The Silver Covenant did nothing wrong!

Lore Story
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I’m sorry, but the post Voidspire Quests make no sense.

Whether it’s the Sunreavers calling us butchers, or us being literally haunted by the “spirits of guilt”, the idea that the Silver Covenant are “butchers” or should feel ashamed, is bloody ludicrous story-wise.

The purging of Dalaran came directly after the Horde went to throw a Manabomb (an until then new weapon) on Theramore, one of the least Alliancey-cities the Alliance had. Which was mostly civilians, but also included Aegwyn, Jaina and Rhonin, the then leader of the Kirin Tor.

There was then further unrest started by Sunreavers in Dalaran, who elected to stay loyal to the faction that just attacked their Kirin Tor leader out of nowhere. And you’re telling us we should feel ashamed or guilty for purging the Genociders out of Dalaran? Because that happened too. The bloody Horde then went on to later burn Teldrassil, literally an act of genocide against the Night Elves.

So no, I have not a single sense of guilt. The idea that the Silver Covenant are “Butchers”, or otherwise should feel guilty is insane. Especially when the ghosts becry being “innocent”. Like, yeah right. What a load of nonsense.

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The Silvercovenant situation is basically a civil war situation, and the Horde quests at least showed them striking gleefully and cruelly against their former people, especially civilians. Taking the Horde version as canon at least in part, this was not an orderly police action, it’s more of an anti-Belf riot. I don’t have a general problem with some or even most the perpetrators regretting it afterwards on reflection.

I do despise the remorse and forgiveness as the great theme of Warcraft, though, and this is just one of many, many examples that. Where is the fun in that?

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ALso not to forgett: The highelves were evild prior to bc from Quel thalay by Lortehmar as tehy refues to use the fel as source, and giving even the forsaken a free pass to hunt them in the border regions, purposly looking awasy as the forsaken hunt and sluagther them.

The blooeelves were far from innoncent.

Heck even its even sztated in the short story where lorte travel to the one elven lodge near startholm and the leader tehre even remind him of that

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It’s hard to decipher your writing, I’m sorry to say, but I will try to reply as I understand it.

The High Elves definitely made the right choice to not use Fel Magic, given what it did to the world. As such they had little to do with that, or locking a Naaru into their basement to use for Paladin abilities.

I don’t understand what you mean about the High Elves giving the Forsaken a free pass to kill people outside of Quel’thalas, since High Elves had nothing to do with the Horde or the Forsaken.

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they did plenty wrong

vereesa went out of her way to deliberately torture and murder innocent civilians who were completely uninvolved in the destruction of theramore, it was an act of pure spite

as someone who happily plays characters across both factions i really can’t take the chest thumping of ‘muh horde’ or ‘muh alliance’ seriously

glad that the matter of the purge has been put to rest once and for all

it’s been over a decade since it happened, dragging it out even further or kicking the can further down the road to avoid addressing it at all would have been silly

and there’s nothing particularly controversial about vereesa having a rare moment of clarity and admitting that killing civilians is a bad thing

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Let’s remember Aethas is not the mouthpiece of objective morality. He is just salty about the purge and that is fair, it was a tricky situation for him. But it is still ugly that elves killed elves there.

His response is bold and kind of funny Lor’themar just lets his subjects get away with everything but yeah I’d say he is not wrong even if the Silver Covenant had their reasons too.

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:person_shrugging: Right or wrong, I dont really care. They resolved it. Though I do wish they doubled down rather than started to say ‘sorry’.

Hell, they could’ve added teeth to the Alliance and had them grinning whilst telling the Horde player that they liked the Purge. But that’s just me.

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I’d also have accepted everyone just not being honest in politics. I know, shocking concept. Publicly stating how errors have been done, while :poo:-talking about the other side once the doors are closed, would have been another way to give us something more interesting than what we got.

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doubling down wouldn’t make much sense at this point

the faction war felt increasingly contrived a decade ago, let alone at present

there’s no longer a distinct campaign for either alliance or horde players, just one streamlined story that practically excludes any playable race that isn’t an elf or a human

in the event it does focus on something that isn’t an elf or a human, it’s wrapping up stuff in such a way as to remove all grit and effectively sanitise them

undermine rid us of gallywix and pushed the goblin cartels into yet another ‘council’

worgen no longer have a king afflicted with the curse, they have a princess who is bereft of it…and their homeland has been reclaimed

i’m glad the purge of dalaran has finally been put to rest in such a way as to dispel the false narrative that the silver covenant were the good, pure elves who never did anything wrong

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Sorry but no. In my book murder is worse then exile. So all shame on the high elves is more then justified.

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high elves are fated to effectively die out over time due to the unfortunate and bland trope of pairing them with humans

the arathi have slightly pointed ears but overwhelmingly human features, including corpulent proportions in some cases

they have very few genuine elves amongst their numbers

so the high elves, on a long enough time scale, will essentially kill off their own bloodlines and race

not something the writers seem to have considered as an implication, perhaps, but even so

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You say that as if it is a good thing by itself. I don’t really see it that way, though. The little irrationalities and adherence to false narratives are exactly what can provide fuel for very personal conflict stories and clarification of different aspects that are internal to the culture, made explicit through external conflict. I don’t mind a false narrative being dispelled, if in the process we are getting something of similar instrumental worth, but removing it doesn’t add that by itself. If the reunification of the elves now led to a new era of elven supremacism or isolationism, with elves from both camps starting to neglect their allies and acting on their own interests uncaring if they clash with Alliance or Horde, that could have been fun, for example. What we are getting instead is just a profuctory ceremony to declare what came before dead, repaying player investment with nothing at all. And even worse, if that’s the model they are going for (and it certainly seems like it), any racial story will likely follow a similar mold. Hold your breath for people once again digging up the Gilnean civil war, or the internment camps, just to have someone who is sowwy for something accepting responsibility.

The faction conflict was disjointed and boring to me, long before BfA. What he have now seems worse to me, though.I’d prefer for them to draw new battle lines along other critera, but if the choice is asking for the old faction war, or the new era of reconciliation, I’ll take the one that depicts at least two perspectives as valid within the game world, instead of just one. Especially if all the perspectives they come up with are stupid anyways.

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ordinarily i’d agree, though i’ll happily cheer on anything that deflates the mindless championing of either faction to the point of excusing anything shady or horrific that occurred

the faction war grew contrived years ago, negatively impacting multiple playable races and dragging them into petty squabbles that had very little payoff in the end

it isn’t just because of the new writers, either - multiple writers have their pet favourites who are thrust into the spotlight at every possible turn (even at the expense of other figures who make much more sense to show up and participate…)

but in addition to that, barely anyone bothers coming here to discuss the story any longer in no small part because of the usual suspects who gnash their teeth at the mere idea of someone or something tied to the alliance ever being held accountable for anything

it’s indisputable that vereesa murdered innocent civilians who were entirely uninvolved in garrosh’s plan to steal the divine bell

that’d make for a cool, gritty story ordinarily but instead we got a decade of the usual suspects insisting it was perfectly justified and any criticism of their precious waifu is obsolete

so i’m rather glad to see the game cast some shade her way (and even that is too much for some to handle, hence the existence of this thread)

the story does have many issues elsewhere, but i don’t consider the purge of dalaran finally being put to rest once and for all as one of them

i’m in favour of a distinct, unique campaign for both horde and alliance players, not necessarily based on faction warfare but to actually highlight that the game has two distinct factions

but the game is over two decades old, eager to chase vague and outdated ‘trends’ so i’m not counting on it

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Does it, though? I mean, the people who think it was justified obviously aren’t convinced by the authors making involved characters contrite, as this thread proves. They just think that false guilt was forced on them. So on the forum warrior front it changes nothing. Not that I think that writing with forum warriors in mind is a reasonable idea in the first place…

And the game already did. The Horde accused, the Alliance denied. And the other way around for the Horde’s crimes. The player is left to make up their own minds, so some players will come to idiotic conclusions, but it’s neither the game’s job to educate them, nor is it in its power to do so, if it tries. Dumbing it down so that the lowest possible number will get the moral point wrong is how we got where we are. If we want any amount of complexity, we have to accept forum idiocy. So be very careful what you wish for here.

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Yes, Silver covenant did nothing wrong. However, it was the Horde that came out as victims despite the Horde using neutral Dalaran for military action and attacking the Blue Dragons. With this one move they could easily start another war between Kirin’tor / Blue dragonflight vs Horde, but no one remembers about it

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Jaina abused neutrality first by involving Dalaran with the alliance to hide the bell in Darnassus. Vereesa used the chance to do a rain of steel on all Sunreavers. So no I am not going to feel sorry for them.

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The night elves found the bell and asked Dalaran to carry it to Daranssus. Where is the aggression towards the horde in this situation? Alliance city asked a neutral city for help. That’s it. I don’t remember any night elves shouting -Haha! Now, thanks to the Bell, we will destroy the horde! HA!HA!

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what some of you forget is that there’s those of us who really don’t give a damn about either faction or the performative outrage whenever there’s the slightest bit of pushback against either the horde or the alliance lol

but it doesn’t change the simple fact that the deliberate murder and torture of civilians is reprehensible and inexcusable, both inside and outside of the setting

bending over backwards to try and justify it is pointless now that vereesa herself has had time to reflect upon the situation and admits that she went too far

as an aside, it’s always stupid to me how readily supposed elf enthusiasts are to cling desperately to either faction and excuse anything and everything that the horde or alliance does, especially in cases when it weakens elven power on the world stage

it’s also funny, really, since despite being so enthusiastic about the faction war and the ‘us vs them’ element to it, the complete inability to hold the extremist elements of either faction accountable for their actions is precisely why it fizzled out and lost appeal with the general playerbase and the writing team itself

something to think about perhaps

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You say that as if it is a proven fact, but as far as I’m concerned if there is anything at all to that statement very much depends on what you mean by “holding accountable”. If you mean that people wanted warcrime trials where the factions punished their own and admitted wrongdoing, I think you’re just plain wrong about very large parts of the playerbase we had back then. If you mean that people were frustrated that they had to swallow that they themselves were asked to forgive and forget the other side instead of being allowed to fight to extract the cost in blood themselves, now that sounds much more like it.

People who were invested in the faction war weren’t pissed about how it ended, but that it was repeatedly ended in the first place. They hated that it was the plot of one addon or another, to be shoved aside after, while the wounds it ripped open and the anger it stirred was still boiling. They didn’t want Garrosh to be tried, they wanted to sack Orgrimmar. They didn’t want Jaina to be dealt with by Varian, they wanted the Horde to make her pay. And while they didn’t necessarily expect to succeed at that, they wanted to continue to try.

That’s not something the Devs tried to do but failed at, it is something they never tried. Probably because they were uncomfortable with the idea of potentially endorsing revenge, war and violence, instead of condemning it in the strongest terms, but that’s exactly where the disconnect is.

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many of those players have since quit, though, a lot of roleplayers on argent dawn on both sides of the fence took their leave after the faction war crumbled away and various playable races deeply rooted in the conflict had no real resolution to long running plot points

sylvanas deserved to die for killing multiple innocent gilneans during the invasion of gilneas, let alone the other atrocities she committed before and after that point

vereesa deserved to die for gleefully murdering and torturing innocent civilians during the purge of dalaran, a crime that was considered ‘unforgivable’ when the big ugly male orc did the equivalent

i was pretty keen on the faction war myself at one point, it provided some excellent roleplay for a time

then at a certain point it became crystal clear that neither some of the writers or vocal elements of the community were willing to let their precious blorbos like wrathion, sylvanas, jaina or vereesa actually receive the due comeuppance for their actions in the story

it’s a problem in pretty much every fandom these days

many of those claiming to want to make characters pay are devoted exclusively to one faction, often the alliance, whilst refusing to concede basic facts like ‘killing innocent civilians is morally reprehensible’

and i disagree with the idea that the devs never tried embracing righteous revenge storylines

they did - the blood elves are compelling examples of that in their original iteration that held a lot of raw appeal for many and there’s been endless complaining ever since their introduction

as well as a weird aversion leading for many to struggle to admit that what garithos, the kirin tor and the night elf/dwarf saboteurs did to the blood elves in the immediate aftermath of the scourge’s invasion was messed up

it’s not surprising that many of those same posters later went on to insist that jaina and vereesa did nothing wrong even when deliberately targeting and murdering innocent civilians

it just becomes very tiresome and predictable after a certain point, particularly if one plays both factions and doesn’t mindlessly champion either of them over the other

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