Is the attack on teldrassil really that unjustified?

[Steampunkette]

http://www.wowhead.com/quest=40794/f...ueens-reprisal

They had intel suggesting Sylvanas was there to steal power for herself. Greymane still hadn't gotten justice for the death of his son, he went and got it.

His "Justice" was a war crime, an assassination attempt of a foreign head of state, cost the lives of uncounted Forsaken, Gilnean, Gnome, Dwarven, and Human soldiers, and the destruction of materials and equipment that were meant to be used to fight the Burning Legion.

Justice my ass. Dude had a vendetta, abused his position of power, and got a slap on the wrist for doing it. Anduin gave him a "Talking to"

No she didn't, she was just trying to save those who already wanted to leave. People should be allowed to leave if they want to.

Defection. Not "Leave if they want to". They were defecting to the Alliance in an apparent Coup attempt by Anduin to use Calia Menethil as a figurehead to start a Civil War in the Undercity to install a puppet he could manipulate (When Sylvanas made her decision). And then Calia threw off her hood and -actually- tried to sway the Desolate Council to follow -her-, instigating that coup. She even admits it at the end of Before the Storm and gets... gasp! A Talking-To from Anduin.

Did you read the book or are you just going off of people's arguments on the forums?

Parqual, the Felstones, and others were traitors betraying their people during a cease-fire. They knew the punishment for their crime was death because it has happened, before, that defectors tried to break their oath of service to Sylvanas and join the Alliance.

Given that we don't know the canon quest order for that zone, it's entirely possible that it was retaliation for the Horde player killing the SI:7 agents at the command of the leader of the miners. The Horde quest says the spies were just "snoopin around", which strongly suggests no hostilities had taken place yet.

The SI;7 Agents bring Azerite to Shaw and Anduin before the Alliance Player gets to Silithus. Which means they got it from the Miners they were spying on. There's no crates of Azerite lying around for the spies to steal it out of. Wonder where they got it...

Nah, seriously, in the first chapter of Before the Storm, Anduin gets the rock from Shaw. Orders him to get all his best men on it. Basically it's the cutscene straight from Legion but longer. Sylvanas doesn't have her interaction with Gallywix until chapter 3. Everything in the rest of the book is presented as occurring in chronological order, including the jarring "Jump Cuts" during the Arathi Highlands sequence where the narrative's focus keeps changing from Anduin to Sylvanas to Calia. There's no reason to believe that the rest of the book isn't, also, in Chronological order.

Which means the Alliance started killing goblins before the Horde retaliated.

[MrSaggins]

Blockade is not a long term solution. It draws alot of resources when you can just take over the place.

A blockade is a take over - of the sea. Essentially a siege upon a port, and yes, that requires resources but so does a garrison to occupy a city of excellent guerilla warriors. They still need to be armed and fed. Does the Horde navy run on oil like in WoD? Is oil scarce on Azeroth? Do carbon blankets heat up the world soul? They only need to buy enough time to get a significant military advantage with Azerite, and then use the Azerite to keep it.

[Aeula]

It’s perfectly justified, it’s a chance to remove an enemy from next door and claim their resources and city. It’s a chance to cripple the Alliance and hold a nation hostage.

It just went wrong somehow and the tree burnt rather than remained standing with a Horde flag waving from the highest branch.

[MrSaggins]

Because of the scope of the war's intent (To push the Alliance off of Kalimdor) the decision to initiate it can be justified... The scope of the resulting war, however, is of course unjustifiable.

You're my favorite.

[MechaCThun]

One day people will stop arguing/flaming/ad hominem attacking over reasons for a fictional conflict in a fictional story...

...and just wait to experience it when it comes out to know for sure.

Assumptions and postulations, HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Fenderxx]

War is seldom moral, and seldom justified - I was just mentioning that the original campaign wasn't meant to mercilessly kill or slaughter civilians or anything of the like, it was a purely strategic move on the part of the Horde to cause political harm to the Alliance's interests in Kalimdor. Without knowing how or why Teldrassil burns I'm loathe to blame it on the Horde, per se; it certainly *could* prove to be their fault, or it could be entirely some other party's fault depending on what actually occurs.

I totally hear what you are saying, and that is kinda a flaw in my statement.. is war moral or justified? Really it's just fun to think about. I currently play Horde and I want to view my side as the good guys, and the Alliance as bad.. and maybe I am having trouble in doing that? I am very curious to see how everything goes down. Maybe it would be more fair to say the Horde are acting as the aggressors in this new conflict? Obviously seeded in a much larger conflict between these two factions.

[Deleted]

While the Horde have had plenty of reason to attack the Allaince in a perfectly justifiable war between MOP and now, they didn't. So while I see your point it's still a dick move to suddenly launch an Invasion.

Also let's not forget that Theramore was perfectly vaild target as well and nearly entirely Jaines fault it is a vaild target. Yet we still hear about the evils of the Horde years later. So regardless it'll go down as a war crime.

[Steampunkette]

You are going to have to explain that to me because from the very moment you talk to Blightcaller they want every Alliance that could possibly see it dead. Meanwhile on Alliance they want someone who can survive impossible odds and get out alive.

And if you are trying to defend it as them just protecting themselves from the big evil Alliance then every single bad thing the Alliance has ever done would be justified as well.

The context being the full order of events in the book that you're ignoring in favor of cherry-picking several events out of a long chain and presenting them as being side-by-side rather than being out of sequence.

I literally explained the larger context in my previous post.

And nah, Froggy. It doesn't work like that at all. See, there's this thing called The Balance of Power. It's a sociological phenomenon between powerful political and military entities where their martial might is similar in strength. Chris Metzen at Blizzcon 2013 stated that the Alliance was the last remaining Superpower on Azeroth. This means that the Horde? They're in a weaker position than the Alliance. They can't win a straight up bare-knuckle war against the Alliance because they don't have the power to do so.

Azerite -further- destabilizes the imbalance of power. The Horde are already significantly weaker than the Alliance who flatly states that it's not intending to offer Peace in Before the Storm. If the Alliance also has control of Azerite through Darnassus, it becomes even -more- powerful than the Horde than it already is, and they've got several people in positions of power who want the Horde dead to the last.

The Alliance can't defend themselves against the "Big Evil Horde" because the Horde -isn't- big. The threat that the Horde poses isn't a big one. The threat the Alliance poses is fucking immense. And nah. It's not "Every Bad Thing" the Alliance has ever done. I don't include them slaughtering goblin miners in the Felwood or butchering surrendering unarmed soldiers who were unable to defend themselves or dropping firebombs on civilian settlements. I'm really just limiting myself to the argument that the Alliance has declared, attempted, and once succeeded at committing Genocide against the Horde races. That even now there are powerful individuals among the Alliance (Like Rogers, or Jaina) who absolutely -do- want to commit genocide and if given Azerite Weapons would be in a position to do so.

Though it could be argued that they got a lot more resources outta the Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren than the Alliance did outta the Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei. Until we get some numbers on the matter, it's probably best to go off the "Still recovering their power after a massive civil war"

[Aucald]

1) The justification of the war is to avoid Destruction. Sylvanas is certain that, given enough time and access to Azerite, the Alliance will create ever more powerful weapons of destruction and eventually use them on the Horde. She outlines a method of keeping the Alliance from getting it, a way to minimize the damage to the civilian populace of Teldrassil and the other Nelfy Lands, and general presents the most justifiable war one can have: To defend oneself from the threat of a neighboring enemy. Particularly one that, at multiple times in history, has declared intent or attempted to commit genocide... I don't think we can stress that, enough.

Personally, I think Sylvanas has mixed her own desire to avoid destruction (the hell that awaits her upon her Final Death) with the welfare of the Horde - either subconsciously or pointedly in an attempt to sell her hostility to the Horde leadership. But that aside, I can appreciate the rationale for the invasion of Teldrassil on the Horde's side of things given the unbalancing equation that is Azerite coupled with the pre-existing hostility between the two major factions.

2) In Before the Storm, Anduin states that there is no Peace between the Horde and Alliance. That there's basically nothing more than a Cease-Fire going on. One which was already broken by the Alliance during the events of Legion, and once again after the Burning Throne. And then once more on the Arathi Highlands... after a fashion. Anduin even admits to Genn that she could use Calia's presence on the battlefield at Anduin's insistence as a justified cause for war in the eyes of the other Horde Leaders, and not be blamed for killing the Desolate Council because of what has happened.

Anduin states the obvious given the precarious political reality between the Horde and Alliance post-Broken Shore. I am unsure there is a cut-and-dry casus belli for either side going into BfA, to speak plainly. Stormheim is probably the biggest but, all in all, it's a relatively minor skirmish - nothing that couldn't be explained away by a distraught Genn and Rogers apologizing or being formally chastised for an unprovoked on the Horde (not that happens either, but it would be an easy way to heal that rift). Silithus is contentious given we don't have a firm order of events for what exactly happened or who opened hostilities with who - I'm personally of a mind that hostilities started up pretty much simultaneously with the Horde killing Alliance spies and the Alliance in the act of spying on the Horde's operations there. Both factions arriving at Silithus pretty much at the same time and then fighting with one another like cantankerous children over a birthday cake.

Ending a Cease-Fire with the intent to defend oneself against a superior foe by occupying a single city to stop an enemy from creating an even more devastating imbalance of power with the foreknowledge of their previous war crimes committed -under- that Cease Fire is a lot more justified than most people like to imagine.

Offset somewhat by our knowledge that Sylvanas still planned a unilateral strike against Stormwind before Silithus came into the equation and changed her plans. Sylvanas wanted a reason to enter into a war with the Alliance, one way or the other, but from the internal perspective of the game this conflict as at least more justified than her campaign against Stormwind would've been.

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The context being the full order of events in the book that you're ignoring in favor of cherry-picking several events out of a long chain and presenting them as being side-by-side rather than being out of sequence.

I literally explained the larger context in my previous post.

And nah, Froggy. It doesn't work like that at all. See, there's this thing called The Balance of Power. It's a sociological phenomenon between powerful political and military entities where their martial might is similar in strength. Chris Metzen at Blizzcon 2013 stated that the Alliance was the last remaining Superpower on Azeroth. This means that the Horde? They're in a weaker position than the Alliance. They can't win a straight up bare-knuckle war against the Alliance because they don't have the power to do so.

Azerite -further- destabilizes the imbalance of power. The Horde are already significantly weaker than the Alliance who flatly states that it's not intending to offer Peace in Before the Storm. If the Alliance also has control of Azerite through Darnassus, it becomes even -more- powerful than the Horde than it already is, and they've got several people in positions of power who want the Horde dead to the last.

The Alliance can't defend themselves against the "Big Evil Horde" because the Horde -isn't- big. The threat that the Horde poses isn't a big one. The threat the Alliance poses is fucking immense. And nah. It's not "Every Bad Thing" the Alliance has ever done. I don't include them slaughtering goblin miners in the Felwood or butchering surrendering unarmed soldiers who were unable to defend themselves or dropping firebombs on civilian settlements. I'm really just limiting myself to the argument that the Alliance has declared, attempted, and once succeeded at committing Genocide against the Horde races. That even now there are powerful individuals among the Alliance (Like Rogers, or Jaina) who absolutely -do- want to commit genocide and if given Azerite Weapons would be in a position to do so.

Though it could be argued that they got a lot more resources outta the Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren than the Alliance did outta the Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei. Until we get some numbers on the matter, it's probably best to go off the "Still recovering their power after a massive civil war"

While I would say the Alliance still occupies a stronger position than the Horde, I don't think the imbalance is as great post-Legion as it was post-MoP (when the above "superpower" statement was made). Post-Legion I would say the standing is Alliance >= Horde, not quite Alliance > Horde or even Alliance >> Horde. Azerite, of course, has the power to throw this entirely out whack and would easily put the controlling faction to the left of any number of ">" operators. Whoever controls the flow and application of Azerite controls Azeroth, at this point - and Sylvanas does not want to be caught in a world where the formula ends up Alliance >>> Horde given her stated overriding goals.

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I totally hear what you are saying, and that is kinda a flaw in my statement.. is war moral or justified? Really it's just fun to think about. I currently play Horde and I want to view my side as the good guys, and the Alliance as bad.. and maybe I am having trouble in doing that? I am very curious to see how everything goes down. Maybe it would be more fair to say the Horde are acting as the aggressors in this new conflict? Obviously seeded in a much larger conflict between these two factions.

Well, I know this is made fun of as a meme or whatever, but the current situation is very gray in terms of morality. Both the Alliance and Horde have understandable justifications for the conflict, and perspective plays a huge role in determining relative "rightness" in this context. I don't tend to think of things in terms of "good guys vs. bad guys" when it comes to geopolitical realities like this, but you can find good in the Horde's position if that's your goal (and vice-versa for the Alliance).

It is interesting to note that at least as of the PTR and Beta the Horde never makes it to Teldrassil proper in their push through Kaldorei lands - it's at the coast of Darkshore that whatever happens to Teldrassil actually goes down. My working speculation is that an Alliance vessel loaded down with Azerite attempts to break the Horde's naval blockade of Rut'theran's post, and the ship is either fired upon or something else happens that ignites its Azerite cargo which then explodes violently, setting huge swathes of Teldrassil's trunk and boughs aflame. Who's to blame for that? Whoever you want to blame, ultimately, but I think the real cause there would be the vagaries of war.

[baskev]

[QUOTE=Auctioneer;49713934]Just think about it, they wanted peace after MoP And They Had it, what did the alliance do in the meantime?
Yes it is unjustified.

Jaina threatens to end the horde and tries to convince Varian to kill the horde leaders at the end of SoO

You mean after breaking the neutrality of dalaran, or the bombing of theramore ( last 1 was a military target). And did we act...nope we sailed side to side against the legion.

Greymane assault horde troops unprovoked and loses the sky breaker

Yes attacking them was bad. But those where FORSAKEN troops not horde troops. And its good that he did. Or she would have enslaved a whole race. Funny you forget to mention both of those.

Caila Menethil tries to cause mass rebelions and defections within lordaeron and the forsaken to the alliance

First the council ( forsaken one) was already not happy with sylvanas . Not with the horde as whole.
Caila did not come their with that goal. She was there as a freaking priest , and former princess to aid in the talks between family's. But her calling them to join the alliance if they wanted to is a bad move. But on the other hand...are the horde not against slavery etc!?!?! And for free will?

They attack and murder innocent goblin miners who are mining for Azerite

Yes, and they continue to mine after they talk about not doing it. In a neutral zone, from a wound of our planet ( witch hurts the planet).

This was all after ensuing peace with the alliance after Garrosh. The Horde didn't provoke the alliance one more time after that

You mean when Garrosh went to dreanor and attacked with orcs? Or when Sylvanas mass muders civilians during peaceful talks infront of the alliance, or you mean the peacefull mass murder of night elves and burning down their tree?!?!

Man where is mehrunes when you need them. Even i know half your facts are wrong.

I know alliance has done some bad things. But the whole of BFA is Sylvanas fault.
- Anduin saw the danger of azurite and listened to diamond dwarf
- sylvanas does not.
- human and forsaken family's go to meet. Some want to go to the alliance but all ( even the ones running back) getting slaughtered by sylvanas. So alliance members who just met the familys are where happy to see them. Even if they where undead just seen there family die for the 2nd!!!! time.
- Sylvanas keeps mining azurite even thought diamand dwarf warned her. And makes the alliance react on her gathering stuff that can only be described as magical WMD.
- she attacks and kills soldiers AND civlians alike in not 1, not 2 but 3!!! alliance zones. Enslaves/uses as canon fodder a neutral race.
- she then attacks darnassus and burns it down. ( maybe not her plan . But fire + azurite + bombs might not have been the right move). She caused it.

and only then lorderaon happens.

So yeah, you are full of it. It was not wanted. Just say me...what did we do that justified all she has done. And do not say...jaina wanted to...jaina, garrosh, varian, sylvanas, sagerras, wrathion say a lot. But its what you do what counts. Hell even GREYMANE thought when the meeting in arathi started that the forsaken where not that bad. ALL of this is sylvanas fault. Her bad moves have been epic.

[Deleted]

Sylvanas is nothing but a power hungry bitch, Genn is a bigoted hypocrite and racist. Tyralion (However his name is spelled) is a fundamentalistic psycho.

Kill them and let Bain take over the horde and him and Anduin would rule in peace.
The Horde as a whole and the alliance as a whole are not to blame. Sylvanas and Genn need to die.

[Lord Pebbleton]

when did the motto of the Horde change from "Victory or Death" to "Run for your Life"?

Actual representation of the battle at the Broken Shore:
A: Victory or death!
B: Death
A: Now, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves *flees*

[Nerovar]

Sylvanas is nothing but a power hungry bitch, Genn is a bigoted hypocrite and racist. Tyralion (However his name is spelled) is a fundamentalistic psycho.

Kill them and let Bain take over the horde and him and Anduin would rule in peace.
The Horde as a whole and the alliance as a whole are not to blame. Sylvanas and Genn need to die.

How is Genn a racist?

[Steampunkette]

Anduin states the obvious given the precarious political reality between the Horde and Alliance post-Broken Shore. I am unsure there is a cut-and-dry casus belli for either side going into BfA, to speak plainly. Stormheim is probably the biggest but, all in all, it's a relatively minor skirmish - nothing that couldn't be explained away by a distraught Genn and Rogers apologizing or being formally chastised for an unprovoked on the Horde (not that happens either, but it would be an easy way to heal that rift). Silithus is contentious given we don't have a firm order of events for what exactly happened or who opened hostilities with who - I'm personally of a mind that hostilities started up pretty much simultaneously with the Horde killing Alliance spies and the Alliance in the act of spying on the Horde's operations there. Both factions arriving at Silithus pretty much at the same time and then fighting with one another like cantankerous children over a birthday cake.

I agree with everything that you've written and I want you to know that I adore you. I do wanna talk about something off of this sliver, here, though...

Anduin -looooooves- peace. He adores it. If he could force Peace into an anthropomorphized form I think it's a safe bet that he would marry that hot piece of Peace.

... so why doesn't he move to create peace in Before the Storm? He makes it -super- clear that he isn't making an overture to peace when he sends the letter to Sylvanas about The Gathering. That he isn't searching for it and all that... but why?

The Political Reality of Azeroth is that Sylvanas has complete autocratic control over the Horde until such time as someone tries to remove her from that position or her actions are shown to be so heinous as to foment rebellion. And as we've seen with Thrall and Garrosh, the line for rebellion is goddamned FAR. Thrall wanted peace so he convinced the Orcs and Trolls and Tauren to travel to Orgrimmar to find peace. Meanwhile Garrosh was a monstrous prick whose ultimate goals only became something the Horde could rally against once he started shitting where he ate by creating Ghettoes in Orgrimmar and talking about taking everyone who wasn't Green and kicking their asses out of the Horde. So they're willing to accept some pretty horrendous violence or extreme measures to achieve peace (Uprooting your people and traveling across the globe is pretty extreme)

Anduin, in his position of military power, of economic strength, or greater than or at minimum equal footing, for all of his love of peace... didn't even broach the subject with Sylvanas. And he could have. The Alliance leadership might not be so tightly controlled as the Horde's leadership, but with Velen's backing, and Malfurion and Tyrande massively benefiting from a true peace, and Ironforge backing Stormwind 'cause the Dwarves are just Shorter Humans 2: Drunken Boogaloo... he could've muscled Gilneas into accepting peace.

Anduin's the High King. He's the king of Stormwind, which is the most powerful of all the Alliance Nations. He could have sued for peace immediately because he's in the position of power and authority, here.

... but he didn't. Was he not willing to extend the Olive Branch? Was he hoping that Sylvanas would take the first step toward peace?

He could've sat down at the negotiating table with Sylvanas on that field of Arathi, with all her Dark Rangers at Thoradin's wall, ready to protect their queen. With all of the 7th Legion Dragoons at Stromgarde. Nathanos and Greymane staring daggers at each other from the battlements as each looked down over their ruler to ensure they were safe.

Hell. Make it a square Table with room for Baine on one end and Velen on the other, to offer further insights into the negotiations.

But he didn't... Three Lies he will offer you.

[Schattenlied]

an assassination attempt of a foreign head of state

prove he wanted to assassinate her and not just stop her from getting the power she wanted to steal (what he actually did). I'll wait.

Defection. Not "Leave if they want to".

Yeah, leave if they want to.

Parqual, the Felstones, and others were traitors betraying their people during a cease-fire.

"their people" are also in the Alliance. Living or undead they are still Human.

their crime

The fact that it is considered a crime at all for them to want to leave the Horde is a problem in itself.

break their oath of service to Sylvanas

You mean the one they were forced to make under duress? "Serve me or go back in the ground"? Yeah, I would break it too.

Which means the Alliance started killing goblins before the Horde retaliated.

There is, again, no proof of this... They got azerite so you assume they killed people to get it, yet the Horde quest giver makes no mention of the spies doing anything other than "snoopin around" when he tells the Horde player to go kill them. If the spies were killing people he'd be more concerned over that then them "snoopin"

[Haven]

She didnt do anything bad after MoP. And if we're going to go to things before mop we might aswell discuss the alliance war crimes aswell. Sure she nuked gilneas into oblivion, but garrosh told her to attack in the first place. Plague was the only questionable thing, but hey, we're talking about Sylvanas here, you know the witch that mind controlled garithos?

Alliance gunning down unarmed orcs in the Jade forest
Massacre at camp taurajo
The list goes on

Wuuuuuuuut? That was Detheroc. Sylvanas freed Garithos from Detheroc's control. And he was so grateful that in return he promised an alliance against the Scourge if he gets all of Lordaeron and Forsaken get nothing.

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The list actually doesn't go on, and that's a problem. Garithos had a profound effect on the Sin'dorei, but he was just one Alliance general. And all of this fails to stack up to decimating Gilneas, Southshore and Theramore. Burning a few teepees and unarmed combatants can't compare with leveling cities, and that's a problem.

Well, technically, Garrosh was just one Horde general, too. Garithos represented the whole Alliance back then, all that was left of the old, Lordaeronian one that defeated Doomhammer's Horde.

Blizz really needs to write more war crimes into the Alliance.

Under St. Anduin "Do-no-wrong" Wrynn? Never.

[Schattenlied]

And he was so grateful that in return he promised an alliance against the Scourge if he gets all of Lordaeron and Forsaken get nothing

Sylvanas was the one that made that promise, actually. Garithos didn't request all of Lordaeron, he didn't request anything, he just asked her what she wanted and Sylvanas offered it to him (and lied) in exchange for helping her kill Balnazzar.

[Steampunkette]

prove he wanted to assassinate her and not just stop her from getting the power she wanted to steal (what he actually did). I'll wait.

Genn talks about hunting his Prey on the Airship and makes a massive assault on her position with Cannon Fire. He doesn't quibble over her stealing Eyir's power at that point because he doesn't know that's her goal. He actually states "I am not in the habit of tracking prey unless I intend on killing it." So yes. He intends to kill Sylvanas. And on sighting the Forsaken Fleet, instead of "Following at a distance and engaging only if it's necessary" (which were the orders) Genn and Rogers -immediately- open fire on the Forsaken Fleet and Sylvanas.

Yeah, leave if they want to. "their people" are also in the Alliance. Living or undead they are still Human. The fact that it is considered a crime at all for them to want to leave the Horde is a problem in itself.

Either you're willfully attempting to portray a grievous crime as being a minor infraction or you're simply unaware that pretty much every nation on planet Earth has laws regarding acts of sedition, defection, and treason... Either way it's pretty clear you're not going to argue on a reasonable plane.

You mean the one they were forced to make under duress? "Serve me or go back in the ground"? Yeah, I would break it too.

The Forsaken get 3 choices. Serve Sylvanas and join the Forsaken, Leave and live your life wherever you want, or return to the grave. They chose the first one.

Your argument is invalid.

There is, again, no proof of this... They got azerite so you assume they killed people to get it, yet the Horde quest giver makes no mention of the spies doing anything other than "snoopin around" when he tells the Horde player to go kill them. If the spies were killing people he'd be more concerned over that then them "snoopin"

I quite literally expressed the order of events based on the book and you cherry picked the joking portion of my post... Telling.

[frogger237]

The context being the full order of events in the book that you're ignoring in favor of cherry-picking several events out of a long chain and presenting them as being side-by-side rather than being out of sequence.

I literally explained the larger context in my previous post.

And nah, Froggy. It doesn't work like that at all. See, there's this thing called The Balance of Power. It's a sociological phenomenon between powerful political and military entities where their martial might is similar in strength. Chris Metzen at Blizzcon 2013 stated that the Alliance was the last remaining Superpower on Azeroth. This means that the Horde? They're in a weaker position than the Alliance. They can't win a straight up bare-knuckle war against the Alliance because they don't have the power to do so.

Azerite -further- destabilizes the imbalance of power. The Horde are already significantly weaker than the Alliance who flatly states that it's not intending to offer Peace in Before the Storm. If the Alliance also has control of Azerite through Darnassus, it becomes even -more- powerful than the Horde than it already is, and they've got several people in positions of power who want the Horde dead to the last.

The Alliance can't defend themselves against the "Big Evil Horde" because the Horde -isn't- big. The threat that the Horde poses isn't a big one. The threat the Alliance poses is fucking immense. And nah. It's not "Every Bad Thing" the Alliance has ever done. I don't include them slaughtering goblin miners in the Felwood or butchering surrendering unarmed soldiers who were unable to defend themselves or dropping firebombs on civilian settlements. I'm really just limiting myself to the argument that the Alliance has declared, attempted, and once succeeded at committing Genocide against the Horde races. That even now there are powerful individuals among the Alliance (Like Rogers, or Jaina) who absolutely -do- want to commit genocide and if given Azerite Weapons would be in a position to do so.

Though it could be argued that they got a lot more resources outta the Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren than the Alliance did outta the Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei. Until we get some numbers on the matter, it's probably best to go off the "Still recovering their power after a massive civil war"

I'm not ignoring the books and you can't use something Metzen said 5 years ago as a fact when if it were the case the Horde would have already been wiped out. Its also been said that the majority of the orcs sided with the rebels meaning the Horde didn't lose many of its people. Also they have the blight and other insanely powerful weapons including a massive gun pointed at Stormwind. How the fuck could anyone think they are super weak compared to the Alliance?

Why would the Alliance offer peace when every time they try it ends up biting them in the ass? Sylvanas isn't just a threat to the Alliance she is a threat to all life on Azeroth

Goblins overbreed and if it were not for their tendency for blowing themselves up and getting eaten/killed they would have already run out of Kaja'mite and other resources while destroying the environment and Azeroth. Using your justifications for Horde atrocities the Alliance would be justified thinning the herd easily.

Also had Sylvanas enslaved the Valkyr race only those she deemed worthy would be rezed. Was Genn not justified in stopping her especially when at least half the heroes of Azeroth would perma die which in turn would make the defenses of Azeroth weaker and eventually make it easier to be corrupted by the void lords?

The Alliance has the night elves in it which are blessed by the one true god in the universe while the Horde has undead and goblins which destroy the lands and life around them. Do you really think Sylvanas making everyone undead and destroying the land of Azeroth is a good thing? Sylvanas's Horde needs to be wiped out and realistically never would have came to fruition. By using your own justifications the Alliance has a moral obligation to wipe out the forsaken esp when her actions would lead to Azeroth becoming a void titan or what ever they call it.

Don't get me wrong I love the Horde and all my characters in it but this isn't what I signed up for I joined Thrall's Horde

[Schattenlied]

only if it's necessary"

Well then clearly they felt it was necessary.

grievous crime

Simple fact of the matter is it shouldn't be.

acts of sedition

They just wanted to leave, that's not sedition.

defection

They are civilians, they should be allowed to leave whenever the fuck they please.

and treason

TIL that wanting to move to another country to be with their families is considered treason.

reasonable

That's fucking comical coming from you.

The Forsaken get 3 choices. Serve Sylvanas and join the Forsaken, Leave and live your life wherever you want, or return to the grave. They chose the first one.

Yes, because the second meant immediate death, and the third meant death a little later. They had no choice but serve or die.

I quite literally expressed the order of events based on the book

Which don't mean anything in this case, because they do not show us who attacked who first.

and you cherry picked the joking portion of my post

Or you just claim you were joking now because your argument got destroyed.

I'm done dealing with you, have fun talking to yourself from here on out.