War of Thorns prepatch was Horde winning. I’d saying 8.0 was neutral. 8.1 was Alliance victory. 8.2 evened things back out and from then on it wasn’t really anybody winning because the Horde became divided between rebels and loyalists, with the rebels winning and doing an armistice with the Alliance after 8.3
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Out of curiosity what parts of Pheandra’s post wasn’t factually accurate? You’re calling 'em a ‘zealot’ but their list of items is stuff that happens in-game.
In WoW, this is an unanswerable question save where it is literally stated, or is shown in game, and then what is stated is true insofar as a strict interpretation of both.
There is a logical tendency to play the “Because of X, faction B must Y.”
That is great for spitballing, but we’ve learned time and time again that a logical inference or, even cloudier, playing armchair general, has little to no impact on what actually occurs.
Numbers, casualties, logistics, campaign strategies, tactics- that isn’t how results happen in WoW. They happen because a story is being told, and it will be told in such a way that the writer shows us things that are entertaining, and follow a sequence of events that lead us to the conclusions they wish to have happen.
There is nothing wrong with this. It is a narrative choice. It falls into the same general camp of “why didn’t the eagles just drop the ring in to Mt. Doom”, which has spawned countless justifications, with Tolkien calling them a (to paraphrase) “dangerous machine he used sparingly.” That is, great stories can still be told without things playing out like a strategy game.
Neither faction was losing the war to the other. Both were having great damage inflicted upon them by it, continuously. In Blizzard’s story of BfA, their nemesis wasn’t one another, or even Sylvanas, who has her own arc parallel to all this- it was the war itself.
The objective of our commanding protagonists in the war story, Anduin and Saurfang ultimately, was to defeat the war itself. End the war, for slightly differing reasons, but the removal of Sylvanas was merely the means to that end. And at the end of the xpac, the war is defeated.
So both factions were ultimately losing to the xpac’s real antagonist, the conflict itself. Really, N’zoth, the old gods- they were a side show, something to create structure and something to shoot at.
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Limiting it to just gameplay? Probably just the War of Thorns.
War of the Thorns
Battle of the Undercity
The Siege of Orgrimmar 2.0
Well the last one wasn’t really won because it wasn’t final, but it would have been won by the Horde, they had more troops and a defense system like Orgrimmar, I don’t think the weakened Alliance could have done that.
lol someone didn’t do the loyalist quest line
hrmm? Why?
Nathanos has you rally citizens to bolster up the ranks and iirc, in the city itself were only Goblins, Maghar Orcs and Forsaken troops at this point.
Then again, I don’t recall the Alliance/rebel forces even bringing siege weapons, and nothing would have stopped Sylvanas from drowning the whole place in blight as she did with Undercity.
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So the same situation as the alliance had ergo?
I definitely don’t consider Battle of UC to be the Horde having the upper hand…even if Sylvanas had a plan for it, the Horde was still forced to abandon the city.
To me, the Horde had the upper hand after Teldrassil, and UC was the thing that evened the factions up again.
And in SoO2, only the cutscene beforehand gave me the impression the Horde had the upperhand. The gameplay didn’t make either side seem stronger.
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Cause there is unrest in org they wherent all you united under sylvanas
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I’m out of likes, but as usual, this is a great write up
I am going to try to be as much objetive as possible.
War of thorns, horde victory, alliance defeat, thousands of civillians died, not so much military.
Battle of lordaeron, Phyirric alliance victory, pushed the horde out of lordaeron, but the horde got the last laught by destroying it themselves, killing a lot of troops because anduin wasn’t really prepared for the blight and being saved by aunty deus jaina in a f*** flying boat.
Horde infiltrated stormwind, released prisoners, killed a ton of guards and escaped without much of a problem while eluding alliance leaders and troops.
7 alliance ships chase them, but end up sunked.
Lost honor implies that stormwind start rectruiting farmers.
At the start of 8.1 the alliance was apparently losing.
Then, BfD happens. Alliance victory.
Alliance destroy zandalari ships , kills rasthakan, sacks the city, horde tries to chase them, leave K.O 2 ally leaders but these escapes with their lives meaning that they got nothing.
Alliance turns the tide in all fronts. Tyrande and her nelfs wins darkshore by themselves, alliance rebuilds stromgrade.
At 8.2 the alliance had the upper hand, azshara/syvlanas does their thing and we are back to square one.
at 8.2.5 the alliance could barely assault orgrimmar, i guess that if that failed, the alliance would go back to the defensive.
So okay, who really won ?
No one.
The horde failed all their objetives at the start of the war.
Securing kalimdor, stop the war before it started.
The alliance also pretty much failed their main goal of capturing sylvanas.
But the one who won was sylvanas who apparently is 20 steps ahead of everyone and got stronger with the war.
i think that the alliance was much more stronger than the horde, but they weren’t really doing anything for victory.
that was the main difference.
in one hand we had the alliance holding back due to morals or whatever.
in the other we had the horde doing anything and all sorts of atrocities to win.
Like making a deal with azshara and literally releasing n’zoth.
if it wasn’t for things like that, the horde was screwed.
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Agree with everything you said except this. As we know after the fact that Sylvanas ALSO wasn’t trying to win. The Alliance was hindered by their morals, while the Horde was also being hindered by Sylvanas secretly tanking their efforts to win.
She was trying to win by extending the war, the horde was already willing to surrender after dazaralor.
But she got what she wanted with the war, the difference is that the alliance isn’t willing to: Raise old soldiers to use them as weapons.
killing civillians just to get a minor advantange.
use superweapons such as blight.
making deals with literal war criminals like zul or ashavane.
not using old gods powers to release them
not making deals with queen azshara who brought the legion the first time
Not releasing an old god.
Thinking in using azerite as a weapon instead of trying to find a way to heal azeroth. (the fact that they used it is simply self defense)
i would say that the alliance isn’t really willing to throw their morals out of the window like the horde does. like, what is even the horde at this point that isn’t genocidal monsters who enjoy destroying stuff for no reason ?.
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You mean when they sided with the Horde by letting the horde use dalaran portals to steal a weapon of mass destruction?
A small sect of the Sunreavers did aid the Horde war effort in Mists. However most were completely caught off guard because as far as they knew Aethas was suddenly imprisoned and the Silver Convent , who was formed because by elves with an anti-blood elf stance, was sent against them.
The only agents of the Kirin Tor involved in any official way was Jaina who killed and imprisoned Sunreavers depending on the circumstances and Archmage Lan’dalock can be fought when Horde players break out of the dungeon if they were sent there during the Purge.
Jaina giving the Silver Convent the go ahead to go nuts was messed up, as evidence by that one agent feeding a Sunreaver civilian to a freaking shark.
Wanting to extend the war is not the same as wanting to win it. And it’s hard to win anything when you continously shoot yourself in the foot, and your own leadership ensures that all your efforts are rendered useless.
Only Baine, to be precise.
True. Lots of souls to feed to the maw. Alliance and horde alike.
sigh I’d say never change, Ethel, but maybe you should.
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No they were all complicit because their leader did it.
Just like how the Horde is entirely complicit for both Garrosh and Sylvanas.
I disagree. You’re only complicit for your leaders actions if you let them STAY leader after doing something you don’t approve of.
With both Garrosh and Sylvanas, a sizable portion of the Horde rebelled specifically to remove them as leaders. In those instances, I consider the loyalists to be complicit, but the rebels not.
At the time with the Sunreavers, I don’t think most of the BE’s in Dalaran were even aware of what Aethas had done, and so were never given the opportunity to remove him before being massacred.