Since I tagged the entire threat spoilers, I think we can freely discuss what this means.
I think Blizzard is stirring the pot for publicity and perhaps even to emotionally charge PVP. I think over and over again Horde finds themselves in evil schemes and used by tyrants. I think the second post does a really good job of showing how evil Sylvanus has been. I agree with that poster that there will be some who will not follow Sylvanas now. We saw one of them in the questline who kneeled and was ashamed and felt dishonored. I think what we are going to see is a story arc where the Horde liberates themselves from a tyrant.
Argus the Unmaker: No hope. Just pain. Only pain!
Sylvanas Windrunner: Life is pain. Hope fails.
Forsaken NPCs, since Vanilla: Death to the living!
End life, end pain, restore hope.
Lok’tar Ogar! Victory in death!
Dark Lady watch over you.
For the Horde players freaking out against Sylvanus… a lot of Horde players just don’t know their faction history…
Lets remember the longer history here. Orcs in concentration camps, a no-surrender kill order on the people of Lorderan (the Forsaken), the slaughter of Goblin refugees, Trolls and Tauren left to die with no hope of salvation save for the beaten down Orcs saving them for no reason other than it being the right thing to do…
Now… when Allied forces were bombing Dresden and Berlin in the 1940s… did we call them ‘going to far’ to stop the Axis war machine with its concentration camps, death squads, and racial supremacy? Or did our grandparents buckle down and win the war ‘by any means necessary’? Did Russian soldiers step out of their tanks on the borders of Berlin after seeing 20 million of their countrymen, women, and children die at the hands of the Axis campaign in their lands? No… they stayed in their tanks, stayed in their helmets, and took Berlin ‘By Any Means Necessary’.
Remember what the Alliance did in years past to bring us to this point. Remember why the Horde fights. Because to not fight, is to be slaughtered by a regime who’s only goal is to end the existence of races not pure enough for their liking.
Silvanus is right…
She is ruthless now. But remember what brought her here. When Voljin’s Loa said they were picking a leader to save the Horde - they meant it. You don’t save yourself from genocide by having a hug-in hippie fest. You build a meaner war-machine to fight back with… and you set Berlin, Dresden, and other cities of the enemy war-machine to the torch.
Yes… the very campaign the Allies used in Dresden was declared to be a war crime if ever used again… by the very people that used it… But ask the allied soldiers who walked into Auschwitz if they thought it was worth it to fight back ‘by any means necessary’ after what they saw… and then remember that this fictional story we have… while a little less ugly until now, had Thrall in one of those camps at the dawn of the Horde…
By Any Means Necessary… You have to save your people.
I’m playing a GAME.
A FANTASY game.
Based on the HEROIC fantasy that’s been around for years.
One where choosing a faction has never been about choosing to play GOOD vs EVIL.
Now Horde are again forced to be muahaha evil. And trying to rationalise away her acts as anything other than evil is stretching a point to incredulity (or plain fanboiism). What druid in his/her right mind wants to kill Malfurion? And how is burning an entire city full of civilians with no military presence left at all justifiable?
I HATE having to do evil stuff in game (The DK campaign in Legion was not fun at all). RL is shitty enough. Getting to play a ‘good guy’ or a ‘hero’ if you like (as we are repeatedly referred to as) is one of the reasons for playing a ROLEPLAYING game in the first place.
This storyline sucked for me. I’m looking forward to the sacking of Lordaeron where I’m sure all Alliance players will also get to feel like crap about how they are forced to play (unless it turns out that Horde/Sylvanus commit more atrocities ‘by any means necessary’).
The Saurfang storyline at least provides some hope for a way out. #Shouldersoff
She’s not evil, she’s right. I’m not stretching anything anymore than my grandfather had to do when he went off to fight the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
My other grandfather knew what it was like to live under those powers. My grandmother’s people knew what it was like to be hunted for the color of their skin, and my nazi-fighting grandfather - racist Appalachian white man though he was - was actually descended from someone shipped here in a slave ship from Nigeria.
All of that, traits I see in the Alliance lore’s response to the Orcs, Goblins, and Undead.
As Malcolm said, you fight that kind of evil by Any Means Necessary. And as the soldiers who took Berlin and Dresden knew - it won’t be pretty. Just as it wasn’t pretty when Nanking and Stalingrad.
It is a fantasy game. But the Alliance has always been the side of the Klan. They’ve always been driven by a racist agenda. Look to the long arc of the lore - not individual battles.
People can stretch heroism onto the Alliance because they do that when it’s a side that bespeaks certain eurocentric traits. But the lore speaks otherwise…
As a veteran I don’t expect war stories to be pretty or to come with rainbow ponies and hug-fests. War is a dirty affair where you do what you must to end the other side’s ability to harm you, or you get extinguished by them. It’s not about honor and glory; it is victory or death.
My toons will strap on their shoulder armor again (I’ve long hidden it due to not liking large shoulders,remember Durnholde, Remember Camp Taurajo, remember the people of Lorderon who have been forsaken by their own kin, and remember the goblin refugees…
I was very sad about Teldrassil, it was always one of my favorite zones. Undercity though, needed a good cleansing, all that nasty green goo and all. I’m on team Saurfang and was really mad for a second there when I thought they were going to kill him off! Hopefully we get to go bust him outta jail at some point.
And all the innocents end up paying the price for the policies and ideals of a government they have no voice in.
German does not equal Nazi. I am sure the same went for the Japanese, they did not all agree with the war they were forced to take part in. My Grandfather was a German soldier. He was not racist, he did not believe that religion or skin color or nationality was a reason to like or dislike anyone, much less kill them. He taught those values to his children and my mother taught them to me and I teach them to my son. My Grandfather was not given a choice and was forced to fight a war he did not believe in under a government he did not want. He was taken captive by the Americans and held in a POW camp in Arkansas for several years. My Grandmother and Aunt were not so lucky. They lived through constant fear of their own government, bombings, starvation, and my Aunt was sent across the country at age 16 to work on a farm because the boys had all been taken off to war. The village my family was from was bombed to rubble by the Americans and was still rubble mostly when my Mom was born in 1947. America also had Internment camps. The family of George Takai was also held in Arkansas for the duration of the war for the crime of being Japanese. He had extended family that were vaporized when the bombs were dropped on Japan. There are no good guys or bad guys in war. Only pawns of power hungry politicians. (Yes this is a gross over-simplification)
There are also no completely good or bad guys in WOW. We follow the leaders chosen for in stories we can not change in any way. We have no influence on the progression of the events that are taking place. The writers have created an amazing emotional response through the carefully scripted events over the past several weeks and have also created discussions of the histories of the two factions that may compel players to go back and read the books, or play the games to witness it again. Sylvannas was at the mercy of a greater force for a long time, Jaina chose to protect the Horde races and her father was killed for it because he wouldn’t listen to her and make peace, Saurfang is trying to reclaim an honor that was taken from him when another greater power poisoned all the horde with demon blood and feels guilty for the oceans of innocent blood he has spilled. Anduin is starting to take up this attitude of “We will stop them by killing them all” attitude too when once he would try to talk and come to an understanding to make peace.
Good guys and Bad guys are subjective. At the end of it, we are all just observers in a prearranged story that we can not alter in any way. Maybe the lesson here should be that rather than responding to any aggression with hate and anger, we should all strive to be more kind and understanding of ourselves and each other before we pass judgement on anyone for their skin, their political affiliation, their life status, their spiritual beliefs, or whom they choose to love.
I believe in forgiveness and acceptance and that is why I support #Nopauldrens and I play both Alliance and Horde. Hell, I married a Tauren for Elunes sake.
Replying to an old post, but a good one. I have done some reading on the politics of both factions and am curious if americans try to line up with wow politics close to their own. I still see anger from both sides in chat so maybe not. I always thought of the Horde as being more diverse and tolerant of others, but I admit I don’t know the history very well.
