You play a character that fits a narrow perspective of the Lore. For example, your Nightborne has no real conception of any of those events or people you described. They’ve been locked in a bubble for 10k years, so you’re pretty much saying they’re invested in a war of extermination against a faction of people who helped their civilization … because Tyrande is characteristically stuck-up.
Also … I’m a Horde player, don’t make me do this. I don’t want to do this:
Hawthorne was attempting to create a supply route through Stonetalon and the Barrans to relieve pressure on the Kaldorei in the War Garrosh started with them; and Taraujo was considered a risk to that chain. Yes, it was a tragedy, but he and his men were punished for it.
Rogers … yeah I want nothing more than to gut this lady. She seems to cite the destruction of Southshore as her motivation for her hatred (but its never elaborated on), but I agree that I will be happy when she’s decorating my wall.
Genn: To be fair to Genn, Sylvanas did try to blight his entire civilization and murdered his son. The ONLY reason that Gilneas didn’t have as many civilian casualties as it could have had is because the Forsaken where not aware of the evacuation method being used. They fully intended to use the Blight on every person in Gilneas. He’s also has mellowed the hell out recently…
Jaina: Watched her entire city get atom bombed by the very people she sacrificed her Father and Nation for; after begging Thrall to intervene when it was clear Garrosh was going off the deep-end (and he gave her a big NOPE!). She went a little crazy when the Horde took everything she had left away from her. If you’re unwilling to overlook Taraujo, you really shouldn’t invalidate Theramore.
Shaw: Uhh … pretty sure this dude was replaced by a Dread Lord (Datheroc) when he was making those claims AND when he had SI:7 give Genn and Rogers information on suspicious Horde troop movements in Stormheim. I’m also not convinced he’s not a Dread Lord even now (Mal’Ganis is creepily absent), but thats a different topic.
Tyrande: Dude, she wasn’t there to see the conclusion of the battle; one that resulted in the living cremation of thousands of her people alive, and the burning of one of the most sacred places in the NE culture. Yeah, I can see why she’s just a little bit pissed … don’t you?
She knows nothing of the other things, but she was a exile and would have seen in Legion how Tyrande was willing to let refugees die to Elisande’s Duskwatch so she could study their form of combat, among other heinous crimes against her people, and Tyrande and her people were the only view she had of the Alliance, which was not a good one.
And you are doing this to yourself, friend.
Hawthorne was punished, anything else doesn’t matter, so I will leave that as a point to you.
Rogers we agree on then, I care not for her motivations, I only care for the fact that she is committing warcrimes and that the Alliance is so willing to forgive her for it.
Genn, what were his words to Anduin when Anduin complained about him and the heroes murdering Rastakhan? He was a King who needs to be ready to die for his people? Hear any hypocrisy? And this is why I hate Gilneas now, because it used to be defendable in the sense that Sylvanas did not want to do it, that Garrosh forced her in a Garithos-esque ploy to send the Forsaken on a suicide quest.
Garrosh allowed her civilians to escape and only attacked when she had amassed a large military force in Theramore, whereas she straightout was willing to send a surprise tidal-wave to Orgrimmar to slaughter everyone there, quite hypocritical if the warmonger you hate is the better person then you.
Shaw: And when he returned you still have the Alliance blaming the Horde for the Broken Shore fiasco, never ones raising his hand and being all like: Ummm… technically… that was my fault. But I guess scapegoating the Horde is much easier.
Tyrande, then maybe she shouldn’t have sent her soldiers out to fight the Horde in Silithus if she did not wish to be dragged into a war that the Alliance was obviously willing to start. Especially when you live atop of a flammable tree. The Alliance did the same thing, civilians could easily escape for three weeks easy as the Horde fought its way to Teldrassil, most soldiers were gone, stuff did not go as planned and it was burned to the ground, just like Taurajo in all but scope, in fact, I think Teldrassil was not as bad, seeing how at least those escaping refugees were not led into enemy territory and slaughtered by hostile pigmen. Tyrande acting all morally outraged is hypocrisy.
OK … then wouldn’t you argue that their is hypocrisy on both ends, and that’s a satisfying conclusion to this discussion. Nearly every major character on both sides seems to live by a “do as I say, not as I do” philosophy, depending on the situation they find themselves in. The chief exception of this, oddly, is Baine … who makes decisions people may hate like crazy; but he’s pretty consistent in his decisions lol (its weird how that works out)!
You may hate him, but man is he consistent in why you hate him.
The problem is that Sylvanas is a stone-cold B****, she does not apologize for it and she does not beat around the bush. It is what I liked about her, I liked how she was the pragmatist, she cares only about results, not morals. And it annoys me when people go out of their way to just be all like ‘You just like her because she is a good-looking female!’, which is a dumb argument to make, considering I could say the same about anyone who joins the Alliance and fans over Tyrande or Jaina. And I will give you the point that Baine, as horrible a character as he is, is at least consistent on why he is a awful member of the Horde.
She’s that way because there isn’t anyone to really hold her accountable for her crazy acts. She’s also a RAVING hypocrite because by this point its pretty safe to say that she’s gone very much down the path of Arthas. There are so many Sylvie/Arthas parallels laced within the “Burning of Teldrassil” alone, and its aftermath with her own version of “The raising of the Ranger General”.
Also, “pragmatism” is a massive double-edged sword when it comes to Sylvanas, because of her LONG history of using people as tools for personal objectives; then abandoning them (or doing away with them) when they’ve ceased to be of use to her. The Horde as a whole being among those included. The idea that its VERY possible that she’s being “Pragmatic” and doing that VERY thing even now … bodes ill for the future of the Horde if that’s the case.
Perhaps the reason this wont be a repeat of MoP, is because eventually, when she realizes she can no longer use us, she’ll bail on us and leave us with the bill for the war she started. With how terrified she is of her own afterlife she’s not the type to sacrifice herself for a Warchief spot she’ll exploit (but never wanted). Her bouncing when the bouncing is good is the “Pragmatic” choice (because funny thing about pragmatism without limiters … it can easily result in that sort of thing).
I actually very much disagree with this, Arthas killed all his men and raised them into Undeath, she does not do this, she killed a few of our soldiers in Lordaeron, yes, but that was a decision between the few that could not retreat in time or every Horde soldier in Lordaeron, which made the decision easy for her. I also like how Baine conveniently forgets that she was the one to remain behind him and us to cover our escape from the Alliance forces and did so again when she distracted Anduin, Genn, Alleria and Jaina to let the rest of her troops escape and her forsaken prep the blight, risking her own neck again. Also with her orders when she attacks Stormsong that she wants not to loose too many of our people, she knows that this is war, and that we fight in it and that means some will die, but she does not slaughter us left and right and raise us, the only time we saw her raise our dead was in Lordaeron and that was a desperate decision which should have won us Lordaeron, had Blizz not decided to make Jaina stronger as the Guardian of Tirisfal.
You can claim many things, but no, Sylvanas is not like Arthas, the only ‘arthas-like’ thing she has done so far is raise one corpse and attempting to brainwash him, not giving him the free-will as every newly raised Forsaken is supposed to be given.
“The Burning of Teldrassil” was so thematically similar to “The Fall of Quel’thalas” its nuts; with Sylvanas serving in the role of Arthas, and the Horde representing her Scourge. Heck, Blizz even added the beat-for-beat parallels of Tyrande’s “Forming of the Night Warriors” to Liadrin’s “Formation of the Blood Knights” to hammer those Arthas/Sylvanas similarities in EXTRA hard (the Tyrande and Liadrin stories are almost identical conceptually). Then of course there is Sylvanas literally doing her own version of “The Raising of the Ranger General”, through her raising of Delaryn Summermoon (she made a mini-her); and the fact that if you read “A Good War”, “The Burning of Teldrassil” clearly served as her “Forgotten Shore” moment. It was an act she committed to, to make sure there was no going back.
Like … these narrative parallels aren’t exactly subtle.
There might be parallels but there are many differences, one is that the Blood Elves did nothing to deserve the ire of the Lich King, he only went there to get to the Sunwell to ressurect Kel’thuzad and murdered his way through, the Night Elves were enemy combatants who sent soldiers to Silithus to kill Horde soldiers, there is that difference. One were attacked out of nowhere for no reason, the other were a legitimate military target for aiding the enemy.
I mean, we also have elements of MoP here… I am hoping that at the end they will hit us with a curveball, a plot made by Genn and Jaina to overthrow Anduin (seeing how Anduin is the only person who actually wants peace with the Horde) and Sylvanas rescues him because of the respect she had for Varian (as we saw in the Legion cinematic and when we fought that huge fel-monster where Sylvanas and Varian were bantering back and forth.)
The “curveball” we’re more likely to get is finally finding out that our oh-so “Pragmatic” Warchief is actually the laughing Shepard from Ogmot’s visions, “leading her blind sheep off a cliff”. We still, TO DATE, do not know HER reasons for wanting this war; only that she has “true objectives” (objectives so apparently grand in scale that she not only suggests that Saurfang would have likely betrayed her eventually anyway; but also that beings like Elune would likely get in the way). At some point, its very possible that her boot is going to come down hard on the Horde … rather than just the Alliance.
I truly hope this is not the case, I really hope that Blizz isn’t going to do a 1 on 1 carbon copy of MoP, seeing how the Laughing Shephard could just as easily be Tyrande who is leading her sheep straight into the arms of Elune, who apparently did not see fit to save her people when the world was in danger several other times, but one defunct World Tree burns and all of the sudden it deserves a Night Warrior ritual? Yeah, I don’t think so. Seeing how Elune is tied to the Naaru (and Xe’ra) I doubt that anything that Elune does is as good as others might like to believe, considering that we saw that if you let Naaru and beings like that roam free, they tend to destroy the planet just as efficiently as any Old God.
Dude, you aware the Alliance wauted for the Warriors and Hunters to leave to attack, right? I mean this kinda blows up your argument (one could argue the supposedly “merciful” stance of letting unarmed civilians get lost in the middle of territory full of dangerous enemies is actualy crueler than giving them one swift mercy killing in situ. Those Tauren got captured, tortured and chopped by Quillboar, and frankly that sounds worse than giving them a big hit on their skulls).
If we go by what’s in game, not only did Hawthorne wait until all the warriors left, he proceeded to assault Taurajo with a full air and ground attack, firebombing all of the buildings, and driving the survivors into the Quilboar. For good measure his troops went building to building killing anybody who had a skinning knife.
He was either a complete sadist or the most inept commander ever seen on Azeroth.
Its actually the latter. From what I know he actually lost full control of two conscript forces under his command at Taraujo; which resulted in the preliminary firebombing and the looting. Yeah … he was not a very good commander. His intentions may not have been terrible, but … intentions only mean so much. It is why his death (and his mens) at the hands of the Horde was Justice served.
And as I mentioned it is only one of the many warcrimes, attempted and exacted, that the Alliance have committed and yet to pay for. Because the Horde is always expected to bend over and take it. As we saw here, the Alliance makes countless military moves against the Horde, yet players and writers want us to believe that the Horde started this war simply because Anduin has not come out and called all those actions acts of war, that is the equivalent of me punching you in the face, claiming I don’t want to fight and getting outraged that you in response kneed me in the groin.
You know, this makes me wonder if this was another case of miscommunication in the Blizzard offices, like Stonetalon Garrosh. Somebody wrote the attack as more brutal than it was supposed to be–possibly after someone else had already written it as an honorable attack where civilians were spared–and rather than devote the resources to completely reworking it, they added all the stuff about how Hawthorne intended to spare civilians but his subordinates got out of control.
It would certainly explain the big weirdness at the heart of it, which is “If they didn’t want to harm civilians, why did they wait until all the warriors were gone to attack?”
oh please… Baine does something cool by stopping Sylvanas from breaking her tenants of all Forsaken getting Free Will on Derek Proudmoore for a plot that was doomed to fail anyway and all of a sudden he’s the new alliance pet cow.
I swear you guys are going mental over this issue.
He has been the alliance pet cow since forever, the first time we see this is Taurajo when he claims that a hunting village filled with civilians is a legitimate military target. And goes to warn Jaina (whose city the Alliance has used as a staging ground for their war in the Barrens) that Garrosh was going to attack her city. Baine has been Alliance for much longer, the new cinematic just proves this further, they should rub out that Horde symbol on his shoulder and put a Alliance one on there instead and be done with it.
And let us be honest, the plan is working amazingly. Why else would Nathanos tell us to stand back and do nothing and allow Baine to do as he does when we tell him? It is because Derek is already brain-washed and with that little quivering lip and little sob-story that Baine brought, Jaina bought it, hook-line and sinker.
Derek is now in place and Baine will be framed for this and I couldn’t be happier, which is why we don’t see Sylvanas livid and just executing that traitorous piece of beef, she is just keeping him out of the way while Derek does his thing.
That seems a little far fetched, honestly. If it were true I’m pretty sure Sylvanas would have been rubbing it in Baine’s face at the time of his arrest instead of behaving like someone stole her favorite toy.
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