This is what I’m calling you out on. You tried to pass off that picture of the Human magic spell as an attack on the Amani homeland in the same way Teldrassil was, and it wasn’t.
The Humans also originally had no interest in the fighting between the Trolls and the High Elves and wanted to stay out of it, but it was Troll aggression that drove the Humans to fear them and how the High Elves sold the Humans into joining:
- Over the span of a few decades, troll incursions into human territories had become more pronounced and ruthless. Something was changing among the brutish Amani to the north. The Arathi knew that if humankind remained divided, it would stand little chance against a true war with its moss-skinned foes.
King Thoradin named his new kingdom Arathor. He tasks his most gifted builders with constructing a mighty capital called Strom southeast of Tirisfal Glades. The semiarid terrain around the city acted as the ideal buffer zone between humanity and the Amani, prohibiting the trolls from launching their much feared forest ambushes. Thoradin also orders his people to build a great wall near the capital to further shield them from Amani incursions. Word of Strom’s might quickly spread among other disparate human tribes throughout the continent. Many flocked to the fortress for safety.
Just as Thoradin had expected, Amani trolls soon began encroaching on outlying lands controlled by the humans.
Thoradin and his generals agreed that they would not risk their own kind or send any aid to the reclusive high elves. For the time being, they kept the bulk of their forces behind Strom’s massive ramparts, confident they could withstand any foe.
King Thoradin kept a careful watch over the intensifying war between the high elves and the trolls. Scouts returned to Strom with tales of smoke rising along the Quel’Thalas borders, of brutalized elven corpses littering the once-tranquil grottos of the northlands. Clearly, the trolls were winning, but Thoradin clung to his stubborn belief that intervening in the conflict would put his people at unnecessary risk.
However, Thoradin’s opinion changed when a group of high elven ambassadors sent by King Anasterian Sunstrider suddenly arrived at Strom. With growing horror, Thoradin listened as the messengers related firsthand accounts of the Amani’s stark brutality and otherworldly demigods who fought by their side.
The Amani threat was far greater than Thoradin or his advisors could have ever imagined. The high elves argued that without assistance from Arathor, the trolls would soon destroy Quel’Thalas. After that, the Amani would launch the full might of their blood-crazed warbands against Strom itself.
For all your concern about genocide, you intentionally look away from what the Humans feared the Amani would have done to them.
This point also has no merit for the Human magic attack at Alterac, when the Trolls had chased the Humans down for weeks, there were no Trolls there that had not been there to intentionally be combatants.
As for the Night Elves and Teldrassil:
Sylvanas intended for genocide against the Night Elves from the very beginning, as she herself spelled out in an internal monologue in A Good War:
- This battle was not about a piece of land. Even Saurfang knew that. Taking the World Tree was a way to inflict a wound that could never heal. Losing their homes and their leaders would have ended the kaldorei as a nation, if not a people.