All of you are giving this more thought than Blizzard. Night elf-Tauren relations wasn’t a story they wanted to tell until Vanilla.
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Do you think why the Tauren ‘did not lend aid’ is important?
Just to clarify, you think a lot of Tauren tribes did not lend aid because they simply didn’t know?
Because that aspect is rather central to why I don’t hold them responsible, whereas I do the Night Elves. And I want to make sure we are on the same page before re-delving into that.
My problem is that these issue still exist even in the modern writing of The Chronicle 3. They doubled down on it.
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I keep saying them not lending aid is not important! As not important as the Kaldorei not lending aid!
Because:
- The world is huge. None of them were immediate neighbors.
- They all had their own crap to worry about.
- They were too few in number to police everyone’s problems.
- And Cairne didn’t ask!
This is applicable for any group you want to apply this to.
… This is literally what I am saying.
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The Barrens, Stonetalon, and Ashenvale are all adjacent.
The Centaur assaults had been going on for generations. Not to mention the Wardens were playing world police for a long time anyway. The Long Vigil seemed relatively free of problems until the Third War, but the Centaur issue started long before then.
Not asking to solve everyone’s problem, just their direct neighbors (a peaceful, druidic race) in a generational problem.
And the Night Elves didn’t bother reaching out.
This is the issue, though. And the reason I asked ‘does why matter?’
- I don’t think these are valid excuses.
- I don’t think they equally apply to any group.
This is the reason why applies differently.
Oh, I just find it an interesting discussion of the lore. Often enough stuff comes up outside the writer’s intent that can be examined. Doesn’t mean I’m calling the Night Elves monsters, but we can still look at the situation. Not a massive issue to me.
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It was not the Night Elve’s responsibility to save a people they were not in contact with. It is not their responsibility to “reach out” any more than anyone else. This is not an onus put on them by the story and not our place to do for the story. I don’t care that you don’t think it’s valid or equally applicable. Night Elves were few in number and as neighboring/distant (interpretation of distance varies pending personal bias of the individual reading this) as the tribes Cairne had not yet united. There is no more onus on their elven neighbors than there is on their Tauren neighbors. I’m so glad you disagree. Very cool.
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It really isn’t a controversial or unbacked perspective. If we don’t have evidence of something happening, we assume it didn’t happen. If we don’t have new evidence showing change, we rely on previous information. You haven’t proven the Horde leaving Ashenvale to be true, so I have no reason to believe that’s the case. If we disregard that idea, anyone could claim anything with equal validity.
Just look at the conversation about the Night Elves. The entire thing is based around the idea that because we never heard about the Tauren asking for help or the Night Elves reaching out to help them, we must naturally assume it didn’t happen. This, despite portrayals of them after WCIII suggesting that it would have been very in-character for each group to have done that at the time, not to mention the Tauren telling the Orcs about the Night Elves to begin with. But, because we have no evidence showing that, we can only say it didn’t happen. Yes this means there are sometimes holes in the story, logical errors or unexplained happenings, but there really isn’t any alternative besides outright fanfiction.
That is my point. Everything is equally valid because all we do know is we don’t know.
Assuming status quo is maintained is also equally fanfiction and/or headcanon, because you have no evidence to back it up.
Giving you the highest technicality passable, I do not have evidence that the Horde abandoned the east of Ashenvale. I do have evidence that Tyrande intended to have the Horde leave all of Ashenvale for good.
You don’t have any evidence to support the Horde intended to stay in Ashenvale, and even less so that they did. Which is what you declared.
When we don’t know something, we use information that we do know. The last we actually had information on Splintertree, Kargathia Keep, and the Warsong Labor Camp, they were all still occupied. Following that, we never had information showing their abandonment. As such, your insistence that they were abandoned is invalid due to lack of support, and can be dismissed out of hand.
These are not two equal claims.
I can go into the game right now and see that those settlements exist. If you want to claim they’ve been abandoned, you need to prove it, and Tyrande’s suggestion to the player and the status of Mor’shan and Zoram’gar do not prove those other locations were deserted.
Also, status quo is statue quo precisely because it is something assumed to be consistently true. If we see a settlement in the lore, it takes quite a degree of evidence to show that it’s been abandoned.
Tyrande’s intentions are not evidence of action, particularly when evidence you yourself presented about her terms seems to contradict those intentions, and when nearly all of Varian’s intentions from that same scene turned out to never happen.
The Horde fought multiple wars over Ashenvale. For early their entire history on Kalimdor, they’ve been desperate for the territory and resources of the forest. The BfA mission table even shows the Horde still holding both Kargathia and Splintertree. That, and the mere fact that they founded those settlements in the first place, is plenty of evidence showing their intent to have those locations.
The claim that the Horde abandoned Ashenvale is no more valid than claiming they abandoned any of their other settlements. Perhaps less so, considering they’ve fought over that area more than any other in the game.
What even is the relevance if the Horde was or was not living in Ashenvale?
The irony here is that this is my stance as well. And the information we do know is intention. Your claim of statue quo is not equal, no. In that it is flimsier, if it holds water at all.
Their reasons for founding them in the first place predate Garrosh’s war, and those reasons are irrelevant in the aftermath of Garrosh’s war ending. This is not evidence of their intention to stay at all.
You rather solidly prove my point that your entire view and declaration that the Horde intended to stay in Ashenvale after MoP is purely headcanon.
None. Veloran is merely upset that his trying to goad me into feeling sad about the burning of Teldrassil in response for saying Sylvanas being killed would be a good thing didn’t work out, so he is now trying to insist that a peace treaty following Sylvanas death won’t necessarily get the Horde out of Ashenvale, and he has settled on establishing his headcanon that the Horde never left Ashenvale after MoP as precedence for that. He’s just stewing in spite because he doesn’t like people disagreeing with him, and I’d rather not see his misinformation be spread around without someone pointing out he doesn’t actually have anything to go off of.
Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam ), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents “a lack of contrary evidence”) is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes the possibility that there may have been an insufficient investigation to prove that the proposition is either true or false.[1] It also does not allow for the possibility that the answer is unknowable, only knowable in the future, or neither completely true nor completely false. [2] In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.
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To make an argument from silence (Latin: argumentum ex silentio ) is to express a conclusion that is based on the absence of statements in historical documents, rather than their presence.[2][3]
Thus in historical analysis with an argument from silence, the absence of a reference to an event or a document is used to cast doubt on the event not mentioned.[4] While most historical approaches rely on what an author’s works contain, an argument from silence relies on what the book or document does not contain.[4] This approach thus uses what an author “should have said” rather than what is available in the author’s extant writings.[4][5]
An argument from silence may apply to a document only if the author was expected to have the information, was intending to give a complete account of the situation, and the item was important enough and interesting enough to deserve to be mentioned at the time.[6][7]
Arguments from silence, based on a writer’s failure to mention an event, are distinct from arguments from ignorance which rely on a total “absence of evidence” and are widely considered unreliable; however arguments from silence themselves are also generally viewed as rather weak in many cases; or considered as fallacies.[1][8]
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They cannot fathom that Night Elves were a very isolationist, scattered society themselves during the Long Vigil. If it didn’t threaten the fate of the world, or them personally, they didn’t care.
It’s fun to watch people try and apply a present (WoW) lens onto a past WoW circumstance. People do it frequently in matters concerning RL.
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I can easily fathom the fact that the Night Elves were isolationist, Ronzonai. Sereven is factually incorrect on the parallels between said groups. And their isolationism is why I would consider them blameworthy.
I have already addressed this. Even in modern lore (Chronicle 3), the narrative/situation exists.
That’s what I thought, thank you. Seems like weak precedent.
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Would a treaty giving back all NE lands also get the Alliance to willingly evacuate all their EK gains?
I can fly to Northrend right now and see that the scourge and Arthas are still terrorizing it. Weird bro. It’s almost like all those zones in EK and Kalimdor in game which haven’t been revamped are stuck in the era of Cataclysm.
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But we have evidence those intentions did not come to pass. None of Varian’s did, and if the Night Elves still held Talrendis Point, Tyrande clearly did not cede all of Azshara’s lumber to the Horde.
Why would their reasoning be irrelevant after Garrosh’s defeat? As you say, they were founded before the war, before Garrosh ever even came from Outland. They were around when the game began. Why should the Horde, ever desperate for territory and resources, want to abandon settlements located in a place so lush as Ashenvale? One of the first antagonizing factors of the war was the Horde’s lack of resources to begin with.
Incorrect. As I said before, you can think whatever you’d like about her being killed. This is what you claimed:
Removing one actor is the road to peace if it gets the Horde out of the Night Elf lands, and that’s all the retribution they have ever needed and probably will be the same again. Old. Hat.
Here, you’re saying that all the Night Elves want is Sylvanas dead and the Horde out of their lands, citing the end of MoP for why that would be a satisfactory conclusion for them. I brought up Teldrassil because your point is completely ignoring what happened there, which makes it laughable that the Night Elves, who had thousands of their people burned alive, who are now effectively refugees in Stormwind, many of whom are literally infused with the wrath of their god, would be accepting of simply getting the Horde out of their lands and returning to peace.
It’s not an argument from ignorance, it’s an argument of precedence. I have (Obvious) evidence of the Horde’s presence in Ashenvale prior to the treaty, I have evidence showing how badly they’ve fought for that land in the past and how much they’ve wanted the resources there, I have evidence the Horde currently occupies all of the same bases they did before, and I have evidence towards every other term of the treaty being discussed by Tyrande and Varian in that room at that time not coming to pass.
You have two main pieces of evidence suggesting the Horde left - Tyrande’s statement of intent to get them to leave in the treaty, and Mor’shan and (Possibly, conflicted) Zoram’gar being abandoned. The first point is contradicted by both the failure of the other intentions expressed at that time in being actioned, and by the failure of her half of the term being upheld in Azshara. For the second point, Mor’shan and Zoram’gar simply do not prove the abandonment of Splintertree and Kargathia.
Moreover, as to the original point of the Night Elves only wanting the Horde to leave to secure a peace - I don’t actually need the MoP treaty in particular to show that’s not the case. There have been other treaties and peace agreements between the Night Elves and the Horde in WoW that have been made while those settlements existed, after Wrath for example. As such, your first statement supposing the Night Elves’ main motivation is false.
First, that is clearly not the argument I was making when talking about someone’s verbal suggestion not being proof of such a term actually being included in the treaty, and the entire premise of that argument is inapplicable to this conversation from the outset. The fact remains, a statement of intent is not evidence of action - And, in fact, we have direct evidence against those intentions given in SoO coming to fruition. We have the fact that no base at Theramore exists, the fact that Gilneas is still a ruin, and the fact that Tyrande did not make true on her half of the deal.
Aside from Amadis being extremely wrong in what the conversation is about (Particularly in that quoted section where he implies that my intent was to insist that the Horde won’t leave Ashenvale after Sylvanas’ death), the precedent isn’t weak at all, both for what the Night Elves want for peace (Clearly that is not their first priority, they’ve made peace without the Horde leaving before), and for the Horde having left at the end of MoP (That simply isn’t shown).
The point of that statement wasn’t to say that the world is literally as it appears in the game, but rather to show that those settlements indeed have existed and been populated for a long period of time. For the Scourge, we know the in-game depiction of them in Northrend is wrong because the war was ended.
Side note though, because Golden always writes as though the in-game depiction of the world is current, you get things like Harrowmeiser at Westguard Keep still being in chains and having been forced to do his bombing runs for four years until the keep was attacked and he was freed. That’s far more extreme than what I’ve suggested, which is merely that some settlements have continued to exist in lieu of evidence of their abandonment.
That’s a non sequitur.
Perhaps you should clarify, because your point is extremely unclear, then.
‘They didn’t leave after one treaty (with unknown negotiation and terms), so a different treaty (which might have different terms) wouldn’t get them to leave’. That is the precedent I find weak.
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I felt sylvanas has become a mary sue.
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Like Lordaeron? Didn’t the Alliance already abandon it? Alternatively: Insert something about Calia here?
Appeal to ignorance.
In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument’s premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it. It is a type of circular reasoning: an argument that requires that the desired conclusion be true. This often occurs in an indirect way such that the fallacy’s presence is hidden, or at least not easily apparent.[1]
No you don’t. You’re appealing to ignorance again.
The fallacy isn’t your focus on the in game character’s verbal suggestion. The fallacy is your ignoring the author’s (Blizzard’s) existent writings when “most historical approaches rely on what an author’s works contain, an argument from silence relies on what the book or document does not contain,” as “with an argument from silence, the absence of a reference to an event or a document is used to cast doubt on the event not mentioned.” Tyrande and Varian’s intentions are applicable because Blizzard as “the author was expected to have the information, was intending to give a complete account of the situation, and the item was important enough and interesting enough to deserve to be mentioned at the time.”
To be fair, Blizzard does keep doing this, like their repeated showing of the Ghostlands being the same as they were since they were put in the game. However, that is different, because those are factual canon situations that Blizzard specifically writes as still being the case, as opposed to the appeals to ignorance that you are making. Such as:
Appeal to ignorance again.
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