The blame should not be shifted completely

Lore Story Forum
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They could have left.

… After several of their friends an family got mowed down by this mysterious and hostile presence in the woods they know nothing about that is directly impeding them in procuring the lumber that the orcs need to build and cook with.

I think most folk with a warrior mentality would’ve chosen to fight back to claim the resources their people need rather than run away. Horde or Alliance.

This one is 100% on the Night Elves. If they weren’t an ultra aggressive xenophobic isolationist society that killed first and asked questions later all of this could have been avoided. Saying it was somehow the orcs’ fault is basically victim blaming because they didn’t know anything about the night elves or what they do or do not consider sacred.

Also night elves don’t worship trees. They revere nature and consider Ashenvale sacred. These are similar but still very different things.

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204

If it doesnt kill with the impact. The internal bleeding will. Let’s be frank unless the light can heal brain damage… Then yeah.

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Again, I don’t think they could have. Cenarius wanted to kill them, even if we assume that they can outrun Cenarious in Ashenvale, which I don’t believe for a second, he’s also bringing the trees to life and using them as foot soldiers. You can’t outrun the forest when you’re in the middle of the forest.

What’s more, I think you’re letting Hordehacker off too easy by assuming his fantasy has any basis in reality.

Which actually transitions nicely into another reason to realize Hordehacker is just wrong. If the trees are sacred in Ashenvale, why on earth would the Night Elves be summoning them to soak up enemy attacks as their first line of defense? If Cenarius had summoned the trees as a desperation move maybe, if the Sentinels had stepped forward to defend the trees first and then failed, maybe. But no, their first move was throwing ‘sacred’ trees into a battle with people known for their axes.

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You certainly don’t get up a few minutes later feeling fine.

…I really just had to respond because obviously sledgehammers are the ideal blunt instrument.

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No, it’s not the real world. However, i was responding to some nerd making the “iN tHe ReAl WoRlD!” argument, despite clearly drawing their ideas of the real world from movies where wars happen at the drop of a hat instead of through a continuous chain of failed diplomacy and everyone being too Hero McBadass to get over losing some tree branches for charcoal in a neighboring country or whatever.

Anyway.

No attempt was made to get the Orcs to understand the offense they had caused. No Emissary came out and was like “hey, guys, these are our trees and they’re important to us!”

As far as the orcs knew, they had found a nice forest in uninhabited land. So they set about collecting timber so they wouldn’t have to, you know, die from exposure or something. And then crazy people started shooting them with arrows.

The orcs had no idea they were trespassing, and no one bothered to try to tell them. There was no effort, attempt to engage in diplomacy No, the Night elves went from zero to eleven instantly.

And it’s been kind of a constant thing for them. Apparently Kal’Dorei culture has no concept of moderation.

Do you like magic? WHY NOT FEED THE PLANET TO SARGERAS!!!

Do you like shapeshifting? WHY NOT BECOME A RAVENING PACK OF INTERDIMENSIONAL DOOM-WOLVES!!!

Are you sad that your son is dead? WHY NOT TRY TO END ALL LIFE THROUGH FIRE AND DOOM!!!

Do you still like shapeshifting? HAVE HORNS AND FEATHERS AND CLAWS AND GLOWY EYES AND ZEBRA STRIPES ALL THE TIME OR SOMETHING!!!

Do you like lords? HAVE AL LTHE LORE THE ENTIRE GAME IS COMPLETELY ABOUT YOU FOREVER AND ALWAYS!

Are you an elf who likes elves? WELL BOY HOWDY WE GOT LIKE FIFTEEN NEW SPECIES OF ELVES FOR YOU!!!

Betcha brawndo sells well in Teldras… well i guess it doesn’t now… or mayeb it does? it’s a big tree, and brawndo HAS WHAT PALNTS CRAVE.

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You’re probably right. The mission was very urgent and Cenarius didn’t actually stop at the forest border. He kept coming down to wreck the entire camp where the orcs were sleeping. He didn’t give any indication that he was going to leave any alive and he certainly never told them to leave.

Cenarius : The demons did their job well. You creatures are as reckless and bloodthirsty as they ever were!

Grom Hellscream : We orcs are free, demigod!

Cenarius : Is that what you tell yourself? Despite what you may believe, you are no better than the malignant bile that flows through your veins.

Grom Hellscream : Damn you! RAGH!

Cenarius was kind’a racist back then.

Also this line.

“Demon Spawned Wretches, you will all die!”

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209

Ehhh, I give it a pass when it’s demons. Demons are jerks.

See, I’m actually fine with Cenarius concluding that the orcs were demon corrupted slaves like the Satyrs and taking a kill first and ask questions never philosophy. The Burning Legion was immensely powerful and, from what I can tell, the orcs are the first and only race to ever come fully under the Burning Legion’s control and then break free. It’s a bit like asking me to believe… and I’m completely blanking on a real world parallel to magic enforced blood slavery. It’s like asking me to believe that a group of cyborg Vulcans all managed to escape the Borg and won’t start assimilating me the second we’re in arms reach.

So fine, Cenarius made the best choice with the information he had available, it was wrong he learned it was wrong later, we’re cool now. I think the problem is that simple and canon explanation for that attack does nothing to justify faction conflict today, and almost universally the people pushing this ‘trees are sacred enough to kill for’ fan theory really want faction conflict.

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Oh yeah. I had forgotten that part.

After killing a bunch of orcs, the elves summoned their Moose-God-Guy… who immediately set about killing even more orcs

All without a “hey green dudes, can you maybe not cut down those trees”?

I mean hey. Maybe ultimately we can blame Medivh for this one. You think this all-knowing dude could have mentioned to Thrall “Hey by the way, Kalimdor has these like, eight-foot tiger-riding amazons, you might want to avoid messing uo their forests.”

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Yah, I tend to be pretty neutral when it comes to that whole situation. I understand why both sides did what they did and don’t consider either reprehensible for it.

I mostly take issue with people trying to paint it as Horde hostility when they were the ones attacked first, they didn’t know the land belonged to someone, and the night elves at no point attempted to correct the orcs on that fact.

It is quite literally blaming the orcs for trying to defend themselves from people punishing them for a crime they never knew existed and that isn’t a crime anywhere else the orcs have been.

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Oh yeah no, it’s ridiculous. Also a disservice to the Night Elves. They are a more interesting and fierce part of the game when we know that they can and will kill at a moments notice for a perceived wrongdoing. If you try to make how the Night Elves respond seem reasonable, you take that savagery away from them. And no doubt take a step towards convincing Blizzard that you never really wanted that savagery to begin with.

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Well the problem is… that’s kinda exactly what was done with the transition from WC3 to WoW.

I remember being really impressed with the WC3 night Elves. I usually roll my eyes at the “Our Elves Are Different!” trope in fantasy games, because almost inevitably, elves are elves, Tolkien-y / Salvatore-ish perfect little nonces, whose ears are a different color in YOUR world or whatever.

Instead Blizzard hit me with these nomadic primeval savages with duck dynasty beards who could literally call the spirits of nature out to explode their enemies, at least when they didn’t just have smilodons do it for them. These elves hated the orcs, and they hated the humans and the Tauren, they were all trespassers and defilers. You had this weird tribal, theocratic thing going on, with hard-coded gender roles, all sorts of weird stuff that actually, genuinely, wonderfully made the WC3 Night elves different from anything i’d seen before.

Then World of Warcraft came out, and the Price is Right tuba sound played. if they weren’t purple you couldn’t tell them apart from anything Tolkien wrote. Dippy sparkle-eyed bunny-cuddlers, heirs to ancient magical kingdoms, and perfect in every way (who are you going to believe, the lore and narrative or your lying eyes?) . Gone were the wild hunters in the woods, with their mobile fortress-villages. Nope. Just a generic elf with different-colored ears.

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Agreed. I mained night elf in WC3 and for much of my early WoW career specifically because I found their extremist xenophobic nature to be interesting and distinct from the other three factions in the game. Their sense of morality was different from the Horde or Alliance and that was great.

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I strongly disagree. You can be savage and harsh while still being reasonable, and a violent reaction to an apparent reappearance of the threat that nearly ended the world is appropriate.

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Sure, if that’s why they were attacking.

This discussion is in a weird place where there are views about why the Night Elves actually attacked, and there are views about why people want to think the Night Elves attacked.

Killing demons on sight is both reasonable and savage. Killing lumberjacks on sight is unreasonable and savage. Arguing that killing lumberjacks on sight is something that civilized people do strips them of their savagery.

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Cenarius makes it pretty clear that he assumed the orcs were legion scouts, and seems to know some of their history.

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Agreed. Cenarius’ actual reasons for attacking were fine. Ultimately he was wrong but he was wrong in a reasonable way that in context justified his attack.

But this is less about the lore and more about a meta-commentary of a rather specific fan theory about that conflict. The one that starts with “No, the orcs opened hostilities by invading Ashenvale and chopping down sacred trees. These trees are sacred man, they’re like ancestors. Night Elves hug them and stuff!”

Where as I’m reading this argument and thinking, “You just turned the Night Elves into hippies exclusively so you can try to invalidate a single Horde grievance from 14 years ago and pretend like the Warsong Outrider’s are monsters and not just poachers.”

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I have no idea how the argument shifted to something like that, even after re-reading through all this. Good grief.

I just want some closure to the alliance’s pain from the fourth war. Some catharsis.

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I like how you try to phrase it as if the prior appearance of the Burning Legion were not completely and totally the absolute fault of the Night Elves themselves.

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The thing is the Night Elves who were primarily responsible for the appearance of the Legion aren’t the same Night Elves standing vigil in Kalimdor.

Those Night Elves were at that point High/Blood Elves, Naga, or Highborne, who were exiled.

Also nothing i said even implied that why are you putting words in my mouth please stop.

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222

So okay. I just want to make sure I understand this.

You open this thread snarling and fuming that the blame for what the Horde did under Sylvanas should not solely be laid at the feet of Sylvanas. Okay, that’s completely fair.

BUT

You also hold that what the Night elves did under the leadership of Queen Azshara is solely and only the fault of Queen Azshara.

That’s kind of a double standard.

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