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  1. #41
    The Insane Thage's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by masterjc View Post
    Vanilla - orcs want trees. 5/10
    Vanilla probably had one of the better takes on faction tensions. There were plenty of border clashes and fighting over resources, logical reasons for neighboring nations to throw down, but small-scale enough that the leadership could politely overlook these skirmishes as the cost of doing business while focusing on bigger issues like Blackrock Mountain, Silithus, and the Plaguelands. Neither side was obviously evil, escalation happened at a reasonable pace, and even at its worst it was believable that the factions teamed up to deal with the Qiraji and the Scourge.
    Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!



  2. #42
    Sounds good but I like that Sylvanas and Saurfang realized it was the only opportunity to inflict big damage over the Alliance.

    I would prefer a accident of azerite near the tree, Azshara intervention, etc.

  3. #43
    The whole BFA story could be summed up as "missed opportunity"

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by NorthernDragon View Post
    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?
    Accept the Horde are always and will always be the bad guys
    Night Elves NEED long hair to the ground and more elegant/regal beautiful options to show their Highbourne heritage

  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by Acidbaron View Post
    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.
    Mages have an entire floating city that, once set up, seems to remain there with very little upkeep. One of the strongest mages in the world, with a portion of Lei Shen's aka Aman'thul's power making a single ship float seems a minor issue.

    Well, wasn't the Alliance losing at the moment she burst in? I'd figure she saw it more important to reinforce her allies who are in trouble than attack from another front and leave them to fend for themselves.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ophenia View Post
    Cannons are magical too.
    I just presumed they were real cannons that she was magically controlling to make them fire ammo she's pre-loaded into them.
    The most difficult thing to do is accept that there is nothing wrong with things you don't like and accept that people can like things you don't.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by NorthernDragon View Post
    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?
    The whole thing made perfect sense honestly and wasn't an act of aggression. Right from the onset of the Azerite mining, the Alliance was the aggressor like "AMG HORDE CAN'T!" and started in on them. The goblins found it and were mining it and then they got attacked so she staged a false attack to draw away the closest source of contest. The actual hit on the tree was spite sure, but the attack was warranted. Everyone loves to ignore that the alliance was the one to draw first blood.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cparle87 View Post
    Mages have an entire floating city that, once set up, seems to remain there with very little upkeep. One of the strongest mages in the world, with a portion of Lei Shen's aka Aman'thul's power making a single ship float seems a minor issue.

    Well, wasn't the Alliance losing at the moment she burst in? I'd figure she saw it more important to reinforce her allies who are in trouble than attack from another front and leave them to fend for themselves.

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    I just presumed they were real cannons that she was magically controlling to make them fire ammo she's pre-loaded into them.
    Yeah people seem to act like Wrathion got the Lei Shen power but chronologically Jaina got either the same or a reasonable portion in her staff. Lei Shen LITERALLY puts it in the dais on the ground and uses it during and she says power it from where you are. If both were done at the same time she took more as the body was there

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by enigma77 View Post
    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.
    I really feel that Alliance didn't start down the morally superior route until Pandaria. In Classic, they were invading pretty much every Horde starting zone, with gnomes blighting their own city and dwarves running all over the place digging things up, regardless of who lived there. Come Wrath, we have the Alliance attacking the Horde while the Horde peacefully returns prisoners of war. Later Wrath into Cata had more even conflict, with stuff tilting Horde heavy in MoP in the middle.

    Quote Originally Posted by Darknessvamp View Post
    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.
    My understanding is that the Night Elf fleet didn't take off until after Sylvanas moved out. She wasn't taking advantage of an Alliance misstep; she had carefully engineered the diversion through misinformation and a march that looked to be heading south, thus diverting Alliance forces out of the north. The (lack of) Malf execution was because it wasn't a fair fight; Saurfang intervened in a duel. While I agree that Teldrassil was framed as a preemptive strike to cripple Alliance aggression based off conflict in Silithus, I'm pretty sure based on the info we have for the lead-up to Shadowlands that she would've jumped at any excuse that could've worked to get Horde support behind her, especially after severing communication between Horde and Alliance leadership.

  8. #48
    Almost anything would have been better than what we got with BFA. Because in my opinion, everything leading up to the expansion was a bait and switch. First there was the build up of Azerite being this new uber weapon that both factions needed to skirmish over. OK. But nothing really came of it in game. There was no real "azerite campaign" in game to show a build up of tensions in a more realistic way over that resource (possibly due to some influence of corruption). But no, the whole azerite campaign boiled down to some cinematics shown at the end of Legion with nothing of any significance happening in the actual game. That and the other cinematics leading up to BFA were all the bait for an expansion focusing on the faction conflict that never was really going to be the focus.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6WlY4KQqFU
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MQl08qS2r0

    You never really saw any in game fighting or activity in Silithus or Tanaris corresponding to this brewing "war" for Azerite or the War of Thrones in the actual game. They just told everybody via books, cinematics and other materials outside of the game that these things happened and thats that. Most players flying into Silithus at the end of Legion saw nothing but the sword sticking out of the ground and no hint of anybody mining anything anywhere.

    Then they released a pre-patch and included the opening "battles" of BFA building up the anticipation but these only lasted for a couple of weeks. Both factions had their own version of the events in Ashenvale and Darkshore because of writing by Blizzard introducing all this nonsense about 'perspective'. Then they relased the teldrassil scenario which was basically another cinematic telling you what happened after the fact with more cinematics filling in the blanks. Nothing really unfolded in the actual game in any sort of realistic way, which should have told everyone that BFA wasn't going to seriously focus on faction war. And with that, they launched BFA with Teldrassil being the big build up to this war between the factions which was all scripted and done literally off screen.

    BFA starts and again, as expected, everything happens off screen and you have to fill in the blanks via cutscenes, cintematics and trailers. The alliance "magically" has set up an assault on Lordaeron, while we were not looking and now there is a battle going on. And of course this too is a scenario not seen in the actual game or open world. It just happens. Just like Teldrassil "just happens". So of course the whole narrative and story around it would be convoluted because nothing realistically happened in the open world. In fact for the longest time both Teldrassil and Lordaeron were actually still intact even after those scenarios, especially for those not at max level.

    So of course everything that happened boils down things told to you by blizzard either in cinematics, cut scenes, scenarios or books.
    Hence the reason the whole thing falls flat, including the whole faction war, because right after BFA starts we divert off the faction war anyway. Which makes it a big bait and switch.
    Last edited by InfiniteCharger; 2020-10-24 at 02:15 PM.

  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Baroclinic View Post
    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.
    Actually before the burning Horde and Sylvanas seemed content on just grabbing Azerite. Sylvanas's decision to burn the tree came out of nowhere and felt retarded even for Sylvanas

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sharnie786 View Post
    Accept the Horde are always and will always be the bad guys
    Actually that's not remotely accurate... Throughout WoW the morality between the two were always a bit of both

  10. #50
    I am Murloc! KOUNTERPARTS's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sharnie786 View Post
    Accept the Horde are always and will always be the bad guys

    I suppose Blizzard wasted an entire expansion trying to prove this otherwise.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by Utigarde View Post
    Yes, pretty much everyone I've talked to about this idea agrees it would have gone better. Before the Storm was an entire book dedicated to "Sylvanas bad, but doesnt want to start a war, Anduin no longer believes Sylvanas can be reasoned with", and then the expansion ends up going with her starting a war anyways and Anduin being surprised she's doing bad things.

    The Alliance has massively more motivations to attack Lordaeron than the Horde does to even care about Teldrassil, let alone burn it. Lordaeron happening first, even with the exact same scenarios, works much more as the Alliance wanting what they see as their land back, and the Horde having the question of what is too far in just vengeance, instead of the Horde randomly being genocidal and starting a war again, and the Alliance being the reactionary sad folks again.

    Before the Storm is about the Alliance trying to resolve the issue They created with the Forsaken and Sylvanas reacting to it by murdering the Forsaken that wanted to bridge the gap that whole mess created. Its them seeking a peaceful resolution to the fact that the forsaken are the way they are because of Alliance reaction to them at the time.

    Afterwards, still enraged that she wasnt the complete ruler of her people, she lashed out at Teldrassil.

    It was a Very clearly written development for that character.

  12. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Thage View Post
    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.
    Wow you're making too much sense in your post and that would make the story actually interesting and we know we can't have that in current wow lore.

  13. #53
    Blizzard has no concept of nuance or "gray" and was always intent on painting Horde/Sylvanas as villains. Personally, to me "gray" means that there are no heroes or villains, just conflict and what it actually entails. The writing is hodgepodge and inconsistent. Everything done this expansion was just a stepping stone to the next "big thing" including N'Zoth and Azshara (total wastes imo).

    I agree that it would have been far more interesting if the Alliance showed some foresight and fortitude and attacked preemptively. Hell, if they're so fucking intent on teaching lessons in morality as they seem so keen to keep doing then having the Alliance as the aggressors would have made far more sense. But we live in a weak culture with weak people who have no actual fucking clue how to separate video games from reality, and the devs are no exception. Whatever makes them and the players feel virtuous I guess.

  14. #54
    Honestly what Blizzard should have done is dedicate the entire pre-patch to the War of Thorns without forcing it to share, then later make the Battle for Lordaeron the 8.1 raid instead of Dazar'alor.
    The world revamp dream will never die!

  15. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by Kimekaro View Post
    Before the Storm is about the Alliance trying to resolve the issue They created with the Forsaken and Sylvanas reacting to it by murdering the Forsaken that wanted to bridge the gap that whole mess created. Its them seeking a peaceful resolution to the fact that the forsaken are the way they are because of Alliance reaction to them at the time.

    Afterwards, still enraged that she wasnt the complete ruler of her people, she lashed out at Teldrassil.

    It was a Very clearly written development for that character.
    It's still a stretch. There was very little reason to burn Teldrassil

  16. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by NorthernDragon View Post
    It's still a stretch. There was very little reason to burn Teldrassil
    That's kinda the point. From pretty much every angle you look at it, burning Teldrassil was a clear act of unquestioned evil, the reason it is done being so that we the players understand just how evil Sylvanas is.

    Really the only reason this isnt common knowledge is because the writers pussied out on portraying the Horde as evil, instead opting for the slightly absurd copout of pretending it was all Sylvanas.
    The world revamp dream will never die!

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Sondrelk View Post
    That's kinda the point. From pretty much every angle you look at it, burning Teldrassil was a clear act of unquestioned evil, the reason it is done being so that we the players understand just how evil Sylvanas is.

    Really the only reason this isnt common knowledge is because the writers pussied out on portraying the Horde as evil, instead opting for the slightly absurd copout of pretending it was all Sylvanas.
    But the Horde wouldn't agree with it. That's why it's inconsitent. In reality half of the Horde would have been in uproar. The Horde haven't been some villanous force since Warcraft 2

  18. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by Sondrelk View Post
    That's kinda the point. From pretty much every angle you look at it, burning Teldrassil was a clear act of unquestioned evil, the reason it is done being so that we the players understand just how evil Sylvanas is.

    Really the only reason this isnt common knowledge is because the writers pussied out on portraying the Horde as evil, instead opting for the slightly absurd copout of pretending it was all Sylvanas.
    No, the reason it isn't common knowledge is the lead game dev going "It's really a morally gray kinda of story" like 50 times leading into the expansion coming out. \

    When ALL OF YOUR INFO going into this event from THE LEAD DEVELOPER is "Well, it's really morally gray. I mean... we don't know who shot first. Wouldn't it be interesting if Teldressil happened AFTER Lordaeron? Pretty morally gray there, eh?" do you really expect people to immediately jump on the obvious train?

    What I don't understand is why they chose to go the route that they did when they had said the things they said previously. If Ion had never said anything about morally gray anything, I think the majority of the playerbase would have immediately thought Sylvanas was bad without a second thought.

    I, myself, kept waiting to see what was so "morally gray" about the obviously evil character doing evil things.

  19. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by NorthernDragon View Post
    But the Horde wouldn't agree with it. That's why it's inconsitent. In reality half of the Horde would have been in uproar. The Horde haven't been some villanous force since Warcraft 2
    Again, that's the point. The writers wanted to have their cake and eat it too. For Sylvanas to both be shown as the ultimate evil capable of doing such horrible acts like burning down Teldrassil out of spite, but also for the Horde to be the noble savages who are pulled into a war they do not want.

    Had the writers properly thought BfA through and made an actual worthy faction war expansion then we would have had some more nuance to how the Horde and Alliance acts when presented with Sylvanas burning down Teldrassil.
    Do the Horde go along with it because they are evil, or because they are scared of retaliation from either Sylvanas or the Alliance?
    Does the Alliance go for a no holds barred beatdown of the Horde worthy of their continued subservience to tyrants, or do they attempt a more peaceful route?

    Instead we have Sylvanas burning down Teldrassil along with a mass of faceless Horde who are never mentioned again.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hctaz View Post
    No, the reason it isn't common knowledge is the lead game dev going "It's really a morally gray kinda of story" like 50 times leading into the expansion coming out. \

    When ALL OF YOUR INFO going into this event from THE LEAD DEVELOPER is "Well, it's really morally gray. I mean... we don't know who shot first. Wouldn't it be interesting if Teldressil happened AFTER Lordaeron? Pretty morally gray there, eh?" do you really expect people to immediately jump on the obvious train?

    What I don't understand is why they chose to go the route that they did when they had said the things they said previously. If Ion had never said anything about morally gray anything, I think the majority of the playerbase would have immediately thought Sylvanas was bad without a second thought.

    I, myself, kept waiting to see what was so "morally gray" about the obviously evil character doing evil things.
    The morally gray thing might have been the biggest piece of bullshit spouted by the devs. The second Sylvanas burned down Teldrassil it was clear to everyone that the Horde was evil and the Alliance good for opposing them, and this painted the entire expansion in a bad light.
    Is Jaina agonizing over letting daelin die despite him seeming a tyrant for wanting genocide? Teldrassil shows they might be irredeemable monsters afterall.
    Is The Alliance justified in attacking the Zandalari, a seemingly neutral party? Not when they harbor known tyrants and allow their ports to be used as staging grounds.
    Is Saurfang right about the Horde being iredeemable? All evidence points to yes.

    In many ways the writers did absolutely everything wrong in BfA if they wanted to paint it as a morally gray conflict. For one they have shockingly little introspection from the Horde on how this is the third time they blindly accepted a tyrant going around genociding.
    The world revamp dream will never die!

  20. #60
    New Kid Zaelsino's Avatar
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    It really is astounding how they could hash out all the different ways another faction war could go, only to settle on the most trite and regressive one imaginable.

    The Alliance had plenty of investment in Lordaeron, and many reasons -- some seeded a decade ago -- to target it and try to remove Sylvanas from power. She'd given them more and more reasons since becoming warchief. The Horde had been mostly divested of its war hawks since Garrosh's era, while the Alliance still had Genn, Jaina, Rogers et al at the helm. We got an entire book just before this whose purpose was to make Anduin realise Sylvanas has got to go. The Alliance striking first made sense and would finally have given us a halfway "grey" faction war. Perhaps most offensively, we just had a world war started by the Horde; it was unthinkable that these writers would be so creatively bankrupt as to rehash the entire thing beat for beat.

    Truly a riddle for the ages.

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