That only happens if the Horde wins an honorable victory

[Amadis-draka (Amadis)]

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Anyway, there’s a difference between being inefficient, and having goals that contradict each other.

The goals weren’t contradictory. Anduin said they would go after Sylvanas after the Zandalari fleet was no longer going to support her.

Anduin thought this meant by getting the Zandalari to agree to be neutral (without telling anyone that’s what he thought).

And Wyrmbane did this by blowing up half the Zandalari fleet and making them no longer a naval force that would be a threat any more.

Either way, their goal was the same, and achieved, even if the means to the ends were different in their minds.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

I wasn’t just referring to the Zandalari, the Alliance gains an overwhelming naval advantage and seems to just do nothing with it.

Which was my point in that character motivations are bent and distorted by what Blizzard wants to prolong and get to.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Or maybe he just recognized that a wound could hurt in more ways than the one he had brought up way back at the start of the story. You keep acting like the Gilneans were this ironclad, “THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT WE’RE DOING ANYTHING” motivation, when they were just one thing that Saurfang first brought up at the start of the planning phase. The idea he expresses more at the end is holding Teldrassil hostage, but I don’t know why he would ever think that was viable if he was never prepared to follow through on the threat.

I keep acting like the Glineas were the ironclad point of anything because neither Saurfang or Sylvanas ever come up with any other way that the Alliance would split, as the burning of Teldrassil sure didn’t break the Alliance’s hope or spread festering dispair like Sylvanas rambled about.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Your analysis doesn’t show her thinking to be flawed in that way though. You mainly just continued to insist it was emotional or scatterbrained, without much evidence.

My analysis is there for anyone to read. You can continue to insist what’s there isn’t there without actually analyzing yourself for why, but that won’t actually change my posts above no matter how many times you want to claim it’s not much.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

First off, as far as your interpretation goes, it’s quite a stretch to say that a character which has been repeatedly stated as being calculating and cunning to totally fly off the handle and senselessly destroy her own plans for absolutely no reason.

We have very different interpretations of Sylvanas. Edge of Night definitely makes Sylvanas into a person who would fly off the handle and senselessly destroy anything she discarded.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

But also, that last part, about admitting that the Alliance would unite? My interpretation was that this was also a lie for Saurfang’s benefit, in order to keep the Horde united by allowing them to fight as they wished while she directed things more specifically behind the scenes.

Sylvanas definitely could have thought she was lying, but if she did she ended up ironically telling the truth with that line.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

if she was really raging so badly she’d have probably been busy arguing with/killing Saurfang in that time

What? She wasn’t arguing with/killing Saurfang because her face was so flushed (can an undead’s face go flush?) full of rage that she didn’t want Saurfang or Nathanos to look at her.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

And you say Delaryn pushed her over the edge, but really their conversation just helped Sylvanas hit on a good idea. Burning Teldrassil evoked exactly the reaction from the Alliance that she had previously wanted, and she immediately knew what their target would be. Sure it didn’t split the Alliance at that exact time , but in the first version of events the idea was that it would take years.

Night Elves even went to Lordaeron. But yes, you are right, she was right in knowing the Alliance would come for Lordaeron. Because she had told Saurfang that was what was going to happen if the Horde tried to win dishonorably.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Saurfang’s ideas of honor are nonsensical, nobody could understand them or predict that he’s spare Malfurion in that situation, especially given everything that he had just done as part of the war effort.

Which Sylvanas should have known his ideas of honor were abitrary before even asking him to plan the attack, or at the very least realized it in the middle of their planning when he sent our “honorable” rogues to sneak attack the Night Elves. Telling him to win honorably without being able to predict what he thought was honorable would be extremely foolish.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Not sure how not reading the vagaries in the same way as you and thinking that she has a hidden objective (Which was directly foreshadowed multiple times in the story and arguably outright stated back in BtS and maybe even here) somehow equals me actually seeing the same things you are.

You don’t have to see the same things as I do. That’s how vagueness works. You do, however, have to admit that the whole passage was filled with vagueness.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

I don’t know, that sounds like an argument from popularity to me.

Sure is. Oh, wait. Nope. Because argument from popularity is the assertion that because my point was popular it must be true. I didn’t say it must be true. Rather that what you think isn’t necessarily true, either. And you being one person who disagrees with me not really mattering or diminishing that other people might agree with me.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

I’ll believe it when I see it.

To be fair, I don’t think Worgen will get Night Warrior character customization. But if they do, that would be pretty sweet.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

But it is? Tyrande and Genn clearly disagree with Anduin’s strategic decision making, both of them almost certainty aren’t aligned with his ideals of peace towards the Horde, and both of them have united the bulk of their forces to engage on their own front, not coordinating with Stormwind. Yes some Night Elves and Worgen are aiding the Alliance, but their contributions outside of Darkshore aren’t hugely substantial.

Both Shandris and Genn will agree with working with the Horde coming up in Nazjatar. And Genn himself was even personally at the Battle of Dazar’alor.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

But the Darkshore warfront is still ongoing. And frankly, it would be better to push the Horde out of Northern EK entirely rather than devote resources towards retaking one zone close to the Horde’s main powerbase. I know you’ll come back with stuff like “Well Malfurion sometimes regrows trees at the end of the battle so Darkshore is an Alliance win” and all that, but the fact is it isn’t over yet, and even if it was, it’s not a massive victory.

Nah, I’ll come back with something like:

@Amadis-draka

Most things indicate that the Alliance won the Darkshore Warfront. Nathanos is no longer at Darkshore (having headed back to Zandalar before the Battle of Dazar’alor, and then we’ll see him for Nazjatar before he goes back to Orgrimmar, and he doesn’t show up in the Alliance version of the Darkshore Warfront, either). The Horde’s version of the warfront is set right after the Alliance intro questing since the Horde has to save Belmont, and since that’s always the case and generals don’t change like at Arathi it would seem this is a gameplay mechanic like repeating dungeons rather than battlegrounds (Belmont also doesn’t show up in the Alliance version of the Darkshore Warfront, so it’s not like the Alliance players recapture him every time, either).

And even outside the Darkshore Warfront we have support that the Alliance won:

@Carmageddon-hyjal

Going back to the OP, I think that canonically the Alliance side of Darkshore questing has to come after the Horde, because the Alliance fights an undead and corrupted version of Ivus after he was killed by the Horde during their quests.

So that’s in-game evidence that the Alliance is winning in Darkshore.

Malfurion regrowing trees is just a rebuttable against the idea that Horde damage to Darkshore couldn’t be undone or would limit Night Elf resources.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Which is why orchestrated a massive misinformation campaign and enlisted all those Rogues and invaded with an overwhelming numbers advantage and praised an assassin that tried to lure him into a trap, yeah totally. I’m sure it was totally reasonable that he thought Malfurion was having an honorable duel with Sylvanas despite just earlier being told that he didn’t care in the slightest for dueling.

As addressed above, completely arbitrary idea of what honor is, yep. Saurfang only cared that he himself and his solders were being honorable (whatever that means at any given moment), not that his enemies also had to adhere to his sense of honor.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Saurfang was downright OOC in that situation when considering everything he had just been doing.

I don’t disagree with you there, as, once again, Blizzard distorts and bends character motivation to be whatever they need it to be to get to the story they want to get to.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

But she predicted that they would do that. It was even part of the original idea, Anduin desperately lashing out to try and end the war immediately. And they still were nearly destroyed. And their unity isn’t what it was before, just as she says at the end.

The main things undermining her plans isn’t her lack of ability to read people, it’s insane out-of-nowhere savior moments for the Alliance that nobody could possibly foresee. And in the next patch she’s still going to destroy a huge chunk of the Alliance fleet by leading them into a trap. I’m not even saying she’s good at understanding people, I’m just saying that’s not really the cause of the setbacks with the Alliance.

And destroy a huge chunk of the Horde’s remaining fleet as well.

But yes, Sylvanas really needs to stop betting against miracles, because it’s consistently not been paying off for her.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

But throughout the story he also hates the idea of Horde lives being spent in the meat grinder of war. So why should he be happy about letting go of someone that could kill countless Horde soldiers, even stymie an entire battlefront by himself? Again, his ideals make no sense.

Spent in a meat grinder of a war that no one could win. What Saurfang wanted was a war that would bring prosperity to the Horde. Or glorious death in defeat. Lok-tar ogar. A meat grinder war where honor was stripped away would not bring glory.

Zekhan: Yes, of course, but... If I do fall, may it be with honor in glorious combat.
Varok Saurfang: There will be no glory today.
Varok Saurfang: Only pain.

If Malfurion lived and brought the fight back to Teldrassil, the Horde could have tried it’s best to fight him off, and at the very least could have kept their honor if they were defeated.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

There’s only so much they can set something up and not pay it off. Ignoring Tyrande and the Night Elves now would be like doing nothing with the Blood Elves in BC, or cutting Jaina or Sylvanas out of Wrath entirely, or, well, not even having them show up in SoO.

They barely showed up to SoO. The Night Elf forces didn’t even go into Orgrimmar itself. They just held the door open for everyone else.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

They can’t just cut her out of Azshara only to have her do nothing.

I don’t have the kind of faith in Blizzard to think they wouldn’t do just that.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Also Anduin getting all preachy at her doesn’t carry much weight when most players seem to be in the mindset that she could do literally anything to the Horde and have it be justified.

Given how desperate Horde players are to find any fault in the Alliance to justify fighting against them, I could actually these types of Horde players actually jumping onto the Anduin band wagon so that they could boo and hiss at Tyrande since they’ve lost Jaina and Genn as their warmonger motivation.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

I mean, I’d say that said confirmation is in fact the existence of status quo information and the assumption of things to the contrary of said information is headcanon. It’s not reasonable to need constant updates on something in order to say it’s like how it was last presented, the universe is just too large for that.

It’s entirely reasonable to need constant updates on something in order to say it’s like how it was last presented, because it is unreasonable to say something is still like how it was last presented without confirmation.

You are right in that assuming what hasn’t been confirmed (a change from what was last presented) would be headcanon. Because assuming canon is what headcanon is. And I am right in that assuming what hasn’t been confirmed (that nothing has changed from what was last presented) is also headcanon.

I don’t assume canon. I speculate and propose what I see is likely. But I don’t declare my views to be canon like you have. That’s what I don’t like about your status quo stance.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

I think that wasn’t much of a major position. People mostly have just wanted him to do things and firmly be on the side of his people.

I mean, I could also say that people want Sylvanas dead, so should Blizzard do the opposite because of that? I don’t think so, contrarianism isn’t exactly a viable literary style.

People are rolling their eyes and predicting that they’ll make Sylvanas Kerrigan 2.0 exactly to be contrarian because people want her to be Garrosh 2.0 instead, you know.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Well they seem to only really know how to copy Horde drama, given all the High King stuff. I’m also not sure they can actually write distinctiveness and independence without friction, they’ve never really been able to do it for the Horde either.

Hell, what would that even look like? Even just making the Alliance races “more different”, how does that help them with always being reactionary, absurdly good, and seemingly always on the same page with each other? They could just give some races a facelift - But in the case of the Night Elves, it seems like you’re arguing against said facelift actually addressing any of those issues, or any of the things people have wanted changed about their story practically since the start of the game.

I don’t think they’ll ever get out of the Alliance being reactionary, no.

But they can make the races more distinctive and independent exactly the way they did with the Darkshore Warfront and giving the Night Elves their fangs back: By focusing on their aesthetics and spending time making them look impressive and, you know, not boring.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

I think you’re too worried about that. Despite what they say, I doubt Blizzard can ever give up the war. Worst case is probably a Jaina-boss scenario where you fight her as the Horde and she just escapes.

And even if she did get the full bat? That would mostly be to Blizzard’s detriment. Like I said, a lot of people are behind Tyrande doing anything. Any lecturing from Anduin would probably just get people to hate him, not her.

The entire Horde BfA storyline has been to Blizzard’s detriment, and that hasn’t stopped them. And Blizzard clearly hasn’t learned their lessons from Cataclysm, MoP, and A Little Patience, so I don’t put faith in them not repeating their same mistakes again.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

It kind of depends on where he’d go, but really I don’t think one patch of helping the Night Elves and maybe some text indicating he did some more would be much of a reprisal.

Also I’m not sure the whole Night Warrior thing would go for the atonement angle.

One patch is already way more than what I would expect Blizzard to go with.

And Tyrande as the Night Warrior forgave Maiev, who also tried to kill Malfurion and murdered a lot of Tyrande’s subjects, so the Night Warrior isn’t blind to atonement.

@Veloran-wyrmrest-accord

Yeah, I’m sure all the people against faction homogeneity would like that . But more importantly, I’m not sure how that could even happen in the current setup, both in terms of the game and story.

I’d really rather the factions just dissolved and each group did their own things, working with, competing against, or being antagonistic towards each other on a case by case basis. Blizzard is probably too incompetent to write that, but I’d still trust it more than an “everyone joins together” thing.

People against faction homogeneity at least have Classic to go back to if that’s what they want to focus on.

As for how it would work, it could be like the Pandaren, but opposite. Horde and Alliance until level 120+, and then you unlock being able to play with the opposite faction.