Redside you’re not really shown who did that either. Nameless catapult operators who I don’t think even appear on screen.
I’d heard a rumor Slyvanas was going to originally torch Teldrassil using some shard of Sargeras’s sword. Shame they didn’t do this as
A. It would’ve put the blame squarely on Slyvanas
And
B. It wouldn’t make the Kaldorei look, just kinda dumb.
Seriously the whole thing goes up in flames from just a conventional firebombing? The place was that flammable and the Kaldorei had zero fire escape plan?
Because the Forsaken had an escape plan. Very simple thing called set up a guarded portal civilains can escape through. Some SI:7 agents kill fleeing civilains before they can reach it but you’re there trying to stop them. Evacuation is the first part of the plan that comes before anything else.
The Nelves not having anything like that planned just makes them seem either dumb or very callous toward their citizenry. Especially considering the Nelves have had in house mages for a long time now.
The primary issue with Teldrassil being a “Red Wedding” style event is Blizz doesn’t understand the Red Wedding or more importantly they don’t understand how the Red Wedding changed the entire story and influenced everything that came afterwards.
Admittedly the books did a better job on showing how the event influenced the fates of the various players than the TV show did. (And it isn’t even over with yet since there are still books to come.)
The big issue with the Nelves not having a fire escape plan is cause one shouldn’t have been needed, at least to one for what went down in the game.
It was a huge living tree on an island surrounded by water. It should not have been that flammable and the Nelves should have been able to notice the sort of massive magic that would have been needed to change it to be that flammable.
The problem comes from the fact that Blizz is HQ’ed in California, more specifically southern California, and not Seattle, Washington. And I mean this for climate reasons not any other reason.
California, more specifically Southern California is notorious for the their wildfires, which seem to happen every summer. The place is hot, dry, and has mostly bushes and shrubs that burn easily and more importantly quickly. These fires start from some of the smallest sources and are almost immediately out of control.
I mentioned this is another thread somewhere around here, but if you look at just what was told about the fire, it was told like it was a California Wildfire, just in the climate of Seattle, Washington where it shouldn’t happen and no where near as quickly.
I prefer the book where he weds a rando because he slept with her in a moment of weakness and the honorable thing to do js marry her.
So his downfall mirrors his father’s. They’re both lawful stupid. Rather than the show where he puts his whole war strategy in peril because of true love.
But either way the character’s actions leads to the Red Wedding. It was absolutely an overreaction on Fray’s part but his family was double crossed first.
Whereas with Teldrassil - Slyvanas just lies about her strategy to cause a world war for a maximum body count. It’s not like Tyrande’s strict honor code or selfishness caused it. Slyvanas is just a cold blooded maniac, and moreover Teldrassil was the target out of convenience. There was nothing personal about it Slyvanas nust needed a mass killing and the tree was in the neighborhood so why not? Stormwind seems to be the place she personally wants to wreck and even that seems weird.
The Forsaken and Stormwind have had beef over the years but as we’ve seen Slyvanas doesn’t care about the Forsaken. And otherwise the Wyrnns haven’t personally wronged her in any way. Just bizarre story telling that only sort of made retroactive sense.
And I love war stories. We do RPPVP campaigns on my server. Thing is with those, the nature of the war is based around an impasse. There’s conflicting goals that can’t be resolved peacefully.
Most recently it was based around acquiring an artifact in Outland, and neither party trusted the other to have it. Neither side was the villain.
Well only Night Elves got to feel the consequences of war anyway. Horde definitely didn’t and Sylvanas didn’t either.
You can hardly call that genocide a war though when you start a genocidal war against civilians and then say “this is war”. This is what the Horde thinks and uses to justify that, but it’s less a war and more just a genocide.
Sounds like what Azerite was supposed to have been…before it became Artifact Power…and what BFA was originally thought of as…until Sylvanas turned the various NPCs in the game into Artifact Power for DEATH!!!
The thing is Slyvanas makes a very convincing case for invading Kaldorei territory.
"There’s this big new resource and all we know for sure is it’s going to change the world forever, and if we want to make sure there’s a Horde in this new world we’ve to make quick and decisive action.
We’ll blitz the Nelves and occupy Teldrassil. With one of their capitols living at gunpoint we can monopolize the Azerite in Kalimdor."
I’m paraphrasing obviously but I really wanted to give Blizz a gold star for that. It was legitimately morally gray. It’s a sucker punch, which is never cool, but it’s done so the Horde can’t get an Azerite empowered sucker punch down the line.
I remember being on these forums speculating on what might go wrong to cause the burning and suspected it’d be some mystery we’d unravel through the game.
I feel about as responsible for Teldrassil as I do for the Game of Thrones finale. There’s nothing to justify. It was the worst story beat in a narrative that was mostly bad story beats.
My reasoning for Teldrassil was it was a quest that gave me something shiny. You know, the justification for everything. Shame the story sucked but hey at least the plaguebat / hippogryph looks cool.
Tbh at this point I have the Undercity/ Darnassus up on most of my toons. They’re pretty major travel hubs and after destroying them Blizz never put in an alternate method. And with the portals replacing the boats/zeppelins they’re now high speed lanes for getting around Azeroth.
It’s actually much faster to take the portal to Silvermoon, run through the throne room to the translocation orb, and then fly to the portal to Grom’Gol than it is for waiting for the zeppelin to Grom’Gol from Org.
Ironically I started doing this when they took away Dalaran’s Karazhan portal to ‘make the world feel bigger’. And now it just feels really obtuse.
I’ll bet if you said that to the Blizzard writers, they would argue that the burning of Teldrassil has influenced the fates of virtually every character in the game, though.
I think you’re in a minority on this forum for finding it “very convincing” and “legitimately morally gray.” Not saying your opinion is wrong, just that it isn’t widely shared.
Well people are allowed to be wrong. I read the quest description she gives in the Undercity and she makes a legitimately good point.
Most of the Azerite is in Kalimdor at that moment. Taking one of the largest Alliance base of operations on the continent hostage to use as a bartering chip to ensure there’s no Alliance interference is a legitimately good strategy.
Which is why the Burning was all the more jarring. ‘Breaking the Kaldorei’s spirit’ was never that relevant to the plan. Killing Malfurion to accomplish that might possibly make occupation easier so I got that.
But then she torches Teldrassil. Which was setting fire to the Horde’s prize and biggest strategic edge in the war for Azerite.
But the story wasn’t ever about Azerite. It was supposed to be, I think, it’s made out to be a big deal for part of the story. But by 8.3 it’s never brought up again. The literal planet’s blood that can be used to supercharge anything, the resource everyone from the Cult of the Damned to the Venture Co. to the Wolf Cult were desperately trying to get their hands on in the expeditions was totally forgotten by the plot.
Which is tragic because I would’ve liked to play that story. Greed and fear is more than enough motivation for both factions, and all factions really, to do some really stupid and cruel ish.
But that might make for a nuanced story where you’d have to write flawed characters with good intentions paving the way for terrible actions.
And that’s hard. Easier to write;
Ghost Lady Bad
Kills People
Gets Confronted For Killing People
Reveals She Doesn’t Like People
Effortlessly Escapes, Tune In Next Time For Maybe A Conclusion
Anywho Here’s A Sea Platter With Too Many Eyes Putting Mean Obelisks Everywhere
Work With Sexy Black Dragon To Stop Squidworst
Congratulations You Won The Battle For Azeroth
Isn’t there a giant sword still sticking out of the planet, spewing magical yellow cake uranium everywhere?
Probably but Meanie McGhostboobs just chucked a brick through God’s window and boy is the sky not looking so hot so let’s go sort that out.
Hey. I went out of my way to say you weren’t wrong for finding it convincing; I think it’s pretty tacky of you not to extend the same courtesy to others.
“Legitimately good” is not an objective measurement.
We are in agreement that the end result was terrible, though.
I’m allowed to be sassy. You’ve said you didnt play the War of Thorns. I did, and really enjoyed it because it introduced the netgun which fixed WPVP overnight. And as someone who loves WPVP, I really loved the prepatch that encouraged it and removed the invulnerability flying use to grant.
So I remember it extremely well. And remember the dissatisfied bewilderment the burning gave me.
In the span of 4 minutes they’d turned an interesting war story into an episode of GI Joe where I had to now put up with Cobra Commander for the foreseeable future.
Maybe it would if it was chunk full of volatile Old God magic and fired at by Shamanic empowered missiles. Aside from a single Scourge invasion, the Tree had never been assaulted before.
I also live in California and have had to deal with these fires turning the sky yellow and red and having ash rain down like it was a normal weather pattern year after year now. That doesn’t excuse thinking Teldrassil would burn that easily.
What’s worse, it’s even Blizzard forgetting their own lore again, in the most neglectfult of ways, as these same Night Elves had the magic to grow and protect a tree from burning in the Firelands of all places just a few expansions ago:
