I’m surprised how many people are just limiting their vision of war at honour.War is not about two pride armies going against each other valiently fighting and having glorious feat of strength that is film and books, that is in many ways varian death.In reality war is about which is the most cunning, sometime the most generous but also sometimes the most cruel and this action are decided by necessity not false feeling such as honour.Richard lion king in England was brave and had honoured he was emprisonned for many years because Philippe Auguste king of France betrayed him and threw him in jail for many years when he was busy conquering Normandy.Sure his action was not honourable but under his reign France had for the first time an advantage over England Same thing with Francois premier king of France which was stupidly captured because he was fighting first line the autrichian emperor Charles quint imprisonned him and make the France paid a lot and put à Spanish ambassador at each royal council ( this is the type of character Saurfang is)I can give hundred of example throughout history where sacrificing soldiers using them like pieces on a board was successful and if we look here at the plan sylvanas had for under city it was working before Jaina and her deus ex machina appeared. Is the plan of sylvanas honorable no! Is it just neither! But when I look globally on the battle for lordaeron I see two things first Sylvanas did put civilians out of the way which mean that she does care for certain things.Second she waited until she was no other option before using the plague.Finally if we took the final decision of Sylvanas to blow the city it is a rational decision which is call the strategy of the burn earth which consist of not letting the enemy getting access to any logistical advantages.All of this to say that yes Sylvanas is not the leader of the good faction but she doesn’t have to be in reality the problème comes from the opposite side when blizzard is trying to show the alliance as a good faction and this should never have happened. You have no grey with anduin and this create an issue in terms of balance
Sylvanas apologists will really scrape the bottom of the barrel won't they?Resorting to a war crime and still losing is not "strategy" or "pragmatism", it's straight up evil.Scorched earth is also a completely irrelevant tactic in this case. What tactical advantage is there in Undercity? None. The "resources" within are useless to the Alliance.What tactical advantage is there in the Capital City? None. It's been a decaying ruin for several decades at this point.What is the advantage then in blowing it up? None. Just a malicious and petty attempt to decapitate the Alliance leadership forgetting for one second that it's THE ALLIANCE which means they'll have other leaders and lines of succession and these very same people have escaped certain destruction before.They even have Jaina there, who escaped the mana bombing of Theramore. Regardless of that, we know this attempt fails, so destroying Lordaeron achieves NOTHING except the vandalism of a human city the Forsaken were squatting under and thus the further galvanisation of the Alliance.To further prove how Blizzard do not give a crap about anything other than protecting their waifu; Sylvanas deliberately destroys and abandons Lordaeron, effectively abandoning Lor'themar to the Alliance as well.If Lor'themar had rejected Sylvanas due to her evil, this would of course be logical. But he doesn't. He's still her willing minion, so effectively Quel'thalas stands alone. Even the selfish ultra-pragmatic blood elves of TBC wouldn't stand for this but... somehow they do. And somehow they won't suffer the consequences of their decision to follow the Lich Queen despite being surrounded on all sides by the Alliance and the Argent Crusade.War is not all about honour, no. But there are rules of war. And yes, there are rules of war in Warcraft, long since established.Sylvanas fragrantly violates them at will because she's a karma houdini of the highest tier, and if not for her plot shields, the Horde itself would string her up for her atrocities.
Ok Synea we get it. You're a butt hurt Horde fanboy and Alliance apologist. Do yourself a favor. Roll a void elf (Who you have done nothing but make assanine head canon excuses), go to Stormwind and suck on your thumb as you tell yourself "I'm a hewo"
This is a terrible optics for the Horde. And to me it seems beyond recovery.In my opinion, Sylvanas is at this point even worse than Garrosh, no matter what happens next. When Garrosh ruled with his iron fist and was about to conquer the whole world, we at least had the excuse that most of the Horde was against him. And more importantly, the player was against him. The quests made you work at the edge of the gray area at worst, but many of them made you to be quite honorable. And many of your superiors that gave you quests were skeptical of Garrosh and turned against him in the end.Now, we see Baine not questioning Sylvanas or the Blightcaller at all. Not a single word of disapproval. Lor'themar is outright enjoying it. I fear they are building him as a villain so lady Liadrin can take over... Nothing against Liadrin, but why the same Lor'themar who contemplated joining Alliance again because of Garrosh, who didn't want to see his elves risen, is suddenly rejoicing while void elves are being gased in front of his eyes.But OK... if you want to make Horde evil, make it evil. But then at least make it believable. This whole thing is totally not.Why?Have we forgotten that the races in the Horde used to have their own identity? Tauren used to pacifists who were just trying to guide the Orcish Horde back to to their traditional shamanistic ways. They felt responsibility for the Horde's journey away from its dark path. That's why they were in the Horde. Now we just casually see Tauren in gas masks with no explanation, because it looks cool I guess. It arguably looks cool... But it's just so wrong. Along with Baine barely saying anything close to disapproval.Blood Elves are strangely OK with using necromantic powers, despite the Scourge was the reason they ended up the way they are today. The Orcs seem to have forsaken honor as well it seems. Maybe the green Orcs really are just evil... but what about the uncorrupted Orcs that just now joined?Yeah, when we are at it... how much sense does it make for the new allied races to be involved in a conflict like that? Highmountain Tauren are basically just Tauren with antlers. So they should be just as honorable and nature loving as their Kalimdor kin. Yet the first thing they do after they join the Horde is to put on a gas mask and start melting people in the name of the undead. Did Mayla know what she signed up for? Is she OK with it? Or is she just conveniently oblivious to it because she has no screen time so we may assume she doesn't exist until Blizzard will need to bring her again? Nothing to see here. Highmountain Tauren just joined the Horde, so all of them became automatons without a free will. Just like it's normal.And what about the Nightborne? I think Alliance players will probably argue that Nightborne are evil on the grounds of being the arrogant magic addicts that brought the Legion into Azeroth. But the Nightfallen faction that joined the Horde was the one that resisted the arrogant evil ones and was lead by very humble and empathetic people. Have you ever had the impression that Sigryn was evil when he spoke? I have never heard more soothing voice in my life. How about Thalyssra? Oculeth? Maybe Valtrois was a bit temperament, but surely nothing sort of "evil undead killer" temperament. And they joined the Horde only because Tyrande was a bit arrogant towards them while the Blood Elves seemed to be good guys with their Holy powers and history of defying corruption and evil leaders. And now Nightborne join the fight alongside Blightcaller against the forces of Light.I am saying that none of that makes sense. If this was not an MMO but a normal story - like RPG story, book or a movie - there would be a ton of not just skeptical voices, but outright defectors. Even entire factions of defectors. Like Nightborne for example. They are not tied to the Horde that tightly yet. Alliance helped them as well. Makes no sense for the Nightfallen to be loyal when this madness occurs. Same for the Highmountain. If this was a normal story, Mulgore Tauren would defect too. There is no benefit for them to stay and fight for the undead. Especially if the Horde's new leader is happy to use the Blight and strategically sacrifice entire cities. With so much friendly fire, I don't think anyone would even consider staying in the Horde.But alas, the only one who seems to protest is Saurfang... and he does so rather mildly.Again... no matter what happens next, nothing will ever erase the fact that all of the Horde races participated in those evil activities. Especially your Horde character. Maybe two or three expansions from now, you will be able to create a new character and skip the entire leveling content of BfA, instead gaining all your levels in Legion content or in the expansion after BfA. Then you might claim that you as a Horde character didn't do anything genocidal.But eh, who knows how much more !@#$ will Blizzard make Horde do in the next expansions...
blizz make horde like $%^&.. fu*********************************************************************************k
I'm going to ignore this moral high ground childhood banter between horde vs alliance, since people like Synea are attempting to ruin these public forums by attacking people 24/7. Anyway, I like this new taste of the horde where we are being aimed at splitting the land masses for each faction. Though Sylvannas has done some grim things in her life and continues to do so, I can still appreciate her dedication to the cause... even though it's by remorseless strategy. I'm partially biased, I like all of the turmoil attached to her story.Anduin has grown to be a pretty interesting leader. I look forward to see how he grows. The Jaina storyline alone will make me have to break the ole Alliance character out. We will probably see plenty of events influenced by the old gods. I wonder if Illgynos or shadow priest weapon quotes will tie into anything this upcoming xpac? I'm excited. BfA is hype.
- Orders us to blight a crowd of people that includes our own soldiers and tells us to leave them to die- Blows up her own city- Leaves Silvermoon alone on a continent full of extremely angry Alliance (recall that the entire reason blood elves are even in the Horde is because they felt abandoned by the Alliance, and also that they have seriously considered rejoining the Alliance before)- Orders the brutal torture and slaughter of a farming/fishing village in Stormsong to raise them as soldiers against the Kul Tirans and Alliance (you may recall that this sort of thing is literally why she was so hellbent on killing Arthas)At this point I'm pretty sure Sylvanas could stand on top of a mountain of smoldering orc corpses in the middle of Orgrimmar while eating a live baby and cackling maniacally, and y'all would still be like "she's just misunderstood".Honestly, this whole story feels like it's being written specifically for Sylvanas. Not even the Horde, just Sylvanas. Characters that should be speaking up against her actions are just going along with it (looking at you, Baine and Lor'themar), the one character who does dissent follows it up by unceremoniously removing himself from the story (apparently Saurfang of all people would rather rot in a Stormwind prison than try to protect his Horde and its values), and the developers are doing Q&As insisting that she's not evil while she acts in a way that's stopping just short of burning down orphanages and raising the kids inside.Everyone's having their characterization and values derailed because they want to push a Sylvanas-centric story. I thought Illidan in Legion was bad enough for the way they handled the Xe'ra storyline, but this is basically that turned up to eleven.(Also, I'm calling this now - even though Silvermoon is the only bastion of Horde power left on the Eastern Kingdoms, even though they're enough of a threat for the Alliance to want to deal with them, and even though the Alliance has an entire racial faction for whom Silvermoon is their former home and therefore have a vested interest in taking it... I bet none of that will ever be addressed except maybe in passing.)
As another poster pointed out, this is especially jarring considering the entire backstory of the Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren. Both of those groups just got over a nasty, bitter conflict instigated by an internal demon-aligned faction quite eager to use fel magic against their enemies. Their very next action is to put on gas masks and throw plague canisters at a group who not only directly threaten them, but also contains some of the champions that fought for their very cause to free them!