Lore theory: breaking bonds with atrocities

Lore Story
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Hello Everyone.

I was wondering about a theory that has been gone through my mind lately.

It’s about Teldrassil and the Night Elves.

Many things have been said about this, the most common theory is that the developers like to write them as punching bags.

I had different theories, as something shocking needed for BfA so someone had to be the victim:

  • Horde races, are not elegible as Horde needs to be portayed as the villains.
  • Alliance races are elegible but it has to be either Humans or Night Elves since all of the other races are … not as popular.
    That was my initial theory.

But today while thinking about Theramore Jaina and Thrall something came to my mind.
War and breaking bonds, with atrocities.

If we look at WoTLK we can see Jaina and Thrall trusted each other.

But in Cataclysm war was needed so the writers just litelary thorn apart their relationship.
Thrall was sent to attempt to prevent the cataclysm because aparently none else could, between Alliance heroes and neutral organizations.
Garrosh replaced him and mana bombed Theramore.
Their relation was shatered, to the point they only recently tried to mend up.

Now if we look at Legion we don’t have Thrall and Jaina.
But we have the Horde player character actively working with Tyrande, Malfurion and Illidan.
All characters related to Night Elf lore.
What was the first task assigned to the Horde player character in BfA ?
Attack the Night Elves.

My first question was: WTF ?
So I had to go through quests that involved being with Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan and now I am asked to go kill their people, of all the people in the Alliance …
Talking about a very stupid order.
Another question: Why my character a leader of her Order Hall is to put up with a Warchief that helped us … in nothing during Legion campaign ?

Saurfang was there, to prevent any further bad actions on the Horde player character, as he took the blame for planning the attack and attack Malfurion.
But unfortunately, Sylvanas was also there to ensure another atrocity in Horde story, by burning Teldrassil.

My theory is: everything that comes in contact with Horde characters or player characters, in one expansion must be destroyed in the following expansion, so Activision Blizzard can write conflict.

While we can say, the player character, never existed in the lore that is written on the books, Activision Blizzard does their best job to make our life as miserable in game because of it.

  • If you are a Alliance player character you get to see Teldrassil burning and a Horde atrocity, while having a leader that is basicaly a saint, which denies you any sort of revenge.
  • If you are a Horde player character, you witness your faction performing a atrocity that basicaly destroys any sort of morality your faction ever had.
    While having a leader that has become everything that she used to hate in Arthas.
    You don’t get to chose your options:
  • You are a soldier that has to do what Sylvanas tells you to do.
  • Than you rebel, with Saurfang.
  • You go and follow Sylvanas orders again, you are not given any way out.
  • The game tells you all the time how evil you are, through NPC’s.
    One example: When there’s a Alliance invasion in Nazmir, the Night Elves archers calls your character: “Murderer”.

We than have:

  • The player that wants to rebel, is not allowed to defect, for the entire campaign.
  • The player that wants to stay loyal to Sylvanas still have to work along side Thrall, Saurfang and kill Sunreavers.

Which than turns the entire BfA in to a guilt trip for the Horde player character and a lesson in to forgiveness for the Alliance player character.
Any doubts, just look how many times the Alliance player character is told to be carefull when engaging the enemy.

And this is why I hate faction wars.

What’s your opinion ?
Cheers.

5 Likes
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I am still counting on a huge Twist in 8.3 to solve this major dilemma somehow. Maybe too hopeful. But this is going far too smoothly for the rebells while loyalists feel empty and Alliance is stripped from their revenge. Something big has to go wrong for everyone, to make sure this won’t just be MoP 2.0 with TB instead of OG as final raid.

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Yeah about to puke on another nelf thread

And thats the funny part. That EVERY damn expansion you quest with nelfs, then you get War of Thorns nand Darkshore and nelfs complain “they dont get enough spotlight” ffs

I’d like to think of this more as a “truth” trip.

There are “monstrous” forces within the Horde, they just happened to become Warchief. Yet what they have done in the past is get the job done, just with a different leadership. Forsaken have been doing Forsaken things since forever they just are now the face of the Horde thats why its more obvious.

Same for Alliance. They have been pillaging and stealing and killing, like they did in Dazaralor and they pretend they are righteous and all. They let their allies down like Anduin and Tyrande and are much less of a “family” than they pretend to.

They both claim to do all this killing in the name of “old hatreds” or “revenge” or “justice” or “survival”.

It might have been a ride of several years for us players, but in the game timeline all the events are not years apart. Theramore , Garrosh and all the faction conflicts were like “yesterday” , so u could justify how everyones blood is boiling.

Its all bias in the end, since every faction just care about their benefits

And they still dont suspect a thing

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Good, maybe some day blizzard will realize that they made a mistake. Even though they should’ve realized that after the massive sh*tstorms but apparently they didn’t…

The only times night elves get spotlight is when they get screwed over completely, I’d rather have no spotlight at all but it’s too late for that now.
Something needs to happen. If they won’t give night elves revenge, then atleast give them a new home to rebuild their race.

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You can’t destroy it without mentioning it. Faction orders weren’t destroyed, they were put in lore limbo. The rogue order is even explicitly mentioned as still existing in a rogue dialogue option with Lilian Voss.

I think there is just no structure to the player story at all. The neutral stuff from Legion is neither erased nor destroyed, it’s just not related to what is happening in the world now. In writing their “great epos” about Sylvanas, Jaina and Azshara, they just forgot what the RP in MMORPG means.

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The latest “Revenge nelfs” thread in disguise unveiled everyone

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The problem with blizzard is the same problem that humans has suffered from since the begining of mankind.
Pride.
You can tell it by there responses.
Consistanty exist to enhance the story not tie our writters hands.
Translation: I want to write a story and dont care if it breaks years of lore.

Or the stated reason why we have bfa:
We feel we can do seige of ogrimar beter.

Add to this the old gaurd left leaving young people eager to prove themselves in charge and without anyone to reign them in they now get to write what they want.
Believing wrongy that there story is vastly beter then what we had.
As much crap as we gave metzen for green jesus atleast he tryed to consider both side.
The current staff just want to write there story and dont give a damm about how it effects people.
Take cataclysm as example: the night elves started losing but where holding on.
They fought for every inch of ground.
In war of thorne they where just crush without effort so they could get to the burning and glorification of god king andiun.
The difference between the old writting staff and the new writting staff is that the old kept things balanced or atleast tryed.
This new one messure there succes in how much people talk about it. Hate is praise to them because it means we care.
And in the short run there correct.
But the problem is that if you just keep destroying stuff and turn everyone into selfish jerks or victems then people will stop caring
After all why care when you know it will never get better.
A lession they shoud learn from warhammer 40k have good things happen too.
Wheb there is good with the bad we care.
If there is only bad we stop caring.
It is why people are so pissed off.
We will never see an end to the faction war. We will never have lasting peace and we will never have a winner.
Where in 40k for every world destroyed there are other workds saved or rebuild.
The eldar god yanead is a desperate gamble to defeat slaanesh.
A small chance but a chance none the less.
Warcraft 3 had the same thing.
Thrall was fighting for a beter future, jaina hoped for lasting peace and understanding to the point she sacrificed her own father.
World of warcraft has been reduced to global wars every ingame year.
Why care if it never changes.

EDIT:
Remember when this happend:

When they still could still write?
When the horde had lines not to cross.
When they where more then just bloodthirsty monsters.
Sure they made him evil later but many still liked him.
At the time i thought he was great to keep the war going forever.
Lose land here.
Gain land there.
Sure i hated him but that was because:
Enemy leader.
Your suppose to hate those who attack you.

I agree there are too many night elves quests.
Even i am sick of them.
Your free to have the spotlight tho.
Having the spotlight on you in wow means your about to have a really bad day.

Preach!

I think this says it all:
When your players are afraid there favorite race getting the spotlight you know something is wrong.

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Wanna more spotlight too? No problem, you can get an other battle of Dazar’alor aswell!

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Only Alex Afrasabi cared about garrosh this way. Kosak and Metzen always wanted to get rid of him. So stone talon was an accident.

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Maybe this time there could be actual destruction, or the loss of a character that wasn’t a dead man searching for a fitting death from the start…

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Indeed.
Which brings us to the point.
There are many writters in blizzard and they all want the story to go there way.
The current head of writing unfortantly isnt someone who care’s much about creating complex multilayer charaters.
Biggest issu with bfa if you think about it:
Andiun, jaina, saurfang, thrall, baine etc.
Call all be summed up in one word:
Sad.
Sylvanas and narathos are just evil for the sake of being evil.
Any depth they had have been forgotten.
Every time i see sylvanas i want to strangle the one who wrote her lines.
Sylvanas was always smart.
Stop making her behaving like a moron.

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are we talking about the same Sylvanas that made a dreadlord to be her right hand?:thinking:

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The same who defeated 3 dreadlords and enslaved one of them.
Then convince everyone that the blight at wrathgate where rogue element within the forsaken and manage to blackmail the worgen rebel leader into leaving.

To this day i dont know who outsmarted who.
Varimases or sylvanas.

She kep her forbidden experiments hidden from the horde, blighted gilneas behind garrosh back.
And if my theory is correct: made herself warchieft.
Tho that last one is probley not going to end up true.

Sylvanas is a skilled manipulator.
Which is why people still hope she manipulated baine into freeing derek, that she is trying to make the alliance and rebels believe they are winning so she can blight them all.
Unlikely with current writers but yeah she was smart.

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I agree.
I have lost my immersion completely this expansion.

Agree.
In the grand scheme, they forgot that in the game the player character is important.
We are not inside a book.

I hate them, for that, I only hope that both communities “reward” them accordingly, they lied about faction pride after all.
They don’t even care if breaks the ties with Legion expansion, which was like one expansion ago.

That’s exactly the feeling i had.
I have nothing against Anduin, but the narrative seems to evolve around him.

  • Teldrassil happens - Anduin is the merciful king that tries to reason with Saurfang and give the Horde another chance.
  • Tyrande and Genn, went to fight the Horde, will they be proven wrong for going against Anduin ? I suspect the answer is yes.
  • The Horde has the oposite of Anduin in charge of their leadership.

In the end I suspect the narrative will prove him right in every decision, while portraying anyone that goes against him in the Alliance side wrong.
For the Horde, it’s just a guilt trip, yeah they get a few bones tossed around like Undercity and Dazzar’alor but make no mistake who is righteous and who is wrong.

I wonder when they realise, they are actualy losing customers and their jobs are at risk because of that …

True.
I stoped reading quest texts.
It’s just faster that way.
Read the bottom line: X mobs to be killed getting Y amount of gold, got it.

To be honest any of my characters would had already comited suicide with this much depression.
Why bother ?
No matter how much they fight, the world doesn’t seem to change for the better.

Fight a bigger theat, just to buy time.
Faction war is right on the corner.
After a ceasefire, another big threat.

Activision Blizzard writters love dark themes and depression.

Never seen such a mess to be honest.
I remeber people talking about boralus quests and Forsaken mages turning people in to fish just to see them drown in the land.
It seems that quest was written by the Alliance team without the supervision of the Horde writting team.

This is the saddest part.
People that support her actions don’t understand that the reason the she was allowed to come this far was because she was vengeful.
Replace being vengeful for just being selfish and evil and you have a raid boss.
Kael’Thas Sunstrider was turned in to a raid boss during TBC and that character was just the prince of Quel’Thalas, the last of the the Sunstrider dinasty, for much less than what Sylvanas has now.

That’s my opinion.
Cheers.

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I think she is mediocre at best. But I’m using RL standarts - maybe for wow ones she is smart. But then again she also trusted well know Gilnean Traitor and got one nasty surprise that costed her 3 Val’kyr.

Edit : oh em gee Godfrey did more damage to Sylvanas than Nite warrior Tyrande.

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Wait what?
I know the forsaken are mostly evil but i dont remember them being this petty.
The forsaken are a race of hatefull people who believes the world shoud suffer for what it did to them.
Suffering for suffering sake was never there motivation.
Sure they do horrible stuff to make the world pay and had some really petty revenge stories but it was always about revenge. Never about suffering for the sake of it.
Like a wife beater.
It is your fault i have to do this.
You make me do this.
The forsaken are masters of making it look like it was always someone else it fault.
To turn people into fish just to make them drown?
That seem petty even for them.

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To be honest I got that information, while debating with Erevien a couple of months ago.

I have to go and confirm it, when I am back from work.

Meanwhile this is the best I got:

"In Stormsong Valley it’s shown the Horde are quite brutal in in their campaign here, at least for the perspective of the Alliance. The attack on the small city itself has civilians killed in the raid and - in some cases - cruelly impaled on walls. I believe a makeshift infirmary is then assaulted by the Horde, though perhaps unknowingly.

This conflicts with Saurfang’s policy in Darkshore, yet even when he was present the Forsaken were seen to murder civilians in Astranaar anyway, the player too wasn’t given any repercussion for killing if they so decided. Is this considered normal practice of war among the Horde now? I know it may be among the Forsaken, those in the Horde who turn a blind eye to them, but now it seems the Horde at large will do whatever’s necessary to win a battle.

I think there are even world quests where you go around blighting civilian bases with plague canisters.

I’ve also heard that, supposedly, there is some Old God madness at play here - but I’m not sure how well founded that is. Any sources would be appreciated.

From what I can tell, there seems to be no law for warriors to kill civilians and even prisoners now, at least not in BFA"

12 upvotes.

“Its morally grey” they said.

“The Horde will not feel like baddies” they said.

42 upvotes.

Cheers.

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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZV_sFpWAAA08YD.jpg

I serve.

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My sentiments exactly.

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Wow.
I knew the forsaken where petty but i never seem them torment someone just because there bored.
This is blizzard attempt to make a faction seem worse then they are isnt it?
Or meaby that guy is just a sadist.

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