The thing is, this isn’t really entirely comparable to Teldrassil because of the sheer scope of Teldrassil’s destruction.
Everyone’s fixated on the night elves and the tree itself, but the fact is Sylvanas wiped out a zone. Teldrassil wasn’t a tree and a city and nothing else. It housed an entire island-wide ecosystem of sentient races and Ancients and myriad animal species. Night elves, furbolgs, harpies, treants, dryads, spiders and sabers; countless living things inhabiting what amounted to a small country-sized forest in the boughs of Teldrassil, and she eradicated them all from the face of the planet just to get at the kaldorei.
Playable race or not, if a character, say, ordered the firing of an artifact or something that exterminated every single living thing in Feralas because they wanted to get rid of the ogres, or in Elwynn because they wanted to wipe out the local gnolls, or in Stranglethorn because they wished to crush the jungle trolls, it’d be really hard to paint that as justified. Regardless of ogres and gnolls and Gurubashi trolls being traditionally “disposable” mob races in WoW terms, scorching all life from a small nation-sized chunk of Azeroth to be rid of them would come across as monstrous and unjustified.
Just as doing so to strike a blow against the night elves seems. In the same vein, as horrible as it would have been for Jaina to have successfully crushed Orgrimmar with her tidal wave, how much worse would it have been if she’d actually been trying to sink the entirety of Durotar into the sea - along with everything living in there - just because it contained Orgrimmar?
Even in the selective mob-genociding world of WoW, indiscriminately razing entire zones to cull one’s enemies rates as inexcusable, straight-up raid villain behavior.
This is also why people are more sympathetic to the Horde than they are to say the Legion, or the Scourge. To people who’ve played the Horde, and especially those who main the faction, it’s not just a bunch of monsters or just “the bad guy faction”. You go on quests to help people find their lost heirlooms. You see families caring for each other. You see friends having fun. You see that there’s actual people and that it’s not just a bunch of bloodthristy monsters.
So seeing the leadership starting a war and many of your friends supporting or simply not caring enough to speak out can be difficult. You disagree, but may not be willing to go so far as to label them all evil and disown them over it. Some may even search for reasons to try and minimalize or downplay it.
I think the responses to the whole War of Thorns have been really interesting. They would have been even moreso if the actual writing were better, but even then, I think Blizzard more or less got the intended effect. The problem is that if you’re a US citizen, these are some pretty real feelings. A little too real maybe.
They could have easily just given us the brown Orcs from Outland instead of doing time travel but I guess they wanted to lay more seeds of “light is bad too”
Well, that was the (apparently misguided) intent behind their plan for taking Teldrassil hostage. Sylvanas pitching a fit and then burning the tree down, predictably, had the entirely opposite effect.
I actually headcanon that the Cenarion Circle is NOT happy with the Horde right now - so much so, that most Horde druids have been shown the door, save for a few exceptions such as Hamuul Runetotem, who disavowed the Horde and is technically a deserter. His primary concern is healing Azeroth anyway.
They’re still able to work with the Earthen Ring though, which has long been a majority-Horde organization. It helps that the Earthen Ring also disavowed the Horde’s actions and are technically deserters, far more occupied with healing Azeroth than the war.
Are they disavowing the shamans who enabled the Tree’s destruction? I’ve given my suppositon on what’s happened to the majority of the Cenarians and the Ringers. Runetotem isn’t being hunted down presumably because he’s keeping close to Magni whom no one really wants to offend right now.
Also, with the defeat of the Scarlet Crusade, the game is lacking any “extremist crusaders” type characters. Male human paladins are old news, especially now that we’ve since established Draenei as the race most associated with the Light.
Lightbound get to fill that niche, gives Draenei as a race some relevance, and using the AU Draenei means that you don’t have to make any actual Alliance members complicit.
This kind of stuff is why I’m usually not a big fan of time traveling stuff in fiction. It kind of makes Nozdormu look either malicious or neglectful since all this awful stuff happens and he doesn’t try to warn anyone.
I guess it could be argued that he’s just crafting the least awful timeline he can but it all makes my head hurt when I think about it lol. I wouldn’t want his job honestly.
Tyrande stormed off and invaded Kalimdor with only the backing of the Gilneans while the rest of the Alliance focused on the Zandalari, which is reminiscent of the original goal of dividing and conquering the Alliance.
The problem is, a divided Alliance is still strong enough to beat back the Horde on both fronts.
It is simple sylvanas assumed the allisnce was as prone to splitting as the horde. She assumed that the worgen would not have sympathy for the night elves and want to help those that saved them. She assumed if the alliance went to go get teld geen would throw a tantrum and leave the alliance. Then if the slliance didnt help tyrande would throw a tantrum and leave the alliance. Her plan requires the slliance members to be so selffish and short sighted they would break apart when also having to fight the horde because no way were hostilites going to end there.
Honestly its because they made the Alliance the Neutral faction in this expac. Can’t really make the other groups more neutral than the alliance is acting because it would require them to just lay down and die.
Same way the Vatican was neutral during WW2, I’d guess. Maybe they just don’t want to invite death & pillage on their lands if they don’t have to, ethics be damned.
While I don’t expect the Cenarion Circle or the Earthen Ring to drop everything, abandon Silithus, and start throwing black paint on Horde soldiers while yelling slogans - I do want to see -some- reaction.
Even if it’s just Ally-side, so that Horde players don’t get preached at even more for things they had no say in, it would be nice to have a character explicitly from one of these groups say they condemn the attack even if they can’t act right now.
Besides, an Earthen Ring or Cenarion Circle character appearing can be an opportunity to show how those factions are handling the worldwide aspect of the Azerite crisis. (And maybe make it feel like an actual crisis like it’s supposed to be.)