The Alliance also imprisoned the Zandalarian princess, unrightfully so.
And they aggressively pursued her when she was freed from wrongful imprisonment.
The Alliance never proved to be allies of the Zandalari, even going as far as to trying to ally themselves with old god cultists simply because the Zandalari requested aid to deal with said old god cultists.
The Alliance has the whole “super hero” story going on, where they keep creating their own villains.
Night Elves intended to send their forces to Silithus to subdue the Horde there, thus actually starting a war.
The Horde responded preemptively to that act.
That the Horde fed the Alliance some misinformation to have them send troops to Silithus is irrelevant. The Alliance intended an act of aggression against the Horde, and the Horde responded as they planned.
And that is the War of thorns.
After the Horde attacked the League of Explorers in Silithus, if I may remind you. This didn’t just happen. It was also a reaction to Horde aggression.
After the SI:7 attacked the Bilgewater Goblins in Silithus, if I may remind you. This didn’t just happen. It was also a reaction to Alliance aggression.
The order was as follows:
The League of Explorer was in Silithus by the sword.
Goblinminers attacked, and sentinels still on the ground were also attacked and barely escaped with their lives, along with several Explorer League members.
SI:7 intervenes
Night elves send their army to secure Silithus.
Horde Attacks the Night elves.
Thing is, that “aggressive maneuver” came in response to the Horde sending their army towards Silithus, which they only did to draw forces out of Ashenvale. They planned the invasion long in advance.
Same reason as above. The Horde manipulated them into doing that because they planned to invade from the start. They were forced into a war, the Zandalari inserted themselves into one that was already going on.
Stop ignoring context.
No, not acording to me, because you had to ignore a significant part of the story to make that false analogy.
They had. This was confirmed by Sylvanas prior to the attack. Her People partook in the fighting, notably in the attack on Anglepoint that the Zandalari aided in.
So either:
Either way, your argument sucks.
By joining forces with the Horde, Talanji and the Zandalari are condoning their attack on teldrassil, meaning they have to condone they Alliance doing the same to them. You cannot ally with genociders and get to complain when people try to stop you.
Yes, because her people actually suffered an injustice they had not bestowed upon others.
This coming from the person who cannot go a week without making a thread complaining about so called “Alliance-bias”?
To be honest it’s not easy to find the timeline for the starting events for the war of thorns unless you crosscheck the events from the in game quests, the book before the storm , as well as the short stories. And this is the timeline that makes sense.
The SI:7 is actually in silithus first trying to understand what the goblins are up to, including sabotaging their mining operations and attacking some of their miners.
Skirmishes between goblins/horde and the SI:7 happen at this time.
SI:7then get hold of some azerite, and send it back with the reports to Stormwind and the alliance. It’s at this point that the explorers league are despatched to Silithus.
The goblins learn of the expedition and attack them.
The night elves send their army towards Silithus.
The horde marches north to attack the night elves.
Now the war would have happened one way or another as Sylvanas wanted it, but I’d say that the alliance did start with the hostilities here.
The whole story in Silithus started before that.
By the time the miners arrived, there was already the League of Explorers doing research, seeing ingame, and there were still Sentinel troops stationed there that survived the explosion and blast and the destruction of Cenarion Castle.
“The Explorers’ League had answered the call by sending a team to Silithus to explore the strange new material known as Azerite. The substance, the very essence of Azeroth, had come to the surface when the fallen titan Sargeras had brutally plunged a massive sword into the world. Azerite’s properties were remarkable, and the Alliance had done very little study of it as of yet. Given the danger from the goblins at the site”
This passage from Elegy is when the explorer’s league team is in Darnassus about to head towards Silithus, so before any explorer’s league presence in Silithus. And after the alliance recently got the azerite sample delivered to them from Shaw. So it matches my timeline I posted earlier.
before the storm describes the visit as the first venture by the alliance, no encampments being set up yet. In the book the alliance are attacked the first day that they are there. The speak from anduin was at page 22, and the miners was first mentioned after the attack from the explorer league
In the alliance quest there is already an alliance encampment there which means that the quest would have to come after the events in the book.
In the book when the first group of alliance arrive Magni is still traveling around the world informing everyone he comes across about the great wounds to Azeroth. When the alliance players arrive, Magni is there in Silithis implying that he has already finished his world wide treck, and has returned to further examine the wounds, and commune with Azeroth.
While things may not be 100% conclusive, all the evidence at hand points to the horde attacking first.
When you further take into account everything we know about Sylvanus and Anduins personalities, Sylvanus creating a massive war machine preparing for war, and Anduin doing everything he can and ordering his people to do all they can to ensure peace. Any alliance officer would know that their head would be on the chopping block if they attacked first. Where as the horde have the motivation to do everything possible to hide all that they’re doing in preparation for war.
It’s the first venture of the alliance proper that’s no top secret of the spy agency, the spies of SI:7 have already been there in secrecy though and even set up a small camp which the alliance player use.
We already know that the SI:7 is active before Anduins speech.
Page 22 of Before the Storm has Anduin in Stormwind giving his speech from the cinematic, the pages following until page 27 consist of Mathias talking to Anduin and showing him the Azerite sample.
It comes back to Anduin on page 54. Anduin have a meeting on what to do and decide to travel to the other members of the alliance and to find out more info about azerite. This is the first time the explorer’s league is mentioned.
Now to ingame. From the gifts of the fallen quest given by shaw: Earlier today , King Wrynn addressed the citizens of Stormwind at Lion’s Rest in a speech given to formally announce the end of the war. After the crowd departed, I met privately with the the King and his advisors to discuss a mysterious substance that has been found in Silithus. This glowing ore appears to be most powerful and the Horde has wasted no time in extracting it from the great wound. The king has ordered me to fill you in on the details, in preparation for an important mission.
In the quest straight after " Witness to the Wound" Shaw says:I’ve already sent operatives to Silithus to establish a base camp. Their orders are to monitor the operations of the Horde and gather any information they can find on this mysterious substance.
One of my SI:7 commanders is currently awaiting your arrival. Go with speed.
So we know Shaw sends the alliance player to Silithus on the same day as the speech happened on page 22. and that they’ve already or is at least in the process of creating a camp there. The alliance then proceeds to kill goblins.
Then on page 81 Anduin arrives at the gates of Ironforge and Anduin have a meeting there with Magni and some others, Magni explains the whole Azerite thing and the explorer’s league gets dispatched. This is also the same expedition that the gobbos will attack.
Then the next time we see Anduin he’s in Darnassus meeting Tyrande and the night elves that will accompany the explorer’s league group on page 149.
Also, I must say I’m sorry because earlier I said the part I quoted from Elegy in an earlier post was taking place before the group had been in Silithus, it does take place after. Messed up that timeline but it does not really change anything from the timeline.
Good that you bought this up. What Magni says when you arrive is " Do the leaders of the Alliance and Horde even know what they’re fightin’ over? This substance that is risin’ up from the wound is the lifeblood of Azeroth! We need ta heal the wound, not exploit it fer power! Azeroth is the only home we’ve got. We cannot allow her ta die! I trust ye, , and I know that yer voice carries great weight among the Alliance. Ye must reason with 'em ta stop this madness! 'Tis the only hope our world has…" Which implies that he hasn’t actually begun spreading the word yet as he wonders if the horde and alliance know what it even is. Remember he told Anduin and several others back in Ironforge before the explorer’s league even got dispatched, so the killing the goblins would take place between the day of Anduins speech and slightly before Anduins trip to Ironforge, to allow Magni to return and spread the word of Azerite.
However many characters in elegy and before the storm seem surprised and think the goblins attacked first, but it would seem that it was the SI:7 that hit hte first blow by sabotaging and killing the goblin miners, but this would not be common knowledge as the SI:7 works in secret and it’s operations are not known by most.
But that is and remains…your interpretation, the facts are different.
Tell me then, which timeline would be correct and not contradict the source material?
I don’t think its crazy that regular people of different organizations would not know about a spying operation by the SI:7
…she was on route to the Horde and traveling with the guy who was fully responsible for the zandalari invasion in Pandaria and the troll uprisings in Cata. Yeah, the Alliance had every reason to detain her. Though putting her in a common cell and not treating her like the royal hostage she should have been was quite inadequate…
They set Stormwind ablaze. Yeah, you pursue guys who do that. Vehemently.
But they did. When they fought against Hakkar for them.
Edit: Was corrected on that below, canonically a Horde raid. Doesn’t really matter much, though.
That was one woman. Her job was to find out what was happening. Without further orders, she went native. Hardly Alliance policy. And as far as we know the Horde never even learned about that one.
I agree with all your points except
Blizzard told us who canonically did which dungeons and raids in vanilla and it was the horde that cleared Zul’Gurub.
The Alliance was first informed by Magni, then the League of Explorers and SI:7 were sent to the wound. But also sentinels and agents of Malfurion were already there, so the Circle was already initiated and brought news to Malfurion. When Magni came to him, he even told him that some of them were already on their way. That was all before the goblins were there.
Finally, when the goblins arrived, they literally overran the area, and attacked the Explorers League the night they arrived, only a few survived the attack, thanks to the help of some Sentinels, where almost everyone was killed as well. Less competition, but they also wanted to secure the area for themselves and their profit. gallywix made no secrets of it.
Eventually, the SI:7 really started to stop the goblins, but by then the League of Explorers had long since been pushed back, and the Sentinels had disappeared, and the Cenarion Circle was only one person left in Silithus
When the PC finally reached the area, there was only the base camp of SI:7, but you can even find the tracks on the side where the explorer League camp was.
Ah, yes, I confused that one. The Alliance only stopped Hakkar’s ressurection attempt in the Sunken Temple, the Horde fought him after his ressurection. My bad.
This series of events would break the timeline established by the book and in-game quests though. As Shaw literally says he already have SI:7 there and had them set up camp, not to mention brought back a piece of Azerite on the day of Anduins speech…
But the book already told that when magni* arrived at malfurion, the Circle and Sentinels were already there.
But Anduin’s speech was after magnis roundtripp by the night elves
Anduin wanted to claim the Azerite, not Tyrande. Nelves were sent there as back up for SW forces. They had no separate agenda and certainly did not want to “take control of the region”. Anduin’s objective was to grab the Azerite from the Goblins.