This year’s speech was given by Adassos Aardynix, CFO+other stuff? 
"Here we are again. In peaceful times once more.
I’ve spent time wondering if I even need to do this job anymore. If we even need to hold this event now.
But I think spending time reflecting on the history of Azeroth, our factions and their conflicts and armistices, has helped remind me why we’re here.
I’m grateful for our ‘new normal’ and the life its allowed us to live. But at what point does the gratitude turn into complacency?
How can we ensure that we are not one well-crafted propaganda, one misunderstanding, one frustration away from war?
It’s easy for us to call someone an enemy. To get angry, to want revenge.
It takes real courage to look at others of a group as people. To take a step back and consider the pain, injustice, systemic or historic issues, culture, and life of others that people in power tell us to call villains.
Can the rallying cries of “for the Horde” or “for the Alliance” be ones celebrating intercultural pride, rather than the horns of war and competition?
But why even reduce us to our socio-political ties, when there is so much diversity within our factions?
Depersonalizing labels can lead us into that insidious complacency. That will make it easier the next time you hear the call to war.
Have any of you caught yourself seeing someone from the ‘opposite faction’ and thought of them first as a ‘Horde’ or ‘Alliance’ citizen, but when you see someone from your own, you first see them for their race, their features, their voice?
And when you go home to your friends and family, or maybe just to yourself – you see them as their names, as individuals too complex to reduce?
Look at people as they are. People with lives like your own. If you can, learn their names. Listen to a story.
I want my children who were born during the armistice to only know peace. I want the elders who have seen decades of conflict to rest knowing they are free. I want all of us, here, to live our lives whatever ways we dream of.
We’re never too young, old, jaded, tired, hurt…to have hope. To choose love and compassion. We have the power to maintain our current armistice through that value. We can’t lose sight of it, no matter how ‘normal’ it gets.
So let’s use this time to reflect and remember all the years we’ve been here, doing this peace thing, but not lose sight of the best part about peace – getting to have fun with everyone."
Adassos puts up his fingers in the peace symbol, then says, “Let’s turn things back up and enjoy the rest of the night. Thanks for being here, everyone.”
November 18, 8pm Server
))
))