While Myf and Glow Gnome beat me to the punch, let me pile on for a moment!!
The problem isn’t that the Alliance leaders never screw up; they absolutely have. Jaina allowing Theramore to be used as a staging grounds for the Southern Barrens, shooting the goblin refugee ship, Camp T, the Purge, so on and so forth. The Alliance leaders have plenty of red in their ledger.
It’s just that ultimately, Alliance bloody hands get washed clean quick. Heck, even in the hypothetical scenario of Turalyon siding with Yrel, there’s a baked in excuse; Turalyon worked with MU Xe’ra and presumably the Light Mother is AU Xe’ra. Of course he’s going to trust her.
And the opposing view is coming from the mag’har refugees, whom the last time the Alliance dealt with en masse was when they were all Iron Horde invading Azeroth because Garrosh said it’d be cool. Their leader, Geya’rah, had even recently shown she’s pretty antagonistic towards the Alliance, if not openly hostile. Not exactly people he should trust.
And I’m not even approaching this with an intent to clean the Alliance hands, just simply looking at the situation. It only takes three minutes to type up an easy excuse for Turalyon’s hypothetical actions.
I believe it was in the Pre-BFA novel. She and Nathanos were talking and they mentioned Stormwind as a target they’d long wanted to go after.
But nothing ever came of that.
To be fair, if the Dalaran WMO wasn’t so laggy, it would’ve been included in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid. So, I think that was less a matter of them deciding to cut the story for narrative reasons, and more cutting it for mechanical ones.
From what I’ve seen, there were times the Alliance would’ve taken off the kid gloves and punched back. These were ultimately cut for reasons that range from, “Well, the Alliance wouldn’t do that,” to, “No, they’re not allowed to hit the Horde back the way the Horde hits them.”
At the end of the day, faction conflict generates hype, but at the end of the conflict itself, players are unhappy. There’s never a satisfying conclusion to it, no sense of catharsis for the atrocities either side commits (to say nothing of how one side will always be objectively villainous). The Horde literally committed genocide, and there are people screaming for Jaina to be put to death over Rastakan (despite the fact she herself wasn’t even present for that fight), and those same people keep asking when Sylvanas will come back because the Horde needs her.
Like I said, these faction conflict stories leave no one happy. One can’t even say its a matter of compromises that leave no one happy.
And let’s be honest. Do we really think for one moment that we could have another faction conflict without the Horde being the bad guys? I think anyone who believes that is deluding themselves. Blizzard’s track record speaks for itself. The fact Anduin is coming back into the scene all but guarantees the Alliance’s pristine morality will remain untarnished.
Yeah, I haven’t seen any signs since BfA that anyone is still trying to pull Jaina in that direction. But the conflict would still have been going on while BfA was being written.
Yes. I think it was originally planned to lead somewhere, but the plans changed.
I agree that it was cut for mechanical reasons. But I think the writers who wanted Jaina to go all “hardline” on the Horde did not give up their hopes of getting that storyline. When the faction war flared up again in BfA, they started writing it again, but for some reason it was cut during development and only a few traces of the original plan remain. This is my theory, anyway. I can’t prove it, but it makes sense to me.
(If I had to guess why Jaina’s story in BfA was changed, I’d guess it was because Afrasiabi didn’t want to detract from Sylvanas being the one and only villain. But again, I’m speculating.)
I’ll go further: I theorize that there was a draft where the Alliance attacked first, rather than “punching back.” What makes me think this?
Jaina’s “Warbringers” short plus Rexxar’s line, as mentioned above
The Korean interview about how Anduin was trying to live up to Varian’s legacy and would not attack Lordaeron “for justice”
The fact that some devs were asked point-blank in an interview whether there were ever plans for the Alliance to attack first and they dodged the question rather than just saying no.
You seem to think that I’m arguing in favor of faction conflict here??
I can be too. As I said I was gonna correct them at one point but I was like “maybe I should look it up before I do” and saw it was the French version.
And I noticed a lot of his posts seem to use French spellings. It might be some French auto correct.
I think they probably did. When they were writing the Horde story. She was going to be motivation for a number of Horde characters, like Rexxar, to get involved… Then when they started putting together the Alliance story they realized it wasn’t going to work. They needed to pull back on it so it would work with the Alliance story. But much of the Hordge campaign was already implemented. So, changes had to be limited. And you get those weird comments by Rexxar. And there is no real explanation why he is involved.
No, I think that idea dates back further than the drafting of BfA. I think it was a leftover/discarded plot point from MoP that some of Blizzrard’s writers were hoping to re-insert into the story.
I think you are inserting to much into the Dalaran over Orgrimmar idea. That was never going to be about Jaina wiping out the Horde. That was supposed to be the ‘fist pump moment’ for the Alliance. To see Dalaran fully on side, helping assault Garrosh forces. It was never about Jaina going over the top. It was just ‘this would be a cool visual’ while also giving the Alliance players something to cheer about their side being cool.
It’s not just that. There’s also the prophecy, and her “Dismantle the Horde” moment, and probably some more that I’m not thinking of at the moment. They point to (some) writers wanting to turn her from a peacenik to a hardline anti-Horde Alliance partisan. And I think those same writers jumped at the chance to try again when the faction war heated up in BfA.
The idea of Genn and Sylvie teaming up, I get from a “fulfilling the trope, inverting their relationship” sense, but… We already get that later in Legion with Maiev and Illidan. And frankly it works better there. As much as they’re sworn enemies, they just simply don’t have the same level of blood fued-type stuff going on, so it doesn’t feel quite as ham-fisted (though still ham-fisted, just to a lesser degree). And their bickering sounds like low-key aggro flirting, and I can never un-hear that.
I’d’ve been much more entertained by a scene going out of its way, trying to force a Sylvie-Genn team up, only to get subverted as they almost-incidentally fight their way through demon hordes while trying to kill one another. Like, whenever Sylvie tries to take a shot at Genn, he throws a demon in the way and whenever he tries to pounce her, she hurls a demon at him. Something silly like that sounds much more in line with them and more entertaining for me.
Which, even at the time Blizzard said was never intended to be a destroy or kill situation. She simply no longer believed the Horde could be trusted to self govern. I think you are assuming a lot about how much of a hardline anti-Horde Alliance partisan she was every intended to be.
I could have gone for that.
They did hang out with each other for 10,000 years. And they clearly had some kind of dependent relationship.
Now I have an image of Sylvanas running up the spine of a Pit lord that is swatting at her while shooting at Genn. And Genn trying to chase her throwing Felguards at her. And now I want that cinematic.
