You can pick the quest chain for this up at the same time or even before picking up War is Hell:
We’ve just received word of reinforcements coming to the aid of the Alliance forces. Their timing couldn’t be better!
We’re in sore need of test subjects and these North Fleet reservists will do nicely!
Take these plague vials with you and speak to Camille, the Bat Handler. Tell her you need to commandeer a riding bat for a special assignment for us.
Once you’re at sea, drop the vials on the reinforcement fleet. I can’t wait to see the results!
https://www.wowhead.com/quest=11170/test-at-sea
The War is Hell quest doesn’t make it clear who attacked first, and Test at Sea doesn’t really clarify if the reinforcements are replacing the North Fleet forces that were lost fighting the Forsaken, or if they are the original North Fleet forces meant to reinforce the Alliance forces at Valgarde.
Without any further clarification, it could have been the Forsaken randomly choosing to use the Alliance as test subjects for their new plague that started the fighting.
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As I pointed out that Sylvanas would have known that broken shore was a trap because she was working for the Jailer at that point therefore the dreadlords. She had always known there was no winning yet lead the horde their knowing that Vol’jin would be taken out and she would be made warchief.
She wanted the Alliance to think the horde had left them to die to antagonize the Alliance into starting a war with the Horde. Not to mention getting the Alliance leadership killed their would mean the horde could wipe out the Alliance easily afterwards.
She could have made it more clear to the Alliance that the horde had no choice to retreat. At any point she could de escalated the situation by sending an apology and condolences to Anduin for his fathers death. The reason she didn’t was because she wanted the war to happen. She purposely obscured the facts to incite war between the factions.
She just didn’t count on most of the Alliance leadership surviving and Genn coming after her but turned it to her advantage. Not to mention didn’t expect anduin being such a damn peacnik after his father died that he would ignore the Hordes crimes and still try to make peace with her(basically cause he doesn’t react like a normal person should).
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I don’t believe this is true. It’s the common misconception but there’s no actual evidence of it. I don’t think Sylvanas honestly betrayed the Alliance until AFTER she was made Warchief, when she realized that Mueh’zala and the Jailer were players on the Broken Shore.
Sorry but you don’t know many “normal” people, do you? You seriously don’t know how they act.
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She does say “a curse upon Volin and his Loa” or some such. As if the whole Warchief/Loa stuff was a side show side track amidst her true goals. She may have been aware of Muehzala’s involvement, but not sure when or how it was going to manifest. And then she didn’t like how it played out.
To paraphrase an infamous observation in American politics:
“What did she know, and when did she know it?”
That fleet is pointed in the direction of Vengance Landing. I’m not sure where else they would be going.
Anywhere really. The Valiance Expedition was circling all of Nortrend trying to find a way into the Icecrown glacier.
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Be kinda a dick move to not help out the Alliance soldiers youd have to change course to avoid.
Hm? There were other Alliance solders in the Grizzly Hills and so on.
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The ships are pointed at the Derelict Strand. They’d have to change course to avoid it pretty quickly if they aren’t going there.
I’m actually trying to organize an RPPVP thing there as a boat fight sounds fun and the ghost walks are comparable so I’m weirdly familiar with that fleet.
As an aside, that is how sailing ships work. They turn back and forth, they don’t sail straight for where they are going unless they are unreasonably luck with the wind.
That being said, the Alliance fleet there did board a Forsaken vessel to seize its Plague shipment, iirc.
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So here’s where I’m fuzzy on things, and someone feel free to clue me in if I’ve missed something important.
Spoilers in case people don’t want to know about Shadowlands stuff.
The dreadlords are working for the jailer. Sylvanas is working for the Jailer. Their supposed stated goal is to feed as many souls to the Maw as they can. The Jailer's dreadlords orchestrated the Broken Shore ambush which was meant to kill both factions. Since Sylvanas is working for the Jailer, she should/would be aware of this. So why then would Sylvanas call for a retreat that spared both factions from being wiped out?
Why breed animosity between the factions for a faction war where they hope both factions all kill each other when the Legion was literally minutes away from doing it for them?
It seems really, really stupid to me.
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I don’t know what extent the Dreadlords are working for the Jailer, or what, but I speculate that the Jailer doesn’t want the Legion to win, since the Legion has larger, reality ending goals that probably include the Shadowlands.
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I don’t recall that quest. I do know that the Alliance collects some of the plague the Forsaken were using on the Val’kyr in Halgrind, if that’s what you might be remembering, too?
Its in the Horde quests.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/The_New_Plague
The Alliance intercepted the ship carrying the latest strain engineered in our Undercity laboratories. Head to the wreckage southeast of here and salvage whatever containers you can.
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That does luckily clear up the timeline, as such that it was the Alliance intercepting the Forsaken’s ships, a battle afterwards leaving them as wreckage, and then the Alliance reservists showing up to reinforce the original fleet but arriving too late.
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The thing I will be salty about until the end of time is how the animated the retreat as if the archers were just casually strolling away for a lunch break. No demons, no fighting withdrawal, just “Oh, Sylvanas sounded the break horn, time for tea and scones.”
It highlights the problem with this dev team, which is that they can’t reasonably write different perspectives on a situation without blatantly lying to the players in order to do so.
That was kind of funny. The Legion had three of its space ships up there and so many demons pouring through portals that the Horde couldn’t keep up. But when the Horde sounds the retreat the Legion just sits back without taking another shot or pursuing at all and just watches as the Val’kyr slowly flap their wings away carrying less than a handful of Horde soldiers while basically the rest of the Horde limps away by foot like a villain adhering to code and letting magical girls finish their transformation sequences.
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Horde favoritism, my man.
Neither is that accurate. I was agog at the Alliance Broken Shore because having just seen the cinematic I assumed they too had been overrun by just wave after wave of generic demon.
Cut to the game experience and I’m going
“Well, glad I didn’t make that post hypothesizing what all these major demons we haven’t seen in awhile since ALL OF THEM ARE HERE!”
Granted the feeling of hilarious hopelessness was compounded by the fact there were like 5 other players with me. And if I were playing it true to character I would’ve popped Vanish, Sprint and ran in the other direction.
To be fair, Gul’dan basically tried the same thing at the end of the Hellfire Citadel raid, including three bosses from the Mount Hyjal raid, and we killed everything he summoned there and Archimonde again, too.
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