That’s the general case for characters in this setting, though. Sylvanas is shown being a credible threat, but a single bullet to her head in Silverpine Forests questing has her killed instantly. Everyone’s a glass canon when the writers feel like tapping them that way.
Thank you for taking the time to go back and read through my post. Your point has been brought up a few times by various posters, yes, and I don’t mean to discourage that. I just wanted to point out that the current situation is that Malfurion and Tyrande are at Darkshore now, so they do counter the Horde’s resources currently stationed at Darkshore, key being since Sylvanas is not at Darkshore right now to support the Horde.
That’s not set in stone, and could change with Patch 8.2 and beyond, just that’s the situation we have in the lore currently was what was my answer to the question you posed in this thread.
The Horde conquered Ashenvale in part one of the War of Thorns, and the novela makes it clear the Night Elves pretty much lost everything there, including so many of their civilians going militia resistance that it looked like the Horde massacred the major towns. The fact that the Horde is also sending supplies to and from Darkshore via land route, also means Ashenvale is under Horde control, since there is no other territory around Darkshore they could be coming from.
Like others have pointed out as well, the Horde bases in Darkshore aren’t being developed into towns their set up more less as central stronghold overseeing resource extraction. Those resources logically have to be going somewhere, and using them to fortify Ashenvale makes the most sense.
Darkshore likewise means little to the Horde on Kalimdor, while Ashenvale is the territory they’ve been pinning over since their landing on Kalimdor, and is too close to the Horde Capital. The close proximity to Ogrimmar also means that unseating the Horde now that we have control over Ashenvale won’t be as easy as taking back a strip of beach on the far coast of Kalimdor.
Horde keeping Ashenvale and Night Elves winning Darkshore is the best answer here, where Night Elves get their rawr were fierce fighters who retook Darkshore moment, while the Horde/Slyvanas still get to hang their hat on, at long last we’ve secured the lands that will ensure the full bellies and prosperity of the Horde on Kalimdor for generations to come.
Blizzard shouldn’t have to spell out basic logic to you, like if the Horde is reinforcing Darkshore via land, they obviously control a land path to Darkshore.
Orcs/Horde viewing Ashenvale as the solution to their resource and farmland problems isn’t head cannon either.
The Night Elf population dying in mass defending Ashenvale is right there in the Novella and they even used it to try and demoralize the Horde by making it look like we massacred everybody.
The elves leaving Zoramgar to be reclaimed by nature is also in the Novella, as its still standing but overgrown.
Yes they won the battles in Ashenvale but they didn’t actually stop there they continued on to Darkshore. It’s quite clear in the game that they set up camp in Darkshore.
That’s exactly the point. Their strongholds are in Darkshore not Ashenvale. Those strongholds were secure but now they are outnumbered as told by the horde quest giver. Even if they are pulling resources from Ashenvale they are transporting them to the warfront or back to Orgimmar for the war effort. It Ashenvale was so securely held that did have had additional troops to send to Darkshore. But once again as told by the horde quest giver, those strongholds have yet to be reinforced. Their outnumbered and their soilders are in Darkshore. The elves win that and Ashenvale is taken too.
How many soilders do you actually think are still in Ogrimmar? Not enough to take on the Night Elf army and with their fighters and weapons out in the battle fields they can’t bulldoze their way through the forset like that did last time, and that was costly for them. They had the elves outnumbered 8 to 1 and still took major casualties. Not to mention it’s not like that the horde army can get back fast enough to really turn the tide, the Zandalari fleet is gone.
Wait, what? In Ashenvale they killed silve citizens and some soldiers but they didn’t hit every base. Oh and Sylvanas even confirms in the book that even though they will win she’d loss more fighters than the elves would, which happened.
It’s not happening stop reaching. They is no way they are even going to attemp to fight the elves in Ashenvale. The only reason it worked last tine is because they had the numbers and elements in surprise. Garrosh had to bring in gigantic beasts to help him and that is not an option the currently have.
That you’ve moved on to the groundless fantasy that the Night Elves and Worgen will solo their way through Orgrimmar there is more proof your are the one reaching. The rest of your premises for Ashenvale are also based on the Alliance winning an Annihilating victory in Darkshore, but the fact that its a Warfront and not just a quest chain says the battle is far closer than that
Your also ignoring that since part of the Horde force is merely former Night Elf soldiers turned to our side in undeath our depletion of forces no matter how the Warfront reasonably ends is limited.
Delaying actions are also quite a thing in battle/war strategy and Slyvanas is no stranger to it.
Your also forgetting that during the War of Thorns the Horde had no option, but to constantly press the attack, as fast as we could, since the invasion was a timing attack. Strategies that rely on speed are rarely ones that minimize your casualties. The Night Elves had the advantage of controlling the zone and towns, last time instead of being the invader.
I think this is the part that they get wrong though. The guerilla tactics were probably used in Ashenvale. The Horde won, but with great difficulty. So they’d probably do it again
Come now. Desanvos acts like the old world revamp never happened and he doesn’t know Garrosh’s Horde never actually was able to hold any of the ground it tried to take, and that in A Good War Saurfang and Sylvanas don’t calculate Tyrande alone to worth half the size of the army they had amassed.
Lewd and unbecoming of a statement that this is, if Night Elf fans are circle jerk fans, Anti-Night Elf fans are just sitting around trying to jerk off harder, faster, and louder as if all they want to do is shout out “I can ignore things even more than you can!”
War of Thorns also proved your gods elves are quite mortal, and yet again War of Thorns was calculated based on can the Horde win before Stormwind can send reinforcements to stifle the blitz. Let alone that if Tyrande herself could have turned the battle she wouldn’t have stayed in Stormwind.
Hold on a minute. Not once at any point during this exchange did I ever say or imply that the Night Elves would move on Orgimmar, that’s just stupid. I mentioned the number of soilders there in reference to them being able to be sent to Ashenvale or Darkshore to back up their allies to help turn the tide of the fight.
The horde will absolutely try and hold out with the blight and other tactical options but the deck is stacked.
Those are a small number of fighters in comparison to other soilders the horde have there.
First off, your opening statement is crude. Secondly, it is true that the elves have been underrepresented. That however has nothing to do with this. It’s pretty much a accepted that they were accurately represented in the War of Thorns and the current warfront.
Now back to the main issue, think about why the Horde is in Darkshore not Ashenvale. Darkshore is literally the entrance to Ashenvale and if that border isn’t secure the elves can walk right in. The horde already have the barrens and Azshara with what forces aren’t deployed so there is no reason to set up another base in Ashenvale, it’s Darkshore that needs to be locked down. With Darkshore reclaimed Ashenvale won’t be an issue. The horde won’t want to take them on in that forest as they have never been able to successfully beat them there on their own. Garrosh needed the beats and in War of Thorns while it was just the horde, they had the element of surprise, they had to move quick and had 8 times the number of soilders and still took massive casualties, but they did win. They are not going to try that again, they can’t afford to. Not after losing Darkshore. They only option is to try and burn or blight the forest so no one can have it.
This should have been their plan after burning Teldrassil. Like I said, if Teldrassil was originally their main target, what use is there in staying in Darkshore? Resources? They should have double-timed the deforestation and blighting and just left. There’d be no skirmish, the Night elf morale would be even lower than it is now, and if they were lucky, the Kaldorei would have pushed out into the Barrens in a rage.
The use of staying there has to be to secure what they think will be the border of their new territory. Had Sylvanas not burned the tree they could have moved to gatgering resources but instead they had to prepare for the evacuation and defense of Lorderon and the war that they all knew was coming afterwards.
If they continued with the blighting and tried to hit all of Darkshore I have to wonder if that would have eventually spread to Ashenvale compromising it resources.
It will most likely end, it is too expensive to really develop for two factions anymore, I wager. With the old gods coming, this could give blizzard the much needed excuse to obliterate both factions and leave us with a system much like eorzea in ffxiv, where city states that have had a history of conflict with each other unite and take on contrived big baddies and other such nonsense. This has been hinted even through the thousand needles questline with the gnome/goblin ship. Which is an old questline.
Godfrey’s bullet to the back of Sylvanas’ dome says, “Hello.”
This was explicitly stated in A Good War:
Saurfang and Sylvanas had discussed strategy and tactics for days, and it had become clear that there were two huge, inescapable points of failure in their plan: Malfurion Stormrage and Tyrande Whisperwind. The leaders of the night elves were powerful, dangerous, and perhaps even unbeatable on the field of battle. No matter how surprised the kaldorei would be by this attack, those two would be a terror for the Horde once the fighting began. They had lived for so long, and survived so much, that Saurfang had to consider the possibility that they could hold off the Horde long enough for the Alliance to send help.
…
Tyrande Whisperwind was planning to remain in Stormwind for weeks to construct a long‐term strategy for dealing with the Horde’s strange movements. She had already left Darnassus. It was the perfect time to strike.
But for some reason, the warchief was hesitating.
“You wanted to launch the attack in three weeks, High Overlord,” she said.
“That was when I believed we needed to handle Tyrande and Malfurion. Now we only need to contain one of them,” he replied. “We’ll have a few less soldiers ready for the fight, but we’ll still outnumber the night elves—eight‐to‐one instead of twelve‐to‐one.”
Sylvanas considered that. “What stops Tyrande from rushing right back to battle? Moving an army from Stormwind in a blink is not possible. Moving a single creature is much easier,” she said darkly.
It was possible, Saurfang knew, but not likely. “How many innocent lives will Tyrande sacrifice to kill a few of our soldiers?” he asked. “That is the question she will face. She will not know of the attack until it has begun. By the time Stormwind makes sense of it, it will be clear that we will overrun Darnassus. Tyrande can slow us down by joining the battle after we’ve already made major strides into their territory, or she can use her power to speed up the evacuation and heal the wounded. If she does not believe she can stop us, there’s no choice to make. She will save her people.”
It was Sylvanas specifically who was worried that Tyrande could come back and turn everything around. Which she has with the Darkshore Warfront.