[Spoilers] Safe Haven Cinematic

[Mehrunes]

Also he is not a traitor. Going against a ruler who tries to assassinate you preemptively because you MIGHT oppose them cannot ever be conceived as treason.

Members of the Horde are literally tools of the Warchief. Sylvanas has the right to use Aggra's bones as toothpicks. Blame Thrall for not actually reforming the Horde and instead resting on his laurels after he just added "New" to the name.

[mickybrighteyes]

You do know that bad writing is having sylvanas send 2 nameless assassins after thrall right? Sylvanas has shown herself to be a highly cunning and ruthless strategist. And now she decides to take out a super powered shaman with nameless assassins? Thats bad writing. She is doing something out of character. She is being uncharacteristically careless with important matters.

also, typically, hasn't Sylvanas been abusing her dark rangers for such matters? Rather than apaprently throw away chumps (unless there's some story about those would be assassin's... like was that V cut something significant or just whatever...)

In and of itself it's not 'bad' except for the obvious part where they're clearly leaving out most the story to show these little snippets.

Someone might point out a certain individual who personally met with a wide array of assassins and cutthroats and employed such people in an elaborate plan... but that level of storytelling hasn't been present in WoW for awhile and likely will only remain in various theorizers' "lore fix" ideas.

[Candy Cough]

Visually stunning but what the hell

There is no coming back from "Not garrosh 2.0" now. Sylvanas was defendable. I could have accepted that the assasins went after Saurfang (Oh no sylvanas is evil help us. Yeah but it was you who planned the war of thorns and butchered innocents), but Thrall? Like what the hell? Does she even remember who invited them into the horde to begin with?

[Mehrunes]

Reading thru 14 pages of comments here.......honestly it feels like a lot of you simply live to complain. Like that's what you guys like to do at this point in your life.

Complain about BFA, WoW, cinematics, movies, shows....complain complain complain....

Just fucking stop.

Cinematic is dope af, if you think otherwise....wtf r u still doing here?

You have no authority to tell anyone to stop complaining. If you don't want to see people complaining and disagreeing with your totally objective view that the cinematic is dope, you can make a blog dedicated to praising Blizzard to high heaven.

Its a great cinematic,

BUT I don't understand Sylvanas motivation for trying to assassinate Thrall?
...I've understood everything to a point until now. This act is needless aggression towards a party that withstood no action towards her current plans, or the way she leads The Horde. Why attempt this? Why bring so many different people together against her? Its odd. She has had a plan, a goal, and strategy all this time...why go out of her way like this. [B][I]It doesn't add up, unless she needs Thrall for some reason?

Her motivation throughout this entire expansion is simply doing lolevil things for the sake of lolevil. This is perfectly in character.

[MatthiasVonTzeskagrad]

You guys will have to excuse Trassk, he's actually the only person who enjoyed the whole Vol'jin's Rebellion/Overthrow Garrosh plot of MoP, so he's gonna defend the shit out of them redoing all of that again with Saurfang/Sylvanas.

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Nah, they have to wait until Saurfang tries to recruit him and after he says "no thanks" then they attack!

I kinda enjoyed the MoP thing.
I hate the guts of this expansion tho. It's worse in every friggin way and is a repetition.

[Mehrunes]

I mean if we didn't know that her plan involves death and a lot of Stormwind zombies, I'd have started buying in the Lelouch theory.

Maybe it's Lelouch story with zombies. Dat creativity!

[mickybrighteyes]

First time was in comic and in game event, it was nonsense. They were bolting each other. In a story telling neither of them would survive 10 seconds of it.

And Garrosh would accept Mak'Gora with magic turned on? I doubt it. He was cocky but not stupid.

That comic Mak'Gora was Mak'gora in name only. Said blood elf paladin didn't care about the rules, didn't even listen to them and lashed out on the female orc. I gues she too didn't care considering she has spared him afterwards. Also body armor is not the same as shield but that's technicality.

Still, Thrall was using sentient and sapient entities.

Mak'gora with magic allowed has no sense in orcish culture. All clans would be ruled by magic users with no warrior ever having a chance to challenge the rule. That's not very honorable.

The nonsense or whatever as you want to view it matters less when compared to the fact that the official lore stance on the rules of Mak'gora has no set established rules as canon. You can cite 9 sets of rules... for 9 different fights and the only constant is that it's 1v1. Hell you can't even say the victor was always the one who fought or that refusal to fight didn't always end in exile. The forsaken durability is more consistent in it's canon interpretation (which, for those of you who don't know... varies from being as nimble as those two assassin's in the recent cinematic to falling into dust at barely any breeze).

I'd also point out that most orc clans were heavily influenced by some shaman/priest type as well as whoever was their most renowned fighter.

[Aucald]

But the idiocy is not in the number of assassins. It's with them attacking only after Saurfang and Thrall are at the same spot. They had an opportunity to attack Saurfang earlier and they definitely could have waited to see if Thrall would join Saurfang and if not, attack him when he was alone. The fact that they made a completely retarded choice to move the narrative does not suddenly not make this bad writing. When characters do something completely out of character just so the narrative can move forward, that is the definition of bad writing.

Hindsight is always 20/20 - they could've done this, or they could've done that. If Saurfang was following them then they didn't have such an opportunity, though; they were presumably there for Thrall all along, with Saurfang following in their wake. The game was over as soon as Saurfang arrived in actuality, which wasn't something they could've planned for under the notion of them being there for Thrall. The best tactic they could've taken was not to attack at all, really; just observe what happened and report back to Sylvanas under the notion that to attack them would also be to die. They chose to take the chance to complete their assigned mission and they died in its commission. That doesn't seem like bad writing to me, it's just the outcome of a bad decision on their parts. We can't really say it's "out of character" because what exactly are their characters? They're just mooks, really; and they died like mooks.

[Mehrunes]

Thrall is just a mortal - like her being susceptible to being shot in the face, he's susceptible to being poisoned and/or perforated by multiple Nightblades. It is also not as if she could've sent an entire detachment of Deathstalkers without showing her hand, as well.

Given how the very cinematic in question showed that Rogues literally turn invisible, why would that be the case?

The story is written to get a narrative from point A to point B, not to pursue a path that best represents what any one reader wants of it. Perhaps there were more assassins and they didn't survive the rigors of Outland, or perhaps those two were just the first of many to be dispatched. We can't really know that either way.

Yeah, and the problem is that Blizzard's writers are using a bulldozer to get between those two points, completely trampling pesky things like logic, reason or continuity over to achieve that.

[Moonrage]

Are you the same type of person that felt MoP was biased in favor of the Horde? Here's a super helpful hint: Getting screen time is not an inherently good thing, usually it's the opposite.

So i should be happy that so far we've had three Horde themed cinematics and no Alliance ones? This cinematic was to keep the Thrall fanboys happy and we all know it.

[Aucald]

They are assassins. The accepted character of an assassin is calculating and good at killing. Mooks don't get to vanish with no cooldown.

Thrall is the former World-Shaman, and Saurfang is a veteran of every war the Horde has ever fought. They were outclassed and they died, regardless of their skill. There weren't any good options at that point - so basically we're just quibbling about when they decided to strike, under the notion that some other time might've turned out better for them (and it probably wouldn't). Their mission became more or less impossible when Saurfang showed up, so it was either try and die or fail and face Sylvanas' wrath later. They chose the former.

[mickybrighteyes]

Hindsight is always 20/20 - they could've done this, or they could've done that. If Saurfang was following them then they didn't have such an opportunity, though; they were presumably there for Thrall all along, with Saurfang following in their wake. The game was over as soon as Saurfang arrived in actuality, which wasn't something they could've planned for under the notion of them being there for Thrall. The best tactic they could've taken was not to attack at all, really; just observe what happened and report back to Sylvanas under the notion that to attack them would also be to die. They chose to take the chance to complete their assigned mission and they died in its commission. That doesn't seem like bad writing to me, it's just the outcome of a bad decision on their parts. We can't really say it's "out of character" because what exactly are their characters? They're just mooks, really; and they died like mooks.

The odd thing is that, I dunno, but wouldn't Sylvanas treat handling Thrall in this manner with a different attitude? Like sending Dark Rangers instead of random mooks?

some other points are worth knitpicking but really just dumb down into the creator of the cinematic abusing rule of cool or reading WAY TOO MUCH into pointless details (like why all out ambush like that only AFTER Thrall made it clear he wasn't interested.... since Saurfang followed them, they should likely be there first and if Thrall was the target why not take him out first and fuck whatever Saurfang might say about it)

[Moonrage]

Reading thru 14 pages of comments here.......honestly it feels like a lot of you simply live to complain. Like that's what you guys like to do at this point in your life.

Complain about BFA, WoW, cinematics, movies, shows....complain complain complain....

Just fucking stop.

Cinematic is dope af, if you think otherwise....wtf r u still doing here?

We're mad because this is yet another Horde themed cinematic, while we haven't even gotten one that focusses on the Alliance. The only one thing close was Lost Honor and that was mainly about Saurfang anyway.

[Fetus Rex]

The nonsense or whatever as you want to view it matters less when compared to the fact that the official lore stance on the rules of Mak'gora has no set established rules as canon. You can cite 9 sets of rules... for 9 different fights and the only constant is that it's 1v1. Hell you can't even say the victor was always the one who fought or that refusal to fight didn't always end in exile. The forsaken durability is more consistent in it's canon interpretation (which, for those of you who don't know... varies from being as nimble as those two assassin's in the recent cinematic to falling into dust at barely any breeze).

I'd also point out that most orc clans were heavily influenced by some shaman/priest type as well as whoever was their most renowned fighter.

Traditional mak'gora has rules per Garrosh and Cairne encounter. Exile is a thing from Alternate Universe so I don't know how much of it would be the same.

Most clans have shaman spiritual guides, but not leaders.

[Aucald]

Given how the very cinematic in question showed that Rogues literally turn invisible, why would that be the case?

Probably not a state that can last forever, and it isn't as though invisibility availed them anything - Saurfang heard them coming in any case. I sincerely doubt they spent the entire time moving from Azeroth to Nagrand invisible as well.

[Walross]

Seeing the usual crybabies on this thread whining about things not going their way and blaming or deflecting it on the writing, its hilarious. Pretending you even had things the ball park to begin with is a level of entitlement I could make a reddit post for.

*sylvanas takes power and does evil things with that power* "This is great, this is how the lore should be now!"
*rebellion starts because sylvanas' evil starts to break the horde* "Urgh the writings shit now fuck you blizzard!"

Do you people have no self awareness?

People want their characters immersed in the lore so badly they start to act like NPCs.

[rcshaggy]

Loved the subtle hint of Thrall wearing alliance colors. Totally not MoP BTW

His Heroes model has blue on it...

[The Stormbringer]

that's actually a great idea, yeah it doesn't make sense but screw it no price is high enough to return to Thrall x Jaina and that ascii code from Gnomeregan
seriously i'd actually love that idea even if i know it doesn't make sense, but at least i love it

Thrall x Jaina was the true ship. The fact that it never sailed and they instead found some rando Orc for Thrall to hook up with always rankled me. Just ignore "Half-Orcs are a thing" forever, why don't you? Bah!

[Aucald]

The odd thing is that, I dunno, but wouldn't Sylvanas treat handling Thrall in this manner with a different attitude? Like sending Dark Rangers instead of random mooks?

some other points are worth knitpicking but really just dumb down into the creator of the cinematic abusing rule of cool or reading WAY TOO MUCH into pointless details (like why all out ambush like that only AFTER Thrall made it clear he wasn't interested.... since Saurfang followed them, they should likely be there first and if Thrall was the target why not take him out first and fuck whatever Saurfang might say about it)

Even Dark Rangers would be mooks in this context, unless we're talking about sending Sira, Delaryn, or Velonara. Thrall joining Saurfang was kind of a foregone conclusion - his reticence is all surface level, you can tell by his expression that Saurfang had already scored several hits on Thrall's objections. The attack of the assassins wasn't even necessary to cinch his aid, though it definitely made the cinematic more fun by giving it an action set-piece.

[Powerogue]

"I followed them."

Oof. I believe him, one of the assassins was already there hiding in/on Thrall's house.

A badass cinematic, and this is exactly where I thought this was heading ever since Saurfang camped out so near the Dark Portal. Did not see Sylvanas sending assassins to Thrall coming though. She grows more paranoid by the day. Finding the most likely heads of a potential rebellion and targeting them precisely instead of Garrosh's strategy of evicting entire races on the slight of one or two people is the more intelligent approach, but it's nevertheless a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Sylvanas hadn't sent assassins to him in the swamp, I have every reason to think Saurfang would have just retired and lived out there the way Thrall was.