As Jaina has been forced in our faces this expansion, I’ve had time to actually reflect on the bombing of Theramore. Like some of my fellow Horde fans, I was initially bothered by the act, but I now admit that I have come around to not only the reasoning but also the methodology.
Granted - Theramore as Jaina’s base of operations served a useful purpose during WCIII as a human base in the fight against the Burning Legion. Human, Dwarf, and High Elf contributions should not be looked down upon.
When Daelin Proudmore took control of Theramore, Jaina stood aside as her father could not be reasoned with to grant clemency to the Horde, which at that point, had earned the chance to start anew. Instead of cooperation, he went with genocide, not the best policy.
As WoW developed, Theramore was the friendly Alliance hub in Kalimdor, and for a while Jaina was a voice for cross-faction peace. But, come the cataclysm she talked a good game for peace, all while Theramore became the staging point for the Alliance invasion of the Barrens. Troops, Tanks, a Battlefleet, scores of cavalry, and massive supplies were sent through the port.
Whatever Jaina’s intentions were by staying at Theramore, it became part of the larger war. And when the Kirin Tor sent Rhonin and other magi to defend it against “Garrosh’s path of conquest” they didn’t realize that Garrosh was just responding to the increased military importance of Theramore.
So yeah… I’m starting to lean in the Garrosh did nothing wrong camp.
Theramore troops also sneak attacked the civilian start towns of all 3 races who were at peace with Theramore. Sen’jin village, The Den, and Taurjo/Mulgore.
Is it any wonder then that the civilians of those 3 races all cheered when they heard Theramore got nuked?
See, taking out an enemy military outpost is all well and good.
Ubernuking it so everyone dies instantly, the land becomes useless and the same effect replicates IN ALL POSSIBLE TIMELINES is overkill.
Just a tad.
Even if you lay out a perfectly reasonable and logical explanation of what went down, the emotional gut reaction of most irl ppl will be jaina = victim and garrosh = mean
Per Eitrigg: That is a hope. You hope to begin claiming this continent as ours. And you might. You would also begin a war that would involve armies from all over the world, Horde and Alliance, locked in a combat that would takes lives and resources. Have we not suffered enough of those costs?
And he was right. An escalating war that ended in a revolution against Garrosh.
Sure. I just know the whole ‘destroyed across all timelines’ is repeated a lot and I have never seen it substantiated. I know it tore holes in reality. And crystalized the victim entirely.
I have heard the “all timelines” thing mentioned a lot. If I recall, it was originally mentioned by an official-ish source, but never officially canonized anywhere. It’s a fairly meaningless assertion, as Bliz hasn’t bothered to decide how timelines work. They add new rules as needed to steer the plot.
In any case, it was stupid to use the bomb on Theremore. You have one uber-WMD. You don’t use it to threaten or blackmail. You don’t use it to wipe out your enemies capital. You use it to wipe out a base you could have easily taken by force of arms. But the devs really like having the Horde blow stuff up with no reason. At least with Theremore they bothered to use a McGuffin.
That came from scrolls of lore. A player got Tide of War beofre release, so they decide to summarize it for everyone.
Unfortunately said reader misread that particular chapter and added that element to his summery. Itimmediately caught on and added on top of Morally outrage pile.
When everyone else got the book, thier was no mention or even hint of Garrosh been a cross dimensional murder. ( not yet anyway)
It sucks to be honest. Asit is an interesting concept but it just headcannon.
It’s probably for the best that part is quietly ignored anyway. Tearing holes into infinite realities can’t be good for anyone. Who knows what it would do or who/what would come through. Might find yourself on the receiving end of an attack from infinite iterations of angry ethereals.
that is because theramore was always alliance.
When garrosh tried to claim kalimdor, she had no choice but to help the night elves since she was part of the alliance.
also, she had a deserter problem that wanted war with the horde.
Arguably the portrayal of the Alliance militarizing the Barrens was one of the more saliently miswrought parts of the buildup to Theramore’s destruction.
I mean, we went into Cataclysm, and we saw Alliance forces amassed in the Barrens, cutting off Stonetalen, fortifying the entrance to Dustwallow Marsh, fighting over the Battlescar and besieging Mulgore. And many of the soldiers are seen wearing the tabard of Theramore, meaning they’re clearly streaming in from and being reinforced by that city.
Now, the natural response to that would be “Well gee, considering Jaina’s historical stance on such things, that’s a pretty huge departure. What exactly led to her changing her behavior that dramatically? Just when did she decide she needed a gigantic highway through the swamp to facilitate massive troop movements for invading the Barrens?”
And the equally natural conclusion would be “I guess we’ll find out when we get to Theramore” (or in the case of Horde, the outposts near Theramore.)
Except we didn’t. Because while the surrounding zone was updated with some local questing to kill wildlife, dragons and misbehaving Gromtotems and the city proper got some cosmetic additions of tanks and the like, content- and story-wise it was still Wow circa 2007 in Theramore itself. Frozen in time and with nary a spoken reference to what’s going on in the next zone over other than “oh, you’re here from the Barrens? No time for that, we still need this obsolete kraken quest done.” And that was never reconciled. Subsequent materials out-of-game spoke of the Alliance presence in the Barrens as if it had just always been there, with no mention of when such an evident ramping-up of military occupation had actualy taken place. We could speculate that it was a response to Garrosh’s increasingly aggressive behavior and unwillingness to entertain further diplomacy, but that was never established as truly being the case, so it’s nothing but headcanon.
Consequently, since nobody was presented with any contextual reason for it in-canon, Alliance players were left grasping at straws to explain what seemed like a sharp, unjustified and inexplicable shift in Jaina’s priorities off-screen while Horde players were left to assume that Jaina had never really cared about peace at all and this stuff was simply her fulfilling the Horde’s meta stereotype of “what the Alliance does.”