Teldrassil's burning was a short-sighted decision on the writers' part

Lore Story Forum
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I really feel like they wrote themselves into a corner in an attempt to raise the stakes.

We were sold as BFA being an expansion that resolved the faction conflict- but it really doesn’t feel resolved. I personally think this is the most fragile peace between the Horde and Alliance we’ve ever seen. There’s bad blood and resentment on both sides, and in Shadows Rising it was made clear that one errant step by either faction could lead to war breaking out yet again. The Alliance does not trust the Horde (understandably so), and the Horde has (legitimate) concerns about factions within the Alliance craving vengeance.

Pretty much anything else that happened in the war could be resolved with time, but Teldrassil I think is going to be really hard to get past. Explicitly referring to it as a “genocide” was a dangerous decision, too.

I just don’t see how the factions move forward from this and cooperate in a way that’s believable.

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I couldn’t agree more. The day it happened, I couldn’t see how they were going to get out of it, and as time has gone on, I’ve started to wonder if they even had a plan to do so. Did they truly not expect that fans would be this angry?? Were they really that … naive? And as you say, it doesn’t make sense for the story either.

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Surprise surprise, burning children and innocent civilians alive isn’t something one can do lightly. You cannot sweep it under the rug or treat it lightly. But we’re sure as hell going to watch Blizzard try their hardest to do so. And the story sure as hell is going to suffer for it.

Perhaps they should have had a few more logic processors installed while over there in Mechagon, might have had a normal level of foresight and predicted this like everyone else did.

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This is made especially perplexing with all of the hand-wringing they’re having characters do about Tyrande and her “obsession with vengeance”.

It’s like… Blizzard told us that this was an unprecedented disaster and slaughter of innocents, and now they’re trying to tell us that the leader of these slaughtered people is wrong to be furious about it, and that she shouldn’t hold anyone other than Sylvanas accountable, when we all SAW other people very much involved with and complicit in what happened.

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Really, all of this nonsense with Teldrassil could have been solved if Saurfang had just stuck to the plan and killed Malfurion. The initial plan was to kill him and occupy Teldrassil to use as leverage to prevent war since the Alliance were escalating things by crowding horde cities with spies and not even being subtle about it (granted who knows whether Sylvanas was actually planning on doing that at this point). Tyrande could maybe still go Night Warrior to avenge her husband but at least the geopolitics would have been less…well…stupid.

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I don’t know if the “Burning of Teldrassil” was short sighted, so much as the events around it. It might have been well planned, and the basis of the plot for 5 years prior and 5 years going forward. The destruction of cities (and the people in them) is not inherently bad in an MMORPG. It depends on “how and why” they happen, and “what comes from it”. In these aspects, Blizzard has surely failed.

The “how and why” was explained poorly, partly because they wanted it to be a surprise. They told us it would happen but not who or why. Then they told us who, and some lame reasons why. Then as BfA ends, we learn Sylvanas just wanted souls to fuel the “Deathforge”. And we still are not clear if there will be other reasons later… And it was done with catapults from pretty far away.

Even as a Horde Player and a fan of the War, there was little to cheer for. The Night Elves aren’t that bad. I’d rather war with the Alliance in defense of Lordaeron and Quelthalas, than secure Kalimdor or burn Teldrassil.

Blizzard could have given the Horde good reasons to cheer at the Burning, but they seemed to go out of their way to avoid it. If Sylvanas approached Teldrassil and said:

“The kaldorei harbor Genn Greymane in this tree. He attacked the Warchief of the Horde in Stormheim, after our unity at the Broken Shore. He broke the peace. If the Alliance does not hand over Greymane and his War Criminals, then this tree and all the souls within it are forfeit!”

I think more Horde Players would have found good cause and supported the burning. Instead, we got:

“Burn it. BURN IT!”

So the burning seems designed to have few fans. As if any thing that might garner support was ignored in order to move the plot in an obvious direction. And that ends up just being a build up that falls flat.

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By introduction of another big bad enemy, and Khadgar / Bolvar / whatever saying “only together…”, and so on. It’s all for ze best of Azeroth, right?

Even if it will turn out that the one whispering to Magny is the long time ago mentioned “shadow of Yogg-Saron” and we have no idea what would be good for Azeroth. Maybe she is powered up by anima, so the best for her would be a constant blood bath, we might never know.

I saw people trying to approach from the last faction conflict from a logical PoV. That was leading just to sadness and disappointment, because the events and character placement seem to be based purely on what was convenient for the dev team. So, we will cooperate, and have faction conflicts, but leave aside “believable” part.

I think it might be better if the players would start seeing the players and in-game characters as separate entities. What happens between the horde and the alliance happens within the fiction based on ideas of the dev team. And the players are just there as those who witness and record the events, or something.

That’s my way of not feeling depression after attempts to analyze the story - just accept myself as a ghost, stuck there after a shady action of a spirit healer, and observing the events while being unable to feasibly affect anything. Things happen with reasoning “because happen”.

gl hf

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It actually could have worked. Had some else burned the tree, say Azshara, and pinned it on the horde, that could have worked. Instead of the horde being the villains one again it wood have highlighted the issue of them being sometimes misunderstood. But no, they didn’t think about that.

I have to wonder what were they thinking. Solving the conflict after Teldrassil? How many characters personalities would they have to change to accomplish that? The Night Elves week never not hate the horde and even without the Night Warrior, Tyrande will never trust them or fully trust the armistice. Do they not know there own characters?

Nope. Tyrande would still be on the warpath and the Night Elves would still be pissed, and I have to wide about the effect that would have on the neutrality of the Cenarion Circle.

Sylvanas would have never been able to hold the tree. If the got close enough, the druids alone could turn it into a weapon against the invaders. She also banked on Genn not wanting to help liberate the tree because of Gilneas. She was wrong.

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Yes it was extremely stupid, The Alliance are Rightfully pissed and sharpening their blades for the moment we even sneeze in the wrong direction.

Horde have been bathed in the Color Red and it’s impossible to get the stain out, along with the memory, honestly at this point, (Probably solo in this feeling but) I feel bad in hoping that the alliance will just kill the Horde and get it over with since anduin isn’t around to get cold feet half way into besieging a city and pull out.

The only honest direction is either

A) Kill the “bad” Faction because trying to further justify why “We’re good now guys trust me” is beyond stupid and alliance would have to be the strongest and biggest idiots I’ve ever seen, (Which knowing blizzard this is a high possible outcome and Alliance players seethe at the idea)

B) Stop playing around and just full on make us “I wear my sins with pride on my arms, like a tattoo” (evil, bad, morally black etc.)

Knowing blizzard though they’ll go with magical option C of lets have the horde be forgiven to an extent but they’ll barely be seen in the story what so ever unless we need something stupid to happen like a boss acquiring an artifact of mass power or someone causing another to go crazy.

I can’t help but feel like Horde would still majorly share the blame since people would say "Had you not attacked us out of no where like that Azshara would of never had the opportunity to kill our people in mass swaths.

Idk fam that sounds like a one of those, sure they couldn’t hold it but it be beyond stupid/ reckless to try and push them out when they have hostages.

It be like bank robbers taking over a bank, and they have a bunch of hostages yet if the owner really wanted to they could just turn on the recently installed “Remote Controlled Manual Defense” and shoot the robbers, sure it sounds interesting on paper but in person, that sounds like you’ll just get a lot of civilians killed for no real reason, since…people are extremely likely to take a hostage with them if they’re going to die.

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For me, it’s this. The problem didn’t start with Teldrassil; it was the horde invading in the first place. And I know some people are probably going to point to the alliance spy infestation immediately beforehand and say that should have been a valid reason, but whether it is or not…the game sure as hell doesn’t seem to treat it as one, on either side. So regardless of the logic, it isn’t.

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It definitely was a short-sighted decision.

But if I’m remembering right, it wasn’t the writers’ decision.

I’m recalling an interview that talks about the writing process at Blizzard, and how the ultimate decision comes down from higher up in the company than the people doing the actual labor, and the laborers have to work around those mandates. And not so subtly implying (or maybe even just stating) that Teldrassil was something foisted on the writers by higher executives who cared more about striking imagery for advertising than logic, and something they had to try and make the best of.

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True but at least they wouldn’t be walking around with all of that blood on their hands. Or maybe Azshara could have been manipulating everything up to and including Teldrassil. Anything beyond that and it’s the horde as the villain again.

The tree has been used as a weapon befit by the druids, unwittingly in Stormrage. They could easily do so again. It really wouldn’t have taken much. Not to mention that place is massive. Good luck trying to find Elves in a forest. Darnassus they would have held but not the outside villages, especially with druids still inside the tree.

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You say that but these are more or less civilians or probably druid trainee’s, with one or two masters at best, it’s going to take awhile for the night elfs on the outside and inside for that matter to either muster a resistance or a attack for their home back.

Against the Full might of the Horde in your home, I don’t see you hiding for very long though with everyone rounding you up into one place, hell I’m pretty sure druids and shamans were conscripted into the war anyway so, the night elfs no matter how they tried to hide would still been found out relatively quickly.

(Highkey feel a bit disgusted having to type this out, just because real world parallels, that the horde would of been doing if they rounded up the night elfs in their own home/town/city)

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You would of had to do two such incidents, one done to the Alliance and framing the Horde and one done to the Horde framing the Alliance.

If Azshara had done something to Teldrassil so it burned when Sylvanas hit it with a warning shot, she would then have had to arrange something at the Siege of Lorderon to blame the Alliance for some sort of event that would make the Alliance look out of control.

Say for example, an agent of Azshara place explosives on the vats of blight, and one of those siege tower catapults hit the explosive causing a chain reaction leading to the blight decimating the Horde present (Giving the Horde their version of a quest to attempt to save something in a hopeless situation as blight leaked in from above into UC like the Alliance had saving citizens from the burning.)

But you can’t pull it off with just one faction getting hit like that. You have to hit each one and just as brutally as you hit the other one.

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I agree but, considering what they did at Lordaeron anyway, I don’t think it would of mattered much anyway if Azshara sabotaged the blight, since Sylv would of most likely blown it up anyway to deny the Alliance it.

At that point it would just seem like we’re saving our own troops from something our warchief did to deny the alliance one of our capitals.

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Sylvanas lied to Saurfang from the very beginning. That was never the real plan. In A Good War, way before Saurfang spared Malfurion, before the Horde even reached the southern border of Darkshore, when the Horde were just getting to Astranaar in Ashenvale, Sylvanas had an internal monologue:

    The kaldorei knew they were outnumbered. They knew their homeland was lost. Maybe a few of them knew in their hearts—just as she knew—that Darnassus would one day burn to ashes.
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Do you know who said it or when the interview was done? I’d like to try to find it.

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Hence why I said in parentheses that we don’t really know if she would ever have done her plan as outlined to Saurfang. The Horde WoT questing vs the in-game cinematic vs the short stories all sort of have these weird conflicting moods. The WoT questline makes it seem like Saurfang axes Malf in the back, Sylvanas told him to finish him, and when he refused and Tyrande hearthed them away she tried to salvage the situation by burning the tree. In the short stories it seems like she was always planning to burn the tree, which she very well might have been. And in the cinematic it almost looks like she regrets ordering it before Saurfang starts lecturing her?

Either way it’s very clear the writers were super disjointed in their approach to the Teldrassil narrative. It never really seemed cohesive.

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but they arent trying to do that

Lol this, horde players be all like, if we didnt burn teld, starting a war of agression makes us the good guys lol what a dumb thing to think

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Based on what happened in Stormrage, I doubt it would take little more than a few druids swimming up to the roots of the tree and taking control. She could not hold that tree and she would have eventually burned it.