I know it’s after-the-fact stuff but it is kinda notable that the rest of the Alliance, after Daelin’s death, just kinda shrugged their shoulders and basically said he deserved it by not also joining Kul Tiras to fight the Horde.
After the Third War the Alliance just isn’t in a position to join Kul Tiras in fighting the Horde, it barely survived the struggle against the Scourge.
Lordaeron, the Alliance’s largest, wealthiest and founding member, is a plagued ruin. Dalaran is also a ruin, Gnomeregan is an irradiated ruin. Ironforge is dealing with an influx of gnomish refugees, Stormwind has effectively lost control of half of its land, with Westfall falling to the Defias Brotherhood and Brightwood became Duskwood, a land full of tainted soil, undead and worgen. Redridge is suffering Blackrock raids and the king and much of the nobility is under the thumb of Onyxia, whose best interest does not lie in aiding Kul Tiras. Stormwind too is also dealing with refugees in the form of Lordaeronian survivors.
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https://twitter.com/DaveofCanada/status/1654695123274350592
This sums it up really well, for me.
WoW had the chance to keep bucking trends, have depth and nuance and lots of grey areas for both factions.
Instead, Horde keep getting smacked with the Villain bat, double-teamed by the STUPID bad, and Alliance get clocked with the Victim bat.
It all sucks.
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The point about Cataclysm basically soft-retconning that the Alliance are the ones declaring war on the Horde happens more than once, too.
Genn Greymane’s attack on the Horde fleet over not following a battle-plan that was made by a dreadlord and accepted by the Alliance got forgiven by Anduin Wrynn in some throwaway off-screen acknowledgement line in Before the Storm, and then it was never mentioned again.
Then, in BFA, the Commander of the 7th Legion landfalls on Vol’dun, steals water and food of an exile camp (leaving them to starve and thirst to death) while killing a bunch of them as well, exploded an archeological site and encampment which his squad recognised as such and were unsure about whether or not they should really attack them since they were just archeologists.
And then when the writers realised that it would make the Alliance have a semblance of doing something that’s being acknowledged in-universe as actually messed up, they shoehorned the Zandalari (in front of a temple of a god that hates undead) and the Forsaken (a faction full of undead that hate the Scourge) accepting a group of san’layn that turned one of the gnomes of the group into a caprisun about twenty seconds after the explosion happens.
Another instance of this is when they sent the SI:7 and druids into the Undercity to kill civilians that were being evacuated and is then never brought up after the fact by anyone, and the fact that the SI:7 and the druids could’ve won the war for the Alliance if they had just focused on spying how the forsaken were rigging the whole city with blight instead of hunting civilians down is never brought up, either.
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Do you recall the name of the questline?
It’s literally the Battle for Lordaeron scenario that starts BFA on Horde side.
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Thanks, I’ll try to play that soon.
EDIT: to check out the details. I didn’t mean that as a taunt.
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Oh, don’t worry, I get it! It’s easy to miss it when you can just skip over it after doing it once alongside every other hectic questline that starts BFA on a new character.
I am semi-surprised you can even still play that questline.
This thread highlights another huge peeve;
The ammount of actually quite plot relevant points that don’t even happen IN THE DAMN GAME.
Seriously. Books and supplementary media are fine, good even! When they are supplementary. The entire core plot having gaping holes in it because I didn’t pay out for what should be side media is a huge No, Get Stuffed from me…
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The man’s cherrypicking a bit, but in his favour the Horde aggression began well before Cataclysm. There are several examples of the Horde actively attacking the Alliance in the Northrend campaign and the Alliance having to defend itself, most notably Mord’rethar where a Horde recon force, upon seeing an Alliance offensive against the Scourge was going too well decided to attack the Alliance forces in the rear causing everyone involved to be slaughtered to a man. When you report this as an Alliance to the Skybreaker the officer responds in shock and vows revenge on the Horde.
When you report back as a Horde player in a similar manner, the response is:
<After a brief pause, Korm bursts into laughter.>
THAT is what it means to be HORDE!
So I wouldn’t say the Horde aggression was tuned up because of Varian. I’d say the Horde aggression was tuned up because that was the narrative they wanted for Garrosh and we all know how that went.
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This was when the war had already started. The war that was declared by Varian Wrynn started at the end of Dragonblight’s questline; the massacre at Mord’rethar happened in Icecrown’s questing zone. It’s the entire reason why Tirion has to hold the Argent Tournament to make the Horde and the Alliance get the fighting out of their system right before Icecrown Citadel’s raid, and even then, it still doesn’t fully work out.
In the case of Elegy and A Good War they also greatly contradicted the War of the Thorns we saw in game.
In a moment that would quickly become very out of character for Garrosh as well, Korm was severely reprimanded by Garrosh who told him in no uncertain terms that such an act is so dishonourable he should take his head.
Prior to this there Alliance and Horde forces were already clashing in the Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills, with most of these clashes being the cause of Horde aggression based on quest dialogue.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Reports_from_the_Field
Our mission in Northrend is to destroy Arthas. The Alliance are but an obstacle that we’ll crush wherever we find them.
We’ve managed to destroy their easternmost fleet; but the survivors have barricaded themselves on the Derelict Strand, south of here.
Our forces should’ve overwhelmed their make-shift defenses long ago, but we underestimated their will to live. Seek my officers in the field, Dark Ranger Lyana and Deathstalker Razael and get them to report on the situation.
The brief war in WotLk also came to an end with a truce, which Garrosh in turn ended in Cata.
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Genuinely believe so much of the narrative has been enforced “This makes no damn sense”, because the PVP crowd would soil and kvetch and whine if they were told they could have Arena but open PVP was no longer Canon.
“bUt ItS wOrLd of WARcr-”
Shut the entire hell up, I do not care.
Not that it really matters since we know there were A-H conflicts prior (see: AV, WSG, AB) prior, but the chain doesn’t specify who started this engagement. The first quest in it (War is Hell) just calls it a “confrontation”.
Later in the chain, the Alliance are referred to as a “thorn in their side”, along with the above mention of them being an “obstacle”.
It’s entirely possible that the Forsaken didn’t choose this fight and that the Alliance started it, especially since Anselm’s introductory quote is as follows:-
I’ve been in the military my whole life. I’ve fought in many wars, under many banners - but they’ve always been other people’s battles.
Not this time. Every Forsaken soldier you see here has come for one reason alone. Arthas must be killed.
“One reason alone”.
Having just played through this brief questline, it’s a whole lot of Anselm saying the Forsaken are there for one purpose; fight the Lich King, but him and other Forsaken saying how they are about to finish off this cornered, starved and injured Alliance force that will ever be a torn in their side that is to be exterminated wherever they meet - and at one point even surprised they could still fight back.
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Vengeance Landing is the main HQ of the Hand of Vengeance and the Alliance had sent an entire fleet to fight them; even the base they have is a makeshift siege camp, as it’s described in multiple occasions throughout the quest text and shown through its model.
Their purpose to be there is fighting the Scourge, to the point that the Forsaken of all people have a quest where they send you out to burn fallen corpses of Alliance soldiers so that the Scourge doesn’t have more minions to raise. Not only that, they didn’t even use Blight on them, going out of their way to recover it since their focus was the Scourge, not them.
From the quest ‘The Windrunner Fleet’, here’s a quote also said by High Executor Anselm: Speak to our bat handler, Camille, and ask for passage to the fleet's location. Be quick, <name>, every minute we spend fighting the Alliance is a minute we could've spent fighting Arthas.
Yeah, and we were just commenting how they always bend over backwards in book lore (The Shattering, in this instance) to always make the Alliance not be the attackers even when they are, at the cost of the continuity of every story ever told in the setting because they’ll burn the entire setting on a sacrificial pyre before having Varian Wrynn act like anything else than Thrall doing a Guts from Berserk cosplay.
In the same book, they also make Varian get a free sippy of worgen mind recovery water, freeing him from the anger and rage issues he got from the time his soul was split by Onyxia, making him ditch a character flaw on the spot, just in case one (1) character flaw was a bit too many for an Alliance character.
It’s a makeshift camp the Forsaken have besieged since their arrival in Northrend, as indicated by the sheer amount of sunken Alliance ships scattered around the coast, as well as the make-do armour worn by all of the Alliance NPCs scattered around the camp. It’s the remnants of a fleet barely clinging to life, and based on what the NPCs say, the Forsaken really do seem like the aggressors here.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Test_at_Sea
They use the plague on the Alliance the moment they recover it.
Bodies they have at this point no use for beyond spare parts and the crafting of abominations.
Which was true as early on as Vanilla? With the exception of Alterac Valley the Horde were the instigators of most of these border skirmishes.
And he still suffered from anger issues for many years after this. The worgen mind recovery water isn’t a cure.
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The same questline shows through the reports of multiple soldiers that the fleets had attacked one another and that they hadn’t been there for a long time, and it isn’t that the Alliance have an advantage of numbers because they were first that is holding them back; but because by the Deathstalker’s report, the ground is frozen, and they can’t get their own weapons into range, while the Alliance forces there have assaulted a forsaken ship and taken its cannons.
Right in a settlement completely full of apothecaries, in a war effort where Thrall had to send the Kor’kron to the Undercity because of just how many soldiers the Forsaken had sent to Northrend. This is the Kor’kron dialogue before you do Wrathgate on a character in Wrath of the Lich King.
With the bulk of Undercity's forces deployed to Vengeance Landing in Northrend, the Warchief has sent us to reinforce the city's defenses.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kor%27kron_Overseer_(Undercity)
The entire plot of Stormwind in Vanilla before endgame is that the corrupt government of Stormwind controlled by Onyxia is sending the military everywhere in pointless military expeditions so that she can get off scot free should her masquerade be dispelled; and, yes, while the Horde did aggression in Vanilla, it wasn’t a retroactive change.
The point of it is that they didn’t retroactively write this. I don’t mind Horde being the aggressors, I like when they make it so as an actually thought out story, but I don’t like it when they write things in such a way where they write one faction doing something, then they write a book where the character very uncharacteristically goes “sorry for party rocking” off-screen and then it’s the other faction’s fault because they randomly chose to break the peace.
It happened in the Shattering, it happened in Before the Storm; hell, they even retroactively changed Terenas II’s memorial quote in Exploring Eastern Kingdoms to say that the memorial made to Terenas by the Forsaken with candles that have spikes and skulls was actually, somehow, written by the Alliance under the orders of Thoras Trollbane, and that they actually, somehow, had Terenas’ crown aaaaaaaall aloooooooong.
It just makes me not even want to roleplay a storyline related to anything even vaguely canon out. What’s the point, if every single point is going to be flipped on its head because the writing team of this game has more mood swings than Grommash Hellscream in Warcraft 3?
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The Alliance had been there long enough for their gear to be little more than rags, according to the Forsaken all of them are starved and injured, their fleet a bunch of wrecks along the coast of their camp. They are battered day and night by attacks from the Forsaken, their only saving grace being two cannon that are not of Forsaken origin. They are only mentioned as “Alliance cannons”.
Vengeance Landing is a military settlement with three apothecary NPCs, the majority of the R.A.S in the Howling Fjord would be in New Agamand.
Before Exploring EK we didn’t actually know who exactly made Terenas’ memorial in Lordaeron or under which circumstances it was made, only that it wasn’t Forsaken who made it.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ask_CDev
The tomb of King Terenas Menethil II was not built by Lordaeron’s current residents or the Silver Hand; the tomb was crafted by the ruined city’s former citizens. Great were the deeds of Lordaeron’s last true king, and his people risked everything to ensure that his memory would not be forgotten.
Lordaeron’s (the city) current residents are the Forsaken. They would have risked nothing erecting a memorial to their last king considering they already held the city.
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