Yeah, my idea wouldn’t have sparked a costly total war that Sylvanas was supposedly trying to avoid in the first place. According to the novella, her plan was supposed to be forcing the Alliance to accept a peace negotiation on the Horde’s terms. I guess a war of mutually assured destruction is the next best thing.
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Yes, your idea would have sparked a slow, grinding and definite defeat. Remember that novella you’re referencing, and how the entire first part is explaining that the Horde will lose the next war?
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According to what’s coming out of the PTR, the Horde is still losing. It’s just losing faster and with a higher body count.
Also, my way could have led to negotiations with the Horde having an upper hand from the hostages (which would have included most of the priesthood of Elune and possibly Mia Greymane). The path we’re on now makes any negotiations infeasible.
There will be peace again after the expansion because this is WoW and status quo is God, but the only way to reach it will be the usual ludicrous butt pulls instead of a believable negotiation situation.
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I’m not sure that there was Azerite already at Darnassus, only that it was going to be a hub for it.
As to taking important hostages, while a good idea the point of burning the tree was to destoy the Night Elves will in about the same way that the Alliance leadership thought that Rastakhan’s death was going to herald the Zandalari’s dismissal of the horde.
At least that is how I took it. However, I cannot rightly say that your suggestion is inherently flawed and perhaps would have been better in the long run.
That being said, the original notion of the OP that this was done with “lols” or the like in mind is still the thing I’m more opposed to.
I mean, Plan B is usually either worse than Plan A or is at the very least improvised. I’m willing to believe that Sylvanas is smart enough that if Killing Malfurion and then occupying Teldrassil was Plan A, Plan B was obviously to just burn it all down. My reasoning for this goes back to Malfurion being the most powerful (mortal) druid on Azeroth, perhaps even the most powerful (though I might be taking Cenarius a bit lightly). Once he recovered he would have gone in and started using Teldrassil to cause all kinds of shenanigans.
Like say ensnaring soldiers and pulling them into the ground… just something off the top of my head that isn’t my worst fear and wish I had never seen, nope nope nope.
My problem with the scenario is that it doesn’t feel like plan B. It seems like she went from plan A straight to plan Q without passing go or collecting $200 dollars.
Burning the tree and all its civilians didn’t serve the original strategic goals of the campaign. She completely changed the operating strategic war goals on the ground in response to a single failure in the original plan. That tells me the original plan was garbage if a single failure led to the complete collapse of the war’s strategic goals.
Any military officer can tell you the old saying, “no plan survives first contact”. It’s the job of the military leaders to plan for contingencies. Sylvanas abandoned the original war goals almost instantly. That tells me there wasn’t any back up plan. That tells me the planning was bad and so was the leadership. It makes her and Saurfang look like idiots.
What’s worse is that her plan Q completely relied on her opponents being stupid too. The entire War of Thorns/Lordaeron was more akin to a comedy than a dramatic “war is hell” story. It’s just a mess and makes no sense. Why do they bother telling us that this NPC or that NPC is a “strategic/tactical genius” when strategy and tactics don’t matter in this setting?
I’m sorry, both my parents were military officers, and this whole thing is a mess to me. Neither side operates with actionable strategic goals or plans. The entire war is just both sides taking turns riffing an electric guitar and stage diving into tactical retreats. There is no exit strategy for the war or for this storyline, and it hurts me.
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Hey my Grandfather and Father were helicopter pilots, so I’m right there with about how this just stinks of needing a big catalyst to start a war.
And that is what it is. It very well could have been Plan Q as you say, jumping the shark in a desperate attempt. I’m not sure what conceivable motion for Plan B through P could be in this situation, but I agree that things escalated fast.
In the end, we’re really arguing semantics. I don’t see either of us being wrong in earnest. We just have some varying versions of what we see vs what we’re told.
But in the end, it is all because Blizzard needed a really good and fast way to start a big war that everyone would get involved in.
Hindsight is 20/20.
As for your fantasy about a version of the story where the Horde ransoms Night Elf civilians. In my version of your version of the story, the Alliance player character leads a rescue effort that frees all the hostages and so the Horde ends up with no leverage and a insurmountable tactical disadvantage.
so you lose nothing? because that’s where you’re at right now.
Cmon, having the tree as a hostage would be good enough or at least give us an easily defend-able point. And the NE would not be going berserk with some dark elune power.
I think you mean we lose just as much. I mean I don’t see darkshore as a victory when we are still fighting the NE for control of the zone and didn’t get a new city in the process.
One, refer to what I said earlier about hindsight being 20/20.
Two, you’re actually wrong. Where we are right now we have whatever evil scheme Sylvanas has been hatching and allies in the Zandalari and Mag’har.
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It doesn’t take Velen’s power of prophecy to predict that mass executing civilians via immolation would leave the Alliance with no choice but to assume the Horde’s strategic goal was complete extermination and react accordingly.
You would have had those allies regardless, so I’m not sure why you brought them up.
I’m sure Sylvanas’ plan to use brainwashed dead relatives as assassins will work flawlessly and won’t further fracture the Horde’s internal politics during a critical junction in the war. It’s not like we’re expecting a civil war or insurrection of some kind at this point.
I really don’t see how this is a legitimate reason whatsoever, considering the most powerful archdruid got taken down by an axe to the back, after failing to prevent the Horde’s brutal occupation of Darkshore. Plus, Sylvanas’s orders were literally set for occupation before talking to Delaryn, even when Saurfang returned without Malfurion’s head.
Malfurion living strikes me more as her making up a reason to blame Saurfang for her actions - given that the whole of A Good War involves his inner monologue to try and justify his actions.
Yeah, you’ve missed the point of what I said. And I’m suspicious that it’s on purpose in order to get that ‘zinger’ in and repeat your thesis statement.
So I’ll explain again plainly. A straight battle between Horde and Alliance the Horde will lose, that is established in A Good War early. A campaign where Teldrassil is occupied and either Malfurion or Tyrande is killed with the Horde will win, that is established in a Good War as well.
A battle where Teldrassil is burned to the ground, and the Alliance attacks all out, and in so doing walks their army and leadership into a death trap. Maybe the Horde wins, or maybe the Horde loses.
That is the lore.
You have no way of knowing that. The Zandalari seemingly sought the Horde’s help when the Horde appeared strong, after Teldrassil was burned but before Lordaeron was destroyed. Would the Zandalari seek the help of the Horde if Orgrimmar were besieged, as suggested would happen in A Good War? Probably not.
As for the Mag’har, mechanically they are recruited at the height of the war with the aid of the Bronze Dragons. Would Eitrigg and the Horde have been able to negotiate for the aid of the Bronze Dragons, or undergo the weird ritual of following Garrosh’s footsteps if Orgrimmar were being besieged as stated in A Good War? Again, probably not.
Are we actually crediting Sylvanas with bringing in the Allied Races? That’s like crediting Thrall for bringing in the Sin’dorei, or Garrosh for bringing in the Huojin.
It’s established that, given the current state of power, if the Horde and Alliance went to war eventually, the Alliance would be in a favorable position to win. Their reasoning never touches on when said inevitable war would happen and it completely discounts anything that could happen in the intervening time to change the strategic calculus of war.
Rather than looking into ways to close the stated tactical advantage the alliance supposedly had over time or raising the cost of a potential war to the point that the Alliance wouldn’t act on their advantage because the eventual victory would be too costly, Sylvanas decided on a preemptive strike against a purportedly stronger world power in the hopes of intimidating it into staying out of future conflicts. I’m sure people passingly familiar with Japanese history during WW2 will have some insight into how well that strategy works out.
Yes, in an egregious case of tell instead of show, we’re told that killing Tyrande and/or Malfurion is critical because reasons. Sylvanas wasn’t counting on both of them dying, so it wasn’t to cripple the NE government by decapitating leadership. Her plan apparently hinged on the NEs all coming down with a case of the vapors and fainting into the arms of their allies instead of being enraged and swearing vengeance. I find this plan very strange considering Sylvanas’ personal story is that exact situation and was even explicitly called out during the cinematic.
I suppose you can spin this as Sylvanas becoming genre savvy enough to try and count on the Alliance holding the idiot ball. Sadly, she didn’t account for random Rule of Cool moments to completely foil her evil plans. It’s also a terrible war strategy to count on your enemies being incompetent when the entire premise of the war is that your opponent is stronger than you.
Sylvanas had already stated her goal of recruiting new blood into the Horde. That was back when NB and HM were brought in. Active recruitment was still ongoing, and Talanji was already looking for allies to help her people.
The novella never said that Org would be under siege within months if they didn’t act quickly. You’re fabricating a sense of imminent attack that wasn’t there. Sylvanas convinced Saurfang that the factions would come to blows again eventually, not that it was going to happen within a week.
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It doesn’t take Velen’s gift of prophecy to foresee an inexperienced commander driven to react by emotion will do so badly. Hell, if you’ll recall, both her and Saurfang called it.
Yes, but the part of the post you missed is how the Horde looks like a much less impressive ally if it’s losing a war.
The Novella establishes that the siege would happen after a successful naval attack that the Horde could not repel. I guess you can split hairs over how imminent ships are, but I’d say it’s up to you to provide a reason why that wouldn’t happen as soon as their fleet could make the trip.
Yes, we’re giving her credit for the things the story is telling us she did.
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Yeah, the “story” can also tell us that Orcs and Humans was a more nuanced narrative, doesn’t make it true. Show, don’t tell. She doesn’t get full credit for standing there and saying “welcome” after people like Liadrin, Baine, and Eitrigg do all the heavy-lifting.
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Not interested in what you think of as “true.” I’m just discussing what’s canon.
Where exactly is this established as canon?
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Well… technically she gives the order to bring in allied races…
But I think credit should go to the individual that suggested and brought them in.