What still bedevils me to this day was that it’s set up was genuinely solid. It was still a preemptive strike which is dubious at best, but with Greymane attacking the Forsaken in Stormheim Sylvanas had some solid reasoning for it. Additionally the idea to occupy Teldrassil and essentially hold the Alliance at gunpoint so the Horde could claim all of Kalimdor’s azerite was certainly morally objectionable but on pure strategy it makes sense.
The quests themselves were also pretty well done. Obviously you had the infiltration of Astranaar but I also vividly recall one daily where both Horde and Kaldorei forces were being pocessed by highborne spirits. Id run out’ve Orcs to free so killed a ghost piloting a hostile flagged Sentinel and of course immediately brain blasted her down as well, but she died saying something to the affect of “So much for the Horde’s honor”.
Experimentally I freed another Sentinel and to my delight despite being flagged as hostile she gave me a /nod and ran off.
I was stoaked. It looked like WoW had come up with a legitimately great morally gray war where we the player could determine the honor or cruelty of our faction through gameplay interaction. Gold star.
And then all that optimism turned to ash in my mouth along with Teldrassil. Where it looked like Sylvanas torpedoed her own plan and commited a mass casualty event in lieu of a snappy comeback. And that impression was somehow less stupid than the real reason; she was working for the Devil.
While I have absolutely zero issues with throwing all kinds of muck at Afrosalami’s name, I refuse to only blame him for this choice. He had bosses, just like everyone else, and at no point has anyone tried to walk back the Burning. Instead they like to remind everyone about it, add some details to it, and keep it in the fore of everyone’s mind.
No. I think Afrosalami might have come up with the idea, but the people around him were all like “oh yeah, that’ll be sooo aweeeesome!!!” Because to them, it was everything they could want.
A big moment all their own. Their new Wrathgate cinematic, their new Garrosh blowing up the Vale, their new “I AM MY SCARS”. A new thing that people will talk about for years to come. Complete with a desktop wallpaper of Sylvanas standing before a burning Teldrassil.
I honestly think they still look at it like that. How many times this patch have we been reminded that “this world tree will not burn”? Heck, the entire motivating factor here is to avoid a Teldrassil 2.0, complete with all the magic fire. They look at Teldrassil as a defining moment, and not as something that has negatively affected the franchise.
Yeah I don’t like solely pinning all of it on Afrasiabi alone. Even if it was ultimately his idea, he’s not the one who wrote the quests or the short stories or dragged it out for years.
Not only that, but as Alysna pointed out, someone above him clearly approved the war of thorns. Clearly upper management at blizz, and I mean those about Afrosalami thought it was a money making idea
As somebody who’s worked in a factory, which most of the game industry companies sound like to me, I can attest that even if I know an idea is a bad one I still gotta carry it out because the boss said to do that and it’s the boss who approves my work.
Just a friendly reminder that not all of us who do dumb things do them because we agree with them… some of us do them because we were told to if we wanted our checks.
That’s the other ironic part. In Elegy, Anduin disagreed with an attack on Undercity. Or was it Genn? But in the game they decided to go ahead and attack Lordaeron? Once again playing into Sylvanas’ hands. Like making the Alliance look bad.
Actually, Sylvanas’ plan had already gone off the deep end. She was going to use the people of Teldrassil as hostages(thus making sure the Alliance could not attack Undercity). Hostages she killed, which meant the Alliance no longer had any reason not to attack the Undercity. She did the very opposite of what she claim was her goal, divide the Alliance and pick it off and it literally just made the Alliance more pissed off.
“The Horde will never conquer an Alliance that truly is one. When we are unified, we are unstoppable, even without a navy,” he said, referring to the terrible beating ships from both factions had taken on the Broken Shore during the first stage of the war against the Burning Legion. “But if they divide us, they can pick us off one by one.”
“That day will never come.”
Anduin faced the gruff warrior who had become both mentor and friend. “Will it not?” he asked, quietly. “What will happen when the kaldorei lose their World Tree?”
“We retaliate. We march on the Undercity.”(Genn is clearly talking)
“They will hold Darnassus hostage against our doing that. Try though we might, we’ll never get everyone through a portal before the city falls. It’s just not possible. If we attack the Undercity or Silvermoon, the Horde will destroy the World Tree and whatever prisoners they take in this battle. Do you think the night elves would tolerate that?”
“Bough of Corruption: As Malfurion tore the remains of Xavius from Teldrassil, a great weight was lifted from the dying world tree. One last remnant of Xavius remains to torment the night elf people, but Elune’s champion approaches to finally free the tree completely.” - https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Vengeance_of_Elune
I’m not sure why this get’s misinterpreted so much. The Bough of Corruption was the source of all the corruption in Cataclysm. All of the corruption present in the Cata-Teldrassil questline was the result of a malignant growth that existed only on the skin as a remnant of everything displaced from the tree when the corruption was severed. It wasn’t an indication of on-going corruption within the tree, it was something forced to the surface and incapable of actually going any deeper.
Furthermore, location had nothing to do with Teldrassil’s corruption. Fandral physically grafted a chunk of Xavius’ body into the Tree, and Malfurion ripped it out.
This -has- to be it. There’s no way that Danuser himself didn’t like the idea, because he went on Twitter basically bragging about liking Game of Thrones s8’s ““Plot twist”” that amounted to something identical (but even worse LMAO) to what BfA did.
I really wish some former WoW devs will someday give some sort of tell all interview tell us all what really happened during this time. Because while what’s his face may have been the main culprit, BfA did feel like MoP but the stakes were higher.
Which yeah, feels like Blizzard and their need for power scaling enemies because we keep killing world ending threats.
In interviews, they teased that Anduin’s invasion of Lordaeron would be partly to “prove himself”. It gave this implication that Anduin was being pressured to take the offensive. He was a new king and very unlike his father.
In a world where Azerite suddenly exists, a Horde led by Sylvanas was concerning.
This even plays into the cinematic.
When Anduin first shows up, he’s helmeted. Silent. He’s very “un-Anduin”.
For the first bit of the cinematic, the Alliance even seem framed as the antagonists. The aggressors.
The Horde is falling back, a Tauren drags his wounded friend, dead Horde are marched over by faceless legions, commanded by a faceless, silent Anduin being spoken to by a Wormtongue-looking wolfman.
It isn’t until Anduin’s helmet is knocked off that we see how utterly frantic he is.
I’m 80% certain Lordaeron was originally gonna play out first, but was swapped for some reason.
Genn was the one who said to attack the Undercity. In the short story, the Alliance fell for the first trap, that the Horde was going to Silithus. The second trap was by pushing the civilians in the tree.
I know what her plot was, I read A Good War years ago. Actually read it three times. However in Elegy, Anduin lamented how not once but twice the Alliance fell for Sylvanas’ tricks throughout the story.
Yes, they fell for the Silithus trick. But the assumption that attacking Undercity was another Sylvanas trick is wrong. She initially did not want the Alliance to attack it and was planning on using night elves to compel the Alliance not to.
No it’s actually right if you look at the cinematic during the Battle for Lordaeron where she explodes the throne room with Blight, attempting to kill Anduin and co.
Sylvanas is a military tactician who isn’t going to show all the cards in her hand. She has plans, and then backup plans for when those plans fail.
So technically the assumption that attacking the Undercity was a trap was actually correct.
That was more improvisatiom rather then her actual desire. She knew the Alliance would attack because she threw away her ace of night elf hostages.
That was never my point. My point was attack Undercity was already her plan going haywire. It was a hodge podge and desperate attempt to stop the Alliance. The Alliance knew it was bobby trap(the initial zone has dozens of SI:7 spies and even Anduin mentions it)