Physics of burning Teldrassil are honestly fine, it’s a visual representation and they even said somewhere the fire was magic or something. They wanted a way to represent the burning in a cutscene so they used catapults instead of going into the specifics. I’m fine with it.
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I would have liked to see some scenes of the horde soldiers actively running around to burn Teldrassil.
just 10 or 15 seconds of seeing the Horde soldiers casting the spells, firing the catapults. Cheering or waving their banners.
Cement the Horde’s actions fully in this action.
Right now you just have Sylvanas saying “burn it” 2 or 3 catapults fire once and… well there it is. Its on fire now.
I’ve seen this idea on the story forum, but I just did a quick Google and wasn’t able to track down its source. Anyone know where it comes from?
No clue. Or actually, I think in the book it mentioned being able to see through to alternate timelines in the crater that was Theramore, so maybe that inspired it. Unless it was just mentioned in a tweet.
I agree with the sense that the visuals were fine.
Physics were not fine. In the lead up to that very cutscene you’re allowed to use these supposed catapults. I do forget the pre expac world quest though. They didn’t really shoot that far, or burn ancients too quickly. (Different than the tree admittedly)
It would have been a more consistent (maybe not better) visual to have gyro copters being the delivery method.
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Didn’t the zone already have one-man zeps flying out over the water? A bombing run with azerite-infused bombs would have been so much more logical.
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You know what’d be cool?! If at the end of the expansion we find out that Sylvanas actually sent those to evacuate the tree, of which everyone made it out after the alliance players ported back to stormwind.
Nelfs are now part of the horde…
I’m sorry, I let my rage at the fact this is true slip out…
Physics…magic or something…
Does not compute.
The reality is that it makes no sense even with the magic argument, and Blizzard just went with what they thought looked cool and advanced the story they wanted. They do it all the time. It’s why the story can be fun but is never worth taking seriously.
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See clearly the trick is having the bomb strapped with mini bombs that explode periodically to keep the main bomb airborne for an extended amount of time, with the main bomb being magically enchanted lava from the fire lands to help burn down that non-eco friendly tree
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It would be one thing if Teldrassil really was this stand out aberration in the plot, but truth be told the entire war campaign is rife with similar amounts of silliness, from Jaina’s Floaty pirate ghost ship and her ability to just ‘magic’ the Blight away to Sylvanas suddenly having the ability to fly and turn intangible when in physical form to escape an Undercity she herself blew up at just the right time for the Alliance leadership to have someone who could cast mass teleport.
The war campaign never even started to make sense beyond ‘Horde did a bad, Horde and Alliance both are upset; oh no, more bad stuff is happening!’ It never got better.
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Blizzard: How cool would it be if we had this 18 year old boy with chronic pain from having every bone in his body smashed by a giant bell run up in full plate armour and make a tank explode by stabbing at it
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We could still always go with the ol’ “Teldrassil was an inside job” conspiracy.
“Demolisher fuel can’t melt world trees.”
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they aint that nuanced, so sad we have to make our own headcannon.
If memory serves, someone got the Tides of War novel early and gave a detailed synopsis of it. This might’ve been on the Scrolls of Lore forum, I can’t remember. I believe it was that synopsis that said every Theramore in the multiverse was destroyed by the mana bomb, and everyone went with that. I never read the book, but apparently that’s not what it says. It says that the mana bomb tore a hole in reality and you could see through it. The “every Thereamore destroyed” spread quickly though, and since only a few people ever wound up reading the actual book, no one corrected it.
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I think it was less that he didn’t know the range of the machines and more that he was giving the officer crap for not having moved them up further sooner.
i.e.
“Which way is the enemy, private?”
“East, sir?”
“And which way are you headed now, private?”
“Uh… North, sir?”
“Then WHICH WAY DO YOU THINK YOU SHOULD BE HEADING?”
“E-East, sir!”
“MOVE.”
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Exactly! It amuses me that so many posters seem to believe Saurfang was asking a question he didn’t know the answer to.
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But there is the contention. The subtext does make sense in this case. The issue being that the actual text makes a point that the cutscene then upends.
Why give flak to the operator for being too far away when these can reach the tree in question. This means When taking into consideration the subtext of “get closer you imbecile”, Saurfang has proven he doesn’t have a reasonable range idea of the catapults. They are fine back where they were. Or the tree is only several hundred yards away? That could be the case.
Or you can ignore the subtext and they both don’t know the range that can be hit.
Another alternative explanation is the catapult has a “banded” range and the enemy was in the wrong zone.
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If we’re to take the range of the cinematics as accurate, then there was no need for the Horde to even enter close-quarters combat with the night elves. They could have simply bombarded the forests from miles away, like they did the tree.
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This all sounds like headcanon to me.
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First, isn’t that kind of all interpretations of subtext…
Second, exactly. Im making up quasi plausible reasons for something that doesn’t make sense. If we read into the text that Saurfang really is a good general, and has enough experience to tell a catapult operator off for something that is shown to be wrong, why is head-canon a viable defense against my argument.
Third, that passage has always ruffled my jimmies…
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