone to doing things on the sole basis of griefing no matter how self-defeating it is.
The suffering that they inflict is the point. Maybe they don’t NEED to in order to literally continue to exist like Death Knights do but there seems to be enough to suggest that they at least get some kind of high out of it.
Heck, there are some who, in the absence of anything that they can grief, seem to start to grief THEMSELVES.
The Horde isn’t born evil. They just do evil things.
Reading this post as reminded me of a quote…
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”
Or you die a hero and then someone casts a magic spell on you that makes you become a villain.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought this. Yeah. Darkshore gets invaded, and Anduin’s first move is to go to Lordaeron? Like, in retrospect, it definitely felt like he was using that as an excuse to go get the homeland back. Then, the first order of duty in the war was securing allies with Kul Tiras (the one remaining, human kingdom) and reclaiming Arathi. Then, when Tyrande comes asking for aid to get Darkshore back, all the resources are already committed to other causes.
Granted, whenever I told friends about this, I prefaced it with, “So, did you know Anduin’s racist.” Which might not be the right term, but imperialist hits the spot.
Ultimately, I dismissed it as Blizzard being too tone death to realize the bigger message they were sending. They wanted to portray Anduin as a hero stuck between a rock and a warglaive, not an imperialist. Sending the latter message without subtext of the former would require le gasp high-level story coordination, and that’s like… I dunno, hard. You know?
“People have always wanted to go to Kul Tiras! Let’s go there!”
“What if we attacked Lordaeron too!”
“What if we made the kaldorei have to fight on their own? To show division in the Alliance!”
“What if Arathi basin, but without PvP!”
Those are four very separate plots, and someone would have to like, I dunno, be paying attention to the common link between them. And, subtext doesn’t make cinematics, so that’s not value-adding.
I’m guessing neither you nor Benedikt read Elegy because that explains it.
Anduin was going to move everything he had to help the Night Elves but then the tree burned and there was nothing left to liberate. Nobody anticipated that Sylvanas would straight up burn Teldrassil because it made little strategic sense.
Also, it isn’t Alliance imperialism to be in Lordaeron. The Alliance was always in Lordaeron, it’s the Horde that’s the foreign entity.
EDIT: These are annoyingly a different resolution on the forums than on the wiki. I apologize for only giving 12 pixels, but it’s only giving me a thumbnail.
I don’t know about the status of Ashenvale, but by the time BfA started the Night Elves had lost Darkshore. It wasn’t until Tides of Vengeance that they reclaimed it, and by then the Alliance as a whole wasn’t in any position to launch a full scale assault because they didn’t have naval supremacy on the great sea yet.
You don’t liberate something that you own.
The night elves had lost Darkshore and Ashenvale, which was their home. There was very much something else left to liberate.
The Alliance went to Lordaeron because Sylvanas went there, not to conquer it. The idea was that they chased her to Lordaeron (literally the first words out of Genn’s mouth are “we have her cornered” because they’d gotten there by pursuing her) hoping that if they eliminated Sylvanas, they could end the war before it got even more out of hand.
The question is why Lordaeron, not why Sylvanas? Sylvanas had been operating out of Orgrimmar for so many months that an interim government had formed to rule in her place, and Anduin knew that.
Yes, but the Alliance’s strategic position in Kalimdor had been decimated and there wasn’t any feasible way for them to launch a full scale invasion to liberate those zones at the start of BfA. Anduin was sending forces there to help the Night Elves but Teldrassil burned before it got there, and the rest of Darkshore was held by the Horde at the time.
The Horde also had, at minimum, naval parity with the Alliance in Kalimdor after the War of the Thorns as well as the advantage of their industrial base being nearby.
The Alliance didn’t even have any functional ports left on the mainland of Northern Kalimdor after the War of the Thorns.
“Why didn’t the Allies just immediately attack Berlin in 1940 and take out the leadership? Instead they attacked North Africa? Must be because they hate the French.”
There’s a fair difference between Germany and Orgrimmar. Namely, Germany was in the heart of Axis territory, whereas Orgrimmar is off on the side. They could have attacked, say, Bilgewater Harbor and used that as a base of operation.
You know, every time I have this argument (which is more often than any one sane person should), the whole “no ports on Northern Kalimdor” thing is always brought up.
What ports did the Alliance have in Lordaeron? A murloc village? They literally just pulled up on the shores. Granted, Menethil harbor is closer to Lordaeron than Kalimdor, but Alleria literally teleported an entire gnomish regiment platoon out of the Void, so I’m not sure that the whole “but muh boats” really matters.
Also, the Alliance did have a spaceship.
I mean, if you’re going to have to lay siege to a heavily-fortified city either way, why go for the kidney and not the head?
EDIT: Also, there was a little easily-missed easter egg of a literal boat actually flying into Lordaeron, so… Again. Do we need ports?
EDIT 2 Electric Boogaloo: Also, if the Alliance just wanted Sylvanas, why not send in an assassin to kill her? I guess they’d need an exceptionally-powerful, highly trained assassin that can move virtually undetected through time and space, all the better if said assassin had a personal grudge against Sylvanas.
That’s why her trap worked. In his desire to end the war quickly, Anduin likely assumed that she’d gone to the Undercity because she’d be surrounded by the most loyal Forsaken who’d die fanatically to protect her, failing to recognize that she was really luring them there in order to spring a trap.
And that trap really had to happen in Lordaeron. Only the Forsaken would tolerate their own Banshee Queen plaguing their city to cripple the Alliance and still remain loyal to her afterward. If she’d tried to do the same thing in Orgrimmar, the rest of the Horde would have probably turned on her then and there.
Ah yes, the location notoriously not at the heart of Horde territory, Orgrimmar.
Yeah the Horde is on the whole pretty weak but I don’t think they’re THAT weak dude.
Also, “The allies could have attacked Tokyo, it’s right there off to the side?”
As you mentioned, Menethil Harbor. Also, Gilneas and Valgarde. The logistics of an amphibious invasion are significantly easier when you are attacking in a place that is very close to your home territories like Tirisfal, which also had relatively insignificant coastal defenses (and even then the Alliance had to bring overwhelming firepower), versus what you’re proposing which is an amphibious invasion against fortified defenses on the literal other side of the planet with little to no logistical support whatsoever.
It would have been suicide and it would have guaranteed a Horde victory in the war. And also, while they were doing this, the Horde would be being allowed to operate with impunity right on the Alliance’s doorstep. Why wouldn’t the Horde just interdict Alliance fleets crossing the great sea to help the Night Elves, or take advantage of the Alliance getting bogged down in Northern Kalimdor to make an offensive against Ironforge and Stormwind?
Immortality is part of the standard package with Lightforging, but it’s not the Faustian bargain you think it is.
A recurring trend of Blizzard that I despise and exactly the sort of thinking that gave us the “Lightbound” business on AU Draenor; Blizz ignoring the consequences of the Iron Horde.
I hope that Turalyon gets a well-written arc, but I fear it’s going to be another “muh fanaticism” thing. I’d like to see Turalyon be a good leader but screw up because he’s not good at politics.