Why is Taurajo seen as unjustified?

[Minikin]

Blizzard through Baine pretty much confirmed that hunters and such were trained there so I dont really see how it is a war crime

Garrosh was constantly applying pressure on alliance, calling Varian a dog in the Ulduar cinematic. His troops bombed Theramore. Sylvanas slimed Southshore and blighted Gilneas. His troops also bombed a school in Stonetalon but they probably had it coming since I think because they were hippies high on a mountain, never good that combination. Astrannar was firebombed too. Finally the alliance went and set fire and made some bbq happen. <innocents died>. Innocents dont matter in wow. I dont care how many nice hd cinematics they make, I am not going to listen to that honor stuff. There is a world quest where you punch Deathwing in the face, its seen as funny and hilarious.

And I am not asking for a pissing contest about how much worse the alliance has done, because frankly I dont care about your counter point and wont listen to it! I am asking why Taurajo is seen in a bad light and not a legitimate military target *sneeze*.

[Pheraz]

Blizzard through Baine pretty much confirmed that hunters and such were trained there so I dont really see how it is a war crime

Garrosh was constantly applying pressure on alliance, calling Varian a dog in the Ulduar cinematic. His troops bombed Theramore. Sylvanas slimed Southshore and blighted Gilneas. His troops also bombed a school in Stonetalon but they probably had it coming since I think because they were hippies high on a mountain, never good that combination. Astrannar was firebombed too. Finally the alliance went and set fire and made some bbq happen. <innocents died>. Innocents dont matter in wow. I dont care how many nice hd cinematics they make, I am not going to listen to that honor stuff. There is a world quest where you punch Deathwing in the face, its seen as funny and hilarious.

And I am not asking for a pissing contest about how much worse the alliance has done, because frankly I dont care about your counter point and wont listen to it! I am asking why Taurajo is seen in a bad light and not a legitimate military target *sneeze*.

Being a very alliance player it's hard to answer neutral here xD
I must admit that I really liked this part of cataclysm. Landing in theramore and questing through the overhauled alliance hubs on Kalimdor. Then after they burn Taurajo they hang the alliance leader in the tree xD

I think it was just a cool episode of "faction war". Nothing bad about it. On the other side completely removing theramore from the map was stupid as it is a hub. They could have burned it in a phase but then rebuild it. Sure I can talk to the dragons to swap phase but it's still stupid.

Also taurajo is such a miiiiiinii mini mini hub. My god... who cares

[AeneasBK]

/endthread I guess.

On a related note: You mention a bunch of stuff that happens during Cataclysm (when they redid the old zones, right?), is there any hard canon on the order in which those things happen, because "in-game" it was a switch over basically on patch day or release day or whatever. Is it assumed that things happen in order of zone levelling (do any zone quests allude to events in other zones or were they all completely insulated by then? I was levelling alts with heirloom gear so you'd often skip entire zones from over levelling them so keeping track of any contiguous storyline was tough.

[Chonar]

Lots of wooshing going on in this thread sofar Cotton, though let's see if it pays off.

[AeneasBK]

On the other side completely removing theramore from the map was stupid as it is a hub. They could have burned it in a phase but then rebuild it. Sure I can talk to the dragons to swap phase but it's still stupid.

I just thought it was weird they'd spend a patch turning Theramore into a giant citadel complex only to blow it up a patch later. I'd have felt it made more sense turning Theramore into the Alliance city on Kalimdor, fill it up with NPCs :P Could have done the same with Kargath in The Badlands that they ended up burying under rock; from my experiences of Classic and pirate servers before hand it was easily the busiest location outside of Orgrimmar for the horde so it would have been fitting to have it built up into a real fortress...


Aaanyway

[Vaedan]

Blizzard through Baine pretty much confirmed that hunters and such were trained there so I dont really see how it is a war crime

Garrosh was constantly applying pressure on alliance, calling Varian a dog in the Ulduar cinematic. His troops bombed Theramore. Sylvanas slimed Southshore and blighted Gilneas. His troops also bombed a school in Stonetalon but they probably had it coming since I think because they were hippies high on a mountain, never good that combination. Astrannar was firebombed too. Finally the alliance went and set fire and made some bbq happen. <innocents died>. Innocents dont matter in wow. I dont care how many nice hd cinematics they make, I am not going to listen to that honor stuff. There is a world quest where you punch Deathwing in the face, its seen as funny and hilarious.

And I am not asking for a pissing contest about how much worse the alliance has done, because frankly I dont care about your counter point and wont listen to it! I am asking why Taurajo is seen in a bad light and not a legitimate military target *sneeze*.

Well, there are some obvious double standards from Horde fans.

- Theramore is justified for them
- Invasion of Ashenvale is justified for them
- Burning of Teldrassil is justified for them
- Burning of Taurajo is the biggest war crime Azeroth faced

It is really ridiculous that some horde fans always remember Taurajo, a minor tauren settlement (it was in fact a CAMP, not even village), not really important for Horde structure in the area, and compare it to Theramore or even Teldrassil.

In my view, destryoing Taurajo was legitimate. Alliance offensive in Barrens was meant to divide Horde armies in Kalimdor and compromise their supply lines from Mulgore. The goal was to aid night elves after Garrosh launched an invasion of Ashenvale in the aftermath of Cataclysm (and elves were really occupied in Darkshore with Twilight Hammer presence, erupting volcano in Ashenvale causing damage and resurgent Ragnaros in Hyjal). What I recall about the quests there is that Alliance commander claims they let tauren know in advance they are coming, so they could evacuate. Horde did many attacks which were even worse (like Silverwind Refuge), while talking about their honor constantly.

You are right that Taurajo was used to train hunters and troops which contributed to the Horde's effort, that makes it valid target. The troops deployed here went rogue and made it quite bad, but it's a war and people tend to the worst things in such times.

[Feanoro]

OP, because Blizzard has been pushing certain ideas for twenty years, culminating in Anduin (disgrace to Lothar's name). Those ideas have been picked up by Horde players.

- If you fight back against the Horde, you're evil/unhinged/consumed with vengeance/corrupted/insane. Also applies if you even suggest fighting back.
- Allowing the Horde to slaughter your people is the height of wise leadership. Bonus points if you comfort them for anyone they lost while killing your people.

[Varodoc]

The attack was completely justified. Not only does Baine, one of the main characters of the Horde and WoW as a whole, agree that it was justified, but also the attack was never brought up in the novel called "War Crimes". Blizzard's stance on this is blatant, so I don't get the title. It IS seen as justified.

Taurajo was not an authorized attack by Alliance command; it was the actions of hired mercenaries going rogue who were then hunted down. What is completely unreasonable about it is that Varian did not just apologize and send Baine the heads of those idiots.

What? The attack was authorized by the Alliance High Command, and if anything General Hawthorne (the man leading the attack) was much more lenient than the High Command anticipated. As Hawthorne explains, he wanted to reduce civilian casualties and let civilians flee before starting the attack, which somewhat jeopardyzed their initial invasion. The High Command did not approve of his tactics, because they wanted to get a lot of hostages. So if anything the High Command actually wanted to attack harder.

[huth]

What? The attack was authorized by the Alliance High Command, and if anything General Hawthorne (the man leading the attack) was much more lenient than the High Command anticipated. As Hawthorne explains, he wanted to reduce civilian casualties and let civilians flee before starting the attack, which somewhat jeopardyzed their initial invasion. The High Command did not approve of his tactics, because they wanted to get a lot of hostages. So if anything the High Command actually wanted to attack harder.

Not quite. The mercenaries botched both plans by just killing the civilians.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Firebombs CAN melt tents.

[Varodoc]

Not quite. The mercenaries botched both plans by just killing the civilians.

Sure, but the attack itself was authorized by the High Command.

[Super Dickmann]

It's a viable military target in the course of an ongoing war, just one done really incompetently, with a hell of a lot of resources put into a relatively small target and a lot of excess casualties that only resulted in the Alliance being in a position to hit the Great Gate because Gardul was a dumbass and coward. Hawthorne ended up getting the axe and all the blowback due to also being a dumbass despite Twinbraid being culpable in actually morally dubious shit much earlier.

Now, the response by our favorite cow, that's something altogether different.

Good bait, though.

[Thage]

Taurajo was justified, the problem was Hawthorne was a first-class incompetent promoted above his ability who proceeded to make every bad decision possible in his handling of the attack in his desperation to look good for High Command. He used a penal legion for ground assault when the Stockades had only recently put down a riot, and although he allegedly only used non-violent offenders, I'd take it with a grain of salt considering his reputation for not bothering to double-check faulty intel--the same faulty intel that suggested the tauren were using Taurajo as a staging ground for a major offensive against Theramore, prompting the attack in the first place.

Further, he used Wildhammer mercenaries who immediately opted to firebomb the settlement, with several civilians caught up in the attack. While Hawthorne did leave a hole in the battle formation for civilians to escape through, he funneled them right into quillboar territory as, again, he failed to do even basic research on the area surrounding Taurajo and apparently had no idea the quillboar tribe was there. His mishandling of Taurajo was so drastic that when Hawthorne is assassinated by Horde adventurers in retaliation, by all accounts High Command let the matter lay there and just carried on with the war as usual.

He poured an overabundance of manpower and resources into a soft target and, as Super Dickmann noted, the Alliance was only able to advance to the Great Gate for reasons unrelated to Hawthorne's incompetent attempt to play the heroic conqueror.

[Lelkowski]

Not quite. The mercenaries botched both plans by just killing the civilians.

Weren't civilians killed by Quillboars or something like that? Or was it retconned? Or maybe I remember it wrong.

[Syegfryed]

Because it was not, it was a lame ass village of hunters, who was a target by wrong intel

cute that you wanted to mimic that theramore thread, sadly isn't the same.

- - - Updated - - -

Weren't civilians killed by Quillboars or something like that? Or was it retconned? Or maybe I remember it wrong.

both, some of then were killed in the initial attack before they realized the "mistake" and send a route of escape to the quilboars camp

[Raisei]

Because it was not, it was a lame ass village of hunters, who was a target by wrong intel

Too bad you are not the tauren chieftain that gets to decide that. The real one said it was okay.

cute that you wanted to mimic that theramore thread, sadly isn't the same.

We agree on something. Theramore was by far worse.

[Minikin]

The attack was completely justified. Not only does Baine, one of the main characters of the Horde and WoW as a whole, agree that it was justified, but also the attack was never brought up in the novel called "War Crimes". Blizzard's stance on this is blatant, so I don't get the title. It IS seen as justified.

I just don't want to constantly be called the villain. The faction I'm clearly biased towards deserves a better telling! Blizzard should just delete the other faction!

[huth]

both, some of then were killed in the initial attack before they realized the "mistake" and send a route of escape to the quilboars camp

Which is ultimately just a more lazy and sadistic way of killing them.

[matrix123mko]

Because Baine said it was justified. /thread

[Hyral]

It was as valid a target as Theramore. It was war. Stop playing victims. Both sides.