Sylvanas x Burning of Teldrassil vs. Arthas x Culling of Stratholme - Morally Grayer?

[KaPe]

What are you going to do with a giant tree? Cut it? Burning was the only real option. Alliance snowflakes need to deal with that.

There's a difference between burning a giant tree and burning said tree with thousands of civilians still living there. Imagine having your own house on fire - by your logic, it makes no difference if you stay inside or run away, right?

[Evilfish]

An act of war can still be genocide. I'm not sure what makes you think otherwise.

By what standards? Convenient ones or Warcraft ones. Hearing anyone cry genocide in this game amuses the hell out of me. But yeah, Sylvanas would kill off all of the Alliance, even if they were Forsaken. So yeah, feel free to use trigger words to make her seem more evil, but I'm curious why you even bother since the writers seem to be doing that already.

Considering genocide, by definition, in this game is treated as a casual quest for both sides, it's amusing to see people screaming like they sat on a nail and acting all serious about it. It's tragic actually, not funny and that's why the only moral of this whole trigger-word drama can be summed up as "it's only wrong when Sylvanas does it".

[Deleted]

You may draw parallel on invasion of Quel'thalas to Burning of Teldrassil although I focused more on the "burning" part in between Culling and BoT.

Not actually an actual contest but careful analysis. Both events happened to be an invasion of territory and mass murder and arson.

This is much more like it.
there is abselutely no comparison beside "both places civilians lost life"
Stratholm had been more or less fully corroupted and would turn into undeads - As in most of them where death already.

The burning of Teldrassil was not meant as "we got no other options" it was "WE do it for the Vine!" Teldrassil Did not have to be burned.
AS Verigo said. much more of a comparisonsburning of teldrassil and Invasion of Quel'thalas. Both where An invasion from an outsider that, Really did not ahve to happend beside Their own evil Motives
Both wher

[Evilfish]

It's quite rare that we're sent on a quest to exterminate an entire race of beings actually.

Cull numbers, absolutely. Prevent invasions, definitely. Send a message, on multiple occasions. Protect an outpost, or take an enemy outpost - More times than we could count.

Genocide? I'm struggling to think of even once that we tried to wipe any specific race off the planet, with the one exception being the Scourge - And they struck first. And that's not beginning to consider Sylvanas' motivations for wanting to burn Teldrassil with the Night Elves still in it - As far as we know, it's because she wants literally everything living to die or lose hope like she has. Whereas any other scenario which could even remotely be considered genocide by the loosest definitions you could think of, still had valid reasons that we couldn't just sit idly by.

Don't struggle too hard, just go through some areas. There's at least one quest that involves wiping out or clearing out a humanoid race that has taken residence in Horde/Alliance/third faction territories. If it's either murlocs, naga, kobolds or harpies, it's always about killing em off (sometimes before they are even born). If we start judging everyone by that standard, there'd need to be a raid for each of us in most zones.

Let's face the facts here. It's not about genocide, it's about convenience, people really, I mean REALLY wanna kill off Sylvanas and they would use just about any excuse to do that and the most common theme among that group is to use trigger words cause triggerword is wrong! Now excuse me, I have to remove the harpies from Highmountain cause they are pissing off the moosemen.

[vipers]

Why cant the horde just be the bad guys?!

How many think horde was bad guys when played warcraft 3 and and on wow only Garrosh and now Sylvanas has change tyrant

[vertigo12]

There's a difference between burning a giant tree and burning said tree with thousands of civilians still living there. Imagine having your own house on fire - by your logic, it makes no difference if you stay inside or run away, right?

Are you telling me NEs are mentally retarded,physically debilitated or suicidal to let themselves stand in fire, sing and rejoice?!

The save x amount of civilian is for dramatic effect only. I bet when somebody started seeing fire they run asap.Don't tell me the portal took several hours to cast or that NE's are hysterical they started killing each other so they may be the first one to enter the portal to other town.

Would the civilians rather stay and die in their beloved home than flee and escape?

[Teleros]

If judging by the events which happened in WoW history, would you consider ... Sylvanas a morally grayer leader now

No, they are not comparable. The Culling of Stratholme being the turning point for Arthas is dumb and fake. Compare the two:

Stratholme:

• Arthas & co arrived too late to prevent the infected grain shipments.
• No practical way of separating the innocent from the infected - or from Cult of the Damned infiltrators.
• The worst result would be abandoning the city to the Scourge.
• How do you deal with a nasty tumour? You cut it out, accepting the damage to healthy tissue in order to save the whole body (ie country).
• Anyone got any better ideas for how to save Lordaeron? It's not like people had a cure for the Scourge plague back then, though some (like paladins) were personally immune to it.

Teldrassil:

• Decision made on impulse (see dying NElf archer).
• No sane strategist on Azeroth would actually think such an act would break the Alliance's morale.
• Likely to make the Alliance fight all the harder, if anything.
• Opens the Horde up to similar reprisals - "do unto others" and all that.
• No chance for the defenders to surrender that we know of (see first point).
• Kills lots of civilians, arguably unnecessarily.

The Culling of Stratholme was basically the least bad option (there were no good ones), and Arthas was smart & brave enough to (a) see the bigger picture, like the fate of his entire kingdom, and (b) act to save it. Blizzard literally damning him for it is classic character / plot railroading - if they really wanted to damn him anyway, they should've made his decision to pursue Mal'Ganis to Northrend the moment when he turned bad instead, but w/e, too late now.

Sylvanas by contrast... whilst she is perfectly justified in attacking the city (it's a key strategic centre for control over all of northern Kalimdor after all), and under IRL medieval standards would even be justified in sacking it if the inhabitants had refused to surrender... yeah I think she made a big misstep here. Definitely wasn't her more usual calculating self. Course, if you want out-of-universe reasons, well I think we all know she's being written as Garrosh v2.0 so meh.

[Evilfish]

No, they are not comparable. The Culling of Stratholme being the turning point for Arthas is dumb and fake. Compare the two:

Stratholme:

• Arthas & co arrived too late to prevent the infected grain shipments.
• No practical way of separating the innocent from the infected - or from Cult of the Damned infiltrators.
• The worst result would be abandoning the city to the Scourge.
• How do you deal with a nasty tumour? You cut it out, accepting the damage to healthy tissue in order to save the whole body (ie country).
• Anyone got any better ideas for how to save Lordaeron? It's not like people had a cure for the Scourge plague back then, though some (like paladins) were personally immune to it.

Teldrassil:

• Decision made on impulse (see dying NElf archer).
• No sane strategist on Azeroth would actually think such an act would break the Alliance's morale.
• Likely to make the Alliance fight all the harder, if anything.
• Opens the Horde up to similar reprisals - "do unto others" and all that.
• No chance for the defenders to surrender that we know of (see first point).
• Kills lots of civilians, arguably unnecessarily.

The Culling of Stratholme was basically the least bad option (there were no good ones), and Arthas was smart & brave enough to (a) see the bigger picture, like the fate of his entire kingdom, and (b) act to save it. Blizzard literally damning him for it is classic character / plot railroading - if they really wanted to damn him anyway, they should've made his decision to pursue Mal'Ganis to Northrend the moment when he turned bad instead, but w/e, too late now.

Sylvanas by contrast... whilst she is perfectly justified in attacking the city (it's a key strategic centre for control over all of northern Kalimdor after all), and under IRL medieval standards would even be justified in sacking it if the inhabitants had refused to surrender... yeah I think she made a big misstep here. Definitely wasn't her more usual calculating self. Course, if you want out-of-universe reasons, well I think we all know she's being written as Garrosh v2.0 so meh.

While I agree that Stratholme was a mess with no good fix and those assholes dumped Arthas for making a decision they disagree with, I think you are being really biased and ignoring story elements.

For example the decision to burn the tree wasn't made on impulse, it was a her backup plan to incurring the wrath of the Alliance, by the way, that makes it worse. It's a premeditated act of aggression, but obviously you get behind the wrong thing.

That brings me to the second part, while her plan might have also included crushing the hope of the nelfs, it was always about getting the Alliance to come to her city in large numbers. Evidently, the Warcraft version of morale is another plot device. I mean it's ok for the Horde to be scared shitless of Malfurion fucking up orcs, but the Alliance is immune to morale attack. Still, can't blame people for assuming it's not. The whole battle of Lordaeron was planned, minus Jarina's arrival and probably the Alliance being routed too early.

Sylvanas is not a good character, for the Alliance she's the devil incarnate, true, but for the Horde especially for those who would rather have conflict, she's ok. As long as Blizzard does not attempt to turn the fan base against her by having her commit more atrocities. I suppose it's not easy to kill off one of the most popular characters and in a faction via a rebellion while that faction was at the short end of a rebellion not too long ago. But they tried.

[Teri]

Stratholme would have died to the plague even if Arthas wasn't near it.

Grain from the Eastweald (the area name pre-Plaguelands), mainly Andorhal, was already in the city, it would have been a matter of time before people would have used and eaten that.

[Teleros]

While I agree that Stratholme was a mess with no good fix and those assholes dumped Arthas for making a decision they disagree with, I think you are being really biased and ignoring story elements.

For example the decision to burn the tree wasn't made on impulse, it was a her backup plan to incurring the wrath of the Alliance, by the way, that makes it worse. It's a premeditated act of aggression, but obviously you get behind the wrong thing.

That brings me to the second part, while her plan might have also included crushing the hope of the nelfs, it was always about getting the Alliance to come to her city in large numbers.

The trouble with this is I see no reason why the Alliance would necessarily. Maybe there's something I haven't read, but seeing as how the war starts in Kalimdor it would've made sense, for example, to strike at Orgrimmar again. After all, you already know the basic defences from the last time you were there, given the geography it's key to supplying Horde forces in NElf territory, and if captured would help isolate Azshara & the goblins too (no point in going near their Big Honking Gun or all the minefields, that's retarded).

Now, yes they did go for Lordaeron, and yes she had a suitably evil plan for how to screw them over there, but... from what I've seen it looks more like she gambled correctly than anything else.

Evidently, the Warcraft version of morale is another plot device. I mean it's ok for the Horde to be scared shitless of Malfurion fucking up orcs

This makes perfect sense, actually. One of the stories from the Falklands War was Argentinian conscripts getting scared as heck of Gurkhas coming along and taking body parts as trophies - point being, it's the intensely personal nature of the threat that makes it so scary. When your buddy, that you've grown up with in Durotar with, suddenly disappears on patrol etc... those kinds of things scare people on a deep level more than "a big tree-city was burnt down" etc. Maybe on a rational level it shouldn't, but there we go.

The whole battle of Lordaeron was planned, minus Jarina's arrival and probably the Alliance being routed too early.

Honestly, the only reason the Battle of Lordaeron went as well as it did for Sylvanas (prior to Jaina's arrival, I mean) is that Alliance High (As F---) Command apparently didn't have any plans for handling the blight, the favourite weapon of the forsaken. Blight-spraying forsaken were immune to it by virtue of their hazmat suits, so evidently some materials can grant people protection from the stuff, and whoever planned the Alliance attack was criminally negligent in not (a) having enough shamans & druids to simply blow the damned stuff back at the Horde, and (b) not outfitting at least some forces with blight-proof gear. Out-of-universe obviously it was for dumb rule of cool reasons, but in universe? Urgh.

As long as Blizzard does not attempt to turn the fan base against her by having her commit more atrocities.

"As long as"... did you see which weapon she was wielding in the screenshot at BlizzCon? Oh boy.

I suppose it's not easy to kill off one of the most popular characters and in a faction via a rebellion while that faction was at the short end of a rebellion not too long ago. But they tried.

One common thing I've seen around and abouts is the idea that the Alliance is the "boring" faction compared to the Horde, and I think there's some truth to that. The Alliance doesn't really have any interesting inner struggles, such as between internal and external honour (15min video), or between races as radically different as the tauren (Earthmother & shizzle) and the forsaken (I hate the living, let's kill them all). For better or worse, that makes the Horde the ideal vehicle for creating conflict with. Blizzard storytelling is almost always done in bright primary colours (ie it's dead simple), and that only hurts attempts to make the Alliance the villains or even merely the aggressors.

I suppose it's a pity that Onyxia was ever discovered in Stormwind Keep really. There was the promise of some very interesting intrigue and such there, and had Blizzard done more stuff like that, they could definitely have made the Alliance the aggressors, even the villains, for an expansion or two. But... politics is boring. And you'd probably need to play Alliance quests to get the full picture. Etc etc etc... compared to all that, Garrosh Hitlerscream and Sylvanas are much, much easier tools to tell simple stories with.

[KaPe]

I suppose it's a pity that Onyxia was ever discovered in Stormwind Keep really. There was the promise of some very interesting intrigue and such there, and had Blizzard done more stuff like that, they could definitely have made the Alliance the aggressors, even the villains, for an expansion or two. But... politics is boring. And you'd probably need to play Alliance quests to get the full picture. Etc etc etc... compared to all that, Garrosh Hitlerscream and Sylvanas are much, much easier tools to tell simple stories with.

It's more of a pity they neutered Genn after Legion. Plenty of people liked Stormheim precisely because it was one of Alliance leaders actually doing something instead of waiting for Horde to mess things up first. The fact that Nathanos nearly died was a nice bonus, but that's exactly what's missing nowadays. Horde does some crazy shit, kills thousand of civilians, kills their own troops to raise as skeletons, will use "certain weapon" for some unknown purpose. Alliance launches an ineffective siege that almost gets their leadership killed and later on still goes "we can't do that, that'd be evil." Shaw and Void Elves are the only ones doing something, but that's just minor side quests.

... Or we get retarded shit like Vulpera Purge Squads, which is just... what? I'm sure someone thought it was a genius "grey morality" moment, but it was just pointless cruelty that didn't benefit the war effort at all. And it got changed, just like plenty of stuff on PTR. Who's even writing that crap, I don't think we had so many changes to a patch in such a short time.

There is a small change that Night Elves will finally show some spine and disagree with Anduin's soft approach... but I doubt it. Blizzard loves shitting on their race, so any internal conflict they could cause within the Alliance will probably end after Anduin waggle his finger at Tyrande and she apologizes for even sinking to "that level".

[Scathan]

Sylvanas burning Teldrassil is more like Arthas invading Quel'thalas, than purging Stratholme. There was also some mildly debatable morals for Arthas' Stratholme purge, when there is no moral justification at all for the Teldrassil act.

Sure there is, Enemy forces, Teldrassil is a legitimate military target, no matter how much you don't wan't it to be.

[KaPe]

Sure there is, Enemy forces, Teldrassil is a legitimate military target, no matter how much you don't wan't it to be.

"Military targets" were defeated at Darkshore. What you were left with were civilians, which, by definition, are the exact opposite of "military targets".

Hell, there even was a quest where Horde champion saves random Night Elf NPCs for some reason. Makes no fucking sense to do that if Sylvanas kills them all just a few minutes later.

[Evilfish]

One common thing I've seen around and abouts is the idea that the Alliance is the "boring" faction compared to the Horde, and I think there's some truth to that. The Alliance doesn't really have any interesting inner struggles, such as between internal and external honour (15min video), or between races as radically different as the tauren (Earthmother & shizzle) and the forsaken (I hate the living, let's kill them all). For better or worse, that makes the Horde the ideal vehicle for creating conflict with. Blizzard storytelling is almost always done in bright primary colours (ie it's dead simple), and that only hurts attempts to make the Alliance the villains or even merely the aggressors.

Look, let's agree to disagree, not everyone has the same perspective and I'll give you an example why.

The specific part of your post makes my point. It's not that the Alliance is boring by composition, it's boring cause of the permanent stagnation that is inflicted on the faction.

There was plenty of potential to make the Alliance have some internal disagreements, but it seems like Blizzard is scared of even taking the Alliance out for a spin and the guinea pig is always the Horde when it comes to experimenting. Even now there's potential but the focus remains on the Horde.
The fact is people don't want to lose their favorite characters and I cannot fault them for that, but they can't ask the opposing faction to give up something they wouldn't and this is part of the message that gets across.

Unfortunately the Alliance has all of it's potential wasted on the joke that is the human potential and while some might hate hearing that, it stands and frankly another thing that worked in Sylvanas' favor was the fear that human potential will infect the Horde. We don't want that and we don't need it to be honest. If you think I'm wrong, then look at people admitting that they don't want to be Alliance buddies and would rather stick with Sylvanas even if they don't like her, that is not fine but what choice have we got now? They totally destroyed Saurfang by associating him with the king of human potential and it's not even the first time this happens as one of the faction leaders is already there. Baine is quite disliked for that reason and the other leaders are susceptible to the same treatment Sylvanas might get and that Garrosh got unless they cooperate with the Alliance.

Sorry but the villain story and the idea that the Horde is made for for fighting among themselves and the Alliance is there to guide and forgive them, no matter what, sold out in MoP.

[Scathan]

"Military targets" were defeated at Darkshore. What you were left with were civilians, which, by definition, are the exact opposite of "military targets".

Hell, there even was a quest where Horde champion saves random Night Elf NPCs for some reason. Makes no fucking sense to do that if Sylvanas kills them all just a few minutes later.

The city is a military target, civilians live there sure, but it is the night elf bastion. The city was not surrendered.

Nothing you said makes it not a legit target.

That quest was stupid.

[Vynestra]

Stratholme was infected with the plague of undeath.

Teldrassil was infected with the curse of life.


If we were to look at it from their respective perspectives, I would say it's actually quite similar.

I found the sylvannas fanboi.

No, it's obviously not the same.

One was an act of war the other was literally a weird morally grey area. The former was legit just evil.

[The Stormbringer]

Sylvanas isn't a Night Elf trying to spare her people a fate worse than death, as well as protecting the rest of the kingdom. She is committing genocide on another people.

[Magnagarde]

Is it even a contest?

Most of stratholme was infected and turning. There was not much to do, and no reliable way to tell who was or wasn't at risk. It was either leave Stratholme alone and end up with a massive city of undead, or kill as many people as he could before to euthanize them and reduce the mount of undead in the area.

Teldrassil was a tree full of innocent people that weren't at risk of anything other than Sylvanas' own forces in a war she unilaterally started for her own goals.

The problem with this parallel, is that the parallel isn't Culling Arthas and modern Sylvanas, it's Arthas marching on Lordaeron and Quel'thalas, and modern Sylvanas.

Pretty much this.

Arthas trying to save his nation and his people from those who would imminently become mindless undead slaves can't be compared to what Sylvanas did at Teldrassil as the night elves had absolutely no intention of harming Orgrimmar/the Horde. Arthas had no better solution at hand, whereas Sylvanas had diplomacy, while having the biggest pacifist and altruist as her adversary on the other end of the table; Arthas had Mal'ganis.

[AlmightyGerkin]

Is it even a contest?

Most of stratholme was infected and turning. There was not much to do, and no reliable way to tell who was or wasn't at risk. It was either leave Stratholme alone and end up with a massive city of undead, or kill as many people as he could before to euthanize them and reduce the mount of undead in the area.

Teldrassil was a tree full of innocent people that weren't at risk of anything other than Sylvanas' own forces in a war she unilaterally started for her own goals.

The problem with this parallel, is that the parallel isn't Culling Arthas and modern Sylvanas, it's Arthas marching on Lordaeron and Quel'thalas, and modern Sylvanas.

Stratholme was infected with undead but Teldrassil was infected by long eared tree huggers.

[Jawless Jones]

Except Arthas was right (a cure for the plague has never been found, and attempting to separate the uninfected would take time Arthas didn't have).

Sylvanas is being completely out of character, a preemptive strike against a faction that has only ever instigated a conflict once isn't very "tactical" or "morally grey", it only makes the character stupid and evil.