Darnassus' destruction was just absurd

[Soeroah]

Azerite makes things better at doing what they're meant to be doing, so I'm fine with that being an explanation for why the catapults were so long-ranged and destructive. Yes, they could have attacked Stormwind the same way, but it would have done less damage than it would Teldrassil, and Sylvanas' goal was to maximise casualties with the least resources possible.

On the other hand, WoW has always had a scaling problem. I can see the catapults hitting Teldrassil in-game if they were Azerite powered. But when you consider that in terms of the lore the Barrens is suppose to take like a week to cross by foot, the distance between Teldrassil and Darkshore is waaaaay further than it is represented in the game, and the catapults couldn't have made that distance.

[Stardrift]

Reminder: The other team has magic things as well. None of these things happen in a vacuum regardless of the effort people put into ignoring context.

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Remember how much trouble CoD:MW2 got in trouble for painting that type of thing as objectively bad? Imagine that, but the people that organize it are actual allies with the player. It's never going to happen in a game that wasn't designed for media shock value.

You can join the forsaken in literally gassing the Alliance and your own allies.

You could partake in the bombing of Theramore.

The Alliance players aided Jaina in slaughtering the Sunreavers.

You could choose to pop Human heads open with a shovel in a Forsaken Nazi-esque death camp.

[Ielenia]

It's a mountain that was grown in the span of a few years and lies miles at sea, protected by druids and whisps and quite possibly powerful enchantments.

Teldrassil is not protected by druids or whisps or "powerful enchantments". Teldrassil is literally just a normal tree, albeit huge, because Fandral Staghelm wanted to make a new World Tree after Nordrassil was sacrificed to stop Archimonde. The thing is, Fandral did this without the approval of the Aspects, who did not bless that tree like they did with the other World Trees.

[FelPlague]

Stormwind (including its castle, somehow) was ablaze because Zul lit, like, three huts on fire with torches. Another piece of Rule of Cool that never gets mentioned again despite the fact that a roaring blaze in a medieval city would cause catastrophic damage. If these ICBM catapults can light the bark of a massive tree on fire within minutes, you can get they would cause a very much non cozy fire in Stormwind.

only some parts of stormwind, cause ya know, wooden roofs, but no where near enough to DESTROY IT like it did the world tree.

"roaring blaze in a medieval city would cause catastrophic damage" it would if not for


buildings being made of mostly stone
LITERAL WIZARDS WHO CAN USE FROST MAGIC

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Keep in mind Steve Danuser and Alex were most likely the two. That pushed the narrative of having Teldrassil burned. Not surprising from danuser since he does favor horde.

llololol you really think 2 random writers were able to direct the entire story of BFA? you know they have a team of dozens of people who all have to agree to make large descisions come to be, especially since stuff like the start of BFA have been written since all the way back when chris worked at blizz still.

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The catapults were engineering though, not magic. So shit does indeed need to be explained.

you... you do know engineering in wow uses magic right..?
Many of the engineering things literally are described as "magic being controlled with machine"

For example goblin totems are "engineering" except they literally use magic to power them, controlling small elementals inside of them.

This is literally you saying "is math related to science?"

Cause apparently things cant be MULTIPLE things, they can only be ONE thing.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think and i could be wrong that the old RPG had them at like 100k but that's not canon. I think it also says in one of the chronicles that In one of the expans there were about 100k losses on both horde and alliance and I can't see the night elfs being around 50k if there are so many troops dying in a single expan's time frame.

though I could be totally wrong on both numbers as I don't have a good way to check them from either source.

I thought it was during one of the dialogues that refernces the burning of teldrassil, but I might be wrong as well, as I can't find it ad hoc either. Multiple 100k seems a bit much though. But you are right, that's true for the wrath gate as well, in a square formation that would be almost a hundret soldirs wide and a 100 long. For refernece, the battle of helms deep in lotr was something like 20k and they had a massively wide open field. Blizzard never did portray size well, neither ingame nor in lore.

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The catapults were engineering though, not magic. So shit does indeed need to be explained.

Have you seen goblin and gnome "engineering"? That shit is held together by magic and duct tape, and it certainly doesn't operate on any physical principles .

[TheLucky1]

Warcraft lore has been cheesy for... 20? 25? years.

You better get used to it.

[MrLachyG]

the only thing absurd here is this thread and some of the replies. first off, there is clearly magic involved which completely negates any range issue. secondly, this isn't real world - it's a fantasy world. so if the writing team decides that the catapults can fire directly on Teldrassil then they are able to fire directly on Teldrassil. this isn't a hard concept to get your head around.

[Accendor]

Worst thing to happen to Night Elf players. It will feel so much better when we butcher Sylvanas eventually.

It will not. It was not Sylvanas who did it, it was the Horde. Sylvanas have the order, yes, but everyone followed and nearly the whole horde stood with her to the end.
Killing Sylvanas means nothing in terms of justice or vengeance, as long as the Horde walks free.

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Don't make me laugh. 'A' mage, only.

Jaina isn't special. She is just famous due to Warcraft 3 and gets a spotlight and deus ex machina powers but she isn't all that. She is simply a mage with a name, period. Khadgar could f*ck her up a million times.

The fact that there is a stronger mage than her, does not make her less powerful...

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I think he meant that its destruction was an excuse for it to be remade an expansion or two down the line, which I find it easy to believe.

Which would be cool, if the event had not also included the nearly total genocide of the night elves themselves. Like seriously, most of them died at Teldrassil or during the War.
Is not possible to get exact numbers of course, but realistically it would be surprising if there are more than a few hundred left in the world (excluding PCs).

[Talrath]

IMO, at the end of the day, the decision to torch Teldrassil ultimately boils down to this:

If they would change the animation to your first Pic then np.

[Accendor]

I'm pretty sure it didn't happen overnight, and it wasn't an easy task. Can't remember where, and correct me if i'm wrong but either in one of the War of the Thorns novels or somewhere else the scene took place in greater detail than the cinematics/warbringer short. I'm pretty sure it was mentioned that getting the tree to light took a very long time, that they used magical fire instead of normal fire (which goes without saying doesn't burn out as easily or follow the same physics.) Ontop of that iirc they had groups of shaman using the wind element to fan the flames and more fire-starting units mounted in the air. If nothing else, certain that Blizzard specified it was magical fire used by horde casters to light the tree. The rest is at least a headcanon for me.

What we see in Warbringers is pretty obviously a jump-cut. all you need to know is that it was burned, it's a narrative device. If they spent so much time showing us the burning in a brief 3-5 min short, it would ruin the storyboarding. Imagine if whenever someone has to get from point A, several hundred miles to point B, they showed every grueling hour of travel just so people wouldn't have to suspend some level of disbelief. Not very cinematic.

As for the Vindicaar, which is arguably the most powerful weapon in either faction's arsenal due to the sheer technological advantage, that thing is benched for obvious story writing reasons, but it already lost it's ability to rain down orbital bombardments when it spent the rest of it's power opening the way to Antorus, so Velen can't use it to just nuke Orgrimmar (nor do I think a semi-pacifist with golden morals like Velen even would do that). Don't think the Army of The Light would do it either.

When it comes to teleportation, the alliance side of the War of The Thorns characterized some of the limits to portals and teleportation better than the video game mechanics do. Teleportation typically only works on one, maybe two people at a time (save for mass teleportation, which I can only assume requires a very powerful mage like Khadgar or Jaina), and portals are hard to maintain, and can only transport a small handful of people, like a small squad of 3-5 people at best. When the fires started to burn Darnassus, they described how mages in the Stormwind wizard tower were sweating beads and beginning to collapse, exhausted as they stood in place trying to keep the way open for hours. Refugees could only enter the portal one at a time having to form single-file lines that probably looked like the lines outside of a soup kitchen. They needed people to stay behind on the other side and keep the masses from panicking, making sure everyone stays in line, and even then, with multiple mages supporting portals and people helping out, they still weren't able to save everybody before the fires reached Darnassus.

I think that alone speaks to the lore difficulty of portals. If you could transport entire armies through simple mage portals, I doubt the Orcish Horde or the Iron Horde would've needed a 10 story gateway constructed by hundreds of slaves, and powered by a constant flow sacrificial souls, to get their armies through to invade Azeroth.

I would like to point out the problem here, because "getting a whole srmy through a portal" is exactly what we do in Draenor when we build our garrison. Its even animated in game.

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the only thing absurd here is this thread and some of the replies. first off, there is clearly magic involved which completely negates any range issue. secondly, this isn't real world - it's a fantasy world. so if the writing team decides that the catapults can fire directly on Teldrassil then they are able to fire directly on Teldrassil. this isn't a hard concept to get your head around.

If that is your logic, then why is Stormwind still standing? And no stone/wood arguments please, we already saw how easily it could be set ablaze in the horde starting quest in bfa.

[Soulwind]

Which would be cool, if the event had not also included the nearly total genocide of the night elves themselves. Like seriously, most of them died at Teldrassil or during the War.
Is not possible to get exact numbers of course, but realistically it would be surprising if there are more than a few hundred left in the world (excluding PCs).

a) We may just resurrect them all in Shadowlands.

b) Blizzard is particularly inconsistent when it comes to population, most playable races were driven to almost extinction at some point, and they kept appearing in large numbers anyway.

Regardless of how they do it, it should be fairly obvious that BfA is going to have little to no repercussions, because the HvA conflict is ephemeral, Old Gods are eternal plot devices, and Azshara is still alive.

[Kumorii]

I like how you describe exactly what Jaina did.

[MrLachyG]

I would like to point out the problem here, because "getting a whole srmy through a portal" is exactly what we do in Draenor when we build our garrison. Its even animated in game.

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If that is your logic, then why is Stormwind still standing? And no stone/wood arguments please, we already saw how easily it could be set ablaze in the horde starting quest in bfa.

because the current Horde didn't attack Stormwind? we attacked Teldrassil instead

[Ashleyxoxo]

Any other destruction would just be absolutely absurd!

[Lazuli]

Well you aint wrong LOL

[Very Tired]

It was pretty much forced because the writers wanted to get their cool visuals in.

The Horde should have been dropping those magic fireballs on every Alliance city and stronghold for years. Set Stormwind on fire with minimum effort.

[Accendor]

because the current Horde didn't attack Stormwind? we attacked Teldrassil instead

Yes,but WHY. If those weapons are as powerful and logical as you claim, burning SW to the ground should be no problem.

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a) We may just resurrect them all in Shadowlands.

b) Blizzard is particularly inconsistent when it comes to population, most playable races were driven to almost extinction at some point, and they kept appearing in large numbers anyway.

Regardless of how they do it, it should be fairly obvious that BfA is going to have little to no repercussions, because the HvA conflict is ephemeral, Old Gods are eternal plot devices, and Azshara is still alive.

If we all resurrected them, we prove once again that every event in WoW is meaningless as all can be made undone. Returning them to life would be even worse.

b) I get what you mean, but this time it's different. We never had one faction (including the PCs) orchestraing and executing a mass killing on this scale ON SCREEN in this much detail. They can be as inconsistent as they want, but without massive retcons they won't get out of this. And - of course - if they retcon it, it once again shows that nothing has meaning in the game.

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It was pretty much forced because the writers wanted to get their cool visuals in.

The Horde should have been dropping those magic fireballs on every Alliance city and stronghold for years. Set Stormwind on fire with minimum effort.

This guy gets it.

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Warcraft lore has been cheesy for... 20? 25? years.

You better get used to it.

There is a big difference between cheesy and bullshit

[Nyel]

It wasn’t absurd, it was completely unnecessary and didn’t even fulfil a purpose after the retcon with many Night Elves haven’t been at home. It’s one of the biggest missteps in storytelling in WoW.

[MrLachyG]

Yes,but WHY. If those weapons are as powerful and logical as you claim, burning SW to the ground should be no problem.

because the story didn't call for it. yes, those weapons probably could burn Stormwind to the ground. getting them there might be slightly difficult but getting them to Darkshore is a lot easier so that is what they went with. it's about the story. you might not agree with the story but it's where the writers wanted to go with it. Why did the Alliance choose to attack Undercity instead of Thunder Bluff, Orgrimmar or Silvermoon? Why didn't they kill Sylvanas on the spot instead of letting her monologue? do I really need to pull out the Stan Lee video on "who would win" again? it is whatever the writers decide. Teldrassil and Undercity were chosen for a reason; one that you, I and everyone else isn't privy too.

also just because you don't agree with the writing, and the direction a story is going, doesn't make it shit.

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It wasn’t absurd, it was completely unnecessary and didn’t even fulfil a purpose after the retcon with many Night Elves haven’t been at home. It’s one of the biggest missteps in storytelling in WoW.

there are lots of things we don't know yet, especially about Sylvanas and her master plan. There could well be a reason that she chose Teldrassil over other targets. She wanted to kick off the faction war, and this was the best way to do it.

[SirBeef]

If they could teleport to Stormwind and destroy it they probably would have. Considering they had to travel on foot through four zones, fighting a war through two of them to get there, I doubt they could have. As for azerite we've seen a hail of bullets burn 100 men to death in seconds and a chunk the size of a baseball burn a magical treant 200 feet tall to death in seconds. I have little doubt that multiple cannonballs worth of the stuff could burn down Teldrassil, which is not nearly as magical as you seem to believe. It's a tree that was grown by mortal druids, that's all.

Someone, the OP, seems oblivious to the fact that game mechanics exist outside lore. For example the energy needed to use a hearthstone requires a full week to recharge. There isn't enough Horde mages to open enough or large enough portals to port in enough catapults and weaponry to destroy all of SW. Sure our characters can pop open portals like its no business. But in lore, it's just not that easy.