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

[Super Dickmann]

Later he verbally denounced Magatha for her "treachery" but did no moves to punish her and pretty much allowed her to take over Thunder Bluff because he refused to send horde forces to assist Baine and his tauren even though Grimtotem were slaughtering civilians.

Garrosh didn't send troops to Thunder Bluff not because he wasn't ready to help the tauren - the Horde race he had in almost as high esteem as orcs given that they were the only ones besides orcs allowed to live in the Valley of Strength, but because Baine preferred to ask Jaina, as is always the case.

@Le Conceptuel

It's simpler than that. The druid school was useless as a military target and was entirely civilian. Theramore was a military target and anyone who stayed behind or was in range was pretty much fair game and were going to, by virtue of his strategy, likely going to have the chance to evacuate anyway. Even in Mists Garrosh condemns the same things he condemned in Stonetalon when he tells Ishi that there's a difference between killing and murder once Ishi says he wants to chop Alliance kids in their sleep.

[VladlTutushkin]

And all of that can be explained incredibly easily by understanding garrosh and his values; or value [singular]: strength.

He is the Warchief, he did not think that Magatha would DARE to interfere with his sacred duel. You can call him closed minded, plenty of evidence for that, but what you're saying is, as you said; just a theory and not what actually happened. I am unaware of any canonical secret orders from garrosh to bomb the school either; source? Or is that another opinion?

The Tauren are in a civil war? GOOD. Let them kill off the weak and make way for the strong, the strong will rule and be much better allies. Baine having to ask for help at all was weakness, made even more disgusting by his asking for help from the Alliance. Garrosh just does not see things the way you do, he doesn't see the lack of choice, only the weakness in asking at all and his disgust with it.

This is how Garroshs mind worked. His entire perspective of the horde was based on romanticized stories of his father leading the glorious warsong into war and overcoming the demon enslavers. A fantasy that culminated in his Iron horde.

And then being milked by pride vampires which kinda points out that he was a moron.

- - - Updated - - -

Garrosh didn't send troops to Thunder Bluff not because he wasn't ready to help the tauren - the Horde race he had in almost as high esteem as orcs given that they were the only ones besides orcs allowed to live in the Valley of Strength, but because Baine preferred to ask Jaina, as is always the case.

He asked Garrosh first and was told to go and die in the ditch.

[Super Dickmann]

He asked Garrosh first and was told to go and die in the ditch.

As much as I would be happy for this to be the case, it isn't. Baine deliberately doesn't approach Garrosh at all because he doesn't trust him and so Garrosh doesn't help him. Yet he thinks of contacting Sylvanas (but doesn't because her city is under Kor'kron occupation) which should tell you a lot about both his decision making. Garrosh only learns after the fact and sends Magatha an angry letter.

[VladlTutushkin]

Definitely, but not that of a directly underhanded schemer, like you've made him appear. He was evil, but a pretty strict Lawful Evil - his rules were always his rules. I suppose if you were to really twist things, you could even say that it makes sense he'd distinguish between Theramore and the Druid school because the latter had Horde members present who didn't go against him or his plans and the former was still a target they were at least already going after.

To a jingoist anybody who "mingles" with an enemy is just a possible future enemy. HIGHLY possible. An "international" school like that would give Garrosh an eye twitch. Imagine something like... idk... Kim the Fat finding out that his north koreans are attending school together with south koreans and americans and the school itself is built in "western" style and teaches disciplines considered "capitalistic" generally.

[AcidicSyn]

And then being milked by pride vampires which kinda points out that he was a moron.

We agree there, I never said he was the sharpest tool around haha. I'm explaining his motivations, not defending them lol

[Le Conceptuel]

Garrosh didn't send troops to Thunder Bluff not because he wasn't ready to help the tauren - the Horde race he had in almost as high esteem as orcs given that they were the only ones besides orcs allowed to live in the Valley of Strength, but because Baine preferred to ask Jaina, as is always the case.

@Le Conceptuel

It's simpler than that. The druid school was useless as a military target and was entirely civilian. Theramore was a military target and anyone who stayed behind or was in range was pretty much fair game and were going to, by virtue of his strategy, likely going to have the chance to evacuate anyway. Even in Mists Garrosh condemns the same things he condemned in Stonetalon when he tells Ishi that there's a difference between killing and murder once Ishi says he wants to chop Alliance kids in their sleep.

Ah, did he? I didn't actually do much of that expansion, so it sounds like the character's actually more fleshed-out than I thought. I would say that using a WMD is still very much worth condemning him, but it definitely presents a different shade of evil. (And, sadly enough, technically gives him more moral high ground in some respects than the relative good guys in some real-world wars.)

[Shedaar]

Eh...Sylvie knew by that point the war was over. She tells Horde Loyalists during their separate ending cutscene she knew the war was going to end soon but wished it lasted a bit longer so more strong souls would go to the Shadowlands.

I'm sorry but how does the sentence you have written correspond to whether or not BFA was "won" by Ally or Horde?
I literally said that Sylvanas would've easily killed both Horde forces and Alliance forces at the gates of Orgrimmar if she didn't agree to Mak'gora and go batshit crazy (probably intentionally given the fact that we now know that she has doubts regarding Zovaal).

[Syegfryed]

I have no idea how you have played BfA and can argue against that.

i think you are reading too much in the garbage, all over the place expansion, or just blind by bias

The overwhelming majority of the horde stood with Sylvanas till the end and not only tolerated the gruesome path that the chose but reveled in it. It was Sylvanas who abandoned the Horde, not the Horde who abandoned Sylvanas.

it was stated, over and over again, that they didn't want to, they only stood with her by fear of being the next killed and fear that they would be killed by alliance if were not united.

i have no idea how you can say otherwise and claim that you played bfa.

- - - Updated - - -

Soo apparently people think the accord with orcs and night elves was broken because of the twilight cult attack, no it wasn't.

The accord was already broken with Varian declaration of war, elves saw that as opportunity, the twilight cult attack was to disrupt the meeting of taurens and night elves to reestablished the accord

Both horde and alliance people were killed and the night elves claimed the horde should be the ones to apologize, seek the guilty, yada yada yada, implying they were the ones to blame

in fact it was just a scapegoat to not firm the accord again, lets be real

[Soon-TM]

night elves claimed the horde should be the ones to apologize, seek the guilty yada yada yada, implying they were the ones to blame.

It's even more funny when you consider that the war was started by an ally of nelfs, and yet they demanded the orcs to apologize

[geco]

it was stated, over and over again, that they didn't want to, they only stood with her by fear of being the next killed and fear that they would be killed by alliance if were not united.

Correct me but they don't really say that until Baien reveals himself.
Until Baien acts there is no talk of rebelling against Sylvanas. They were all good with her.
And even after she reveals herself no one feels bad about the genocide against the Kaldorei. To the point that when they fight Ashara they don't even say an apology to Shandris.

Rezzar fights because Jaina "killed a lot".
Liliana has her motives.
I think only Garrona says something like they are forcing her.

It's even more funny when you consider that the war was started by an ally of nelfs, and yet they demanded the orcs to apologize

It's more fun to think that Elves are supposed to give things to Orcs simply because they don't have them.
But when the Elves are the ones who need things. The orcs don't even think of giving him anything.

Or even more so when they realize that everyone knows that the Orcs wanted wood from the Kaldoeri. But nobody starts to think with what they paid for the wood. The Kaldoeri were basically giving it away to him for some random resources he didn't want. I don't know why they are surprised that they are not interested in killing such a deal.

[Syegfryed]

Correct me but they don't really say that until Baien reveals himself.

No, it was said many times before.

It is said that literally after the burning, Saurfang said all of the alliance was coming for the horde, they united instead of divided, would go for then and would not stop

It as said by Rokhan, Baine and so on.

It's more fun to think that Elves are supposed to give things to Orcs simply because they don't have them.

Its something normal, to share something you have in abundance with the neighbors in famine that saved the world with you, that helped you when it needed.

But when the Elves are the ones who need things. The orcs don't even think of giving him anything.

are you sure about that? the elves needed the horde to fight archimonde and the legion and the horde gave their lives to then, is that anything in your book?

The Kaldoeri were basically giving it away to him for some random resources he didn't want.

and with what basis do you say that?

[geco]

No, it was said many times before.

It is said that literally after the burning, Saurfang said all of the alliance was coming for the horde, they united instead of divided, would go for then and would not stop

It as said by Rokhan, Baine and so on.

They still do not show a problem with Sylvanas or with her way of action. Except for Varock who is leaving the Horde.

Its something normal, to share something you have in abundance with the neighbors in famine that saved the world with you, that helped you when it needed.

You really have a point. But hey Malfurion and Thrall are for each other they will not lift a finger for their people until they have the ax in their heads.

are you sure about that? the elves needed the horde to fight archimonde and the legion and the horde gave their lives to then, is that anything in your book?

Well right now the Kaldorei have to rebuild their capital and their entire nation after being split in half.
Someone is giving you something?

Trall could only offer an apology. And he thought that they were at hand with that.


PD: And the Horde gave both their lives to defeat the Burning legion and the Kaldorei. It was not one side helping the other. Simply the two fighting against a common enemy.

PD

and with what basis do you say that?

I really have no basis.
Or well my base is as I said. No one is talking about what the Kaldorei were getting in return.

Sometimes I read that it was Iron. But again the Kaldorei don't need it.

[Irian]

You said it yourself mate. Garrosh attacked them after they broke it [the trade agreement] off. So, it [the trade agreement] was broken by the night elves, and Garrosh attacked in retaliation.

Granted, I think Garrosh would have found a reason to attack anyway, but the fact still remains that he was not the one to break the agreement; that was the Night Elves fuck up.

There wasn't even an attempt at diplomacy. The moment Garrosh found a moment where there was tension between the night elves and orcs, he attacked.

If he was that eager to attack over a misunderstanding, it was only a matter of time until something made him decide to attack. He didn't even take time to investigate whether or not the attack was staged, I can't totally remember but I'm fairly sure he never even looked into why the hell the Horde attacked them to begin with.

There's really nothing night elves could do. If orcs want something, they kill and take it. It was a matter of time until some kind of event drove them to attack.

[Super Dickmann]

The idea that the Horde was majority opposed to Sylvanas' war goals is the most desperate form of coping in the recent story. The entire story is predicated on Sylvanas having majority support - shamans helped burn the tree, trolls used night elves for target practice. Orcs tell you that the Horde will always be hers in Brennadam as they nab Kul Tiran land. Orcs are ready to chop down Sadfang and Green Jesus in the Underhold while talking about how they have no honor. Tauren arrest Baine and the Earthmother blessed the drums to help the war effort. The only reason the Horde at large ultimately turned on her is because she called them mean doodoo heads and flew off because of her supremely low IQ, not wideranging policy disagreement. Hell, one of the last things you do is beat up Eitrigg and drag him through the streets where the citizens fling rotten apples at him.

That is not an incidental element, it is the entire core of the story - that the population are by and large morons and need their beliefs corrected by imposition from up above. Is it stupid that orcs and tauren don't care about the defilement of their dead in Lordaeron? Does it make sense that they're gung-ho for the war up until the exact second their leader calls them names whereupon they become peaceniks? Of course not, BFA is wretched, but that's the story as presented.

@Le Conceptuel

It's largely accidental. Theramore is treated as the worst thing to ever happen, but due to the way Garrosh's strategy required waiting so he could wait for as many troops to assemble as possible before nuking them, evacuation was always going to happen. This isn't out of any special solidarity for the people there, those he does grab are used for target practice later after all, much like Kul Tiras does to captives, so he's not some peak humanitarian, but Garrosh has never gone out of his way to target civilians.

[Raisei]

It's even more funny when you consider that the war was started by an ally of nelfs, and yet they demanded the orcs to apologize

It's unfathomable that even years later, with dozens of revelations to the contrary you still buy the propaganda that Sylvanas started the war because of Genn. Sure she is pissed at him, but her reasons for starting the war should be very evident by now...

Also, for the sake of fact. Tyrande did not expect Thrall to apologize, she doesn't give a crap about the insencere apology of the Orcs or the Horde, knowing they will betray them again anyway. She expects the head of the Banshee, maybe then she will decide to not drop a moon on Orgrimmar. We will see.

[Zyky]

Alliance basically gave up Azshara, Horde wanted more.

[Raisei]

The idea that the Horde was majority opposed to Sylvanas' war goals is the most desperate form of coping in the recent story. The entire story is predicated on Sylvanas having majority support - shamans helped burn the tree, trolls used night elves for target practice. Orcs tell you that the Horde will always be hers in Brennadam as they nab Kul Tiran land. Orcs are ready to chop down Sadfang and Green Jesus in the Underhold while talking about how they have no honor. Tauren arrest Baine and the Earthmother blessed the drums to help the war effort. The only reason the Horde at large ultimately turned on her is because she called them mean doodoo heads and flew off because of her supremely low IQ, not wideranging policy disagreement. Hell, one of the last things you do is beat up Eitrigg and drag him through the streets where the citizens fling rotten apples at him.

As I pointed out above (or in another threat) this is exactly it. The Horde just wants to have war. The cause is irrelevant, the enemy is irrelevant, they just want to slaughter things, hence why they stood with Garrosh no matter what he did and they stood with Sylvanas, because those two allowed them to be their worst selves.

Thrall tried to suppress it in his new Horde, but he failed and the minute his ass left the Warchief chair, the Horde was what it was when the Orcs set foot on this planet the first time. Which is why Tyrande is completely right and Anduin is delusional.

The moment one of the new Council decides that it would be cool to have war again (Talanji probably) Orgrimmar will rise up and happily execute the other members of the Council. Shadow's Rising doesn't even sugar coat this. The Horde was pretty much one vote away from just attacking the Alliance again, consequences be damned. It's gonna happen, the question is just when.

That is not an incidental element, it is the entire core of the story - that the population are by and large morons and need their beliefs corrected by imposition from up above.

I wouldn't say "morons" but "bloodthirsty idiots" barely held in check when their leaders aren't psychopathic killers themselves. It is Anduins believe that they can still be corrected at this point and most likely he will soon learn how wrong he is. If he survives Danuser's redemption arc for his Dark Lady that is.

[BaumanKing]

And as for his declaration of war, here's the sole mention of Sylvanas:

Man, after so many years of peaceniks it's so weird to see an Alliance leader to talk like that. I completely forgot about it. And the most interesting thing is that Varian is not shown here as a villain, just a guy who's fed up with orcs.

[loras]

Ashenvale was the primary cause of Alliance and Horde's tensions in Kalimdor -- Durotar and Orgrimmar lacked the essential resources to sustain their population properly after the Third War, and the night elves seemed less than willing to provide them. It has been a major point of conflict -- in the original game, Cataclysm, in the Fourth War, etc.

As far as we know, Tyrande giving Azshara to the Horde was able to guarantee at least several years of peace, as the Horde abandoned most of their outposts in Ashenvale.

What if Tyrande and her night elves just gave the orcs half their territory? Would that have settled tensions between them permanently, and perhaps even averted or settled the Alliance-Horde faction conflict once and for all?

Yeah, let's give 'em Czechoslovakia while we're at it, maybe that will appease them.

[Super Dickmann]

As I pointed out above (or in another threat) this is exactly it. The Horde just wants to have war. The cause is irrelevant, the enemy is irrelevant, they just want to slaughter things, hence why they stood with Garrosh no matter what he did and they stood with Sylvanas, because those two allowed them to be their worst selves.

Thrall tried to suppress it in his new Horde, but he failed and the minute his ass left the Warchief chair, the Horde was what it was when the Orcs set foot on this planet the first time. Which is why Tyrande is completely right and Anduin is delusional.

The moment one of the new Council decides that it would be cool to have war again (Talanji probably) Orgrimmar will rise up and happily execute the other members of the Council. Shadow's Rising doesn't even sugar coat this. The Horde was pretty much one vote away from just attacking the Alliance again, consequences be damned. It's gonna happen, the question is just when.

As said in this and other topics, this is largely BFA exclusive. Even Mists didn't go as far with the orcs in the sense that they still had a verifiable motive. In the same scene where he admonishes Ishi he also mentions that their time in the wilderness is soon to be over and they'll soon settle down. You can freely argue over how much Garrosh actually would either want or could be a peace time ruler, but the fact that the game acknowledged that those involved had some kind of motive at all puts it miles ahead of BFA. Ditto how the Alliance were the ones to start off declaring the war, the genuinely morally gray fare in Cataclysm and that up until the last five minutes Varian was actually trying to win the war rather than make peace with the Horde. Like @BaumanKing says, it was a different (and better) time.

The fault with BFA isn't even necessarily that these constituencies exist. Given the bad blood between the factions, what happened the very last expansion in Legion and the fact that the thing being fought over was WMDs that could be in the hands of loose cannons that Anduin, as an inexperienced king could not keep in check would all give the Horde plenty of motive to be pro-war. Those who aren't directly pro-war could, as @Syegfryed brought up but is wrong about in this version of the story ,be driven by the post-Teldrassil feeling of having no other way out because they wouldn't even consider the Alliance would forgive genocide. Things like Brennadam could be used to push the cycle of hatred they keep crowing about - Daelin wanted to wipe them out and the Darkspear, now with a position of power, are monstrous to the Kul Tirans who had nothing to do with those who chased them down and used them for target practice. In turn, this would harden Jaina and her mother's conviction rather than having them immediately forgive.

If you wanted to tell a story about how long lasting such grievances can be and how harm inflicted on one leads to another and the importance of breaking off somewhere, you can do it. But you need to actually put your work in - show how Sylvanas is spurring these misconceptions on to keep her support, show the Horde's reluctance, not just the big name NPCs and show why they consider there to be a danger, humanize their opposition instead of having them be saints. A Good War did this and it's why it's by far the best of the side materials for that expansion. Both Sylvanas and Saurfang are operating on fundamentally wrong premises, but premises that are rational to hold. While bad and ill-advised, this story could have been done if there was care put into the various group and personal interests. However, it's not the soap opera style story they actually wanted to tell where everything is the fault of the morally Grey Lady, the Alliance are presented to everyone as being comically good boys and things end with a handshake.

I wouldn't say "morons" but "bloodthirsty idiots" barely held in check when their leaders aren't psychopathic killers themselves. It is Anduins believe that they can still be corrected at this point and most likely he will soon learn how wrong he is. If he survives Danuser's redemption arc for his Dark Lady that is.

They are precisely morons. Their position is Lovecraftian in its incomprehensibility and seems to be just based on them trusting Sylvanas, someone who had a bad rap in the Horde prior to BFA for a reason. They have no genuine convictions - they kill because the bad lady told them to, but when the Bad Lady tells them to they pull a 180 and now love the human king eulogizing a deserter in their capital. If they were genuinely committed to Sylvanas's stated war goals, Geya'rah or whoever would have just gone 'i'll do the same, but unironically' and they would've steamrolled Saurfang's 'so few' rebels outside. They didn't because the point isn't that the Horde are headchoppers or because they're loyal to the institution of Warchief (that they already pissed all over years ago to ditch Garrosh) but because of their trust in this one dead lady in particular. One might say that the Horde as presented to us, lacking beliefs, removing its cultural institutions and changing their entire way of operating at a whim is hollow. Dare I even say, it is nothing?