Well there is alots of dead civilians in good war, in that whole book is about saurfang realizing that there is no such thing as a good war as the hordes crimes are just built upon as the invasion of ashenvale continues
Well did the children, elderly and the frail fight back? Didn’t thousands beyond number get consumed in the flames. Even if thousands escaped which is doubtful, but lets say a few thousand made it out. Tyrande in the book said most did not and many more beyond number died. Did they fight back? In Astranaar did the civilians fight? Did the children being nurtured in the boughs of the great tree fight back? The elderly? The sick and frail? That’s the genocide we should be mindful of.
The War Chief is the Heart and Conscience of the Horde, they bear the burden and the responsibility for the Honor of the Horde. The Horde is not a democracy, nor as my friends on the right would say, a constitutional republic.
Countries switched sides in World War 2 as they changed leadership. When Romania’s King Michael was forced to abdicate by the Soviets, they changed allegiance from Axis to Allies. Even at Nuremberg. we did not hold the German people at large for the crimes that we executed and imprisoned their leadership for.
Azeroth has never been a fair world. This is not a story where wrongs are set right. There is always the lingering dissatisfaction that will provide fertile ground for the upcoming Fifth War when it’s time comes.
In the context of the War of the Thorns before the Horde got to Darkshore we do not actually have any examples of children or elderly being killed. The only reference we got of them were of being evacuated. From Elegy:
- All who could walk were pressed into service. Even those generally regarded as civilians—tailors, food merchants, innkeepers—had learned over centuries how to fight well enough to defend themselves. Those few who could not—mothers with infant children, the wounded—had been portaled to Stormwind when the magi arrived.
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For some, it was.
That would be a logical place to put them, but it’s never been spelled out. And Lillian Voss complains in the new novel that the climate of Durotar is bad for them and they “prefer the shadows and the damp”; that implies that they’re not getting shadows, which they would be if they were living underground.
TBH, I’m not sure the hold under Orgrimmar is canonically still usable. It’s certainly ignored.
Yes. But the Horde as an entity is responsible for Teldrassil, and for the war that followed. It may be true that not everyone in the Horde supported or had the abillity to object to it, but the Horde as an entity is guilty. Which proves the writers didn’t think for two seconds about the fallout of the burning because if they did they would not have written it this way.
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Sylvanas was using it to train troops. We go into it to save Baine during the war campaign.
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I think your assertion is wrong. Certainly not supportive of “murdered civilians in Astranaar and butchered their way into Darkshore”.
A Good War talks about “defenders” in Astranaar being poisoned. Not civilians. The only references I know of to civilians being killed in Astranaar is in Alliance content in game, and, again, Horde content has Saurfang protecting civilians.
The only references to civilians in A Good War is few spots. Speculation about whether the Alliance fleet would bomb the Horde forces instead of evacuating civilians. Not reference to killing them all all.
And there is the passage were civilians that used small boats to get away from Teldrasil to the beaches. That is about the boats, not killing them, though these are civilians that Saurfang has a protect in game.
“What can we do to make the civilians of Teldrassil so afraid they can think of nothing but running?”
There is one interesting passage that directly contradicts the notion the Saurfang wanted to kill civilians…
“What can we do to make the civilians of Teldrassil so afraid they can think of nothing but running?
"Nathanos grunted. “The threat of imminent death works wonders. Can we bring your new plague with us, Warchief?
“No!” Saurfang exploded. “Absolutely not, you blasted idiot! If we murder every person on the World Tree, we will unite the Alliance against us!”
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Did you not do the quest Horde side. You can one shot civilians with a certain ruthless blood elf rogue.
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You aren’t given any direction to kill civilians and that BE rouge, while personally not offended, makes it clear that if you do, it was the PC’s choice. There is no indication that is was “the Horde”.
And even, this was mostly a Blizzard playing tricks. For me, they had priestesses (you know the ones that fight the Horde all the time?) be hostile. So that even PC who don’t want to kill civilians got tricked.
So more cheap tricks by Blizzard? Yes. And example of how “the Horde murdered civilians in Astranaar and butchered their way into Darkshore” Not even close.
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Elegy actually shows that the Night Elves were the ones that planted the bodies in Astranaar as a trap. And A Good War actually has Lorash die well before the Horde makes it to Astranaar. So if the novels are canon, the Horde quests in Astranaar couldn’t be so.
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The Horde quest, the previous poster’s claims not withstanding, don’t have you murder civilians.
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Furthermore, in the Alliance side questing, Delaryn even makes reference to the trap attempt:
My expectation back then was that N’Zoth was playing the Alliance and Horde against each other and mindborking them into taking military actions they never would have with a clear mind. I expected the Alliance to answer back with horrific atrocities of their own so that both sides would have plenty to be ashamed of after the war, but we could move past because really it was N’Zoth’s doing. I don’t think it would have been a good twist, but it’s the kind of thing I expected Blizzard to pull, and it was the only way out of this mess I could see. As unsatisfying a resolution as that would have been, it’s still leagues better than what we got.
Instead of Sylvanas being N’Zoth’s pawn, he ended up being her pawn, because of course. It’s Sylvanas. She’s so galaxy brain that even the “most cunning” of the old gods is 20 moves behind her. I can’t wait til it’s revealed that she has been playing the Jailor the whole time, too.
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Then it clearly has a “Don’t come in here unless you’re an evil warchief” filter lock on it. 
(Translation: the writers only bust it out when they want to make someone look shady.)
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Almost every problem of believability in BFA could have been given a satisfactory(ish) explanation if Lordaeron had happened before Teldrassil. Sure, burning it down would have been an unjustifiably excessive revenge and little about the expansion’s story would change, but I think if Teldrassil was at least retaliatory, there is room for the issue to slowly de-escalate over time. Just like Taurajo and the Purge of Dalaran and Theramore, things can slowly be smoothed over if there is at least 1% of greyness you can use as wiggle room.
Teldrassil is 100% black as it stands. You just need 95% black to make it grey and then you can kind of work it. But Blizzard wouldn’t even give us that.
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Well, potentially better for the horde, at least. Flipping the order would mean more time to evacuate Teldrassil civilians while (in my opinion) would give the forsaken some needed feeling of oppression from the alliance. I think it would also give Tyrande a better argument for being angry with Anduin if that’s the way Blizzard wanted to cause inner faction drama, because then she’d have a strong reason to feel betrayed for being dragged into a war that didn’t need to be brought to her land. As it is, to me it looks weird for her to be overly angry with Stormwind when they still sheltered her people in the first place.
But would alliance players actually be happy with that? It’d still result in a pretty zone being destroyed, and kicking a race that was already being memed on for the story Worfing them in the past.
Edit: I suppose you could flip the burning scenario so that it’s the horde player trying to rescue unconscious soldiers occupying the tree because the night elves went full on Scorched Earth with their own land, but it’d still seem weird to me.
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Maybe? If the rest of your hypothesis holds true, and the civilians are all evacuated. Point being, it gives the story a lot of room to breathe in a number of hypothetical directions as long as War of Thorns is retaliation for Lordaeron. There’s potential to make everything easier for both factions.
If I went full on conspiratorial, I’d claim they dropped hints that Lordaeron was supposed to be first, but then something changed internally and they rushed to flip it.
That may be true, but if all the higher-ups cared about was a striking image, there were MUCH better ways to spin it than what we got.
The cinematic also makes it look like she had no intention of burning the tree until Delaryn sassed her. So one source suggests she was planning it from the very start, another says she came up with the idea midway through the campaign, and the third makes it look like she decided to do it literally on the spur of the moment.
I have no idea what distinction you’re trying to make with this.
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