So like… both the New Horde and Alliance are defensive alliances out of fear of being destroyed by the other, creating two major military powers in WoW’s setting.
Only one major war happened between the Horde and Alliance during the MMO (although I don’t see how the war against Garrosh wasn’t one) with the other’s being border clashes and minor incursions between the factions. Often a few settlements burn down, something bad happens, the Horde and Alliance find some agreements, and eventually they point at a bad guy to push all the blame on for this collective murderfest.
So for mostly gameplay reason, the narrative can never really go into any of the factions favour.
But what if one of the major fations actually succeeded in completely wiping out the other from the surface? What would actually happen? Will the Alliance colonise Kalimdor for it’s own? Would the Horde be stable enough to stick together, or slowly crumble apart?
Your thoughts are as good as mine so just joke around here if you like.
Whichever faction loses could have a roleplay renaissance. Playing the underdog is just - moreso in the factional sense. Forced to make your dealings whilst avoiding the boot of the big guy
If either faction was broken by war and scattered to the winds? With past history in mind, everyone dies in such a world. I don’t know to what exactly, but it would be the first end-of-world class threat coming in Azeroth’s direction.
Absent the “let’s team up for the greater good” power boost, the remaining faction would almost certainly be wiped out eventually.
Storywise, what would happen with competent writers is that a new cosmic threat wouldn’t show up for a while and we’d instead be forced to deal with the aftermath. I don’t think, realistically, a complete extermination could be done. There’ll always be pockets here and there.
On the defeated side (Horde, lets be honest) you’d have your story focus split between being scrambling rebel underdogs still clinging to the idea of fighting for their own future and those who ‘chose’ to fall under the bootheel of the victor and live in a controlled, enforced ‘peace’.
Forced labour to enact reparations to the victor, a complete disarmament of the populace, executions of leadership, and a constant presence of troops in what cities were not razed to the ground.
On the victory side, you’re now unchecked with power and have essentially no enemies left to fight, along with presumably a massive army of trained soldiers. Concerns about corruption in the military would spike, individual generals might decide that they could lead better than whoever currently sits the throne causing rebellions (are they supported by the Losers? Some might be…). Sympathetic voices would clash with hardline voices on how to deal with the Losers, causing political rifts.
The faction as a whole - absent a threat that required standing together - would be slowly drawn apart as their individual differences become more prominent.
Eventually the story would culminate in a few clutch victories for the Losers, allowing them to take back some territory, while the Victors are too beset by infighting, bureaucracy, and schisms to properly mount a defence once more, and being weakened as a result, and so you’d end up returning closer to the old status quo, though not quite as close anymore.
I want to be in this world of warcraft. At the end of MoP, and beginning of BfA that’s an outcome I was hoping for - and back then I was a diehard horde player, wanting to be the underdog.
I remember dialogue from Varian Wrynn after Siege of Orgrimmar where he adresses the fact why he chose not to continue the war, even if it was the best chance to finally bring the Horde to heel. Unless he’d go full genocide, he’d have to basically put Thunder Bluff and other cities under martial law, aswell as expend resources and soldiers to constantly keep the Horde under heel, while only ensuring that they’d just seek to rebel whenever and wherever they could.
That is even in the at that point unlikely event he could’ve salvaged the peace talks with the blood elves and bring them back into the Alliance.
In wow’s universe though, Vervaina’d probably be right in that it’d just lead to the next big bad to wipe out the victorious faction.
If however, the next big bad would not show up, I suppose it would depend on how strong the unity between the nations of the winning faction is on whether or not problems would arise. There’d atleast be massive lay-offs of armed personnel and the selling ( and potential dissappearing) of redundant weaponry, provided all those soldiers are not needed to keep the losing side suppressed, like in Varian’s explanation. Else you’d suddenly be stuck with a massive army that costs god knows how much.
As long as one faction loses I’m happy, but Horde going would be the most likely outcome.
The dream:-
Orgrimmar: Razed (no strategic/material reason to keep it, it’s entirely symbolic)
Thunder Bluff: “Lenient” martial law (due to Baine’s historical friendliness to the Alliance).
Echo Isles: Destroyed. Darkspear forced to seek refuge in Zandalar.
Undercity: Purged entirely. Whatever Forsaken survived forced to flee into the Plaguelands (v. dangerous!)
Silvermoon: Harsh martial law. Sunwell ideally destroyed as part of the invasion.
Bilgewater Port: Sunk beneath the surface. Gazlowe executed.
Highmountain: Occupied, harsher than Thunder Bluff is.
Suramar: Forced to re-bubble, locking themselves and the majority of the Blood Elf refugees away (those who left Silvermoon). Alliance outposts built around its exterior to monitor for any changes or movement.
Huojin: Forced integration into the Tushui and “re-educated”. Huojin philosophy books burned or otherwise destroyed.
Zandalar: Only survived by virtue of being too isolated to truly dominate, but their fleets were shattered and their waters are regularly patrolled, forcing them into effectively complete isolation. A crumbling empire of nothing.
You’d think the apothecaries of the Forsaken have been brewing something terribly bad for a mutual assured destruction in case it would ever go that way.
I hate this narrative, the implication that there will be an infinite number of big bads and devastation caused by them is incredibly yawn-worthy. Each one stepping up in power level until you’re fighting “Those Who Came Well Before Those Who Preceded The Precursor’s Grandparents.”
It’s interesting that commonly people see it as the Horde is the one that loses, and the Alliance make strides to dominate and control their people and territories with puppet leaders, border controls, and so on.
I think that would be a good way to show the Alliance in a conflicted and at times cruel position, while keeping to their themes.
And truly a result where the Horde were under the boot of the Alliance for a time, having to scramble together and seeing rebel units and causes pop up, all in effort to regain their independance and identity…
That would have been exciting as hell.
Honestly with Teldrassil gone and Undercity plagued (before they fixed it in the forsaken questline), I was imagining a scenario where Silvermoon was lifted off of the ground and becoming a new floating city like Dalaran and moved to Kalimdor, and then he Draenei fly their Xenedar ship to the Eastern Kingdoms.
Then each faction have their continents and there would be no more fighting, except a few more skirmishes going around.
Now, though, I think with a few more years of this armistice might do the war some good. Maybe even making up a neutral city hub kinda like they did with Republic City in the avatar universe with LoK.
Even with the Big Tree reduced to a pile of kindling, the night elves have all their established history on Kalimdor. Teldrassil was only… what, twenty years old? They’ve lived in and around Ashenvale and Hyjal for 10,000 years. They’d have to be pried out with a crowbar (which I’m certain many forum orcposters would enjoy).
It was grown sometime between the end of the Third War (21) and Vanilla (25).
It was burned in 33, meaning it was between 8 and 12 years old. No child born among the great boughs of Teldrassil was even a teenager by the time it was burned.
The tree wasn’t even old enough to drink alcohol!
It was still bad, genocide, etc. etc. but in the vast lifespan of many Night Elves it was barely a blip. Teldrassil wasn’t really the important part, it was the people they lost at Teldrassil.
But yeah, between Hyjal, Ashenvale, Feralas and more, the NElves shouldn’t be mass-exodusing their ancestral home just because their tree got burned down.
They should do it so they can plant a new World Tree on the purged ashes of the Undercity, purifying the land and establishing Lordaeron as a centrepiece of the new Night Elf Empire
Elven ADHD go “ooh shiny new thing!”
They’d have abandoned it entirely within 50 years if it hadn’t been burned down after they got bored of it and moved onto something else.
I imagine they migrated to Teldrassil because Ashenvale/etc had been ravaged by the Legion, their long isolation had been torn apart, and Fandral Staghelm was like “gals come over here, I’ve built us a replacement Nordrassil!”
The people who lived in what’s now Felwood had to go somewhere, for example.
That’s most likely it. In the Third War’s aftermath their ancestral lands were devastated, depopulated and dangerous to be around. Not even Hyjal had regrown yet - it was still a wasteland.
Teldrassil must’ve looked like a great place to start anew; build homes, raise families and so on. While life would return to some places on the mainland, many Elves had already grown roots (kek) in the new World Tree. Why would they leave?
- moreso in the factional sense. Forced to make your dealings whilst avoiding the boot of the big guy 
