Because it was a cold war. But also false, the Airship fight in Icecrown is one of the stupidest encounters to date and was mocked from the get go.
“We’re trying to stop the Lich King and save Bolvar-lets have a tea break to murder each other for no reason” -_-
Ashran and Stormheim are both criticized and mocked, the latter INCREDIBLY so to this day, for the same reason the Icecrown one is (huh, both involve airships).
“The legion are invading, this is our darkest hour, i’m gonna stop attacking them to turn on an ally and waste countless soldiers and resources instead of fighting the INVADING WORLD ENDING THREAT”
Someone: but but SL teaches us this was the right thing to do AxeShooLee-
Later Bad writing trying to justify earlier bad writing doesn’t make either stop being bad writing. You don’t give someone a pass in hindsight if they didn’t have any knowledge to actually act on. Genn stalled the defense against the Legion to go after Sylvanas because it was Sylvanas, nothing more.
Remember when the invasion of Brennadam was supposed to be Quillboar so when they swapped it to Horde at the last moment and left the Quillboar programming in so the “Horde” npcs were hostile to Horde players too :3
That feels more like making sure people knew how far Sylvanas was willing to go. Like Blizzard wanted to make sure people knew she was never intending to stop with controlling Kalimdor. I really doubt Blizzard ever had a draft of the Horde attacking two major Alliance cities. I know they can be dumb sometimes, but that seems to far even for them.
I think that was an artifact of the Horde story written first. Like they wrote the Horde story and were give Rexxar motivation, since Rexxar was never a warmonger and they wanted him in. Then when they were writing the Alliance side the realized it would have been VERY out of character with the Alliance story and had to pull back the plans. Rexxar’s comments stayed in. Possibly because they forgot about it, didn’t communicate with the programing team, didn’t know what to do, etc.
In some ways what I think happened kind of is that.
We know they wrote the Horde story first. When beta opened the Horde story was in and nearly complete. The Alliance story was literally just a couple quests in before it stopped. Boralas was just a jumble with floating buildings, very few NPCs, etc. The Alliance campaign was just a rough story board. As they fleshed out the Alliance campaign there were changes made to the Horde campaign. But, as it was already implemented, things that no longer fit got missed or left in for other reasons.
So, if you think of the Horde campaign as the previous draft then yes, a lot of those little things are artifacts of a previous draft.
On top of that, it doesn’t much matter if Genn did happen to know that Sylvanas was working for Zozo; the Legion is an immediate threat. Sylvie getting her magic lamp isn’t going to end the world right now, but the Legion absolutely is. Heck, even with the magic lamp, Sylvie is still assisting in fighting the current and immediate threat to all life on Azeroth.
Anyone wanting to give him a pass has to equally damn him for that same action. “Well, she is absolutely going to be a threat later” isn’t much of a defense when alien demon armies are right outside the cave.
I can only speak for myself, since I do routinely defends Genns actions during Stormheim. I think it’s more She never stopped being a threat. Best to kill two birds with one stone and make sure she doesn’t inadvertently or purposely end up help ending the world sort of thing
That would go completely against Genns character at the time. He was a vindictive person who didn’t let grudges go and it often blinded him to the greater threat around him. It’s why he ultimately stepped down in favor of Tess. He knew he was an old man who will always struggle with his anger and his inability to let go of a grudge
It’s why Stormheim is considered probably the best writing blizz has done. It genuinely lets people decide for themselves who was in the right.
Also, if you think about things from Genn’s point of view (as the flawed, traumatized and angry person) he probably saw Sylvanas as a greater threat than the Legion. Partially because nobody else was paying attention to the threat.
You can argue if she was or not. That is a whole different discussion. But, from Genn’s perspective you can see how he could have believed it. Which would make his actions reasonable, from his perspective.
Sorry friend, that would be terrible writing. It would be completely cliché and out of character, for both of them.
Warcraft is no stranger to cliche’s nor is ot strictly a naughty word if handled correctly.
Not wanting to die with goals unfulfilled or lose to the legion would be in-character for them. Have the face off still, but just give Genn SOME character development.
It is when it is cliche for the sake of the cliche. Let’s make them work together by forced cliche is bad writting.
Development doesn’t mean suddenly dropping past characterizations.
But, ‘she cannot be trusted and will stab anyone in the back’ is. He would never trust her to fight next to him. He would die fighting on his own because he would never believe she wouldn’t shoot him in the back during the fight with the Legion. That is exactly what he believed she did at the Broken shore, which got Varian killed. He would expect the same, and expect her to get him killed and let the Legion do whatever it wanted.
And i didn’t suggest it, it you have a legion assassin trying to backstab you literally right this second you don’t ignore and let it happen… I’unno maybe Genn mains DPS.
And that’s what would make it so juicy, I’m not saying have him go to her for help, no, he wouldn’t do that, i’m saying them have to fight the legion while their fighting then and there.
Honestly kinda dumb on the Legion’s part as well that they didn’t try and take advantage of the situation in some way.
This is part of the reason why I would like it if The Lightbound would cross through Space/Time into Azeroth, have Yrel interact with Turalyon and convince them that their watmy of doing things is the correct way as the Lightbound start to repeat their atrocities on Eastern Kingdoms, thinking that the Holy Light that the Lightbound worship is the only true path to go down…
It’s long overdue for an Alliance Leader to intentionally screw things up.
So you want them to make all the same mistakes, just flip the sides?
Problem a lot of people have is they think only their side got it bad and now they want the other side to suffer. Ignoring the weird ‘punish the other players’ for Blizzards choices. The big problem is that it was bad for both sides, just for different reasons. Trust me, you don’t want the Horde to get the same treatment the Alliance did in the faction wars.
I doubt that too. I think Sylvanas having a goal of attacking Stormwind was in a draft at some point and then was quietly dropped when they decided to have her attack Darnassus instead.
I dunno, when you put that together with Jaina’s “Warbringers” short and the ominous “I’m listening now, Father,” I think it’s possible that they at one point had big plans for Jaina to really go off the deep end … no pun intended. It looks like there is a faction within the writing team that has wanted her to do something similar at least since MoP if not longer (see: the prophecy about “the proud lady” and the plan for her to be “raining fire and magic” on Orgrimmar from Dalaran).
There are other things that strike me as likely coming from earlier versions of the story, but they’re less obvious, just places where I get a feeling that a particular moment has been repurposed and was originally meant to land differently in a different context. But my sense that those moments are off is just “feel” and speculation, so I don’t expect to persuade anyone who’s skeptical by listing them.