Sylvanas did. And when the time came to put the torch to Teldrassil, Saurfang was the only one who protested. Still did nothing to actually stop it.
Yep
She doesn’t order the release of the civilians.
She is the Warcheif.
Great. Sylvanas wasn’t the one who ordered us to save and spare civilians: Saurfang is. And we specifically stated that.
The goalpost: Quit moving it.
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the counter argument would be that Sylvanas would push for a war regardless, due to her own motives for the war, but if the Alliance never backstabbed the Horde, or the Alliance took Genn’s actions seriously and actually punished him for it, then at minimum you’d have Saurfang not on board with the WoT, and would likely have far less support domestically for such a plan.
I mean really, the Alliance killed any chance of not looking like a hostile faction so many times between Legion and the WoT. SI:7 was slaughtering gobbos and blanketting Orgrimmar in “we really don’t care if you know we’re spying on you” levels of spies, and Anduin unintentionally brought someone to a potential peace event that immediately advocated for Couping Sylvanas.
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Hey now! Maybe get a different emoji. XD
The Goalpost is right where it has always been. When the time came to burn down Teldrassil, none of the Horde’s warriors questioned it. They all followed their orders immediately, and did so with efficiency. Even those that were placed under Saurfang’s command, because Sylvanas outranks Saurfang.
Still different than Taurajo, when it wasn’t Alliance who killed the Civilians, it was Quillboar.
You can argue Alliance incompetenc, you can’t argue Alliance malice.
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Nah.
Yep
/10char
You literally see the last moments of a bunch of civillians in Taraujo where it was alliance soldiers cutting them down with manic glee, and that was after the indiscriminate firebombing, but go off about how kind and loving the Alliance is.
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Horde didn’t have to retaliate to that just like Alliance didn’t retaliate to Teldrassil by nuking Thunder Bluff or Org. There is such a thing as “letting stuff go”.
And this still doesn’t change the fact that War of Thorns was ultimately an embarrassing example of the Horde getting played.
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I disagree.
Attacking the leader of a World Power is an act of War the same as burning a world power’s population center is. The Alliance did not let go: They went to war. Just as we did not Let Go.
The Alliance refused to penalize Genn at the minimum, so the Horde had to punish them for their hubris. They do not rule the Horde. They are not above the Horde. They do not get to decide if the Warchief dies. They do not get to tell the Horde to pound sand.
The Alliance willingly broke the treaty Varian had set with Vol’jin. They went with the full intention to murder the Warchief Sylvanas Windrunner. That act of war ignited everything after it.
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And you literally see the Alliance commander ordering that Civilians should not be harmed, and should be given a path of escape.
Beyond that are Alliance soldiers who are activily disobeying Alliance command. If you want to blame that on Alliance, then we can go ahead and blame Sylvanas’ alliance with the Jailer as a Horde Alliance.
Or, we can say the Horde and Alliance, as institutions, are only blamed for the things they do as a united collective.
In this case, the Horde is responsible for the Genocide of the Kaldorei. The Alliance is not for the few civilians who were killed in a small, Barrens town.
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But the WoT wasn’t pitched as revenge, it was pitched as a way to gain defensive leverege against the Alliance, who had been shown to be completely hostile. The end game of the WoT as far as anyone but sylvanas knew, was the Horde removing a weak point in their geography and giving the Alliance reason to not be so suicidally hostile.
They weren’t avenging Stormheim, they were trying to avoid it happening again. The Alliance showed zero indication that they weren’t going to do the same thing over and over again if they felt they could.
“Sure he firebombed civillians to death, and ordered his men to march on the survivors, where they were all killed or run off, and most of the ones who got ran off got killed horribly because the Alliance at best had half-assed recon, and at worst were intentionally sadistic, but he told them to be nice while doing so”
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In a time of peace.
Toward the people mining the very life blood of the Titan World soul, as the Cenarian Circle and Earthen Ring try to heal it.
Yes. I would say that is worth being hostile toward.
Yes, because the Horde were completely within their rights to enslave the Val’kyre, and mine the World soul…
He ordered his men to take the camp, and spare civilians.
Quit the headcanon.
We know for a fact this wasn’t the case with Alliance command.
As I said, you can argue incompetence. Can’t argue malice.
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What peace? Genn pearl harbor’d the Horde fleet and tried to assassinate the Warchief, and SI:7 was actively massacring goblins in Silithus. Peace, my butt.
Oh yes, the Alliance was so very adverse to using Azerite themselves 
You’re telling me that an alliance army, that included Nelf outriders who repeatedly invaded this very same area, somehow didn’t notice the mountains that were wrapped in Briars, something that was pretty much globally known to mean there were quillboar there?
I mean hell, if you wanted to save their lives, why not make their way out the damn road to Mulgore lol. You had to go out of your way to make the gap the only one direction that was nearly assured death. And given the same soldiers who made that gap were slaughtering families in cold blood, I’m willing to believe it was 100% intentional.
edit: If general numbnuts in the Barrens gets absolved for good intentions then 99% of the Horde should get the same treatment given the intent of the WoT was not to burn down Teldrassil unless you were sylvanas.
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When the Horde was trying to enslave the Val’kyre and mine the world soul. The Horde was a direct threat to world peace in this instance.
After the Horde started using it. It was either use it and fight the Horde, or let the Horde gain the tech advantage, potentially leading to a Horde Victory, and lose all ability to stop them from abusing that power to begin with.
Those have always been there. It’s geography. Why didn’t they flee into Mulgore?
Great question. The Alliance wasn’t blocking that path, the Alliance was coming from the opposite direction. Maybe it was the giant wall that the Tauren put up?
You are also very clearly bias. Do the quest on the Alliance side, and it paints a very different picture. What you are more willing to believe isn’t the canon.
Their intent was to start a war because the Alliance wasn’t letting them enslave Val’kyr and mine the wound…
Hardly the same circumstances, when the Alliance in the Barrens was fighting a war that they didn’t start.
If the commander is ordering the civlians to be released and the soldiers are cutting them down anyway, that’s the sign of an incompetent commander.
I’ve seen the same label slapped on Saurfang when he ordered civilians in Astranaar be spared but they ended up getting killed anyway when he moved on.
“Shoring up your defenses” by conquering enemy territory seems like a bad excuse. At least in my estimation. It also seems strategically unsound. If it had succeeded the way Saurfang had imagined, they would have had all of Kalimdor plus all of Lordaeron to defend while Alliance had all their forces pooled and could have easily pushed north. The best they could have hoped for is Horde owning all of Kalimdor and the EK belonging to the Alliance. In the end, Lordaeron lost to the Forsaken and likely Quel’thalas taken by the Alliance as well.
The better option IMO would have been to shore up their defenses and let the Alliance come to them. They could have at claimed to have had the moral high ground after that with the Alliance being the agressors.
This, IMO, would have been a much more interesting way to kick off BfA.
Oh please. Alliance have been mining the life blood just as much as the Horde even after they made the same promise to Magni to stop doing it. This was seen in the first day of the War of Thorns when we saw night elves going at Azurite deposits with picks.
Turns out their promises were just as hollow as the Horde’s.
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But not an evil one.
Also, in WoT, you had the option to kill civilians despite Saurfang telling you not too. So…
Exactly.
Only after the Horde invaded.
In WoW’s story, actions are the least important thing about hashing out morality; intent trumps them, and the actor’s characterization trumps both of them.
If you’re good, burning down a town or committing genocide can be totally blameless or outright praiseworthy. If you’re bad, defending your home or just HAVING a home can be an act of bloodthirsty savagery demanding completely justified extermination.
edit: to be clear I think this is both simplistic as hell and messed up.
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