Realistic portrayal of the Alliance within World of Warcraft

[Verdugo]

I mean, whole USSR had to starve, lose huge swaths of population and live on scraps and rat shit but they won the war and it was worth it since otherwise they would have eventually lose entirely and be wiped out.

It was worth it so that they can start their own famines!

[VladlTutushkin]

the USSR wasn’t fighting alone and they didn’t go for wiping out Every enemy nation just removing the ruling party and ending the war which is what happened in bfa.

there really isn’t. The cenarion circle would have more or less ended with the night elf portion fighting the horde with the alliance.

The earthen ring is made up of active horde/alliance members with sylvanas threatening to pull support from it.

The argent dawn are worthless with horde/alliance support.

the rest are in the same boat as the dawn.

destroying your self is a far worse idea then returning to a classic-cata Cold War state and reviving and building strength.

I don’t really see any point talking about ashenvale as we have no info on it’s state post BFA and people saying it was given up to the horde are just assuming that based on said lack of info.

Unless I missed some short story or such which is possible I guess.

“Building strength”? With whom? Anduin? He will never build any strength he is a moronic pacifist. Also even IF Alliance builds up its military then so will the horde simply making next war more devastating and since we know that Alliance is bound to take the first (and worst) hits in the game that just means more genocides, more pain and more unnecessary drama.

Just finishing this pointless struggle now is better.

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It was worth it so that they can start their own famines!

USSR had famines before WW2 and Russian Empire had famines almost every next year but difference is that back in RE nobody just gave a fuck about some peasants starving to death and world wasnt yet “concerned” over anything or anybody outside their own borders.

[Daemos daemonium]

“Building strength”? With whom? Anduin? He will never build any strength he is a moronic pacifist. Also even IF Alliance builds up its military then so will the horde simply making next war more devastating and since we know that Alliance is bound to take the first (and worst) hits in the game that just means more genocides, more pain and more unnecessary drama.

so anduin didn’t attack lorderon or go to war with the horde? He wasn’t in favour of the void elfs light forged or kul tirans joining the alliance? I know that fanfic is fun and all but can we stick to reality?

Just finishing this pointless struggle now is better.

mutually assured destruction is rarely the right choice and would be the only outcome assuming the horde didn’t win and of course ignoring the whole sylvanas shadowlands thing.

[StationaryHawk]

Oh, i misunderstood then. I meant Gilneans and Theramore.

Gilneas is complicated, but it's clear the Alliance never abandoned it. The capital is reclaimed at least twice, once by the Alliance and later by a force of Gilneans, and the Alliance was engaged in naval warfare off its coast to keep the Forsaken from establishing another foothold. Battle for Azeroth implies that it has since been occupied by the Alliance, with the Horde's intent in Stromgarde being to use it as a launching point against Gilneas and at least two other mentions of attacks staged against the kingdom.

Theramore Isle and Northwatch Hold were casualties of a war Varian declared, the latter having been reclaimed by the Alliance since. I'm not sure what more the Alliance should be expected to do for them.

[VladlTutushkin]

so anduin didn’t attack lorderon or go to war with the horde? He wasn’t in favour of the void elfs light forged or kul tirans joining the alliance? I know that fanfic is fun and all but can we stick to reality?

mutually assured destruction is rarely the right choice and would be the only outcome assuming the horde didn’t win and of course ignoring the whole sylvanas shadowlands thing.

I also didnt expected them to attack before Shadowlands. After that however Alliance would be smarter to attack the horde without warning, demolishing as much as possible.

[Daemos daemonium]

I also didnt expected them to attack before Shadowlands. After that however Alliance would be smarter to attack the horde without warning, demolishing as much as possible.

Do you mean during the shadowlands? Or after a recovery period? Because during there’s a scourge invasion going on, after recovering from bfa and shadowlands then ya I’d say attacking the horde first would make sense.

But continuing the bfa conflict would be a death sentence for the alliance with or without the shadowlands stuff.

[Mehrunes]

I get that the BE's bargaining position in early TBC wasn't great and that joining forces with the Horde was more a matter of necessity than taste, and Lor'themar's behavior has broadly reflected this, but as shown by the Zandalari example they could have insisted on being allies of the Horde rather than enslaved to it, especially given that Thrall is hardly the most unreasonable of Orcs.

That hardly the most unreasonable of Orcs didn't want them to join at all and had to be convinced by Sylvanas.

Similarly, why did Sylvanas also throw away her sovereignty to some Orc after fighting so hard to earn her freedom? Something which would bite her in the ass hard in Cata. It just seems totally out of character for anyone who has a minimal amount of spine to look at the Blood Oath and not say "oh hell no, I am so not handing my people's sovereignty and lives to one person that can be replaced at the drop of a hat just to be part of your club".

It's not like she ever did anything other than pay lip service to that. The Forsaken did what they pleased, they fought whom they pleased and they assisted whom they pleased. Even when Thrall put them under martial law in his sheer hypocrisy and Garrosh forbade them from using unaccepted strains of the Blight (or any strains of the Blight in Gilneas) the Forsaken used the Blight left and right and at most bullshitted the Orc overseers about how it's totally a weak strain and it's only to box the Worgen in. And when she got tired of the Kor'kron Sylvanas simply killed them.

[Super Dickmann]

I get that the BE's bargaining position in early TBC wasn't great and that joining forces with the Horde was more a matter of necessity than taste, and Lor'themar's behavior has broadly reflected this, but as shown by the Zandalari example they could have insisted on being allies of the Horde rather than enslaved to it, especially given that Thrall is hardly the most unreasonable of Orcs. Similarly, why did Sylvanas also throw away her sovereignty to some Orc after fighting so hard to earn her freedom? Something which would bite her in the ass hard in Cata. It just seems totally out of character for anyone who has a minimal amount of spine to look at the Blood Oath and not say "oh hell no, I am so not handing my people's sovereignty and lives to one person that can be replaced at the drop of a hat just to be part of your club".

I do agree that Anduin has a disproportionate influence, but that's because he's human, in and out of the story; in-story, the humans are the biggest kids in the Alliance bloc (yes, it makes no sense, but logistics in Warcraft never made sense at all) and out of story people like humans for some reason or another. Thus he gets to be important while the funny short dudes with beards blather on about woons and most NEs hug their trees, just like his father was super duper important despite showing up out of nowhere early Wrath and doing little but having some of his kingdom starve and partially trigger a war he was losing. That's just how it is, I don't like it but it's hardly the most egregious breach of realism amongst the factions.

There's a very significant difference between the bargaining position of what was an empire that just a month before had one of the strongest naval powers and even in decline was able to push proxy wars throughout Cataclysm and Mists and that of the blood elves, which were a decaying state of virtual addicts reliant on Sylvanas to hold their border at all. This is notwithstanding that Sylvanas didn't give a flying shit how much autonomy she gave Talanji because she was a plant for a blue man from another dimension. She had to push them through over the edge to even get them into the Horde. Sylvanas herself in turn had to had any kind of recognition from a power not at the time hostile to the Alliance, plus (debatably) material support to not fall. If she hadn't joined the Horde, she'd be hostile to everyone and be bound to be wiped out. More than the simple narrative difference though and how weak the blood elf position is relative to their Alliance counterparts in the night elves and the dwarves is that the issue actually narratively exists. Rommath excoriates Bob for submitting to Sylvanas' demands to send troops, while later on Garrosh complains about having to keep them going, Bob ponders defection when the Horde no longer suits his interests and even Thrall made the very joining of the blood elves contingent on them proving they could carry their weight. Likewise the Forsaken's political dependance until Cataclysm where the tail begins to wag the dog.

No such situation exists as regards the Alliance. The night elven and dwarf dynamics and the idea that the human king walked in and imposed an alliance command system on them after holding the king's daughter at sword point is never brought up. Whereas we know the reasoning for the contrived joining of the Forsaken to the Horde and the mindset of both the faction and the ones joining and we know much more about the blood elves' due to how heavily their narrative hinges upon this relationship, we still have no canonical explanation of the sequence of events that lead to the night elves joining the Alliance. The debate that @Raisei and @Eggroll had is, unlike the things just described, purely a fandom construct representing no positions that anyone in story has ever professed, not even a strawman. There is no equivalence between the Alliance and Horde in that regard at least not until BFA and the addition of the Highmountain and Nightborne who occupy similarly dubious ground but still stand above the Night Elf-Stormwind association by virtue of actually having an on-screen sequence of events leading to their joining rather than having their assimilation take place entirely over a menu screen.

[rowaasr13]

Except thats not Taurajo. Thats from classic.

Name 1 (one) kid/teen killed by "those dwarves" "from classic". Or cite one "from classic" quest about Stonspire with word "genocide" in it. Spoiler: you can't, because you've pulled it from hell knows where.

All we have on that in game is a SINGLE sentence from a single Tauren and if that's your base for proving "Alliance is just as bad as Horde", considering piles and piles quests, entire storylines, scenarios, battlegrounds and movies of Horde's crimes in game, then it just shows how completely pathetic those attempts are.

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it's not Taurajo; and what were those Dwarves even doing in Tauren ancestral lands and why are they demolishing and excavating it in the first place

Does name "Bael'dun" sounds "taurenly ancestral" to you?
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Any land touched by foot of any Horde race immediately becomes their ancestral and permanent property. As wise and "war-hating" Rexxar once said: "We shall purge those those KUL TIRANS from OUR lands!", while standing in Stormsong Valley, KUL TIRAS.

[Daemos daemonium]

Does name "Bael'dun" sounds "taurenly ancestral" to you?
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Any land touched by foot of any Horde race immediately becomes their ancestral and permanent property.

So uh was North America not Native American land because it now has names like British Columbia? Because that’s pretty much your argument your making here the dwarfs renamed the land so it can’t belong to the cows. It’s not like kalimdor even had a dwarf population before hand or any thing.

[rowaasr13]

So uh was North America not Native American land because it now has names like British Columbia? Because that’s pretty much your argument your making here the dwarfs renamed the land so it can’t belong to the cows. It’s not like kalimdor even had a dwarf population before hand or any thing.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Dig_site#Kalimdor. Hint: Bael Modan is a DWARF archaeology dig site.

[Daemos daemonium]

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Dig_site#Kalimdor. Hint: Bael Modan is a DWARF archaeology dig site.

And British Columbia was/is a British settlement, you missed the point.

Before WC3-classic kalmindor had no dwarf population the land belonged to some one else before they sailed across the sea took it for there own and renamed it.

[Dire]

Anduin wouldn't of been able to inherit the High King title. Because that's a military rank, bestowed upon Varian by a count between the Alliance's leaders.
If this was actually real, the Dwarves would've either cut themselves off from the Alliance, the Night Elves wouldn't co-operate with the Humans anymore, Genn would focus on trying to reclaim Gilneas, the Gnomes would side with the Dwarves because Anduin being named High King would just reek of corruption. He's just a boy, not fit to rule the Alliance as a military leader.
Obviously the leaders of the races besides Humans would look very, very weak towards their people. They would think that their leaders are weak, that they don't care about them. That they bow down before the Humans. The races of non humans would revolt against their leaders.

The Humans, as a side note, are culturally taking over the Alliance as some sort of Imperialistic government. The state that every race is donned in Stormwind armor tells enough.

If we were really realistic, the Elves wouldn't allow themselves to get governed by a Human. But that ship has sailed.

Anyway, let's say Anduin wouldn't have been able to be High King. His kingdom, his lords would've already tried to usurp him by the point of the battle for Lordaeron, as he is weak military wise and weak physically wise (it's canon that Anduin SUCKS as a sword fighter, even his warrior of a father gave up on him). He doesn't interact with the Lords and nobels of Stormwind anymore, hell Varian didn't either after WotLK. It's like they all died or something.

Ah but, I forgot. This IS Blizzard. I forgot that, they don't do those storylines anymore. Nope, only Marvel-esque storytelling allowed here. Something something writers and twitter something. You know the deal.

Only fictional storylines of extraterrestial threats are allowed here. No infighting allowed, unless you faction is the Horde.

BUT WAIT:
Somehow, somehow, the Orcs were content with Sylvanas being named Warchief, despite the Orcs having almost no good standing with the Undead thanks to the Wrathgate, Garrosh Hellscream and his propaganda against them, aswell as their "dishonorable" tactics on the battlefield. Imagine Sylvanas being named Warchief in the heart of Orgrimmar and no Orcs within the city made up of mostly Orcs would dispute that claim of title and challenge her to a mak'gora.
Sylvanas has neither interacted much with the Horde apart from her involvement with the Lich King one dungeon and that one time she took the spotlight from Vol'jin, because the writer's were already setting her as Warchief before the dude even got stabbed from a demon. Besides those moments, all she interacted with was the throne in her Throne room and the Forsaken.

So I guess even both factions get screwed logically wise and this whole ordeal is just a fallacy of writer's just writing whatever the fuck they want instead of being consistent and truthful to the source, but who gives a SHIT when you can just write that everything's happy with eachother in this perfect world of Azeroth and you can just go back and retcon and change things to your liking because you're too uncreative to come up with anything new so your only solution is to change things that happened before your time because you think you somehow come off as creative in doing so but instead you just disrespect the whole franchise with your gibberish and bias towards your favorite characters.

SPOILER ALERT - Varian also sucked as a leader. Same with Grandpa Menethil... same with Thrall... Garrosh... etc etc....

The fact that you cannot see that they built in weakness in ALL leader shows you couldn't write shit better then any of them.

Trash post.. trash perspective.

[StationaryHawk]

Does name "Bael'dun" sounds "taurenly ancestral" to you?
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Any land touched by foot of any Horde race immediately becomes their ancestral and permanent property. As wise and "war-hating" Rexxar once said: "We shall purge those those KUL TIRANS from OUR lands!", while standing in Stormsong Valley, KUL TIRAS.

There's nothing to suggest that the dwarves traveled to Kalimdor at any point except in recent history. Bael Modan was built by the Explorer's League in order to excavate the surrounding area and, while there's essentially no canon sources (aside from a magazine) describing what they were looking for, it's implied to be of titan origin.

The Bael'dun dwarves never claim the land to be their ancestral home. Their motivation for driving the Stonespire tribe was for their own convenience.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Dig_site#Kalimdor. Hint: Bael Modan is a DWARF archaeology dig site.

So is Thoradin's Wall, even though it was built centuries before the dwarves awoke.

[rowaasr13]

There's nothing to suggest that the dwarves traveled to Kalimdor at any point except in recent history.

There are Earthen in both War of the Ancients and in present time.

The Bael'dun dwarves never claim the land to be their ancestral home. Their motivation for driving the Stonespire tribe was for their own convenience.

It isn't really up to the Horde to discuss need to GTFO because of "driving somebody out from their ancestral lands". But I digress, I repeat initial question: where anywhere in game or official lore materials dwarves are known for "genociding" or being "known to slaughter kids/teens" (copypasted direct quote)?

So is Thoradin's Wall, even though it was built centuries before the dwarves awoke.

Exactly, centuries. As compared to dozens of centuries of history since then. I think dwarves had enough time over 1800 years since contact to leave something for archeologist to find even around Wall, considering that it borders Khaz Modan. But you seem to imply that somehow small settlement in Classic managed to create "archaeologic dig" in so little time just as well or what?

There's also little tidbit in history of Mulgore: "For the first time in hundreds of years, the tauren had a land to call their own." It is pretty clearly means that until them none of the land was theirs, so their claim to "ancestral land" isn't much better that dwarven. If anything, those are "centaur ancestral lands".

[Daemos daemonium]

There are Earthen in both War of the Ancients and in present time.

Not only do earthen not equal dwarfs as not all of them turned into actual dwarfs but there are no earthen on kalimdor prior to them going there in BFA, Tons of other Titan creations but not a single earthen.

There's also little tidbit in history of Mulgore: "For the first time in hundreds of years, the tauren had a land to call their own." It is pretty clearly means that until them none of the land was theirs, so their claim to "ancestral land" isn't much better that dwarven. If anything, those are "centaur ancestral lands".

actually it implies they had lands and then lost/were driven off of them and weren’t able to resettle until Mulgore. Much like actual native Americans which they are obviously styled after.

[Myradin]

I'm pretty sure Thoradin's Wall being a dwarven archeology sight is a mistake. I'm guessing the dev thought Thoradin was a dwarf's name, despite being a humans.

Meanwhile Bael Modan had titan ruins in the RPG, that WoW kind of hinted at but never went anywhere with.

[StationaryHawk]

There are Earthen in both War of the Ancients and in present time.

Earthen are not dwarves. They were created solely to further the titans' designs and congregate almost exclusively in titan cities. If we're considering anything they touched to be dwarf land, they may as well be given them claim to the whole planet.

It isn't really up to the Horde to discuss need to GTFO because of "driving somebody out from their ancestral lands". But I digress, I repeat initial question: where anywhere in game or official lore materials dwarves are known for "genociding" or being "known to slaughter kids/teens" (copypasted direct quote)?

That's not my quote, and I'm not defending it.

Exactly, centuries. As compared to dozens of centuries of history since then. I think dwarves had enough time over 1800 years since contact to leave something for archeologist to find even around Wall, considering that it borders Khaz Modan. But you seem to imply that somehow small settlement in Classic managed to create "archaeologic dig" in so little time just as well or what?

The implication is that the artifacts are of titan origin.

There's also little tidbit in history of Mulgore: "For the first time in hundreds of years, the tauren had a land to call their own." It is pretty clearly means that until them none of the land was theirs, so their claim to "ancestral land" isn't much better that dwarven. If anything, those are "centaur ancestral lands".

"For the first time in hundreds of years" implies they had a home that was lost, which is exactly what happened.

I really can't see what you're trying to accomplish here. The game makes every effort to paint the dwarves of Bael Modan as the aggressors. Even the dwarves do not defend their actions, knowing full-well that their work would cause problems but choosing instead to drive the "bull-men" out because it was easier than negotiating. They're not the good guys in this scenario.

[Mehrunes]

Name 1 (one) kid/teen killed by "those dwarves" "from classic". Or cite one "from classic" quest about Stonspire with word "genocide" in it. Spoiler: you can't, because you've pulled it from hell knows where.

You're just grasping at straws here because you got called out on not even knowing what it is that you're replying to. Which, for the record, is quite weird because the post in question by @Ardenaso was their reply to your own post where the clear implication of what you asked them to do was for them to provide examples of Alliance actions other than Taurajo. So the way you immediately went on to talk about Taurajo in subsequent reply made no sense.

Either way, the reason I'm saying that you're grasping at straws here is that the reason why we don't know any of the Stonespires from the area that Dwarves occupied is that they were already killed by said Dwarves before the Vanilla quests even began. Which you'd know if you had any clue about the questline in question.

All we have on that in game is a SINGLE sentence from a single Tauren and if that's your base for proving "Alliance is just as bad as Horde", considering piles and piles quests, entire storylines, scenarios, battlegrounds and movies of Horde's crimes in game, then it just shows how completely pathetic those attempts are.

And this here is the part where you're putting words in other people's mouth in order to mask the stark weakness of your argumentation. Neither @Verdugo, nor @Ardenaso, or anyone else involved in this exchange said squat about wanting to prove that "Alliance is just as bad as the Horde". So your remarks about how it's other people's arguments (or your straw-men of them) are pathetic rings rather hollow here. Especially since no one here was making the argument that the Horde is some paragon of justice. Yet here you are, utterly incapable of admitting an act of Alliance decimating a Tauren tribe because they felt entitled to dig for Titan junk in their land was evil.

Does name "Bael'dun" sounds "taurenly ancestral" to you?

The entirety of Mulgore is ancestral Tauren land. The Dwarves are not native to Kalimdor. Mulgore being that to the Tauren is an explicit statement from World of Warcraft: Annual 2015 lore book. You have absolutely nothing here. By your "logic" here New Kargath is ancestral Orc land.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Any land touched by foot of any Horde race immediately becomes their ancestral and permanent property. As wise and "war-hating" Rexxar once said: "We shall purge those those KUL TIRANS from OUR lands!", while standing in Stormsong Valley, KUL TIRAS.

I just adore how you don't see the irony of your words here.

So uh was North America not Native American land because it now has names like British Columbia? Because that’s pretty much your argument your making here the dwarfs renamed the land so it can’t belong to the cows. It’s not like kalimdor even had a dwarf population before hand or any thing.

I don't know about British Columbia, but Ashenvale is definitely ancestral Orc territory. Look at dat Kargathia Keep. Night Elves brought the Horde upon themselves.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Dig_site#Kalimdor. Hint: Bael Modan is a DWARF archaeology dig site.

Not only is Bael Modan not Bael'dun that you previously talked about, but you're just providing evidence on how you have no clue about the events pertaining to Bael Modan and the Stonespires. The journal of Prospector Khazgorm makes it clear the excavation site was recently opened in Vanilla. And that the Dwarves themselves considered the Tauren they forced away to be natives. Meanwhile all you've got is harping on a dig site, completely ignoring the fact it's been thoroughly established in the lore that Dwarves love to dig for Titan junk. Which is why one of the rare DWARF archaeology rewards is a Mechagnome pet.

[Daemos daemonium]

I don't know about British Columbia, but Ashenvale is definitely ancestral Orc territory. Look at dat Kargathia Keep. Night Elves brought the Horde upon themselves

That's a very good point it has a orcish name which must mean it has always belonged to the orcs, the night elfs should really stay off orc land.