Morally Grey? ARE YOU KIDDING ME.[Spoilers]

[Minikin]

So are we gonna sack Orgrimmar again this time with Sylvanas as end boss? sigh...atleast the whole hur dur horde are morally gray argument is over .

Different city this time please. Been to undercity twice, ogrimmar once. How about we go to azshara this time. Can't go to quelthalas, forever safe behind loading screen

[jackofwind]

And why the fuck would they surrender when they are controlling most of the other continent?

Because they are appalled at the atrocities being committed against their citizenry and are afraid that more will happen? The Night Elves do not control the other continent. They are merely one faction of the Alliance, and on their own they have been outmanned, outgunned, and broken.

Many Allied countries surrendered in WWII to save themselves from atrocities even if the Allied force as a whole did not.

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

The reaction to the events at Darkshore is getting such a huge amount of negative feedback and the more i think about the whole event the more i like it myself. I play mostly alliance and i envy the setup horde are getting.

First of all the beginning of the attack seemed to make sense to most. Cutting down the supply of azurite for alliance and cutting their closest haven in Kalimdor is understandable. I think this is why Saurfang is there, he really wants to preserve the horde. The true motive of Sylvanas though seems to be to strike fear into alliance. Once her motives were out in the open it was too late for anyone to back off, the war had already started. There is no way a horde can start a war with alliance, rise against Sylvanas and hope to win the war at the same time. To me it seems like even Nathanos realizes that.

Then there's Sylvanas herself. To me it seems the biggest backlash is to her being... her? This is what Sylvanas has always wanted is it not? From the beginning of wow was she not hoping to build a great undead army and not be dependant on the horde they reluctantly joined? I really get why people wanted her to be to be good or to have changed to love the horde, but where has this been implied?
Reading the book it is pretty clear that she isn't in any way good. The way she treats her own people who dare to hope of a better life was dark. What she did to the elves was less evil or horrible. This makes sense to me, she is a great character and the worst possible person for position of ultimate power inside the horde.
If the tree would not have been set on fire by her and it was some kind of "misunderstanding" i would have been so disappointed. Just like the broken shore fight where Varian died. It made no sense that alliance wouldn't eventually hear what really happened. If it was set on fire by anyone from alliance just so horde couldn't get it it still would have been her fault. This to me seemed like the greatest way to setup the upcoming expansion.

Now the horde, Saurfang and their players are in an interesting situation. It seems like the options are to win without honor or risk losing with it. Victory and honor not being on the same path is interesting. I can see in a smaller scope that choosing between two bad options feels shitty but looking from alliance pov it's really interesting to me.
To me it seems silly that people don't think this is the morally gray thing. The whole meme was a pretty damn stupid thing to grab onto. That's where i think that you are an idiot if you think that blizzard actually thinks that the burning of the tree was morally gray itself. That seems more like choosing to misinterpret on purpose to shit on the story.

Then there's us as the alliance. What if the whole horde sticks with Sylvanas? I don't think alliance is capable of fighting that horde, especially if we aren't able to do horrendous things like Sylvanas is. For the first time i actually feel like we should be afraid of the horde. If we aren't able to abandon "being good and just" we are going to lose something big. The comic where Anduin sits on a throne in Exodar has me thinking that it might not be cause they are flying it. The book has Sylvanas plotting to attack Stormwind and for the first time i feel like losing Stormwind is possible.
Then how would alliance respond to the horde that got rid of Sylvanas then? Is there a chance for anything but war anymore? Either way the horde has the choices to make and we are going to be ones to react and that's why i think the horde are getting a really interesting start of a story to begin the expansion.

tldr: blizzard fanboy spinning yarn

edit: I really love what is happening in the story right now. Death threats can be sent to alliancelover6699@gmail.com

[Deleted]

And why the fuck would they surrender when they are controlling most of the other continent?

The Alliance consists of different factions like the Allies did in WW2. You don't defeat all three factions at once.. you defeat them 1 after 1. In this example, its the Night Elfs first, so it makes a lot of sense. The burning basically forced the Night Elfs out of the war, aside from their remaining forces on different continents or guerilla tactics. Think France in WW2. It was defeated early in the war, but it was still part of the Allies, and did fight alongside them towards the whole war. But the Night Elfs don't control any other continent... the Alliance does, huge difference.

[Minikin]

I completely agree with you - it's Blizzard's story. There's no sense in getting mad at stories or saying they're not fair, because they're just that - stories. Hordes of idiots thinking they can do better without ever having written a worthwhile page of text in their lives won't change that.

Here's the thing - people, generally, are fucking stupid. WoW has a huge playerbase, which essentially means that there are a vast quantity of fucking stupid people. WoW also deeply engages a lot of its playerbase, which leads us to a situation like this where we have a boatload of highly invested but also highly stupid people who all think they know what's best.

At the end of the day if they tried to write the story that they think is better it would come out as atrocious bottom-of-the-barrel fanfic. You can go online and read the stuff these people put out - stuff they think is fantastic. It's not - it's almost entirely garbage.

If anything I'm upset that this would waste sylvanas given that she's started a war she can never win (gameplay trumps lore, and thus neither faction will ever lose).

Not to mention the missed opportunity that for once they could make the alliance the bad dudes and be the aggressors. Because now they have confirmed what everyone suspected for so long about sylvanas. So business as usual.

[jackofwind]

If anything I'm upset that this would waste sylvanas given that she's started a war she can never win (gameplay trumps lore, and thus neither faction will ever lose).

Not to mention the missed opportunity that for once they could make the alliance the bad dudes and be the aggressors. Because now they have confirmed what everyone suspected for so long about sylvanas. So business as usual.

Absolutely, I'm disappointed that she'll likely just end up either having a dumb redemption story or go on to be the next Horde leader raid boss. But really, it's perfectly fitting within the (often poorly written) Warcraft story - we've seen it coming for a long time and at the end of the day it's the story Blizzard wants to tell.

Also, it's stupid that the events have no consequences in-game due to the Bronze Dragonflight. That's just lazy IMO and stops the story from actually affecting the world.

[Tarba]

The alliance tried to assassinate Sylvanas and decimate her fleet at the very start of stormhein "because they had an opportunity" -during the legion invasion-. Why the fuck are you complaining about morally gray bullshit.
It's a freaking legitimate retaliation.

The alliance wants and tries to destroy the forsaken and the horde. The forsaken and the horde retaliate. But they were nice enought to wait the end of the legion.

Alliance is worth than the horde.

[skumnasty]

Everyone needs to just calm down. Go watch Taliesin's analysis, realize that Ion never said Sylvanas herself was "morally grey", and wait for some more story. Stories are supposed to make you feel things, so for all of you "this was just shit/lazy writing" people, realize how angry people are... a story that works up that much emotion might actually be better than you're giving it credit.

[The Stormbringer]

I'm saying that Sylvanas realized the occupation itself would have been unsuccesful as long as there was still hope. I feel that's the point of her conversation with Delaryn.

Yes, occupation was the goal, until Sylvanas realized it would have been unsuccessful; the following WQ also makes reference to further tearing down the Kaldorei so they will eventually give up.

That's her shifted goal; occupation wouldn't have been enough, she had to do something that would truly destroy their morale.

Will she succeed? We don't know, but I don't think it is about being an idiot, it's about being utterly ruthless.

It's also her being ridiculous. These are elves that have lives for thousands of years, have fought against much worse than her, and all throughout have never once surrendered without a fight. The fact that she thought she could 'break them' is so egotistical and arrogant that it's sad.

[Minikin]

Everyone needs to just calm down. Go watch Taliesin's analysis, realize that Ion never said Sylvanas herself was "morally grey", and wait for some more story. Stories are supposed to make you feel things, so for all of you "this was just shit/lazy writing" people, realize how angry people are... a story that works up that much emotion might actually be better than you're giving it credit.

They wanna cash in on the "I hate horde! I'm switching to alliance!" "Horde so Savage. Switchin now brah".

Brilliant marketting.

[Reyuna]

A lot of people are saying Sylvannas is Garrosh 2.0. I disagree, she has more in common with Leoric, maybe that's the direction she will go throughout the expansion.

[nyc81991]

Sylvanas is "morally grey" just like the GCD and class design purning were done because (and I quote) "Why would we make a change that feels bad?"

Great minds working at Blizzard these days...

[skumnasty]

They wanna cash in on the "I hate horde! I'm switching to alliance!" "Horde so Savage. Switchin now brah".

Brilliant marketting.

The fact that anyone would faction change over this is baffling. Or unsub. "Waaaah my leader made a bad decision in the lore!! How can I go on?!?!" Wait for more story, or better just grow up and get over it. The ideals of the horde havent changed just cuz some leader made a whack decision.

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Sylvanas is "morally grey" just like the GCD and class design purning were done because (and I quote) "Why would we make a change that feels bad?"

Great minds working at Blizzard these days...

They never said Sylvanas is "morally grey" but good try.

[regularspecial]

Sylvannas isn't morally grey, but the situation IS.

HOW?

I'm gonna play a devil's advocate for a moment.

Now, the original plan was to capture Teldrassil in order to rob Alliance of where they would transport Azerite to Eastern Kingdoms, all the while making sure that Kalimdor becomes predominantly Horde controlled territory. The idea being that they would subdue the night elven population by killing Malfurion in order to break their spirit.

As we all know, in a fight, which Sylvannas was loosing, Saurfang interferes out of duty to protect his warchief and realizes later what he did was interfering in a 1v1 fight. Which is the reason why he let Tyrande take wounded Malfurion away, even though Sylvannas told him to finish him off and bring him his head.

So now that she's been robbed of her masterstroke to break the will of night elven populate and take the tree for the Horde, she's in serious trouble. Alliance fleet will arrive and without them being able to take Teldrassil before there arrival, they will push the Horde back to Durotar and the retaliation for what they did will be immense.
So with that in mind, if Sylvannas couldn't take Teldrassil for herself, then she'll rob Alliance of a base on Kalimdor.
And the reason why Saurfang didn't say a word (which people are complaining after displaying an honorable act) is because he probably knows this happened because of him for letting a key figure in Sylvannas' plan go.

So as a war tactic, this seems valid and Sylvannas did the right thing. Hell, after the cinematic plays out and you completed the quest, Sylvannas says that she did not predict this to happen.

PROBLEM IS that the cinematic portrayed it as if Sylvannas burned down Teldrassil in a heat of the moment out of sheer spite.
So there seems to be a disconnect between the quest and the cinematic because Sylvannas didn't berate Saurfang for disobeying her command.

this makes sense to me, however regardless of burning the tree not being part of her plan she still burned hundreds of innocents and that's pretty unforgivable. like there's killing the leader or symbol of a people to break them and then there's burning that symbol while people are still inside

it makes sense "why" she went with burning the tree to kill hope, however there's now a matter of hundreds of civilians murdered and that's squarely on her. saurfang had a hand in the events but burning people alive goes far beyond just burning a symbol and i'm not sure how you can tastefully address it.

it isn't "morally grey" at all. i don't care that it isn't but it's what i've seen used to describe their intent with BFA and imo it is way off. there just isn't any real way i can see that being justified unless old gods are more powerful depending on how many night elves are alive but that's almost certainly not the case

edit: tl;dr: it's "morally grey" to go with burning the tree because killing the leader didn't work out. however the burning people alive is an entirely different matter that i think was included without realizing how horrible that is to do.

[Ielenia]

But... but... Sir... She's not a Lich... She's a banshee...

Pretty sure you're saying this in jest, but on the off-chance that you're actually being serious: neither was Arthas.

[nyc81991]

They never said Sylvanas is "morally grey" but good try.

They said that BFA was going to be morally grey. Sylvanas started the war / expansion with an act that isn't morally grey at all. Good try though.

[Isilarya]

The fact that anyone would faction change over this is baffling. Or unsub. "Waaaah my leader made a bad decision in the lore!! How can I go on?!?!" Wait for more story, or better just grow up and get over it. The ideals of the horde havent changed just cuz some leader made a whack decision.

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They never said Sylvanas is "morally grey" but good try.

The question was whether Sylvanas was going darkside Garrosh style, Ion beating around the bush becuase he didnt want to say yes is absurd enough in its own right, the fact he immediately deflected onto "azeroth is shades of grey" because he knew he would get verbally obliterated if he said yes is just cowardice.

[Syegfryed]

The fact that anyone would faction change over this is baffling. Or unsub. "Waaaah my leader made a bad decision in the lore!! How can I go on?!?!" Wait for more story, or better just grow up and get over it. The ideals of the horde havent changed just cuz some leader made a whack decision´

so if people primary play for the lore, because they like it, and like the factions, you think is absurd for him to leave because they fuck up the faction and let the lore like shit?

the solution is feeding blizzard so we can get more shit? LUL

And yes by now the horde ideals already changed, did you know? honor means nothing here, this whole bullcrap is totally different from the horde build from warcraft 3 who lived until cata

[Tabrotar]

I think you're misunderstanding. Just because she is a tragic character doesn't make her actions excusable. It just means you can understand the motivations behind why they are being made.

She was like this way before right from the start of her story in WC3 it was her fucking horrible fanbase who excused anything she ever did.

And no i can´t understand what ever she was thinking because all what she was doing there was out of spite of being called out for what she is aka Arthas 2.0

[skumnasty]

They said that BFA was going to be morally grey.

Quoting you again: "Sylvanas is "morally grey" like...".

They actually said "Azeroth is morally grey".

So since they said "Azeroth is morally grey" every single person and action inside of it must also be? What a difficult way to build an interesting story.

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The question was whether Sylvanas was going darkside Garrosh style, Ion beating around the bush becuase he didnt want to say yes is absurd enough in its own right, the fact he immediately deflected onto "azeroth is shades of grey" because he knew he would get verbally obliterated if he said yes is just cowardice.

You're assuming you know the ending of the story. Try waiting it out a bit. Maybe you're right, but maybe there is a reason they don't want to blow the entire story before revealing it because some privileged kids want answers now and can't wait for a story to just unfold?