He was scheduled for execution until High King Anduin Wrynn personally intervened to help Saurfang ferment a rebellion against Sylvanas within the Horde. The enemy of my enemy is my friend etc., Anduin recognized that Saurfang did not expect Sylvanas to blight the Horde’s own troops, firebomb Teldrassil and massacre the Alliance forces left stuck on Kalimdor. He expected a war, yes absolutely, but he expected A Good War. He learned no such thing exists and made amends as best he could as a damned man.
This is a philosophical perspective piece and only really rings true if you live in a stable, western European democracy or Asian democracy aligned with the West or the USA, it is absolutely not true for the rest of the world who are seeing an almost constant suffering, plight and civil war such as in many African countries.
Because they’re trying to make amends, as Germany did. Whether it lasts, who’s to say.
Bringing it back to lore adjacency, the issue is that Blizzard went out and stated both in and out of the game that Sylvanas had the the support of the majority of the people in the Horde, from the pig farmers to the commanders. Whether that is 51% or 99% we’ll never know but unlike Garrosh who sowed discord between the races of the Horde, Sylvanas had universal support for her actions.
I think the problem here might be that the people who went through with it and pushed for the story to be told that way aren’t the same people as those writing the story now. There’s that whole thing with Afrasiabi pushing through the story where Sylvanas burned Teldrassil for example.
I don’t want to act as if current writers are somehow good or had no part in BfA at all, but I wonder, if we were put on Blizzard’s writing team, would we honor the writing choices and themes of Shadowlands or Dragonflight, or would we want to explore parts of the setting we’re interested in? Especially if those themes were pushed through against our wishes in the first place by someone we despise?
The RL Fire Nation did however try to do their best to divert the blame on bunch of men though, and away from the Fire Nation as a whole.
This is IMO the greatest issue and shows the lack of foresight they had. I wonder if it was sone desperate attempt from them to distinguish themselves from MoP by not having most of the Horde rebel.
Unfortunately, it now creates narrative dissonance where characters act as if the war ended in Horde redeeming itself like in MoP, when in reality they only did so because their Warchief peaced out.
Overall 8.2.5 was weird, somehow Loyalists were more powerful than Rebels and Alliance, even though pretty much every Horde leader except Gallywix and Geyarah opposed her. I guess tauren, blood elves, Nightborne, orcs and trolls really liked Sylvanas that much more than their own leaders for some reason.
So, I’m not really sure about this one. They definitely said that, but then they released Reckoning later on which. . .kind of very obviously shows that even the Loyalists turned Rebel when Sylvanas said they were nothing but fuel for the warfire. If they didn’t turn rebel they wouldn’t have willingly let all the rebels back into Orgrimmar and hosted a funeral for Saurfang. The only way it could be more obvious that Loyalists were a small minority by the point of this cinematic is if they had an NPC called “Exposition McExposition” who /y “WE ARE NOW NO LONGER LOYALIST. WE ARE REBELS”.
The only conclusion is that philosophically they ultimately agreed with her publicly stated positions (“Kill the Alliance”) and only backed down when forced to be the sudden loss of their leader (thanks to her being momentarily struck by the idiot bat).
Pretty much, which is the huge reason of the following dissonance between BfA and DF. Horde started a genocidal war, they were really happy with genocidal war, had zero punishment for that genocidal war and now we’re meant to be friends.
I’d really love to be a fly on the wall during the team meetings where that story was created, to see who came up with it.
Anyone who RPs for long is bound to end in a situation where guild they’re in changes, whether gradually or suddenly, and what it becomes, both in terms of theme, events, general attitudes, is something they just can’t deal with anymore and quit. Question is, if you were put in charge of such guild, would you try to uphold the legacy you never agreed with in the first place, or would you do your thing?
Because I’m starting to think, more and more, that this is the exact same sfeeling Blizzard has towards the story of BfA.
Personally I would try to write the new story in such a way that it doesn’t contradict previous established stuff, as much as I’d hate it.
Then again, I wouldn’t add in wowpedia characters that have written everything down in books to be found, and would make in-universe characters and books unreliable narrators, thus allowing Fel to be both pure arcane (from human, gnome, dwarf, elf perspective), Dark Voodoo/Loa Magic (trolls), and part of the Disorder sphere.
Canonically, the Horde night fae aligned Player is grudgingly given the opportunity to redeem themselves by saving kaldorei souls from the maw, presumably earning a “fine, you get to visit” pass by tyrande fiat.
Yeah, that’s why the ‘oh we’re all friends now’ (to put it very simple and in a very not so nuanced way) thing feels a bit off - with the real life comparison made, a lot of the (surviving) people that were various levels of involved with and responsible for the things that happened were put on trial vs the shtick of Sylvanas being a goner and oh well, that was it we’re all good now sort of thing.
Putting the people responsible and in charge on trial is like, the one big way that these sort of events are processed in reality and they are the way of getting to a stage where people can ‘move on’ - when the people responsible aren’t persecuted, in reality we see that this causes continued, lasting grievances and hostile sentiments that really have no way to be processed until violence flares up again; with the writing we’ve had, we’re told that in the World of Warcraft™ this won’t happen as long as one single person is dealt with.
I think that could be fine if that’s the tone of the game you’re going with, but BfA and Shadowlands both made it very clear that the War of Thorns and the Fourth War were massive events with huge consequences for everyone involve that caused a lot of grief and hatred all over the place: they wanted to go ‘deep’ with it, but then the resolution is like… the exact opposite of what’d work, both in a vaguely realistic setting (with regards to how people think, act, etc rather than technology or magic or whatever) and for a narrative that wants to handle these ideas, concepts, and feelings in a satisfying way.
The narrative is just disappointing! City’s pretty though and it’s quite clear that a lot of love has been put into it: it feels like the people on the staff team that are Night Elf fans got to work on it, for once (aside from the art team).
Which is the problem. They did not join the Rebel side (although at that point it’s hard to talk about rebels when it’s 80% of Horde leadership in situation where the Warchief just quit) because they wanted to fight against Sylvanas, they joined because their favorite e-girl told them she doesn’t care about them no matter how many innocents they kill for her.
To be a rebel, you actually have to rebel against the people in charge. Surrendering to the rebels and swearing loyalty after your leader flees to Argentina Icecrown does not count as rebellion.
Throughout BFA’s storyline, Sylvanas sells this war to the Horde as the fix to a pattern that’ll never end; the Horde and the Alliance restarting a war of attrition, and driving each other to extinction, with the Horde perhaps being the first one to fall. Over and over, wars are restarted after periods of peace, no matter how long or fruitful, and it all begins once again.
The Horde, having just gone through Legion in which a misunderstanding which could’ve been as easily solved as demanding an explanation from across the street in Dalaran kickstarted a regional war with an entire Horde fleet getting bombed from an Alliance airship - and every other conflict before that, bought into it big time.
It’s a classic manipulation tactic that’s been used throughout IRL history, and not just by (insert dictatorship here). “Better them than us” is a messed up thought and motivation that’s likely as ancient as the cutting edge technology of ‘hit rock until sharp’.
So, fast forward into this cinematic: https://youtu.be/8NRLuUnpGYg?si=L5qFWm-tOAfc7V8B&t=251
You can clearly see how even the loyalists who stuck with her until the end didn’t just flip after she left; they began flipping the moment she said that ‘The Horde is nothing’, perhaps buying into the idea that the main bulk of the Loyalists were doing this out of some personal love for her, only to find her own personal bannerwoman shooting a glare at her the moment she says this, followed by her ordering the gates to be opened and the loyalists atop the gate to pay their respects.
It goes even further than that, as the Forsaken basically threw her legacy overboard straight after, with its military itself reforming the Desolate Council and Tirisfal’s 9.2.5 phase having Sylvanas’ statue completely missing, with the exception of the statue’s beheaded head, discarded on a random table.
So, regardless of what a literal nameless NPC might say such as:
Their actual military, dark rangers, apothecaries and deathstalkers included, reinstated a government that Sylvanas herself executed; a government which then proceeded to instantly pull their troops out of Gilneas as a show of good will towards the worgen, and then sent their military into the Emerald Dream to help the Night Elves gain a home again.
TL;DR: Loyalists were numerous, yeah, but the main bulk of them were misguided and manipulated, who thought they were doing that for survival and/or for the Horde, only for Sylvanas to admit in front of everyone that it was just for herself and that the Horde was nothing in her eyes.
Saurfang knew this because it was how he had been manipulated into accepting the prospect of an open war with the Alliance in A Good War, and all he needed out of her to free the city was for her to show that she wasn’t doing this for the Horde; and, as the cinematic shows, it worked.
Jfc I write a lot of cringe RP but the difference between this and that is that I don’t get to write WoW’s story.
At least I know to sue when my headcanon thread posts become real lore.
I just wanna see some cave dwelling holdout npc brought to their senses 8 years from now when Sylvanas returns in person to tell 'em the war is over. One final boot to the “put war back in warcraft” crowd, perhaps or an opportunity to display her newfound empathy.
According to Shadows Rising, Thrall purged the pardoned loyalists of those who still had secret sympathies for Sylvanas! It was one of the terms for the ceasefire with Tyrande, lest she burn Orgrimmar to the gorund.
Nothing as of yet, save that the BG is a “War Game” has been confirmed yet. I would advise everyone to hold horses on anything related to the new BG until we actually get the info on what it’s all about beyond “Silvershard Mine Resource Bar fill-up”. The fact that it takes place right next to the Giant Dwarven City where Alliance + Horde are actively co-operating gives me some alarm bells.
