Stormwind is still better than most of the horde economy as it is self sustaining. I mean the Orgrimmar literally lacks clean drinking water and needs to depends on Tauren shifting massive amounts of water through the Barrens to them.
Forsaken are literally unable to sustain themselves without Human dead.
Basically the Horde falls apart if the indvidual nations if left to its own devices.
I can imagine that if the Horde do control Kalimdor it won’t be long to they strip/Plague Ashenvale and then come begging to the alliance again wanting more resources as they destroyed they’re only chance in Kalimdor.
The Horde doesn’t beg it takes: hence the war. Also I’m pretty sure, with that waterfall of freshwater oming down from Hyjal, any shortage of water in Org has more to do with Goblin water tanks than available clean water. Because the citzend of duratar hardly have to leave the city to throw a bucket over. Im surprised Orgrimmar doesn’t have a moat or two at its north and south walls.
Orgrimmar getting Tauren druids and shaman to shift rivers to them for water, is still taking care of their citizens better than stormwind, who just threw an entire regions worth of people into homelessness.
Is the poverty in Westfall still an ongoing issue as of BFA though?
edit: I would also point out that the issues in Westfall were exacerbated by Vanessa VanCleef and the newly reformed Defias. So it’s not like Stormwind was totally ignoring the situation.
The way Anduin throws away the lives of alliance soldiers against the Horde I doubt over population is an issue any more.
Shaman and Druids moving rivers isn’t a thing other wise we would have mages in stormwind just creating food for the whole populace. The one river they have flowing down to their city is tainted by the Goblin factories to the north.
In Stormwind which homeless population did they kick out? Are you talking about the stonemasons? if so they basically fled the city after refusing Varians fair offer when of offered to pay the original amount and they then rioted and killed the queen.
Stormwind is a massive refugee center as it is housing Nightlelves, Gilneans, Gnomes and dwarves all living in the city.
Anyway, no, Stormwind doesn’t have the worst economy, when you consider how much they’ve had to shoulder. The Westfall thing was weird, and like several Cata zones was written as mostly a parody of CSI. It never made sense thematically, given that the so called effects of the economic strife were never actually seen outside of Westfall, and certainly whatever that strife was, it was done by the time MoP rolled around. Stormwind manages to run smoothly, have resources, and still be a focal point for the Alliance despite having lost farmland in Duskwood and Westfall, though Westfall most likely recovered.
The only recent reference we’ve seen to economic strife in Stormwind is in Elegy, and that was because of the massive influx of refugees from kaldorei lands, many of whom are probably gone by now.
You want poor economy, look at Orgrimmar, which apparently can’t properly manage lumber resources to the point where they were constantly attacking nelf lands, in spite of having access to Azshara and Stonetalon now.
If the horde could have taken teld abd started cutting it up they would still need more lumber with how they are written. Really woth all the magic both sides have no one should be short anything but manpower.
No everyone here is not the same person, except you and Pheandra it seems. Also, like I said, Topper McNabb has been begging since before Classic all the way through to present day BFA.
Pheandra is anti-Horde, I’m anti-Blizz Writing team. As for Topper, he’s a flavor NPC who spouts various references for the Warcraft RTS games as well as some pop culture references. I don’t think you can use him as a reference to the argument of Stormwind having the worst economy. The only other NPC who is a beggar in the city actually has a stash of gemstones in the small courtyard beyond him, so he’s clearly in it for his own amusement.
I find this kind of hard to believe. Though they are technically named “Leper Gnome Laborer” in game and not “Slave”, I recall seeing one of them locked in a cage, which would be evidence of coercion.
Actually, I think Stormwind has the best economy of all the Alliance members. It has a massive population due to a constant stream of immigration. This not only gives Stormwind abundant manpower reserves for war, but also a very large tax base.
Westfall is actually known as the breadbasket of Stormwind. However, the Cataclysm ruing many of their crops and aid did come from Stormwind. It’s just that the Defias was sabotaging all the goods coming from Stormwind into Westfall. This was fixed by the end of the zone questline.
Stormwind is booming. All the jobs it has created via the military industrial complex. Unlike the Horde, Stormwind doesn’t outsource itself to Goblin organizations.
The nobility is gone. There is no mention of them anywhere in game. Manduin is our Lord and Savior. Remember that it is under him that the entirety of Azeroth is coming under Alliance influence.
I’m inclined to say it doesn’t matter. Largely, because Blizzard have been really bad at showing how it matters. Logistics is not their strong suit.
The drain of resources from the war against the Lich King, as well as the economic collapse of their primary food producing region in no way even slightly inconvenienced Stormwind’s ability to field massive armies and fleets across the globe. Even in Cata itself, when the losses of manpower were still fresh, and their breadbasket was in ruins.
The Horde being so destitue of resources, to the point Orcs were starving to death in the streets, in no way inhibited Garrosh from blockading an entire continent. Nor, like Stormwind, from fielding huge armies across the globe, as they escalated old warfronts and opened new ones.
The Night Elves are on the brink of extinction in the novellas, and yet, still manage to gain a foothold on Kalimdor again in defiance of the Horde. Almost single-handedly. Though, I suppose that one is ever so slightly more believable, as it was the civilian population that took the brunt of the casualties, and Night Elves need little to no infrastructure to generate resources.
And that’s when they even bother to mention logistics and resources. How had the Army of Light been acquiring food and resources for 25,000 years? Their ships and equipment are not the cobbled together scraps of scavenging guerilla fighters, like the Krokul. Plus, the Army of Light has been breeding their own elekks for over a thousand years, since Turalyon and Alleria gave them some from Draenor. Assuming a physiology and metabolism similar to an irl elephant, each one is going to require a massive quantity of food, daily.
I’m aware. But even that one ship, with its entire army and their mounts, is going to need massive quantites of food (including vegetable crops for the elekks, which require large amounts of space, a relatively stable growing enviroment, and a large sink of man-hours for labor). As well as large quantities of whatever metal they use to forge new and repair old equipment.
Alot of the military and economic aspects of WoW don’t hold up if you look too close, and try to figure out how they work.
I always had the vibe that the homelessness and poverty in Stormwind (though more in particular of Westfall) was setting up for a peasant revolt that never manifested. I suspect that was Onyxia and the Defias’s plan all along, to make the rulers of Stormwind look unpopular so that when they marked on the cot tthe people would join them, but then all their plans got exposed by adventurers and there was no one left to take advantage of the situation.
Now, the Alliances successive wars and continued focus on thwarting the Hordes every attempt at expansion hasn’t done anything to help improve that artificial situation. If anything it has made it worse, and as OP pointed out, Anduin has not done anything more to solve that problem than his father did…
But I doubt any peasants are going to revolt any time soon when the Legion is attacking or their afraid Sylvanas will murder them in their beds.
I wouldn’t really put the blame on Stormwind tbh. Stormwind is more a hub of refugees rather than a result of poor economic decisions. Remember, Stormwind was sacked. Then destroyed again by Deathwing. Meanwhile all of the other Human kingdoms have been destroyed, unless you count Dalaran which is barely a fraction of Stormwind’s population.
There’s not really anything that COULD have been done. WoW has been constant world ending threats after another, there’s not really any time to recover that. Sure, resources were stretched thin because of Northrend…but the alternative is letting the Undead sweep across the world and murder everyone. It doesn’t help that Sylvannas has been constantly ruining their northern borders with some serious plaguebombing.
So I wouldn’t necessarily it’s a leadership problem, but rather a current events issue. It’s a lose/lose situation, because it’s the only human country LEFT. So pretty much everyone’s problems get thrown into them.