Not that I disagree with your larger point, but this is my semi-annual reminder that as stupid as it seems, the Alliance and Horde were not at war between Cata and MoP, i.e. Theramore was a Pearl Harbour situation of the Horde striking at the Alliance when a truce was in place. Stupid? Yes, but all clearly laid out in “Tides of War”.
If it makes you feel any better, Kosak said the same thing about Theramore on Twitter at the time.
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Ah yes, the second expansion in a row with the demonize the horde in book peace treaty to ensure they were at fault for any hostilities no matter what the Alliance had done in game. Wheee.
Regardless, Theramore was still shown to be a military asset that had been used as a secure landing place for alliance forces to enter Kalimdor, not just a random city.
Would have been nice if that made it into the game writing rather than all the hand wringing over how horrible it was.
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Many things could and should have been done differently. I would have preferred a version of history that clearly stated that Jaina had struck first into the Barrens during Cataclysm in order to pre-emptively stall Garrosh’s offensive into Ashenvale. The weird version that we’re left with makes her look naive or stupid or both. If she had struck pre-emptively, we could have had an interesting debate about whether she prevented Alliance casualties or just started/expanded a war unnecessarily. Instead, we just got a narrative mess.
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See, Theramore bothers me less because… Yeah. It was absolutely a military target, and properly presented as one. The entire Alliance invasion of the Barrens was made possible because Theramore got involved, built a whole road, and became the docking point for the Alliance. Civilians were allowed to flee into relative safety, and only the stragglers caught the worst of it. And this is after the Cata era part of the war had already been long underway.
Camp Taurejo though? Like, what did the tauren even do to make them a legitimate target? Live in the Barrens when the Alliance invaded? And pretty far from most of the conflict? In a small encampment that couldn’t provide support to much of anything?
And yet I’m supposed to believe not that they’re both legitimate targets. That Theramore’s bombing was a crime, yet Camp T who didn’t do nothin’ to nobody is legitimate?
And so we’re all clear, this isn’t a thing about complaining about the Alliance or Alliance players. I love y’all, even been mostly playing Alliance for months now.
But damn. The writers and developers do not make it easy feeling like the two factions are equal. One is the perpetrator of horrific crimes, and the other is a noble bastion of goodness who would never!!
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If you’re going to make me put my Alliance partisan hat on, I will point out that Theramore was attacked when there was a truce in place, and at least according to Alliance questing, Camp T was being used as a training/staging ground for Horde troops in the Barrens.
But I would rather not put the hat on, because your underlying point about the game preaching at Horde players all the time for crap that the writers put in the damn game is correct.
No they weren’t. Alliance came as close as Mulgore and Baine had not the power to call a truce. It was all out war the moment Honor’s Stand had fallen.
Camp Taurajo was a hunters net used to collect game nothing else. And the alliance cowards as usual waited uintil all warrior left and fire bombed the place from above.
It’s just that frustration with the writers mainly. Like Camp T, before Golden’s retconning it into horribleness. I actually think it was the best example of how to do faction conflict with both sides feeling alright about what they are doing. Alliance did do something bad, but as the player you find out about the bad intel that led to it, and then what I think may be a dropped thread about forces in the alliance power structure manipulating things to encourage the conflict. So while the horde isn’t just angry at something imaginary, the alliance player is not shackled with the guilt of the bad action, and can be seen as working against bad forces in the alliance as well.
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I think we’re talking about seperate attacks on Theramore. Durring the Unnumbered War with Garrosh, there was no truce between Cata and MoP. It’s all a continuation of the same conflict, and Theramore got bombed after the Horde pushed the Alliance out of Northwatch on the way to Theramore.
Yeah, I know the Alliance-side questing had some bad intel or something going on about the tauren prepping to attack, which turned out false. And the Alliance commander allowed civilians to flee.
Even though the Horde-side quest shows the civilians actually were herded into quilboar country, and a few named civilian corpses were on the ground, and IIRC were even part of a quest for Horde players. But… The Horde side isn’t canon? Because? Like, legit, I know it’s not canon now, but I’m at a loss for why. And it never could be canon, because it contradicts the Alliance side of the quests.
Still. If the actual city supplying men and arms for the war, where civilians got to leave, is somehow not a viable military target? Camp Taurajo shouldn’t have been either, especially given it was all due to bad intel. That… Kinda means it couldn’t be a viable military target, but Baine’s gotta Baine, and the writers can’t let the Alliance respond to aggression with aggression.
See, this is where both sides upsets me. Yes, it does suck playing Horde and always feel like you’re a drunk getting into every brawl at the bar.
It also sucks playing Alliance, knowing that you’re waiting for the drunk Horde at the bar to get tired of punching you, so you’ll finally be allowed to kindly ask them to stop it please, or you’ll get slightly cross with them.
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If you want a great nutshell of some of Ye Olde Cata issues, the treatment of Silverwind Refuge vs Taurajo is one of those that vexes me to this day.
On both sides and especially with how they’re framed for the quester. Great example of the overall issues in Cata, though.
I’d say I should quest through the Barrens/ Ashenvale to refresh my memory, but I honestly don’t hate myself enough to go through a slew of Kosakisms.
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Go read Tides of War and get back to me. I don’t feel like laying out all the proof for you. The Alliance and Horde were in a truce between Cata and MoP. Is it stupid? Yup, but that’s what Tides of War says.
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As stupid as it is, in Tides of War, Theramore is bombed during a truce. Yeah, Northwatch gets attacked, but Jaina still tells Kalcegos to not attack the Horde ships approaching Theramore because it might start a war with the Horde. The whole damn thing was stupid from beginning to end.
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Please tell me you’re kidding. You need to be kidding. I cannot think of any mention elsewhere of some truce.
But ToW is also where Genocidal Jaina was born, and also isn’t mentioned anywhere, so… Yeah.
Damn it. You’re not kidding, because I remember something like that.
Great. Wonderful. Now I have to live in a world where Garrosh, freaking Garrosh agreed to a truce.
I’m fine with him also breaking that truce, because Garrosh gotta Garrosh, but I now have to live with the idea he calmly sat down and said “yes, I shall agree to not war today, thank you.”
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“Nah, I don’t feel like war tod-- JAY-KAY it is war-o-clock”.
Gotta throw in some treaty breaking to make the war crimes extra spicy, after all.
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I am not kidding. P.127 - it wasn’t actually Kalcegos that she told it to, it was Pained. “No, Jaina said firmly, They are not in Alliance waters. I will defend Thermore, but I cannot condone being the aggressor. We’ll just have to wait.” And she says this after Northwatch has been attacked. I have to say, I used to think War Crimes was the worst WoW novel, but over time, I am starting to think that it was Tides of War.
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Man, I’m still sticking up for Sylvanas as the worst just because of what a mess it was. But it at least had the excuse of needing to stitch together an entire mess that was never going to work gracefully. And try to make, “I will never serve” make sense after all that… stuff. It never really had a chance.
Tides of War made most of its own problems. Which had almost no bearing on the world so it’s not like they were requested endpoints.
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Yeah, I will forgive the Sylvanas novel a bit because as you said they had to close off that crap sandwich somehow. Tides of War built its own crap sandwich.
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I sort of enjoy that there’s novelization diabolical mastermind Garrosh who is mostly very calm and very treacherous, that one quest honorable orc boy Garrosh, sad BC Garrosh, and then in game Garrosh who is a raging idiot, emphases firmly on raging.
At least three Garroshes in a trench coat. Except that doesn’t work because none of them have a shirt.
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Oh, and I hate Tides of War because it has my most petty niggling loose end in WoW - where Garrosh survives a direct explosion and they never explain it - not in the book or ever since.
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So given what I’m learning today, I have my own vote for which is worst, and why we should all agree with me and support my choice.
All of them. Every single book is the worst book, and no other book can ever be as horrible as what we have gotten. All they can ever hope to do is equally be the worst book, or be better than the worst books.
This way, we have set a minimum bar for all future books that, with some time and effort and writing talent, can be exceeded.
“You can be terrible, just be better than what came before you”.
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