This is why I like the topic of Genn and the Gilneans’ isolation: there’s plenty of wiggle room to argue whether their decisions were correct or not, because there is no clear answer.
I feel like the southern Silverpine Forsaken’s possible grudge against the Gilneans for leavingthem to die at the base of the wall is perfectly justified, and so is the Gilnean’s decision not to risk letting the plague of undeath past their one defensible position. There was a possibility of avoiding a tragedy, against the possibility of creating another one, with no clear facts to determine which it could be - and so the factions and the players are free to make their own judgements based on their own opinions, and not have the game tell them they’re literally wrong.
I think more conflicts in this setting should be like that.
Strength is needed to be agile. Its a common misconception that you can be agile without being strong. Just look at how jacked any serious dancer is.
Heck pound for pound a cat is more than twice as strong as a dog. Its how they can jump so high.
Based and Alliance-pilled.
Varian represents everything wrong with the Alliance. That meathead irrevocably damaged it to the point the Horde is a better representation of the old Alliance. Not to mention he was a literal nobody got to where he was at the expense of older, more beloved characters.
So glad that cancer is gone. The Alliance would be better off without the Wrynns.
This was literally the only reason I disliked Varian, but that was the fault of bad, sexist writing. I don’t blame Varian for being hijacked like that.
Otherwise, I thought Varian was the perfect person to lead the humans. I liked how aggressive and anti-Horde he was. It finally emphasized the flaws of the Alliance in a way that felt fair and somewhat justified, without making them outright villains like they often do with the Horde. I loved him as a counter for Garrosh, and I wish they both got more screen-time instead of one dying and the other going crazy.
I just hated them making him “High King” of the Alliance and softening his attitude in the process. The High King arc was garbage. The Alliance is an ALLIANCE, not an empire. It’s the start of the Alliance becoming “humans and friends” and I hate it.
This x100000. I really wish the Wrynns were just killed off. Varian is gone, and Anduin should have stayed in the Maw forever (though his new arc does look interesting, I just worry about the story returning to the Wrynn show).
AND THIS! High King is so stupid because it has devolved the Alliance into just “Humans and friends.” Which sucks a lot. Although I will say this, even though it was cringe to make Varian High King at least it was voted on by the other leaders of the Alliance… Anduin is just HANDED the title and for what??? It’s not a hereditary title like being king of Stormwind!
It made ZERO sense for Anduin to be made High King. None. And I will die on that hill, Blizzard only did it because they wanted to continue the Wrynn show plotline they had since making Varian High King. And sadly, it just turns the Alliance into the Humans and Friends faction.
Varian represented everything good about the Alliance and as Mercy would say, Heroes never die. He will always remain a legend of the Alliance that people will remember in high regard.
And Genn himself regrets it. That had he not built the wall at all maybe Lordeaeron would never have fallen and by extension his son may still be alive.
Glad Anduin is coming back. With any luck he takes back the Throne from Turaylon(peacefully). May Velen’ vision of him remain true and he rules the Alliance until old age.
It will be fun to see what Chronicles 4 has to say about this high king business.
I remember the Varian hate, back in yon days when I was just barely starting to pay attention to the story and read the Story Forums.
Personally, I liked Varian as an Alliance cast member, and hated him as the Alliance cast leader.
His hotheadedness drove some fun plot points, like his declaration to Thrall during the reclamation of the Undercity. He was a good foil to Jaina’s forgiveness and optimism, gave a voice to factionalist sentiments, was a nice fallible character who could still sometimes learn from his mistakes, and his hotheadedness and fallibility gave the Horde a concrete reason not to get too cozy with the Alliance. (Though the last point was mostly developed in retrospect, from the Anduin era.)
But the “High King”? Blech. We don’t need a blueside Warchief. Hopefully it’ll be as irrelevant as they tried to say it would-
Trials of the High King? Nopenopenopenopenope. Burn it now.
Anduin being High King now, because… uh… inertia? NO. BAD. STOP IT.
If they had the patch candance they do now, the Trials of the High king thing would probably have been alot better. As it is, we had Varian deal with 2 leaders and that was it.
I doubt it.
Even if Genn had made it in time, Lordaeron would probably have fallen already and he would have been next on the list.
According to Chronicle Vol 3, the gilnean army does fought the Scourge in the Silverpines forest only to be crushed - and the Scourge wasn’t at his full might.
So even if the Gilneans had helped Lordaeron, it’s a given that they would have been defeated as well unless Arugal came to unleash the worgens.
Ultimately, what Genn did was the lesser evil. Otherwise Gilneas would have been wiped off the map by the Scourge.
So I would have preferred the devs to delay the patch in order to have a good experience.
But it was done in bad faith at nearly every level and i’m tired to explain why.
They just don’t care about the worgens.
And I think he could have stop the rest of Lordaeron from falling, or maybe make it so the Alliance itself wouldn’t have been in the state it was to allow the cult to get such a grip. With more people sharing the burden the people of Lordaeron might not have been so willing to go along with the cults.
Hell, maybe he could have convinced Stromgarde not to leave.
To be fair, it entirely depends on when Lordaeron called Gilneas for help.
As far as i remember, Genn turned away messengers from Lordaeron but when Lordaeron sent them to call for help? Before or at the point of no return?
Also regarding the state the Alliance of Lordaeron was… Gilneas had claims about Alterac’s access to sea and Genn tried to put Isiden Perenolde on the throne of Alterac.
Had he succeeded, he wouldn’t have left the Alliance, not build the Greymane wall and Alterac would have been another player against the Scourge.
Saying that Gilneas was responsible for everything would be forgeting that both Lordaeron, Kul Tiras and Stromgarde are equally responsible because of their own claim.
But in a very specific way… not jacked the same way a Sumo wrestler or Arnold Schwartzenegger in their prime. It’s really hard on female ballet dancers who have to be nimble but also light enough to be picked up by the waist.
A friend of mine was passionate about dancing ballet, but ultimately she had to admit that her frame was too large and heavy and she was one of the mosrt lithe and flexible people I ever knew.
That was due to Deathwing and presumably with him being forced to flee that issue was being resolved/or at least likely ended up resolved more peacefully.
The entire point of my “had he not built the wall” is had he actually left the Alliance, at all. That feels more like the theme of his reminiscing at Liam’s grave. That had he not built a physical and diplomatic wall then maybe the Alliance wouldn’t have weaken at all. Maybe events would have change so that the Scourge itself could never have gotten the grip it did.
The past is over, beyond reproach, it is the domain of the truly old and the dead. While the bronze flight might give one hope to go back and change that which is lamented, it can never be so.
The truly old speak of the past as if it is alive and force it upon the young who have only the lamentations of the truly old and recorded words of the dead to even know the past had existed at all.
Nothing the truly old do will ever undo the past and it will only harm the young. The young meanwhile have the future to look to because soon enough that will be their past and those who advance to become the truly old will perhaps repeat the cycle.
The truly old perhaps in some distant future will finally learn to let it go and move on, for the past is stone and soon enough dust in the wind.
My point isn’t so much the past can be change. It is that even Graymane himself now doubt that his choice was the right now. So I’m not sure why people are so sure that he did chose the right when maybe he himself admit that maybe things could have been better had he not walled off his city.
Gilneas would never have stoped the scourge, the scourge had already won by the time arthas and jaina were investigating it. Only dalaran’s magical prowess could had a chance to stop it and the mages were umprepared in their arrogance.
If anything they would be just giving more soldiers to the scourge.
The retread the scourge had while arthas was in northrend seemed all part of ner’zhul’s plan, cuz the moment arthas returned, the kingdom felled in a matter of days, The capital city in hours.
Genn was right in locking the kingdom, it was not an easy decision, but sometimes the right decision is a painful one. It was necessary to save the civil population and access the situation, imagine being a king while the third war was starting.
First: orcs were raiding the slave camps, the horde was moving to somewhere and at the time the kingdoms were all focused on it.
Second: a strange plague/disease was killing the most far and isolated villages, with apparently no comunications from those villages.
Third: undead were roaming the forests and starting to group up in hordes and raiding small towns.
4th: the king of kingdom next to mine was killed by his own son that now is rumored to be leading the undead.
How was Genn with information he had at the time not choose to close gilneas from lordaeron? Orcs, plague, undead and betrayal all at the same time in the lands next to his? Only an insane person would leave the gates open, and to let the gates.open is to invite doom to your own house.
Also equally funny is Quel’thalas did the exact same thing as Gilneas… only with Magic. They left the Alliance and built their magic shield wall and said screw the Alliance. And yet no one in the Alliance holds that against them, why is Gilneas the only one that gets crap for it?
Damn, when you put it that way it sounds kind of crappy. It’s like, “Yeah we know these other people did the same thing as you but they got what was coming to them! You didn’t! So you deserve to get hated!”