Technically, Arthas was only disavowed by Jaina and Uther.
The rest of his troops remained loyal while he purged the city and after, as he marched on Northrend and defeated Mal’Ganis.
He returned to Lordaeron to a parade and hero’s welcome, only for him to betray and kill his own father/the king. That is when he was pretty much out of the Alliance and forced to go to Northrend.
Although even that wasn’t seen as that bad, as upon Arthas’ death, his father’s ghost shows up to comfort him, and the pair share a very tender scene. Honestly, he gets the most tragic and sympathetic send off of any expansion archvillain in Warcraft history.
But the Horde itself doesn’t. In the new novel, Maiev even calls out the Horde for sticking its head in the sand and trying to avoid any share of the blame. That is the ultimate failing of the repeated introspective storylines for the Horde, in that the Horde fears actually facing anything it’s done. It is the very essence of this thread “Yeah, it happened. Can we just move on?”
BfA had a whole subplot devoted to how bad the leaders of the Orcs felt about the terrible thing he was party to and the how several other Horde leaders teamed up to take down their own Warchief.
When is the last time the Alliance champion had a major storyline in which an Alliance leader had to confront the terrible atrocities they were party to and help take down their corrupt leadership?
So they can’t even get away with trying to downplay without someone actively calling them out as trying to downplay it and again calling attention to it. How often does the Alliance council get called out for downplaying the unjustified evils its facilitated?
Of the two factions, Only the Horde ever has had to face the consequences any of its misdeeds. Facing the latest bunch of misdeeds resulted in the expulsion of Sylvanas and Gallywix as racial leaders, a dead Saurfang, the abolishment of the Warchief position, and an internal purge of Sylvanas sympathizers. That’s just in the game narrative itself. On a meta level, it’s left much of the Horde in a conceptual limbo, as Blizzard clearly struggles with the idea of handlin Horde as they didn in WC3 or Vanilla.
If the Alliance was not sinless in BfA, then what sins did they commit and what were the major consequences of them? What did they lose as a result?
That was as it’s presented. But just as Sylvanas was behind Wrathgate all along. (perhaps her pact with the Jailor started there?) So was the burning of the World Tree. And the decimation of both Horde and Alliance forces at Lordaeron.
But what Sylvannas planned was not a war of survival, but a deliberate plan to kill as many as possible on both sides.
Saurfang is indeed the only of the Horde leaders that turned against Sylvanas when he did, and even he didn’t turn on her as early as he should have. And he’s dead now. The remaining Horde leadership are hiding behind his sacrifice so that they don’t have to point any fingers at each other for following Sylvanas as long as they did.
Garrosh and all his loyalists are dead. Unlike Jaina and vereesa who got away with their BS scott free. That is the double standards from the writers we are talking about. Alliance can never do wrong even if they doing wrong. Or short. It’s bias from the writing team.
The Horde, as a result of its sins, lost Sylvanas, Nathanos, Gallywix, and the role of the Warchief and there’s people marching through the streets of Orgrimmar in chains. That’s party of the story calling attention to their wrongdoing and giving them negative consequences for it.
I’m openly admitting what the Horde did wrong and how they paid for it in the narrative. I’m not saying the Horde is without sin. I’m not saying that sin ever goes unexplored.
You however, still fail to even acknowledge the Alliance ever does anything wrong, and even if they did, you can’t shot where they get called out/suffer for it.
The only one engaging in what-about-ism is you. Because the way that the Alliance’s sins always get justified or whitewashes is by the narrative pointing to the enemy and going, “Okay, but they’re worse!”
Well then it wouldn’t be premeditated on the part of anyone except Sylvanas in this case.
Which would be in contrast to your example of the attack on Turajo, in which every single person going there was aware they were going there to do that. They weren’t sold on the occupation of Turajo, only for it to be revealed that they were there to slaughter them all along.
Quite the opposite. As exemplified by this very thread. These conversations almost always go the same way:
“The Horde has done something evil!”
“Yeah, well the Alliance does bad stuff, too.”
“Not as evil as the Horde!”
“You’re just trying to avoid that the Alliance had done bad things, just like Blizzard.”
Once again, this is all just an avoidance tactic to drive the conversation away from the original point, that the Horde did something bad.
Amusingly, in the new novel, Tyrande herself also calls the aftermath of BfA a “sorry excuse for punishment” for the Horde, because while there are players that care about Sylvanas, Nathanos, and Gallywix, their loss is not the Horde facing its wrongdoings, in that the Horde’s wrongdoings was following these people.
And for all of the Sylvanas loyalists in chains, there are still Sylvanas loyalists whispering to each other, pretending to have disavowed her, but are an even clearer example of Horde introspective storyline not actually amounting to anything for some of its members.
Wait. What did they pay exactly? They lost villainous leaders? Wow, what a loss. Sylvanas who’s now openly hostile to both factions, Nathanos who is her lapdog, and Gallywix who nobody ever liked anyway. They also lost a title? Are you kidding? The Horde got exactly 0 retribution for a literal genocide and got to place the entire blame upon Sylvanas. Now they hide behind the sacrifice of the ‘‘honorable’’ Saurfang (who was the one who first led the assault in Night Elven lands and made the genocide possible, mind you)
Have you missed how these threads always seem to start off with, “The Horde has Done Something Evil”? It really doesn’t end there, though. It’s also followed up with, “And therefore must be punished/isn’t heroic/etc.”
But the counterargument isn’t merely “Yeah, well the Alliance does bad stuff, too.”, in order to maintain some kind of moral parity. It’s more along the lines of, “The Alliance does bad stuff too, but it gets whitewashed and they still gets to be the hero.”
Or even, “I played Horde because I wanted to be a hero. Where’s my old Horde at?!”
Or even, “I like playing the Horde because I want to be evil!”
The Horde and its relationship with villainy is a very well known and well explored territory.
And in all your explanation about why the Horde isn’t being punished enough for its wrong doings, you still can’t even bothered to come up with one single nasty thing the the Alliance did in BfA that actually come back to bite them in the rear.