Sylvanas' Genocide of the Night Elves

[Sylvaeres]

"Genocide" lol. Sorry NE players, you're characters getting deleted.

Genocide- the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

Excellent fail guy. Truly remarkable

[Ielenia]

Last I checked Arthas wasn't the Lich King during the campaign in Quel'thalas. And he actually killed 90% of the High Elves. Sylvanas killed 3 villages.

Give her time...

[iamthedevil]

Genocide- the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

Excellent fail guy. Truly remarkable

You may be a bit slowwwwwwww. I didn't think that comment had the possibility of going over anyone's head seeing as how direct of a joke it its.

Truly remarkable.

You also may want to get your full definitions in there if you are going to complain and not cherry pick things to fit your narrative.

"the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group "

Edit: I also just have to add that it's pretty funny that I can tell you had to google genocide and just copy pasted the first thing google suggested. A+.

[Martymark]

It's probably retaliation for the Alliance committing genocide on the Goblins in Silithis.

[LaserChild9]

According to Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/genocide

So how is destroying an enemy city of strategic and undeniable military value genocide?

I mean, you seem to have ignored most of that definition:

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part:
a national

The Night elves?

ethnical

The Night elves?

racial

The Night elves?

religious group

Sisterhood of Elune? (Also Night elves)

So to recap, as far as we know the burning of Teldrassil is done in a time of relative peace, the targets are (specifically) the Night elf race including the sisterhood of Elune. If it looks like Genocide and smells like genocide, can you guess what it probably is?

Of course we don't have all the facts and it could be a provoked attack, in which case you wouldn't really class it as genocide, in much the same way that if a person of another ethnicity punches you, its not racism to punch them back.

[Zulkhan]

The Night Elves have a religious caste + their homeland is the actual target = Sylvanas is somehow persecuting said religious caste to wipe it out. Top notch equation right there.

Go and check the meaning of the word intent. Soldiers falling in battle do not count as an intent to exterminate an ethnic, racial or religious group, nor taking or destroying their properties without considerable casualties.

[Deleted]

The Night Elves have a religious caste + their homeland is the actual target = Sylvanas is somehow persecuting said religious caste to wipe it out. Top notch equation right there.

Go and check the meaning of the word intent. Soldiers falling in battle do not count as an intent to exterminate an ethnic, racial or religious group, nor taking or destroying their properties without considerable casualties.

Burning Teldrassil is not going after soldiers. It's destroying the Nightelves' capital and main cultural centre which houses most of their civilians too. It also houses the only Temple of Elune on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms (it used to be the only one overall, when we didn't know about the one in Val'sharah) and it's own enclave of the Cenarion Circle, plus many of the survivors of Gilneas. Remember, they actually have a bigger part of Teldrassil for themselves and are a lot of people, mostly civilians, not only the few living in a tree shown ingame.
If the burning is not an accident or a setup it is indeed an attack on mostly civilian targets, not only from one race, but actually two. One of which have already lost their capital to Sylvanas once (but got most of their civilians out... to Darnassus).

[Mehrunes]

I mean, you seem to have ignored most of that definition:


The Night elves?

The Night elves?

The Night elves?

Sisterhood of Elune? (Also Night elves)

So to recap, as far as we know the burning of Teldrassil is done in a time of relative peace, the targets are (specifically) the Night elf race including the sisterhood of Elune. If it looks like Genocide and smells like genocide, can you guess what it probably is?

Of course we don't have all the facts and it could be a provoked attack, in which case you wouldn't really class it as genocide, in much the same way that if a person of another ethnicity punches you, its not racism to punch them back.

Yeah, no, that's not how this works. First of all, the most important part of the definition is the intent to destroy. Secondly, all the other parts you latched onto have to be part of the intent. You need to have the intent to destroy someone because of their nationality, race, ethnicity or religion. If it worked the way you butchered it, every event in which someone died would be genocide because every single person is a member of a national, racial, ethnic and religious group. So no, it doesn't look like a genocide, nor does it smell like a genocide. @tkioz is 100% right. Don't correct people on something you have a negative amount of a clue about. What makes this even more laughable is that all of this is right there in the page that was linked in the post you quoted.

[Aquamonkey]

What the Horde and Alliance did to the Scourge is closer to genocide.

[NatePsy]

Silly OP, it's only genocide when Garrosh does it, Sylvanas did no wrong apparently

[Zulkhan]

Burning Teldrassil is not going after soldiers.

Soldiers falling in battle do not count as an intent to exterminate an ethnic, racial or religious group, nor taking or destroying their properties without considerable casualties

It's destroying the Nightelves' capital and main cultural centre which houses most of their civilians too

Which is still irrelevant unless said civilians are still occupying their houses the moment Teldrassil went kaboom, something Anduin's speech pre-siege of Lordaeron disproves.

It also houses the only Temple of Elune on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms

Which, again, doesn't count on the context of the intent, it would be nothing more but collateral damage. Destroying a temple hardly counts as genocide if you don't also care about wiping out the religious order itself.

No one ever argued that burning Teldrassil wouldn't be a massive blow to Night Elf civilization and culture (even though not a crippling one I would say, considered how said civilization lived for several millennia without it) but so far nothing really indicates the intent of ethnically cleansing Night Elves out of the globe.

[Deleted]

Which is still irrelevant unless said civilians are still occupying their houses the moment Teldrassil went kaboom, something Anduin's speech pre-siege of Lordaeron disproves.



Which, again, doesn't count on the context of the intent, it would be nothing more but collateral damage. Destroying a temple hardly counts as genocide if you don't also care about wiping out the religious order itself.

No one ever argued that burning Teldrassil wouldn't be a massive blow to Night Elf civilization and culture (even though not a crippling one I would say, considered how said civilization lived for several millennia without it) but so far nothing really indicates the intent of ethnically cleansing Night Elves out of the globe.

Well, that's true. If Sylvanas indeed does this (which at this point is probable but not actually confirmed) she does it to seriously harm Nightelven and by extension Alliance presence in Kalimdor, not because she thinks she can wipe the Nightelves and Gilneans off the face of Azeroth with it.
The only thing I can't see as disproven yet is that there will indeed be lots of civilian casualties, because Anduin talks only about their homes. I simply can't imagine how Teldrassil can burn at all and if it does it has to come as a surprise. There's several smaller cities and one capital city plus the Worgen enclave there, additionally treants, ancients, wisps and whatnot, they can't evacuate all of this in time. This exodus, from the top of a burning tree none the less, would take weeks.

So I guess I do agree that, while it's going to be a devastating attack (the real extent of which remains to be seen), the intent is not genocide. But I don't think the Gilneans are going to believe that ^^

[Slyme]

Burning Teldrassil to the ground makes Garrosh look lame in comparison IMO, maybe i played to much SWTOR recently but i like playing as the bad guys in a video game, not sure why people wanna paint the horde as saints, i'm a horde player and i'm totally fine with them being the bad guys.

[Niaraa]

Ah, no at that point she actually still stopped herself from being exactly like Arthas. She let Lorna live and didn't turn her, though she could have.
That's not to say there's no reason to hate her, especially for Gilneans, but she was not being like Arthas at that point.

sometime she is not and you realy want to trust her. sometime she is for example at the battle for Andhoral Horde side, you have to kill human peasants rise them as forsaken with a val'kyr and send them against their former humans friends what is the difference with the scourge strategy? in bonus she imprison Koltiras because he fraternize with Tassarian...so yeaah forsaken can have free will... until that's match with Sylvanas plans. but she will not the only character who will act like this Jaina in BfA look merciless and full of anger.

- - - Updated - - -

What the Horde and Alliance did to the Scourge is closer to genocide.

it was! we want to destroy the scourge entirely, wipe it out of the surface of azeroth so yeah this is genocide. the burning of Teldrassil not. nobody know how things will happen for Darnassus. maybe the war started in regular way and the Goblin/Sylvanas or random Horde general want to try this brand new Azerite without a clue of the power and consequenses, imo it was a test

[Deleted]

sometime she is not and you realy want to trust her. sometime she is for example at the battle for Andhoral Horde side, you have to kill human peasants rise them as forsaken with a val'kyr and send them against their former humans friends what is the difference with the scourge strategy? in bonus she imprison Koltiras because he fraternize with Tassarian...so yeaah forsaken can have free will... until that's match with Sylvanas plans. but she will not the only character who will act like this Jaina in BfA look merciless and full of anger.

I would not trust her, not even back in Cata and not even when she didn't turn Lorna. I ran around Undercity and Hillsbrad in Vanilla enough to see what's going on. From a Forsaken perspective: yea, to hell with all the others, let the Banshee Queen do with them what she wants. But from the perspective of any other race: uh..nope, leave her alone and get the heck out of her way. I understand perfectly why any human would hate her.

What I wanted to say was, that she wasn't like Arthas/the LK back at that point in Cata. I'm not sure if she hasn't gone a little further since then, because it may be that she sees her acts of mercy have so far failed and come back to haunt her. (Which is the case with almost all acts of mercy so far in WoW^^)

And yes, Jaina is kind of still on an edge there, but we'll see where i goes, just as we will see with Sylvanas. If Blizz do it right, both Jaina and Sylvanas may get a really interesting story, especially because they are so 'shady' at the moment. I just hope it won't be the raidboss-story. >.<

[schwank05]

I am all for it I say we murder and wipe out every non Horde Race on Kalimdor, move the Alliance to EK and we get Kalimdor all to ourselves.

[Mehrunes]

sometime she is not and you realy want to trust her. sometime she is for example at the battle for Andhoral Horde side, you have to kill human peasants rise them as forsaken with a val'kyr and send them against their former humans friends what is the difference with the scourge strategy? in bonus she imprison Koltiras because he fraternize with Tassarian...so yeaah forsaken can have free will... until that's match with Sylvanas plans. but she will not the only character who will act like this Jaina in BfA look merciless and full of anger.

You're conflating lack of free will with imprisonment. Koltira was a traitor, he was imprisoned for that. That didn't rob him of his free will. And raising people is as much as of a Scourge strategy as it is Odyn strategy. The difference between Sylvanas and the Lich King is that she didn't enslave those peasants. Once their blood frenzy wore off they were given the choice to join.

[TheFirstOnes]

*Eats Popcorn*

Only a matter of time until we know why Sylvanas burns Teldrassil.

[Niaraa]

You're conflating lack of free will with imprisonment. Koltira was a traitor, he was imprisoned for that. That didn't rob him of his free will. And raising people is as much as of a Scourge strategy as it is Odyn strategy. The difference between Sylvanas and the Lich King is that she didn't enslave those peasants. Once their blood frenzy wore off they were given the choice to join.

they was under the mind control of the val'kyr the all time. and if Sylvanas suffer so much for being rise as an undead why she do that to other she perfecly know they will suffer forver for this. and Odyn? ok at this point of time nobody know this guy exist. and Koltira a traitor we can discuss about it! but i don't think he tried to help the alliance or Tassarian he gave time for both side to recover and have an honorable final battle. but an Sylvanas don't give a shit about honor and friendship only the result count regardless of the maner.

[Aquamonkey]

they was under the mind control of the val'kyr the all time.

Why do some Alliance soldiers raised by the Forsaken immediately become loyal to the Forsaken while others do not? Are they being mind controlled? If so, by whom - Sylvanas or the Val'kyr? How does this relate to the fact that the Forsaken cultural identity is based on their free will and rebellion against the Lich King?
Free will is one of the cornerstones of Forsaken culture, with the great capacity for both good and evil that it entails. However, some undead, especially those who die in combat or under extreme stress and are raised soon after, enter into a violent, frenzied state. Undead in this state are easily manipulated and their rage is often directed at the foes of those who raised them. After the effects wear off, if the risen corpse has not been destroyed, they are given the same ultimatum that other Forsaken are offered: join the Dark Lady or return to the grave. (AskCDev3)

and if Sylvanas suffer so much for being rise as an undead why she do that to other she perfecly know they will suffer forver for this.

Because Sylvanas doesn't see it as a curse anymore... did you miss Cata? If those undead don't like it, they can quit.

For someone so bent out of shape over mind-slaving undead minions, you seem to forget that all DKs do this.

and Koltira a traitor we can discuss about it! but i don't think he tried to help the alliance or Tassarian he gave time for both side to recover and have an honorable final battle. but an Sylvanas don't give a shit about honor and friendship only the result count regardless of the maner.

It's a war. Koltira aided the enemy. That's treason.