Every Gilnean isn’t a combatant. There were still Gilneans on Teldrassil. There presumably would have been when the Horde occupation force came in. Including, again, possibly Queen Mia. It’s the new home of the bulk of their population.
The stated plan was exactly as dumb as blowing up Undercity to kill 5 people when almost half the people you’re trying to blow up make portals on the regular… and you know this because you just saw your sister move herself and your other sister around with ease less than like a month ago.
So, every defender evacuated Teldrassil, leaving behind innocent civilians, including the Queen of Gilneas, and a bunch of important, non combatant priestesses of a female warrior cult.
Well… yes? Because that was the stated plan. To capture Teldrassil with a manageable number of hostages that would still be enough to use as a deterrent after bleeding out the most formidable combatants among the civilians on the way up through Ashenvale and Darkshore. It’s unlikely that the hostages would include no Gilneans.
It wasn’t a great plan, but Saurfang found it plausible. (How it was supposed to credibly function long term is beyond me, but Saurfang is so dense throughout the whole arch that it’s on brand.)
This entire post leads me to believe maybe english is not your first language. And for that, I’m sorry I erred a little on the poetic side instead of writing plainly.
Assuming Sylvanas wasn’t intended to be just saying whatever would get Saurfang to roll along with her plan of sucker punching the night elves, she had a really bad read on Genn. Because the second that the situation popped up, not only did he not complain about Gilneas first, he actually sent his people to help the night elves take their turf back.
I doubt he would have been written as reacting differently in a hypothetical situation where Teldrassil was captured with hostages. Who, again, would probably include Gilneans.
Or you know Genn actually grew and changed. Let’s not forget this was a character that was one of that least liked the Alliance and now he is one of its greatest supporters.
I’m not against characters growing and evolving. But Genn was one of the best anti-Horde, anti-Forsaken characters that Blizzard had in the Alliance for future storytelling and making him just another “peace is more important than anything else” character is just a boring direction to take his character.
Anduin-clones. Right now Genn, Jaina, Baine and Bolvar all serve the same function that Anduin does in the meta-story. There’s no reason for it. One of the biggest complaints about Warcraft’s storytelling right now is that all of the dialogue is written in such a way that any character could have said a line, it’s all interchangeable.
Genn should never have given up his anti-Forsaken bias. That’s going to make future stories 100x harder to tell.
I just don’t believe Genn was ever a “peace-at-all-cost” character, and making him one is a travesty. Genn is a character that absolutely should have put pride above his people. He should settle for nothing less than reclaiming Gilneas. That is who Genn always was until BfA. Making Genn into an Anduin-Symp murdered the character in my opinion. To the point that Blizzard had to pull Alleria and Turalyon as the next Alliance-based villain candidates.
Genn has never been written consistently. If he were he would have been manipulating Anduin into attacking Undercity for past grievances, nothing to do with Teldrassill. That was the story the BfA cinematic implied and that was the story we were owed. Not the nonensical horse-pocky we got in BfA and Shadowlands.
Only because C-Dev is foolish and short-sighted. Of what use is Genn to the story now? He is not a foil to Sylvanas? His support of Anduin is redundant? He’s never going to support going Deus Vult against the Horde or Forsaken? Any line he speaks Laura Bailey or Daddy Metzen could speak just as easily? Why even keep him him in the story? Why not just let his daughter take over like Rastakhan and Talanji?
Not gonna lie, as a Sylvanas-fan first and fore-most the story has gone pretty well for me so far. Not gonna lie.
In all seriousness I would retcon all of Warcraft’s lore back to at least the end of Legion. I would devote every resource I have at my disposal to make that happen. Even if it meant giving up Vulpera.
I’m not saying she was making plans in the Vanilla-WOTLK era. But after she killed herself, that was the original plan. Before the jailer stuff, it was clear that she didn’t want to die and meet the same fate Arthas did, so she was trying to expand her influence as much as possible. The Forsaken didn’t have a purpose to exist after Arthas was dead and their vengeance was quenched, so they were easy to whip up into a cult of personality - a stronger one than they were already in - and start marching off to conquer the Eastern Kingdoms for Sylvanas.
I think this is willfully ignoring Edge of Night. We knew early on that she didn’t want to die and meet the same fate Arthas did, so she was working on projecting her influence to solidify her placement. The war was starting with the Alliance. Gilneas hadn’t been Alliance for decades by that point. So to Sylvanas it would likely seem that Gilneas is ripe for the taking. There was no reason to believe that the Alliance would come to aid them. There’s a bunch of humans to kill and turn into new Forsaken.
You might think that but you’d also figure that the state of Pyrewood doesn’t really give any clues as to what’s happening behind the wall. For all Sylvanas knows Gilneas is still doing fine, or it’s completely wiped out by Worgen. She can assume that Worgen are there, but she doesn’t know that specifically. She would weigh all possibilities and likely come to the conclusion of it being a mix of humans and Worgen. She didn’t know the extent of the infestation, she thought it’d be an easier target than it was, and she was repelled.
If you play the Worgen starting zone, you meet the Forsaken first. You don’t see any Orcs at all until you’re in the Cathedral in Gilneas city. An Orc comes in and tells Sylvanas she better not deploy any of the blight, she promises not to, and then immediately tells her Executor to prepare the blight. That is the first time you see any Orc. Then later you start seeing more Orc forces and that’s by the time you’re already getting to leave with the Night elves with the promise that you’ll return with the Alliance backing you.
The Orcs didn’t start the invasion, so I’m not sure where you’re getting it being already in motion from. As soon as the barrier reef collapses because of the Cataclysm, Forsaken ships roll in. Maybe you’re getting that from the Horde experience where you as a new Forsaken are joining an invasion already in progress. But Sylvanas was already marshalling troops long before then.
I’m pretty sure that this is the order of events. It may be the case that you spy Orcs on the Forsaken vessels when you see them invading. Because I have nothing better to do, as of the time of the writing of this post, I’m going to play through the heavily bugged Worgen start to see if this is or is not the case and if you see Orcs prior to Forsaken involvement.
Garrosh “strongarmed” Sylvanas into invading Gilneas because he wanted a port in the EK - even though the Forsaken already have a port on the northern coast of Tirisfal. She joined in not because she necessarily has to or wants to obey the Warchief, but because she wanted more corpses. Again, you attack a village of Kirin Tor and raise them as new Forsaken. There was a big deal about this when people were asking why the newly raised Forsaken all immediately ally with Sylvanas and Cdev answered that when you die, at least violently like that, there’s a lot of anger and hate so Sylvanas harnessed that to emotionally manipulate her newly raised Forsaken like the Scourge. So much for valuing free will.
Plenty of people, historically, lay all of the blame on Garrosh. He was the one who ordered an invasion of the port, therefor he is solely responsible. That’s not the case at all. She wanted to take Gilneas for more fodder for her quiver of arrows. That doesn’t absolve Sylvanas of responsibility.
And the questing experience happens in Cataclysm for both Worgen and Forsaken. By the time she is invading Silverpine, that is in Cataclysm when she was planning on expanding her influence.
I keep saying that the situation changed when she burned the tree. It was intentionally different and expected a different reaction. As I also said, Genn wasnt really the one most likely to be wrong or unfaithful in this scenario. He would have been in the right if he mentioned anything about the Alliance taking back an occupied world tree before helping to take back Gilneas. No one expected a single conversation to tear the alliance apart. It was intended to be a slow moving cancer. And it wasnt even meant to break Genn or Tyrande, who were both likely to do whatever Genn and Tyrande do, but to challenge Anduin’s inexperienced leadership. It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that Anduin would feel torn between Darnassus and Gilneas. Darnassus isnt even reasonable without taking back Gilneas first because of UC.
“This isn’t real!” Sylvanas announced, her voice echoing in her head and sounding as it had when she had been alive. Were her people really so weak? No—no! Garrosh had all but murdered the best of her troops in his own wasteful campaigns. The Forsaken leadership had been gutted. That was what these visions showed."
"Sylvanas did not move or shy away. “I was once like you, Garrosh,” she answered, her voice quiet and steady, loud enough only for the warchief to hear. “Those who served me were tools. Arrows in my quiver.”
“The army of undead that surrounded and protected the Dark Lady was still hers, body and soul. But they were no longer arrows in her quiver, not anymore. They were a bulwark against the infinite. They were to be used wisely, and no fool orc would squander them while she still walked the world of the living.”
She was on the defensive as of EoN… not expansion. She only took Gilneas for Garrosh, and to ensure that blight was used instead of wasting undead lives.
And then she immediately squanders her troops in her failure to take Gilneas. And if the assertion that she does it solely on Garrosh’s orders is true, then it does seem like that fool Orc squandered them. Either he did, or she did.
She could just tell him no. She does things without his permission all the time and Garrosh is impotent to stop her, because Garrosh knows that he can’t just split his forces trying to quell the Forsaken while he’s in a war with the Alliance. She’s not doing it just on behalf of Garrosh. Sylvanas always has ulterior motives to everything that she does.
The reason why I bring up EoN is that it seems clear from that, that she doesn’t want to die, she doesn’t want to have her people reduced to nothing in a war she can’t replenish her numbers from. So there she goes, killing and raising as many humans as possible. Specifically humans, because Val’kyr can only raise humans… until they raised Night elves later.
