Lordaeron/Teldrassil - Missed Opportunity?

[NorthernDragon]

I think both Undercity and Darnassus got scrapped to make room for future Night Elf / Forsaken development. They were both kind of boxed in to begin with. The Forsaken wouldn't be able to build a new identity under Calia if they kept living in smelly sewers. The Night Elves had meaningful story development for a long time and why would they? They were safe and sound in their treehouse on the far end of the world. Not to mention the in-game implementation of Teldrassil was a horrible artifact of 2004 level design.

Now the Undead are free to develop above-ground settlement and the Night Elves are returned to the world and the story.

Oh I am not against them destroying the cities, just the story reasons behind it

[Nagawithlegs]

I honestly think they just wanted to get rid of Undercity & Teldrassil/culturally revamp the Night Elves and Forsaken, and wrote the story from there. They just didn't do a great job of it (at least not in the short term, when most people think that the two races won't even get new cities).

[bagina]

Do you think Blizzard missed an opportunity in having the attack on Lordaeron occur after Teldrassil as opposed to the other way round? Personally I feel it would have made for a more compelling story had Greymane convince Anduin to retake Lordaeron and Gilneas which would then lead to an enraged Sylvanas to burn Teldrassil in retaliation since the kal'dorei aided Gilneans. What's your opinion?

Yes I very much agree with this course of events. It would definetely work better. I don't know what made them not go in this direction.

[Villager720]

I completely agree which makes me question if Blizzard felt preasured in not doing this because surely from a creative pov the writers must have known this would have flowed better

I just cant understand what would have pressured them to do so, but having thought about it more over the course of the day, it really does feel like they reversed the order of events semi-last minute.

[enigma77]

Yes but Blizzard is obsessed with portraying the Alliance as unquestionably and utterly benevolent. Which is one of the dumbest decisions ever, if you ask me. Humans are dicks you know. They should be dicks in Warcraft too. Not goody two shoes.

And I feel like when we started out in this game, it was different. The Horde had a very bad history obviously, but Stormwind was a kingdom rife with corruption and political turmoil, with the whole Defias storyline. Then Varian came back and he was a dick. After Cata everything went to hell, Garrosh became a psychopath and then the Horde raided their own city (lol, to this day this has to be the dumbest thing to ever happen) and we've been stuck with the noble, selfless, benevolent and boring Alliance ever since.

Like I get it, the writers working for Blizzard are not going to turn this story into Game of Thrones. But their writing is truly, truly awful in my opinion. Like it's genuinely bad enough to make me wonder how they deserve to be paid for it. Even when they have obvious opportunities to create actually interesting stories, they always choose not to. It's sad, I really used to like story, but nowadays I'm just like whatever, it's bad, boring and predictable anyway.

BFA could have been a great story, they just chose to not to (make it one).

[Kyphael]

Any narrative that could and might have made the Alliance instigators, and really not that much considering Sylvanas had already killed Calia and other innocent Forsaken as others mentioned, giving the Alliance plenty of reason to try to re-take Lordaeron, would have been a better route than to rehash the corrupt Warchief story and vilify the Horde all over again only to splinter the Horde, and turn Baine into a traitorous dog and nearly ruin Varok. But Sylvanas, the victim of a mass genocide, turning around and doing the same to another elf race who had really done nothing to her or The Horde made her character and that aspect of the lore irreversibly bad.

[Sithalos]

But that would require the Alliance to actually do something bad in-game. We can't have that.

[cparle87]

I feel regardless of timing the magical ship Jaina conjured up kinda made that whole lordaeron event quite a mockery to all the previous war events in warcraft.

I believe there was some sort of intend to paint sylvanas up as the expansion bad guy so she could bring us into our next expansion so the timing was done on purpose.

She didn't conjure it up. It was a real ship with real cannons. She simply teleported it and made it float.

[Verdugo]

She didn't conjure it up. It was a real ship with real cannons. She simply teleported it and made it float.

Right, that makes it soooo much better.

[BossManRoth]

Yes I very much agree with this course of events. It would definetely work better. I don't know what made them not go in this direction.

Christie Golden not wanting Anduin to be tarnished is what happened

[Ophenia]

She didn't conjure it up. It was a real ship with real cannons. She simply teleported it and made it float.

Cannons are magical too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CGBLVNpoKo

[Acidbaron]

She didn't conjure it up. It was a real ship with real cannons. She simply teleported it and made it float.

It remains a rather ridiculous element, especially if you consider if it can actually fly why not attack Lordaeron from behind and flank their entire defence?

It's a forced tie in from Jaina's kul tirans past and it looks completely out of place.

[Darknessvamp]

The problem is that the Teldrassil attack was a reactionary event already, remember by the point it had happened the Alliance had already been openly attacking Horde forces in Silithus and even the attack only occurred as the Alliance thought intel indicated (another Shaw screw up) the Horde was going to bring a reinforcing army to control the zone and so preemptively sent nearly the whole Night Elf army there (a bit of a daft move considering the constant border skirmishes with Orgrimmar) and Sylvanas leapt at the opportunity. The only things that never made sense about the whole thing was Saurfang just randomly deciding what is and isn't honourable after planning and carrying out the poisoning of a whole village and it's guard and then decided executing Malf after a fair fight was a step too far and Sylvanas suddenly having some weird ideas about hope and it leading to the burning randomly (till they later decided "no actually she totally meant to burnt it all along despite setting it up for an occupation").

I mean even if they changed the order around so that Undercity was blown up first people would still say Sylvanas was the big bad because she burnt the tree randomly.

[Powerogue]

Not really, honestly. Then we'd be here whining that Greymane never had any comeuppance for starting a faction war.

[Verdugo]

Not really, honestly. Then we'd be here whining that Greymane never had any comeuppance for starting a faction war.

The fact that you only see this as a negative means its a superior idea.

[Thage]

Do you think Blizzard missed an opportunity in having the attack on Lordaeron occur after Teldrassil as opposed to the other way round? Personally I feel it would have made for a more compelling story had Greymane convince Anduin to retake Lordaeron and Gilneas which would then lead to an enraged Sylvanas to burn Teldrassil in retaliation since the kal'dorei aided Gilneans. What's your opinion?

We can't have the Alliance be the aggressors, how else would we recycle the Horde Redemption story arc a fiftieth time?

Also, if we were going this route it would have been a more interesting story if N'Zoth's cultists burned Teldrassil in a false-flag whereas Sylvanas carried out the War of Thorns as a conventional war to secure Orgrimmar's borders given the night elves were among those generally pushing for war on the Horde, and as revenge for the Alliance sacking the Undercity. Pinning Teldrassil on the Horde would have escalated a tit-for-tat into a full-scale global war with actual moral greyness, instead of The Alliance and the Horde Rebellion going up against an omnicidal nutcase who propagandized and information-controlled most of the Horde into backing her up.

There's a lot of ways this storyline could've gone better, but they picked the laziest route possible because of fucking course they did.

[masterjc]

Do you think Blizzard missed an opportunity in having the attack on Lordaeron occur after Teldrassil as opposed to the other way round? Personally I feel it would have made for a more compelling story had Greymane convince Anduin to retake Lordaeron and Gilneas which would then lead to an enraged Sylvanas to burn Teldrassil in retaliation since the kal'dorei aided Gilneans. What's your opinion?

Genn is close friend and Father Figure for Anduin, also he is kind of Warmonger, on Alliance side, who wishes vengeance against Sylvanas

so after Arathi events, he could convince Anduin,t hat Calia deserves vengeance, Alliance would conquer Undercity. forsaken would flee to Kalimdor, and Horde would decide to kick of Night Elves both as Vengeance and as guarantee that Alliance wouldnot have foothold in Kalimor

it would open amazing opportunities

1. really GREY story
2. Alliance think they do Justice and they are right, and HOrde think Alliance betrayed peace, and they are right as well
3. Alliance would have inner struggle between survived Kaldorei and remaining allies. also Worgen would feel bad, because of them, thier saviors ended in bottom
4. part of Kaldorei would move to EK and make new settlements
5. Horde too might have some sruggle but eat elss point, as yeah Sylvanas shot first arrow, but it was alliance who started war.
and so on


do you notice, that Blizzard sucks at making reasons of war in game called World Of War craft?

Vanilla - orcs want trees. 5/10
TBC - eye of the storm/ruins of outlands (outdoor pvp) - we fight BL and Illidari and instead of uniting, we fight for ruins? 3/10
WotLK - wintergrasp amde no sense, but after Wrathgate, Isle of Conquest was good 10/10
Cata - Garros wants conquest - 10/10
MoP - fighting for resources? - 9/10
WoD - Ashran 0/10 for artifact, which nobody has seen
Legion - Towers- 0/10 BL is killing all wtf
BfA - start war anew for what? - 0 effort again
and so on

[ro9ue]

I feel the whole BFA story leaves the horde looking way worse and the alliance mostly justified. And that's shit. So yeah I agree it should've been reversed.

[Baroclinic]

Do you think Blizzard missed an opportunity in having the attack on Lordaeron occur after Teldrassil as opposed to the other way round? Personally I feel it would have made for a more compelling story had Greymane convince Anduin to retake Lordaeron and Gilneas which would then lead to an enraged Sylvanas to burn Teldrassil in retaliation since the kal'dorei aided Gilneans. What's your opinion?

Have we been sleeping through this expansion? Sylvanus wanted war. She wanted death, lots of death, to fuel her plot powers. It would have made no sense for the Alliance to start crap. The alliance leader was trying to schedule pow wows and swap meets.

Sorry, but your Horde is the sole reason for the last expansion and the upcoming expansion.

[Kauko]

As much as cinematic was epic, story was solid... all up until the magic ship and childish BS like that. Who makes this stuff up?