The burning of Teldrassil doesnt make sense

Lore Story Forum
102

I brought that up very early on in the discussion, within the first few posts :

But if other people are adamant in refusing to make sense out of things, they will over look such details that can make sense out of it.

103

Total side note, but this just made me think (probably a lot more than anyone at Blizzard) that magic in this universe has to just nothing more than cyber warfare through a different medium.

What stops a mage from making a portal to Org and tossing in a bomb? Another mage that maintains an anti-portal spell or some sort of particularity that only other Horde mages know, probably changed consistently.

What stops your computer from getting a virus or malware? Your computer’s anti-virus that maintains approved software locked behind your personal password (among other features) that probably should be changed consistently.

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104

My problem with that is this passage from A Good War:

If they had longer-range weapons available, why would Saurfang even care about the short-range ones being too far from the front?

Furthermore, when he arrives at the front a little later, he finds his forces under fire and in need of siege weapons to protect them:

It really appears that they have no better option than the siege engines with a range of a couple hundred yards. I have a hard time believing Teldrassil is supposed to be only a couple hundred yards from shore.

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105

Good comparison. Cyber warfare and portal warfare have the big similarity in that physical location and distance no longer matter. If only cybersecurity could be so safely ignored as portals’ potential in WoW :stuck_out_tongue:

This was/is/would have been addressed slightly in the leadup to the Purge of Dalaran, since it was stated (with very little detail) that the portal to Darnassus to steal the Divine Bell only worked because someone used Dalaran’s neutral portal network (and its permissions!), implying that something keeps Alliance/Horde mages from portalling into each others’ cities. I wish they’d given a bit more detail on that - it’s cool worldbuilding.

It’d be a small detail that I doubt most players would be interested in, but I’d love to see some neutral factions grumbling about having to jump through hoops to teleport to faction cities now, since security was raised after the Divine Bell incident. Just a little nod to consequences of the event, and suggesting a tiny bit of friction between the factions and neutral parties because of this security risk. (After all, if/when all the captured Sunreavers were found innocent, there’d still be the consequence of realizing that just one single bad actor with access to a neutral organization’s resources can cause so much damage.)

(As another comparison, datamined material that never made it into the live game has a similarity to time travel in that it really messes with tense.)

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106

That only casts doubt on whether they are certain of the range. It ends in a question mark, as if he is not even sure.

107

A faction war regardless makes very little sense anyway.

The war-loving races within each factions are reliant on a majority of other races within the same faction who would prefer not going to war.

That is why faction wars are so stupid. Not a single race within either faction have the power to go up against the entirety of the other faction, but that is what would have to happen to have some sense of a “faction war”

Every war blizzard writes are also very boring. Where are the ressources? What are the stakes? Neither faction can totally decimate the other, the Horde have no racial leader that they would cry about losing anyway now.

A faction war is absolutely redundant, and have been since Mists of Pandaria.

Even if A’s vision of the BFA story were to be completed, it would still be bad.

108

So its clearly there in the subtext, I’d love to see it expanded upon. Can you launch a portal DDOS attack? Does a mage need complete concentration to maintain whatever they’re doing? Does putting a warlock too close to them scramble their spells? When is portal maintenance? Do they send out phishing portals? What are the procedures for when a portal password is compromised? Or is it like one those old timey switch boards? We need to know!

109

I imagine portal phishing is more like receiving a random summon from a warlock.

“Hello, you have been summoned to an island in the Twisting Nether. Transportation back home costs 10,000 gold.”

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110

Brb, sending a portal request to Aethas Sunreaver.

“Your Kirin’Tor membership has expired. Please accept this request to renew your membership and get 10% off.”

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111

If the range is in fact greater than a couple hundred yards, why do they move the siege engines?

Furthermore, he would have learned the range of the siege weapons when they used them in the very next scene. Nothing is said about them having a surprisingly enormous range. It is beyond credibility that that detail would not have been mentioned if it had been intended.

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112

A Faction war started by the Alliance after legion actually makes alot of sense. considering the broken shore event and how that looked to the Alliance. also considering what we discovered Sylvanas was upto.

Again, a faction war started by the Alliance wouldn’t have many pushing against it. Night elves would support it considering how the horde were still in their lands. Humans would have supported it considering the death of Varian, Worgen would have, Dwarves. etc etc.

Only possible outlier would be the Draenei but even they have plenty of reasons to believe the Horde are deserving to be stopped.

I don’t think so, the MOP war was great and was generally well written(until 5.3 with alliance only getting robo kitty), some of the best discussion points come from conflict between the expacs. the Conflict is only looked down on because BFA was sabotaged by the current writers as they clearly changed direction of the conflict. I’ve always assumed that it was the Alliance that was supposed to start the bfa war based on some of the lines in the game that were left. I believe when afrasbi was removed and danuser was put in charge Golden made him pivot away from making Anduin the aggressor, (she also made sure Jaina went full peacnik again)

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113

Depends entirely on how much Shaw himself hates the Horde.
The Alliance’s own spymaster was victim of the Legion’s plot, as we saw in the rogue questline in Legion. The Legion basically kidnapped the Alliance scouts, including Shaw, and infiltrated the Alliance which lead to the disaster in Legion.

For some reason, it puzzled me why the Alliance never spoke to anyone else on the Horde about this… blizzard do be blizzard.

Anduin and Velen would both strongly oppose it. Anduin wasn’t even fond of the idea during Legion, very shortly after Varian’s death, nor was Velen.

Ashenvale was said to be a boring place to be posted in between Legion and BFA, if there were Horde, the Horde was not violently active. We know what the worgen would do, I am not so sure about the council in Ironforge.

Discussion points, yeah, but that mostly comes out from blind faction-fanatism, rather than objective facts. But not really that extremely interesting, neither was the wars that are usually terribly written.

MoP did do it better than BFA, with the Horde and Alliance mostly relying on what they could find on the Isles for the most part until the end of the conflict. The most interesting thing was slapping the Lei Shin and Garrosh

114

I still say it was silly and ignores that there were BETTER AND MORE BELIEVABLE means of doing the same thing like using Azerite.

115

Anduin Should have been more upset about how his father died. He should have taken his fathers last words to heart. The fact he essentially completely forgets the Hordes hand in his fathers death is terrible writing.

Velen also should have been harden after the events of his sons death, while not at the hands of the Horde he wouldn’t have been so passive about the Hordes actions considering their past.

Shaw is terribly incompetent and honestly should have been replaced years ago. Regardless of the trap it Dosen’t excuse how the horde up and left the Alliance to die so they could escape.

Sure people want to be proud of their faction, BFA just brutalised both factions because these writers are terrible. Neither side can be happy with how their faction was written because the writers simply don’t care about the factions. They only care about a handful of characters which has left the World of warcraft to suffer.

What we need are writers who know warcraft and want to write it, Not fantasy writers who can’t write more than 4 characters and have not interest in the wider setting. We also need writers who can actually plan out a long term story and make it interesting without trying to force their own politics into the writing.

116

Regardless of the trap it Dosen’t excuse how the horde up and left the Alliance to die so they could escape.

If the Horde didn’t escape, that basically destroys almost the entire Horde leadership in one go. And It also would not have made any form of difference in the Alliance’s fight at the front of the Tomb, they would have fallen no matter what.

117

And Velen SHOULD have been more angry at the orcs for what they did in the past, literally building a road of deceased draenei.

But that is just not the type of characters they are… Anduin also seemed to blame Wrathion more so, than he blamed the Horde.

Because the Horde had legitimate reasons to retreat - in part due to the Shaw’s (THe Alliance’s) incompetence, as you put it.

Had the Horde not retreated, both the Alliance and the Horde would have died totally at that point. The Horde blew the horn of retreat, would you rather Sylvanas and Varian stood yelling: “WHAT?!” to each other?

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118

I like what they done to Horde, in general. They might been done it in a very bland and somehow stupid manner, but the Horde has always been this pragmatic band of survivors, whos cared more for their own survival, rather than for some cheap “high moral values”. The only problem is in the people online, who for some reason forgot the Horde quests, and begin to think that Horde is just more cool/spikier Alliance. N-n-nope!

119

Ah, I remember the days of Legion, when Blizzard went out on stage and asked “Alliance, do you remember when the Horde betrayed you at the Broken Shore?”, and Alliance players looked to each other and whispered “What? Did I miss something? Was there an supposed to be an extra scene? …What do you mean, that was supposed to be a betrayal?”

If they wanted the event to be read as a betrayal, I think the Alliance side of the story needed to emphasize something like:

  1. The Horde leader had sworn to the Alliance leaders something like “we will hold off these demons with our lives” which clearly states that retreat was not an option that the Alliance should have planned for, because otherwise retreat is a perfectly normal and predictable tactic.
  2. That the Horde had promised some duration between warning the Alliance of their impending retreat and actually retreating, only to retreat immediately instead, with it emphasized that with only one more minute’s worth of cover, a significant number of Alliance troops and Varian would have survived.
  3. That the Alliance believed (even if we OOC know it to be untrue) that they were minutes away from defeating the demons and Gul’dan and ending the invasion there, if only the Horde had covered them that last while longer.

But none of those were clearly stated, so nothing is personal or devious enough to be a betrayal. The pro-Horde Alliance feel that “what, did you expect them to all willingly die on the off-chance that it would have changed anything?”, while the anti-Horde Alliance feel that “why would we have trusted them enough to not plan for them abandoning us?”.

Though now I do want some of that to be addressed, if only to canonize some of the fan speculation created to try to fill in the gaps between the events Blizz showed us and Blizz’s continuing insistence that those events constituted a betrayal. Plus, it can have some juicy dramatic dialogue that also reinforces the Horde’s distrust of the Alliance:

Horde: “We were moments from being overrun, with no end in sight!”
Alliance: “…We were this close to getting to Gul’dan, to ending the invasion for good!”
H: “I saw nothing to suggest such a thing.”
A: “Of course not, you couldn’t see the field from the ridge you were supposed to be holding.”
H: “Did you expect us all to die there in the name of this distant, unseen hope?”
A: “Yes!”
H: “…”

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120

Huh, I do not remember that.

We don’t need to canonize further. It was already stated in game that the Alliance and Horde was running into a trap at the initial assault on the Broken Shore.

We see it through the rogue questline in Legion. The Alliance had sent a scouting party to the Broken Shore to gather information, but before they could return they were intercepted by Dreadlords. Spymaster Shaw was captured, and a dreadlord took his place.

So the Horde and Alliance were acting on information from a Dreadlord in disguise at that point, and walked right into a trap. Had they stayed, all of the Horde and Alliance would have died that day. How communication could otherwise be, I do not know. Could Sylvanas have been standing at the cliff and yelled out to Varian and hope to be heard? Who knows.

Right now, the only thing we know is that the Horde retreating saved both factions at that point.

121

I do. Aviala isn’t making it up. It’s too bad the board from those days got nuked, or we could dig up the old threads of headscratching from that time.

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