I’m kind of glad they clowned out the character and shoved him back in the Kirin Tor. Rommath shouldn’t have to compete with this kid for what little screentime the story allocates to BE magi.
In theory, but the problem is that they refuse to use Rommath, or any other BE mage apart from Aethas. Which leads to the Nightborne suddenly being the “magic specialist elves” instead.
keep in mind there were Dreadlords trying to create a faction conflict. That plan to weaken the Horde and Alliance so the Legion would win is a huge tip that Sunreaver infiltrator was a Dreadlord plant.
The narrative is better when the narrative is better period. Just any classic war movie can show how full on total war can make for great stories.
I don’t mind the AvH in MoP simply because it was a natural outcome of the escalating faction conflict that started in Wrath but really kicked off in Cata. So you go from a minor story to a secondary story and finally a main story. The Old God stuff in MoP was also directly linked and caused by the AvH in MoP. Meanwhile if you look at WoD, the faction conflict was basically self-isolated to Ashran which got no real story reference (unlike the stuff in Wrath such as the Battle of the Undercity or the Broken Front incident). Then in Legion the AvH stuff was minor, isolated to Stormheim but important to the story there. This better matched the stage the AvH conflict was in Wrath. Then in BFA it went straight to total war levels seen in MoP. There was no act 2 if you will. It went from Act 1 to Act 3 straight away.
Also at least when it came to Theramore, Garrosh had evidence of Theramore getting involved in the faction conflict directly. Such as acting as a staging ground for the Alliances campaign into Southern Barrens and occupying / establishing forward outposts in Horde territory. Such as Durotar. The method he chose to win that conflict though was the war crime, not so much the siege itself. Meanwhile what did Darnassas / Night Elves do to earn being lit up as the worlds biggest bonfire? The conflict in Stormheim was overseen by Genn and his fellow Gilneans. With some survivors from Southshore mixed in. But then again, that was probably the point Blizzard wanted to make after they retroactively changed Sylvanas’ motives at some point during BFA’s development. I doubt ‘the Jailer told me to do it’ was the motive from the offset when the idea was pitched.
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Im still of the opinion that the initial story had Anduin leading the Alliance in an invasion of Lordearon before the horde attacks the Night elves. BFA would have had the Alliance going a lot more aggressive and escalating the conflict. However, when the story team leadership change happened, they rolled that back and had Anduin be an absolute pansy and not do anything of note against the Horde.
Hence why we have parts of the story that make no sense or voice files still in game complaining about Jania having too much blood on thein hands. The current writing staff have been trying to roll back the story away from the conflict since they took over and have instead been trying to focus it on the Cosmic war story instead which is just so so terrible.
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“We have forgotten what makes us strong…”
mUrDeRiNg EvErYtHiNg FoR sUpErDeViL!!1!!!11
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We didn’t even need the second bit. Every single one of the Alliance’s war hawk characters had personal as well as political reasons to strike at Horde-controlled Lordaeron (Genn, Turalyon, Alleria, Jaina, Rogers) and that pre-expansion novel even gave Anduin a stake in Sylvanas’s downfall. As if staining the lore with some of the worst story beats this game has ever produced wasn’t shame enough, the War of Thorns was also utterly unnecessary.
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very true, Having a war campaign through lordearon would have been far more interesting than Ashenvale.
It would have also galvanised allies like the blood elves and by extension the Nightbourne into the conflict.
Sylvanas’s motivations for the War of the Thorns also don’t make sense, literally nothing about how it was framed makes sense.
Zovaal aside, the “Let’s attack them now to secure peace in the future forever by capturing Darnassus and holding the Kaldorei there hostage so the Alliance will split itself apart” doesn’t make sense, the Alliance has for the most part been pretty consistently unified post-MOP. Sylvanas has no reason to presume they’d split apart that easily.
It’s also just an unnecessary and unpragmatic waste of resources, especially after the Legion invasion. Sylvanas has always been a bit of a villain, the Burning of Teldrassil - the genocide - was/is in character for her to order, but she’s never been stupid. She had no reason to torch the tree.
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The only war crimes are acts committed by the side that lost the war. Because it’s the side that wins that gets to decide what the crimes actually are. If we found a spot that was the major supply nexus for the other side in any of our major conflicts, we’d have bombed the hell out of the place, civilian populations be dammed. Millions of civilians lost their lives during the World Wars and it wasn’t because of the common cold. (Although the extremely wrongly named “Spanish flu” did claim a lot during The Great War)
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You have it wrong. it was “Let’s Attack them now to secure survival in the future” the future depicted in Sylvannas’ vision and what she sold to Saurfang was a case of war vs extermination by the Alliance, especially for the Orcs and the Forsaken.
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Honestly, the only way that War of Thorns and the drubbing the Horde took for a target of … dubious strategic value that was then thrown away immediately actually makes a bit more sense with the goal of throwing as many souls (Horde, Alliance, and otherwise) into Superhell for the Turbodevil to nosh on.
Because at the end of the day, the Horde lost a stupid amount of soldiers so that Saurfang could have fun until he recalled that warcrimes were BAD actually and they could kill some night elf civilians and noncombatants, while barely touching the night elf forces.
I disagree about it being natural. The natural outcome of that story was for the Alliance to be the aggressors, after Varian actually declared war on the Horde during the Battle for Undercity.
For me, the biggest redeeming feature of MoP AvH is that it was pretty easy to ignore. There were lots of other things to do, and they weren’t gated behind the AvH storyline, unlike in BfA.
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I do not honestly think so, because of the HD cinematics. Those take years and years to produce, so they had decided to do this very early on in the development cycle of BFA.
As Metzen was surprised, however, it does mean it happened after he left officially, but before afrasiabi was kicked out of his spot as he was the one who called those shots, and they have been trying to pivot from them since he left.
The Hd Cinematics could have been shuffled around, we know the last one Metzen worked on was the siege, he had no input in the saurfang ones. For all we know Afrasiabi probably intended to invasion of lordearon to come first but the order was shifted aroud after even he left. Makes no sense they would show that cinematic at blizz con only to have the burning proceed it.
Edit -We also have no time frame for when Steve took over narrative lead from afrasbi however so it’s possible that it wasn’t long after Metzen left and they changed direction fully and then started on development of cinematics straight after.
Oh, but it WAS necessary, because Blizz can never commit to the Alliance being the aggressors in a faction conflict. And I don’t mean a “Villain”, I just mean the aggressor. No matter how drowning in reasons to want pounds of Horde flesh they are. You see this general trend happening around the early Cata era. Which is why the Horde HAD to start it, no matter how lacking in motive, means, and opportunity they were. And why the Horde were allowed less and less reasons for starting it … but still must.
This is why Vol’jin HAD to die, to set Sylvanas into the drivers seat of the entire Horde. After all, nothing about the settup of a conflict on EK actually required Sylvanas to be Warchief. Stormheim could have still happened; the Gathering was entirely comprised of EK peoples; Genn, Turalyon, Jaina, Rogers, Vareesa … all had their sights on Northern EK and Sylvanas. But Warchief Jin would have just complicated matters a bit, and it would have been very difficult to have him start the next war. So just like Cairne with Garrosh … Jin had to go.
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I agree on that. Alliance and the Horde are not enemies, BUT also not a friends. The best it was in Classic-WOTLK, when Alliance and the Horde were fighting for Azeroth, but from time to time they had some small local conflicts (PVP + some small PVE quests chains and dungeons).
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Ah right, my apologies. Still, though, I’m not seeing the truth in what Sylvanas proposed. Both the Forsaken and the orcs have gotten better PR - albeit just barely for the Forsaken - the orcs aren’t regarded as the monsters they were in the First and Second Wars, and while some people may not like undead, they’ve still helped defend the world with plenty of Forsaken being in the Argent Crusade, one of them being a former member of the R.A.S because he didn’t like the direction that Sylvanas was heading in.
Securing survival can be done in peace. They should have tried to restore/rebuild the damage that the Legion inflicted upon them and acquired a tighter grip over the lands that they currently held - building a stronger defense against Quilboar and Centaur raids in the Barrens and Durotar, retaliating more strongly against Grimtotem still loyal to Magatha Grimtotem, etcetera. -
As for the Forsaken’s predicament, that could be solved by the Forsaken freeing any Scourge that might remain in Lordaeron, or even Northrend. Wouldn’t be a permanent fix, but it’d give them enough numbers to where they might not have to worry about it for a bit.
While Genn, Rogers, and many other members of the Alliance might want nothing more than Horde blood and would attack the faction at any chance given to them, Anduin’s still their High King and the Alliance as a whole isn’t/wasn’t going to war against the Horde unprovoked so long as Anduin ‘Owchie ow my bones hurt if I feel bad vibes/think bad things’ Wrynn was/is the High King.
Now that Turalyon’s Regent/Lord Commander of the Alliance forces, however, that might change.
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Yes, but not grimderp. I do not think Warcraft, despite how gritty it was even in Vanilla, should be trying to force it 24/7. The world isn’t all depressing crap 24/7. That said- 100%, these ideas were always there. Like to be blunt, Dragon Lore has like 4 or 5 different instances of S.A. Mostly Old God related, Deathwing or ‘Beta Ultraxion’ whatever his name was in one of Christie Golden’s books, but even Malygos to some extent if you REALLY think about Keristrasza.
Also when it really comes down to it: most people dunno the lore. Not even just players. A lot of major parts of the lore are hypocritical if you view them from a consistency angle, but most people don’t actually care enough to. Forsaken are honestly one of the best examples of this, because Sylvannas betrayed the remnants of the Alliance in Lordaeron so that she, a Quel’dorei, could hold Capital City. But that explicit betrayal doesn’t come up. People always lean on the ‘oh you just hate us because we’re undead’ angle for Forsaken, and not the ‘oh, you have us because the first act we made as people was to break our promise to living humans.’ And at a certain point its impossible to tell if the devs are aware of this as in-universe propaganda, or we’re so far down the line that the modern writers couldn’t pick up on it as propaganda and just genuinely think thats actually true LOL.
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