Playing classic these guys were well equipped. They held their own in Strstholme, and had a Hearthglen as a staging area. With alliance help, I don’t think the Forsaken would have had any gains at all. Obviously we learn later about Bal controlling them all, but that was much later. If we had allied with them, we never would have realized this anyways
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The issue is that they’re extremists and the Alliance took umbrage with that.
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We tried when we thought they were simply hunting the Scourge. It wasn’t until we found out from a Scarlet deserter that they were fanatics who were killing anyone disloyal to their cause that we opposed them.
Furthermore, allying unknowingly with a Dreadlord would really not have boded well for the Alliance, given that they were unknowingly allied with a Black Dragon at the time.
Even furthermore, most Scarlet holdings ended up being taken by Argent hands anyway, Hearthglen most notably. They don’t really have any presence in the Western Plaguelands at all since we decided to back Tirion and the Argents rather than the Scarlets.
FURTHERMORE STILL, I’m sorry to say this again, but I cannot stress how utterly little I care about reclaiming Lordaeron. A lot of conflict could be avoided if the Forsaken were just allowed to have it uncontested, given that it’s… y’know… their rightful home.
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The Scarlets are insane and see everyone as corrupted. They slaughtered hundreds of innocents in their madness.
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The Alliance supporting them would have been an ACTUALLY morally grey move and could have given some depth to the story.
Yes, the Scarlets are zealots and objectively wrong, but there is a degree to which you can understand joining them. The Scourge decimated their homeland, and they are clinging to the hope of retaking their homeland.
That would have actually been a good reason for further tension between the Horde and Alliance.
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Honestly, I don’t think supporting a bunch of zealous puppets led by a Nathrezim would be a wise idea even if the Alliance didn’t know about it at the time. As cunning as he was, Balnazzar would have found a way to exploit said support to gain more influence.
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Supporting the Scarlet Crusade would have been strategically the best decision for the Alliance.
The Scarlet Crusade cannot match Stormwind in numbers, but they have are a very specialized force with a lot of valuable experience fighting undead; not to mention held important strongpoints in the Plaguelands.
They are maniacs; and you’d probably not want your own soldiers near them; but they would be valuable against both the Scourge and the Forsaken.
In the best case scenario, once the Scourge’s hold over the plagueland was broken with the defeat of Naxxramas or even the Lich King, the Alliance would have been able to stage a 2 front war on the Forsaken.
The fact that the Scarlet was puppeted by a Nathrezim would be problematic, but assuming the Alliance won the war against the Forsaken, the Scarlet Crusade would likely be so bloodied from constantly fighting at the frontline of the conflict Stormind and Ironforge could easily stomp out what remained. And even if they lost, the Forsaken would have to pay the cost of destroying the Scarlet Crusade, leaving them weaker.
Even during Classic, the Scarlet Crusade was like a sinking ship with Balnazzar trapped on it; but if the Alliance’s leadership had been competent, they would at least have been able to profit from said sinking ship.
Then again, not like massive military and strategic blunders are exactly a new thing for the Alliance leadership… sigh
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Honestly, when you just have a relative few living descendants or survivors of the place, the idea of reclaiming it is more based on “we deserve that land because it used to be Alliance”.
It would be like having High Elves be the face of an Alliance conquest on Quel’thalas because they intend to “reclaim” it.
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I am not entirely sure the scarlets had a good view of nonhumans… now that i consider it I do not think I ever saw a non human crusader. I wonder if they took a Garithos perspective.
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- the Alliance did help them to a degree. Dont forget the Ashbringer was forged by Magni himself.
- even if the Alliance wanted to help them further the Scarlets would have outright refused due to their racist tendencies rejecting help from a multiracial coalition.
- Stormwind, the one human nation left that could help them, was suffering its own internal crisises and more important had a black dragon preventing their armies from helping even their closer allies like the dwarves, much less Lordearon survivors.
- by the time the Alliance could have done more it found out the Scarlets were crazy, and later under a dreadlord’s control.
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While it would have been great for the Alliance to have been supporting the Scarlets against the Forsaken in Lordaeron, which would have legitimized the Scarlets on the one hand, given the Forsaken an actual in game reason to dislike the Alliance, as well as the much desired moral grey that everyone wets themselves over…
Blizzard instead decided to make the Scarlets all crazy and think everyone not wearing red was infected by the Plague and needed to be purified, that meant the Alliance too.
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We needed dungeons. Scartlet Monestary was about 3 dungeons worth of stuff.
Though we only saw human crusaders they did have an elf statue among their humans one they used to honor their Scarlet heroes. It’s currently unknown what happened to any possible non human members, though it’s most likely that they perished in the fight against the Scourge and were among those who defected to the Argent Dawn.
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I’m aware.
Still doesn’t make it a good lore decision.
Hell the need for a dungeon is why Gnomes failed at getting Gnomergan back, keeping them refugees, but at least now they are actually doing something.
The fact that a dungeon is a dungeon hasn’t seemed to stop the Mechagnomes from setting up shop in Operation: Mechagon, so there’s that at least.
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Which is great now. Now maybe they’ll actually let the gnomes get their home back so we can at least add them to the list of Alliance races that aren’t refugees.
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It’d be lovely if we could start trimming that list rather than adding to it every expac.
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Well the in game reason is the Stormwindians killed our diplomats and went up north to hunt us for sport.
Now I’m not sure how true that seems from an Alliance perspective but go ahead and roll an undead on a RPPvP Classic server then try leveling in Hillsbrad. After awhile the blighted ruins of Hillsbrad human structures in Modern WoW will feel pretty damn justified.
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Given current trends, this is probably going to be revealed to have been that Sylvanas had those diplomats killed herself to place fear of the living on the Forsaken.
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Sylvanas… or the cult of the damned, if Arthas wanted to try and cut them off from gaining aid.
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