After watching the cinematics...

[h4rr0d]

Excellent post and I agree with everything that was said, except the part about Jaina being a hypocrite. While you are correct that she did the same thing, she also didn't know that the Horde were being overrun, and the Alliance cinematic sets it up this way. In her mind, she just thinks the Horde betrayed them and left, so she's not really a hypocrite.

It will be interesting to find out if Slyvanas eventually explains herself to the Alliance, and where they two factions go from there. Maybe she won't be able to...

Well, we know Jaina is a hypocrite back from MoP when she is all neutral neutral bla bla, then sides with Alliance by hiding the artifact in Darnassus and goes apeshift holocaust crazy bitch when her blood elf buddies help Horde. It's questionable if she realizes what happened there or not though.

[lightofdawn]

to all the people in the comments suddenly blaming the horde for what happened here, remember three things.

1: The horde was being attacked by far more than the alliance did. The alliance just had to deal with lots of demons on the ground. The horde on the other hand, was being bombarded by legion spaceships from the sky, on top of just as many demons on the ground as the alliance was. Its a miracle they held on for as long as they did. Do the horde version of the scenario if you don't believe me. The cinematic fails to show the giant spaceships blasting the shit out of our troops.

2: The alliance explicitly said that they needed the horde to provide air support in order for them to make their big push, and the only reason they sounded the retreat was because the horde couldn't provide said air support. Had the horde remained instead of retreating what would that accomplish? The horde would die down to the last man and woman, and the alliance is still without the horde providing air support, thus the alliance would have had to retreat anyways. The horde wouldn't have been able to provide support had they chose to sacrifice themselves, because again they were getting blasted from the sky by fucking spaceships. So its not like the horde would have been able to provide more than at best five seconds of cover fire before getting slaughtered.

3: Jaina is a fucking hypocrite for blaming the horde for what happened. She herself did the exact same thing that the horde did on the broken shore, the last time the legion invaded. She and her forces held archimonde on hyjal for as long as they could, but when they were overwhelmed, they sounded the retreat, and fled, rather than die pointlessly. Now she's giving shit to the horde, calling them dishonorable cowards, for doing what she herself did the last time the legion came a'knocking.

Have a good day.

also this, so much this

[Evilfish]

This point is entirely wrong.
She's not saying they're cowards for retreating. She thinks the Horde purposely left to let the Alliance die to the Legion. Jaina doesn't know that the Horde had to retreat because they were being overwhelmed.

If you did the Alliance side of the quests you'd know this.

Then she lives up to her stupidity in the past. Shame the Alliance isn't in the habit of punishing their idiots and incompetents cause Jaina and the wolfman would be long dead.

[DeltrusDisc]

As an ally, watch the horde cinematic bro.

On another note, Genns new model made me want to roll a worgen.

Yeah, it looked pretty solid, no joke.

Too bad any faction leader type model is pretty much off-limits to players.

[CountViceroy]

I'm sure this has already been covered but,

it's obviously staged this way to invoke faction resentment, which is fine, but it irks me that they had to disregard battle logic in the process which makes the whole thing come of as forced.

The horde and alliance are clearly able to talk to each other on the ridge, even during battle, as displayed by varian and sylvanas shouting at each other through out. Both also agreed on the strategy before hand with the horde protecting the alliance flank. Which makes it all the more annoying that the horde fail to simply inform the alliance that they are about to be overrun, nor are the alliance able to hear the horn blown signaling the retreat, convenient.

The alliance cinematic also intentionally displays the dark rangers retreating in a totally different way than was actually taking place at the time. Instead of the paniced rout they were actually in, they are shown of as "hahaha, you're stupid for trusting us, we're leaving you to die now, have fun!" which again makes the whole thing come of as extremly forced for the sake of.

[Shefu]

I'm gonna transfer to a PVP realm just to slaughter you fucking green skin fuckheads!

So you are mad that the Horde didn't sacrifice itself over nothing? oh ok then....enjoy your transfer

[Menzolies]

I'm gonna transfer to a PVP realm just to slaughter you fucking green skin fuckheads!

all I can say is LOL.

[Tinary]

The horde and alliance are clearly able to talk to each other on the ridge, even during battle, as displayed by varian and sylvanas shouting at each other through out. Both also agreed on the strategy before hand with the horde protecting the alliance flank. Which makes it all the more annoying that the horde fail to simply inform the alliance that they are about to be overrun, nor are the alliance able to hear the horn blown signaling the retreat, convenient.

The alliance cinematic also intentionally displays the dark rangers retreating in a totally different way than was actually taking place at the time. Instead of the paniced rout they were actually in, they are shown of as "hahaha, you're stupid for trusting us, we're leaving you to die now, have fun!" which again makes the whole thing come of as extremly forced for the sake of.

Actually, you can see Sylvanas and her archers getting killed at the beggining of the allaince cinematic. At 37 seconds in til 41 seconds (aka 4 seconds), you hear the horn but where is Sylvanas? Not on the ridge anymore, she went to the Vol'jin with her epic lvl 20 mount where she got ordered to "Not let the horde die", You see Genn searching for Sylvanas after he was ordered to get the Windrunners archers to clear the sky's. Tho, first freaking arial troops coming in after Sylvanas lost few of her archers to those bats and its all "Get them to clear the sky for us" while their mages and gnome with a mecha just sit there. Also, after the horn, they just sit around talk about "oh noes she wouldnt", "oh noes I knew we couldnt trust her" "Without the hord we be overrun, lets run milord" while they just wait there for some weird reason just looking at demons and not running. Then, king pay's for their mistakes and well, apparently now horde sucks cause alliance apparently has no tactical mind. Oh well, long live the horde.

Altho, Varian should have ended the spit with "For Azeroth" not with "For the Alliance" but well, Blizz wants horde vs ally war.

[arcaneshot]

The horde and alliance are clearly able to talk to each other on the ridge, even during battle, as displayed by varian and sylvanas shouting at each other through out. Both also agreed on the strategy before hand with the horde protecting the alliance flank. Which makes it all the more annoying that the horde fail to simply inform the alliance that they are about to be overrun, nor are the alliance able to hear the horn blown signaling the retreat, convenient.

Watch the Alliance cinematic again. They heard the Retreat horn, the one time Sylvanas used it.

What more do you want, a messenger pigeon? The Alliance knew exactly what that signal meant.

[Lannden]

Wow, this thread got savage. I'm going to say this is a lifelong alliance player, the horde didn't really do anything wrong and the sloppiness of the retreat both sides not just the horde. Both sides should have realized that retreating was a likely outcome and should have communicated the plan to each other, as far as we see as players there was no communicated retreat strategy, this falls on the leadership of both sides.

Furthermore, even if the retreat had been communicated better the outcome would have been the same. The difficulties the Alliance had retreating had nothing to do with the horde not being there to cover them and everything do with Gul'dan summoning that huge fel reaver, something the horde could have done nothing about. I guess it could be argued that the Horde could have helped Varian fight off the demons, but that would not have lasted long and would have more than likely have led to the horde being completely wiped out.

Finally, it wasn't cowardly for the horde to retreat at all. If the horde has stayed on that ridge they would have been wiped out, when it comes to the question of staying to fight and being wiped out, or retreating so you might be able to save the bulk of your force (including your secret weapons) strategy dictates that the answer is clear. The outcome with the fel reaver and Varian's death would be the same, but this time with the lion’s share of the horde gone. If anywhere here were leading that battle you would have also called for a retreat there or you would be a bad general.

tl;dr
The problems with the retreat had more to do with bad communication than cowardice and the outcome would have been the same or worse no matter what.

As an aside, does anyone else think it is odd that almost every race seems to have a lead from the front mentality? You would think that you would want the people who're both the generals of your army and the leaders of you nations to not be facing the world ending demons head on.

[Theoris]

tl;dr
The problems with the retreat had more to do with bad communication than cowardice and the outcome would have been the same or worse no matter what.

And the assault on the Broken Shore was a set-up by Detheroc disguised as Mathias Shaw to begin with, so nobody is at fault really.