She gave the order to burn Teldrassil.
No one else could have done that but her
She is solely responsible more than anyone, that’s the point I was making, not that others are absolved of all responsibility.
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Earth irl story is NOT a basis to qualify Warcraft’s one. If Calia sucked as a proto queen that was precisely thanks to her own self-defeating attitude. She simply didn’t even try.
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He does have a point. Leaders are only capable of acting if their people support them. The army who carried out her orders are just as guilty for what happened. It’d be like the allies rolling up to the bunker, finding Hitler dead and going “oh well, job done. Let’s go home” ignoring that an entire army supported his endeavours.
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Quit crying. It’s just a tree. This is pathetic.
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Seconded. I can’t say I’ve wanted a character dead this much since Garrosh.
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A tree that was full of people who burned to death. Do you think as many people would care if it was an empty tree?
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The grey area is how difficult this becomes on an individual scale. Let’s say you have one soldier in a vacuum (IRL soldier, Horde soldier, doesn’t matter) that strongly disagrees with what the force he is in is doing, in the middle of a conflict. What, in this case, would be the right and reasonable thing to do?
In this case, if I were a guy manning a catapult that’s about to throw some flaming rocks at Teldrassil, I would imagine that if I objected, I’d just get punished (and, depending on how awful this regime is, maybe others I care about) and someone else would be put on that catapult to do it instead. There’s an argument to be made that not only would I be putting myself or others in grave peril, but that I might not even be capable of making a difference in that moment.
There’s a lot of nuance that still suggests they’re in the wrong for doing this, but the point is that there’s an inherent amount of environmental pressure that makes it difficult-at-best to avoid going along with the flow, which in turn has some effect on their moral culpability for what happens (even if it doesn’t totally absolve them). For that reason, I think it’s a mistake to say that they are “just as guilty” for what happened; the morality of giving those orders and the morality of being in a position where you’re obliged to carry them out is, without even considering which is worse, very different.
My own two cents is that a lot of the Horde-side participants are being horrible here due to their tacit support (among various other reasons), but what they are doing is not equivalent to what Sylvanas is doing.
Edit because I originally dropped completely the wrong quote in there.
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A total defeat of the Horde but Sylvanas also needs to suffer. Kill Nathanos Blightcaller first and then remainder of her Valkyr. Also the Orcs should be purged from Ashenvale.
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Agreed. It’s always troubling to me when the rank-and-file are held to account for war crimes when their superiors aren’t. And while in some circumstances the “I was only following orders” argument doesn’t hold water – like when you have a choice of not going to fight at all, or when your own life isn’t in imminent danger – if I had to prosecute someone for committing murder when someone else effectively (or literally) was pointing a gun at their head ready to kill them if they didn’t, I’d have a pretty hard time doing that.
I also think that calls to “purge” the Cenarion Circle or the Earthen Ring are utterly unjustifiable. There’s no reason to think that any individual of a Horde race who’s also an active member of one of those organizations (as opposed to one who’s a druid or a shaman but is actively engaged in the war) has taken any action to support Sylvanas or her war. There are Trolls and Kaldorei in Silithus working together to try and figure out how to heal Azeroth’s wounds; I’m not interested in sending in the troops to wipe out half the folks who are literally trying to save the planet – who does that help?
And the idea that we should attack Thunder Bluff or any other civilian target and kill innocents is abhorrent to me, and would be to my characters as well. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, after all. The ones my Kaldorei want revenge against are Sylvanas, Blightcaller, and the leaders who sit and wring their hands or philosophize but don’t do anything to stop them.
As for what would make me happy as a player and give my characters a sense of closure and the ability to move past all this, I want the entire northern part of Kalimdor and its eastern shores returned to the Kaldorei and their Worgen friends and allies. The Horde can keep the zones where it has civilian settlements that would be harmed by being summarily kicked out – Echo Isles, Azshara, Durotar, Mulgore. Let’s make the Barrens and Thousand Needles neutral with peacekeeping forces to maintain order (maybe hire the Booty Bay Bruisers, those guys hit like trucks and Booty Bay has incentive to have more neutral zones in peaceful states, to facilitate trade), but otherwise keep the Horde presence on Kalimdor isolated and neutralized.
And let’s see the Tauren leading the Horde. It’s high time the Horde had a warchief who values balance, and who isn’t a narcissistic, warmongering sociopath who wants only to subjugate everyone not of their own race. The Kaldorei people can work out a trade treaty with them – the Tauren and Kaldorei have more in common with each other than either does with most of the races of their own factions – and the Tauren can work to aid the other Horde races on Kalimdor. They’ll also be expected to keep them in line and prevent attacks against the Kaldorei and Worgen people.
As for the Eastern Kingdoms, I think the Sin’dorei should be allowed to keep the lands they currently hold and remain members of and subject to a Tauren-led Horde. God knows none of my characters want Silvermoon City, it’s so garish and bright (pretty in its own way, but my characters will take the soothing blues and purples of Ashenvale, thanks). The Cenarion Circle can continue helping them try to cleanse the Ghostlands of corruption, and maybe the Horde and Alliance can work together to return the Plaguelands to something that isn’t plagued. The Kaldorei can keep their base on Shalandris Isle but make it a neutral zone - no more lowbie quests killing the Sentinels there. This will be more a diplomatic outpost to facilitate negotiations between the Sin’dorei and their estranged cousins.
Stranglethorn…honestly I don’t know what to do with Stranglethorn.
I know a lot of folks will disagree with a lot of this and it isn’t intended as a starting point for a debate or argument, just me rambling sort of stream-of-consciousness about what I, personally, would love to see happen from the perspective of my characters, not what I think would be best for the player base or the game.
3 Likes
There would have been no infestation to purge.
I really hope that’s an IC response. 'Cause I gotta say I really do not understand players – as opposed to characters ICly – who have it in for one race or another in WoW. It’s just weird and gross and I keep seeing it – very often from players who also say to folks who care about their faction or their character’s race or their character that “it’s just a game, get over it.”
I guess the explanation is probably just that people are weird and inconsistent and very good at seeing their own side of any argument, and often less good at seeing any other side. (Not directed at you, btw, just a general observation.)
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Arguably if the Tree had been empty, there would have been no reason, no gain, for anyone to burn it.
Part of me doesn’t really care anymore. At this point I’m happy to see the Azeroth burn in a tide of vengeance that is drowned in blood. Horde blood, alliance blood, it’s all good. Let the world be consumed by the old gods and have the scattered remains fight for survival in what remains. I don’t personally see how the horde can be reasoned with, nor negotiated with, as all you see from the alliance side is their death camps, genocides and cruelties as they heedlessly blight everything around them in an orgy of destruction and torment. Also it might make for a pretty cool story.
Still, there is supposedly good in the horde too though as alliance you see it very rarely. There is much talk about ‘honor’ and the quotes about Thrall’s horde with the importance to know when to show compassion.
So with that in mind…
I want to see the horde leaders acknowledge they did something horrible. That it is something they will never be able to make right but that they will do their best to try. I want to see them treat the prisoners they’ve taken from the WoT with dignity and respect and do all they can to help them find what family might be left. After all, the horde is all about family right? I want to see the horde do all they can to reach out to the scattered remains of the race they’ve left on the brink of extinction and to ensure what few there are have somewhere to live and rebuild their lives by leaving their lands unconditionally to the survivors.
I want to see that horde so many on that side speak so fervently about and see them take responsibility for who they’ve become, who they want to be and what they’ve done.
Maybe then there would be some actual growth and a possibility of an actual peace.
With the current writing that seems rather unlikely to put it mildly and I expect most of us to be left quite dissatisfied with whatever outcome they leave us.
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a bunch of angry wisp nuking orgrimmar
or a void lord eating the sunwell, either one is good option, and please, killing as many horde as possible
since that is impossible:
cool war status,horde dismantled,world destroyed i don’t care as long as we don’t have:
peace, surrender,“teaming up for the greater good”. or worse “forgive the horde”
then i guess that could be enough, or just that this nightmare of stupid faction war just end already.
going back in time and make teldrassil or bfa never happen is also a good option, but then again i will have to ask why we even have a faction war in this xpac that could have been so great without it.
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The idea of “repayment” breaches a new level of absurd. The atrocities done can’t be repaid any more than history can be reversed.
What’s done is done. You put down Sylvannas not to appease the idea of Night Elf vengeance, but because that woman is simply too dangerous to let live. As long as she walks and doesn’t breathe, she’s a threat to everything that does.
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Better safe than sorry with Old God artifacts like Teldrassil. In the book Stormrage, it was revealed that Fandral created it specifically as a massive Old God beacon that then took over the entire planet.
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It was also revealed that the Aspects had given their blessings and purified it.
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I guess you are just more trusting of “purified” corruption artifacts than I am, as a black eyed corrupted troll.
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I’d like a formal written apology and a negotiable IOU to be discussed in a court of law.
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I wonder how many times people will need to point out that Teldrassil had been purified and blessed before people stop using it’s former corruption as an excuse as to why literal genocide is justified.
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