If the night elves gave half of Ashenvale to the Horde, would there have been peace?

[Hellobolis]

Hardly. They eagerly followed Sylvanas into an unprovoked war, even though they had no need for it. They had just gotten new allies of which some were especially skilled in teleportation magic. Any and all resource problems should have been easily solved at that point.

No. The truth is that many in the Horde just want to have war. It's an intrinsical part of their culture and without it they literally have nothing to do. Hence why they eagerly grab their axes every time someone points at a target. Thrall tried to keep this bottled up and surpressed, since he saw the folly in it, but he could not remove this trait completely. Hence why as soon as he was out of the picture, his successor only had to say the word and Orgrimmar jumped at the chance of blood.

yes, they will follow a warmongery leader easily as it's in their culture.

but they also obviously can keep themselves in check even when their kids go hungry under a non-warmonger leader. (which ironically is only possible because of that same warrior culture.)

the hordes need for conflict is a river. a good leader can channel the course of the river into productive areas, a bad leader can break all the dams and cause a massive flood.

if the elves and humans had been smarter about it, they could have had a lot more influence on who succeeded thrall, and thus what conflicts could have been avoided.

[schwank05]

Blood elves cant leave EK even more so then night elves cant leave Kalimdor because blood elves will shrivel and die if someone destroys Sunwell.

Those pussy bitches may as well join the alliance anyway.

[Raisei]

It made perfect sense militarily for Sylvanas to destroy Darnassus, and abandon the UC. I was thinking this would be the perfect opportunity for each faction to get an entire continent. But alas Blizzard does stupid things with the story all the time.

Sure, if her goal was to plunge her faction into a total and unending war that it could not win, then yes, it made sense to slaughter all those civilians. Which was of course indeed what she wanted.

But no, from a military stand point the best she could have done was take the tree and hold the elves inside as hostages, thus pressing Anduin and Tyrande into heavily unfavourable agreements. A move that would have even worked, because Anduin would have never allowed the elves to die.

By murdering them she not only removed that option and any restraints the Alliance would have had, she also gave the Alliance a reason to wipe the Horde out once and for all.

Of course the writers immediatedly regreted it and decided to blame it all on Sylvanas who was gonna go apeshit in the next expansion anyway, but really every military personel ever can tell you that the last thing you want to do is give your enemy a righteous cause and unite them against you, while also alienating the people on your side that might not be happy about seeing a tree full of civilians burn.

[VladlTutushkin]

yes, they will follow a warmongery leader easily as it's in their culture.

but they also obviously can keep themselves in check even when their kids go hungry under a non-warmonger leader. (which ironically is only possible because of that same warrior culture.)

the hordes need for conflict is a river. a good leader can channel the course of the river into productive areas, a bad leader can break all the dams and cause a massive flood.

if the elves and humans had been smarter about it, they could have had a lot more influence on who succeeded thrall, and thus what conflicts could have been avoided.

I smell a stench of appeasement. And you know what happened last time someone tried appeasement?

[VinceVega]

No it would not have.

Horde, more specifically orcs, are just way to horny for war. Everything in their culture is war. Hell the leader is called WARchief.
Garrosh did not care about other races. He used those who are usefull the rest got discarded. He is the epitome of a fascistic nationalist. And hella racist.

Thrall always was the odd one out because of his proximity to some humans. Without the orcs there would be no WARcraft. Just...Craft.
Given the opportunity i don't think they would shy away from commiting genocide on every race on azeroth including the horde races.

Sure there are some who have a conscience. Like Thrall and Saurfang at the end.
They always talk about honor and bullshit but they are worse than the scurge imho.

I don't mind tbh. Gives us some story and conflict. But Blizz should have give the whole race a more... "human"-side (yeah yeah i know). I don't really see much of a difference between demon blood prcs and current ones.

[Darknessvamp]

It would have been extremely unlikely the Horde would have just stopped at that and made peace with the Night Elves, despite having Druids and Shamans among their ranks the Horde isn't known for it's horticulture or ability to create sustainable sources otherwise they wouldn't have pushed so hard into claiming Ashenvale territories in the first place.

Plus the issue of needing wood from Ashenvale in particular is from the result of their first mistake of establishing Orgrimmar in Durotar of all places instead of moving further inland. I mean they already knew the forests of Ashenvale were claimed and protected by the Elves before settling down and it's not like they were forced to stop there considering the nomadic Tauren were able to set up Thunderbluff in Mulgore.

[Crimznrain]

This is a story written by a company that needs to drive engagement. There needs to be tension. Peace is boring. No matter what the writers decided, they would have found some way to make war happen.

[Wolfrick]

The main thing to look into here is that... the Night Elves are a very very and I say VERY proud people...

You say that the night elves gave Azshara to the horde... the only reason they did was because Varian (the Leader of their Alliance) strongly wanted it to happen and Azshara was allready 99% abandon by the night elves...

So to Tyrande it was like giving away trash.... and when she did, she said "lets see how soon the Goblin destroys them selves with their greed... so she and the night elves gave away that area with a very bad taste in their mouths...

So, giving away parts of ASHENVALE... would never ever have happend...

[Steelangel]

I guess that many players don't particulary like playing the random bland blond nice prince who helps unicorns, sings to birds and helps old people cross the roads, from any fantasy book for 6 years old children.

I mean that doesn't actually exist, but you do you.

[Soon-TM]

if the nightmare was messing stuff up and it wasn't just caused by nature, how much better could it really have gone?

Don't forget those meddlesome nelf druids trying to terraform Silithus. They surely did an awesome job there

[VladlTutushkin]

Don't forget those meddlesome nelf druids trying to terraform Silithus. They surely did an awesome job there

They did good job in Desolace. Silithus just much harder to work with and yet we dont know how bad it was when Sargeras sword struck it.

[LilSaihah]

Didn't we try this with mister Hitler and he just decided he wanted to grab some more?

[Bwgmon]

Considering the people of Warcraft don't actually exist and everything they do is at the whim of whoever is writing the story, I doubt it. All it would've done is make the latest slice of "putting WAR back in WARcraft" look slightly more arbitrary than it usually is.

[Powerogue]

Considering Azshara, no, absolutely not.

Garrosh was never a "take just what we need to survive while trying to avoid making new enemies" warchief. That was Thrall. Garrosh was someone arrogant enough to genuinely think he both can and should conquer the world.

His pride was literally so massive it manifested itself as a raid boss.

[VladlTutushkin]

Didn't we try this with mister Hitler and he just decided he wanted to grab some more?

Yeah. Wanted to say that but didnt wanted the trouble of "duuude dont compare to Hilter!". Appeasement politics which allowed him to grab as much land and resources as he wanted did not stopped him from wanting more and allowed him to build up momentum for a World War.

And his main argument also was "Germany just needs resources, we will take our due and not more."

[Powerogue]

I mean that doesn't actually exist, but you do you.

That's the slant he winds up looking like when people idolize supervillains like Garrosh and Sylvanas.

[iosdeveloper]

doesnt feel like Warcraft to me

imagine Putin would gave half of russian territory to china cuz they have no natural resources? World of Charitycraft

[Calfredd]

doesnt feel like Warcraft to me

imagine Putin would gave half of russian territory to china cuz they have no natural resources? World of Charitycraft

Decent analogy but you have it the other way around because isn't half of Russia desolate frozen wasteland?

[Soon-TM]

They did good job in Desolace. Silithus just much harder to work with and yet we dont know how bad it was when Sargeras sword struck it.

Um, Desolace wasn't terraformed by druids, it was just a consequence of the Cataclysm. As a matter of fact, the CC NPCs in Desolace send you to investigate wtf is going on since it's clearly an unexpected phenomenon for them.

[VladlTutushkin]

Um, Desolace wasn't terraformed by druids, it was just a consequence of the Cataclysm. As a matter of fact, the CC NPCs in Desolace send you to investigate wtf is going on since it's clearly an unexpected phenomenon for them.

Well, Plaguelands still does the job of a good example... Until forsaken started fucking things up there.

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Decent analogy but you have it the other way around because isn't half of Russia desolate frozen wasteland?

Resource rich desolate wasteland. Main problem is extracting and refining those materials. And of course abysmally stupid governors.