There isn’t really a whole lot different between a Dark Ranger and a Hunter. Dark Rangers are basically just undead hunters with creepy pets and shadow magic. I think that’s what I like about Hero Talents. They give Blizzard the ability to add in class fantasies that players have been asking for, but aren’t really extensive enough to fill an entire Class / Spec tree.
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Not a very special one. Armies raze cities in the WoW universe all the time. As soon as Darnassus was taken out of the picture, the Alliance brought siege engines to Undercity. You see, the only thing keeping the Alliance from leveling UC, was Darnassus.
I feel like you are ignoring the very statements you are arguing against to make your predetermined talking points. The text equivalent of not actually listening, but instead just waiting for your turn to talk. The point was not to kill people. The point, was to shock living people. The tree was the target. The people were permitted to evacuate before the decision was even made to burn the tree. It was a salted earth kind of thing. It was a defaced statue. It was a burned down Solomon’s Temple. It was the destruction of an irreplaceable cultural landmark. It wasn’t genocide no matter how many times you say it.
The story literally has them check in multiple times on the progress of the evacuation. He was surprised they were burning the tree and the people left inside. It was certainly a mass murder but mass murder is not new for the universe and it certainly wasn’t the first time our characters participated in it.
Erevien, a LOT of content is created for each expansion but not all of it get the green light into the game or up in the current content.
Devs are powerless too, specially when the high ups are dead set on what THEY want to see in-game, even when “advise” that it wont go well with the players (or current audience or consumer in game at X time). That’s what AAA companies are suffering from IMO nowadays a lot of amazing talent but being lead by a lot of out of touch people with TONS of power and influence in the decision making. (I speculate from my limited experience working with devs and having dev friends, it’s not like I know anything lol)
I don’t know about “permitted,” because the burning happened pretty much as soon as Delaryn surrendered. But evacuation had certainly been going on.
Let’s address the problems with this argument.
First, saying a bad thing has happened before does not make said bad thing okay. Even if there were tons of examples of genocidal wiping out of civilians, it wouldn’t make what Sylvanas did not a war crime.
Second, no cities full of civilians are not wiped out “all the time.” Yes, cities have been wiped out. But, not really that often.
And third, every single time it has happened it has been called a atrocity. The closest example would be when the scourge destroyed Lordaeron. Which I hardly think is the precedent you want to use.
Go back and read what you wrote. I don’t think you thought that out very well.
How does the Alliance bringing siege engines to Undercity prove the Alliance would have leveled Undercity without Darnassus because Darnassus was gone. And, even with Darnassus gone the Alliance still didn’t level Undercity. So, again, go back and think that through.
Also, siege engines are not used for leveling cities. That is not how they work. They are designed for breaking and/or getting past enemy defensive fortifications.
No, the point WAS to kill people. You don’t burn a city full of undefended civilians you already have control of unless you intend to kill people.
No they weren’t. They were not given time, the questing made that VERY, VERY clear. That was the whole point of the hopeless save civilians quest. Being able to save only a very small fraction in the time allotted was to reinforce that.
Yes it was. It was literally an attempt, mostly successful, to kill the entire population of a region. (Teldrassil was more than just one city.) There really isn’t another way to describe that.
To compare it to a…
Is just mind boggling.
I think you have it mixed up with Undercity. Undercity was evacuate prior to the conflict, Teldrassil was not. And there were Horde quests checking on the evacuation of Undercity. But that didn’t happen with Tedrassil.
I really just don’t get how you missed what happened with Tedrassil. The loss of all the Night Elf lives was a MAJOR plot point in that patch and the entire expansion following the patch. And the expac following that one. Your head cannon idea that the city was evacuated and it was only the tree has no basis in facts.
Re-read AGW and Ellegy. I get tired of copy pasting the same quotes for 5 years.
I have read them. There is nothing in them that suggests the population was completely, or even mostly evacuated. Quite the opposite in fact.
In fact, I think you need to go back and reread them because you missed a TON.
Here are some relevant passages from Elegy:
Seem like evacuation was allowed to you?
Greatest mass incremation sounds totally like something that you described as something that happens “all the time.”
Seems totally like evacuation was allowed, right?
Oh look, Elegy called it genocide.
More than a city. Countless innocents. Oh, and called it a genocide again.
They tried to evacuate the city. Tried being the operative word. Sylvanas didn’t give time. She burned the tree practically as soon as she could. The only evacuation was a panicked rush as fire consumed more than a city, and entire land. One that only saved a very small percentage of the people.
How about from the other perspective, let’s check A good war:
Do you think that fits your evacuation of everyone narrative?
And then there is your ‘strategic reasons’ narrative:
Strategic, right?
Again, not a situation of evacuation. Even Saurfang knew it was citizens being consumed.
Did you even read the the stories even once? Nobody who actually read them could seriously believe that the tree was evacuated, or even close to it. Nobody who read them could actually believe that the loss of life was a later refrain of the story. So, either you have never read them or you are trying to rewrite history. I strongly suspect the latter.
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Yeah. I know. I’ve been referencing that this whole time. You know Golden wrote ELEGY right?
maybe i’m remembering a bug more than the prepatch event, but my memory is that alliance players were given a quest objective to rescue darnassians with, like, an impossibly high quota, ‘1/956 civilians saved’ or something, which just drove the point home of how not-evacuated it was
I’ didn’t say “the loss of life was a reframe” I said “The loss of life being the point was a reframe.” The point was to take the World Tree, mostly evacuated. That was the goal.
"The Sentinels were not surrendering. Even as a tide of Horde flooded Darkshore, they fought on, trading their lives to give the civilians of Teldrassil every chance to evacuate.
Sylvanas had no objection. More dead enemies? Fewer prisoners? They were doing her a favor. "
She didn’t want the sentinels to live and she didn’t want the civilians to stay.
Furthermore, EVEN GOLDEN (while describing it as a genocide) describes refugees filling the homes of Stormwind, spilling into the streets and out the gates into Goldshire. Remember. This is Stormwind after the war against the Legion. There are so many evacuees that Stormwind (even with the unrealistic generosity of her people) cannot contain them. EVEN Golden, can’t resist the urge to describe the successful heroism and expertise of the Alliance evacuation effort.
I get it. Victimhood complex is cool these days. It would be great if the Night Elves survived, but then you’d lose that sweet sweet victimhood. But then… They did Survive, when convenient. Unless pity is needed, then they were genocided.
Yes, I know she wrote it. I know there is this weird hate on anything Golden said is popular, her writing it doesn’t make it wrong.
And you called out Elegy as proving your point, yet you pick and choose what to accept. That says more about you then Golden.
That is correct. The quest was called “A Flicker of Hope.” And it was 982, with a 3 min timer. If you got 50 you were doing REALLY good. You got a failed message and woke up in the temple, which was on fire, after that 3 mins.
Yep.
That was also not a reframe. You don’t spend so much time in quests and stories highlighting the loss of life if that is not the point.
That was Saurfang’s plan. Not what Sylvanas was after.
Otherwise, when it was “only innocents remain” she would have waited. Otherwise she would have allowed Saurfang to move in and capture the city, as was his plan. If they only wanted to destroy the tree they could have waited. Sylvanas didn’t wait because she wanted to kill them. The death was always the point of burning the tree.
Let me quote again:
Even a fraction of that population is going to strain an already populated city. The fact that Stormwind could even absorb them for a time tells you how few there were. Keep in mind, Darnassus was about the same size as Stormwind and that doesn’t even include the surrounding areas. Add in the refugees from Ashenvale and Darkshore to the Teldrassil refugees and you would be talking about more than doubling Stormwinds population overnight.
Let’s put some real world comparisions. NYC has population a bit under 9 million. What do you think even dropping in 5% of that as refugees would do. Do you think NYC could absorb near 450,000 refugees? Any idea what that would do to the city? For comparison the refugee limit in the entire US is 125,000.
When you really think about it, if only 5-10% of all Night Elves from Teldrassil survived Stormwind would be considered EXTREMLY generous by taking them in.
Says the guy trying portray the Horde as victims of Blizzard reframing a story to make it look worse.
Look, all the evidence is pretty clear. Sylvanas committed a massive atrocity, intentionally killing nearly every Night Elf in Teldrassil. It is that simple. That is the fact. It was clear at the time. It has been confirmed since. While you can try to rewrite history, the evidence is against you.
982 is not nearly every night elf and more than likely not a huge percentage of the population, but at the same time the surviving refugees are said to stretch out beyond the city confines. It is just an example of blizzard having their cake and eating it too. A cartoon “Genocide” without any actual substance.
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i mean the number almost definitely isn’t supposed to be indicative of the actual population of darnassus, it’s supposed to cement the sense of futility in the player.
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Its also incredibly dumb how the apparently the entire population crammed into one tree, but also could still overunn stormwind
It’s not that her writing it makes it wrong. It’s that I have consistently criticized her use of that word since ELEGY came out. It’s Godwin’s law for this franchise. People like you think it’s an instant win button. As soon as someone throws it out there the debate is over. I don’t have any patience for it. It’s a powerful word that is also nebulous. It is like poisonous tofu. It tastes like whatever you want, but it taints the interaction.
It’s not the horde. It’s anyone who was interested in seeing where the story was intended to go.
I’m not horde. Not even a horde main. I’m a consumer and a hobbyist. I started a story. That story had a very predictable direction (Something resembling illidan or Kerrigan especially considering that Blizzard was adamant that it would not resemble Garrosh). People who identify very strongly with one side or another were very vocal on the internet and Blizzard changed direction. Blizzard decided on Sylvanas’ final motivation so late in the narrative that they had to have it explained in act three via a quick novel written by… Christie Golden. Prior to that, her motivations for burning the world tree and going to war were not to kill as many people as possible. Again, if that were the case why evacuate Undercity?
That is not what is happening. It was literally a genocide attempt.
Calling this ‘Godwins law’ is like saying a discussion of WW2 is Godwin’s law.
Blizzard told us what it was.
It really isn’t as nebulous as you claim.
Definition:
the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
The majority of Night Elf population was in Teldrassil. It was an attempt to kill that group, and it had the aim of destroying that nation. It fits.
You have zero evidence for that claim. None.
Considering the development cycle we do actually know that Shadowlands was already in the works when BfA was released. That means that when this was all happening they already knew what they were doing in Shadowlands. They already had that path laid out. Everything we know about how Blizzard develops things says they didn’t change directions in act 3. They had that planned before BfA started.
Because those were her troops and resources. Ones that were, for the most part, fanatically loyal to her. They were her supply lines and support. She was not about to throw away her most loyal group until she no longer had use for them. She would have lost the war MUCH earlier without them, so she was correct in keeping them.
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Maybe they just really wanted to cash in on that Daenerys Immediate Heel Turn cred. That thing everyone absolutely loved.
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iirc the reason for this is she intended every else except the forsaken to die and have them inherit azeroth
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Which would have ALSO been cool, and consistent with EVERYTHING WE KNOW FROM VANILLA.
But that’s not “cause as much death as possible, feeding souls to the maw to empower Zovaal”
No one can convince me that was the original plan.
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