I’m still really confused as to why the horde are attacking Teldrassil. If this is about Azerite, why are we attacking a city on the completely other side of the continent where it’s found, full of elves who most likely aren’t related to this whole thing, because I can’t imagine these guys being cool with either the Horde or Alliance taking the lifeblood of the planet. Considering they got angry over a few trees in WC3.
I mean, what’s our motivation? Aside from our leader told us to, but what’s her motivation? It’s not really made- oh it’s because we’re evil now. Okay. Don’t you tell me we’re not, every line of dialogue from Sylvanas just oozes “We’re the baddies :D”
Like even if it’s revealed the horde didn’t burn down the world tree, we’re still basically attacking these guys for seemingly no logical reason. That’s what saturday morning cartoon villains with no depth do.
Sylvanas’ excuse is that Teldrassil will be used as a seaport for the Alliance to ship Azerite to the Eastern Kingdoms and if it is not stopped, the Alliance will create weapons of war from it and use it on the Horde. That’s the reason she has given the Horde so that they would willingly fight for her. It does not mean it is true and it also does not mean that those within the Horde have the ability to know it is true or not (I mean they don’t have televised news to refute it after all).
Its called propaganda.
So unless you have contacts on the Alliance side or have personally spoken to King Anduin, your character shouldn’t have any reason to disbelieve Sylvanas. After all from past experiences, the Alliance has been hostile toward the Horde for decades, why would they change now? The only classes that are likely to have the ability to refute Sylvanas’ claim are: Mages, Paladins, Priests, Shamans and Druids. Why? Because those classes have neutral factions that regularly deal with the leaders of either side:The Kirin Tor, the Silver Hand, the Argent Crusade, The Earthen Ring and the Cenarion Circle. If you’re a part of or have strong ties to those factions, then you are likely to be in the know of the politics going on in each faction. Because what effects the Alliance and Horde, also effects the neutral factions and they will want to know the motivations of either side of the war.
However that does not mean your character would still willingly destroy Teldrassil or fight the Night Elves regardless of whether you know or not. At this point it is on a personal level and has more to do with your characters morals and principles. Perhaps an orc warrior such as Saurfang knows from personal experience of what happens when you attack a world tree and does not want to be a part of that. Or perhaps your troll hunter does not believe in harming the forest because it disrupts the balance of the hunt.
Any Horde character capable of thinking strategically also knows that destroying or taking Teldrassil will not stop the Alliance from shipping Azerite to the Eastern Kingdoms or the Alliance getting their hands on Azerite. The Alliance still has Azuremyst Isles and the Exodar to base their sea operations from in Kalimdor and it isn’t very hard to build a new seaport say in Tanaris. So strategically taking Teldrassil only denies the Alliance a major seaport and navy, but does not stop the shipping of Azerite.
Sylvanas also mentioned that Azerite is appearing all over the world, so the Alliance will get its hands on the stuff regardless. The only reason she does not consider that important enough is because the largest deposit right now is in Silithus and she controls that deposit. By taking/destroying Teldrassil she denies the Alliance easy access to that deposit. But again the Alliance still has the Exodar and can build a new seaport elsewhere. By taking/destroying Teldrassil, all she has done is bought the Horde time to mine up the Azerite in Silithus before the Alliance can reestablish a presence in Kalimdor.
Killing Malfurion would, theoretically damage the morale of the Night Elves, but only for a short period. Once the shock of losing him wears off, the kal’dorei would fight back even harder. From a tactical perspective, this will make taking Teldrassil all the easier. A demoralized enemy is easier to defeat than one that is inspired. Killing him would save Horde lives and resources and prevent a months long siege upon the tree. Sylvanas wants to take it quickly before the Alliance can muster a defense in time. The longer it takes, the harder it will be to secure Kalimdor for the Horde later on.
Sylvanas’ reasons are sound from a military perspective, but politically her motives remain unknown and we won’t find out any of the latter until after we’ve reached 120. We can speculate based on previous expansions what she plans on doing and that outlook does not bode well for either the Alliance or the Horde.
Just an addition: There’s no plan to destroy teldrassil, she wants the horde to occupy it, in a sense to hold the Night Elf population hostage so that the alliance can’t make moves against The Undercity or Silvermoon.
She basically just wanted the military advantage, which honestly isn’t the worst idea considering how big of a game changer Azerite is.
Not to mention the night elves were shown to be actively gathering Azerite when it started sprouting up in Darkshore
Like idk when this post was originally made but like, it’s all right there in the first few quests, it’s solid reasoning that’s a lot deeper than the “horde r evil now” rhetoric people seem really desperately hoping for
I still don’t see how that makes anything okay. Like… It’s still bad. Like Sylvanas is still invading and enslaving the place. Just because it got set on fire maybe accidentally too doesn’t make it better. She’s still evil. Very evil. Sure she didn’t plan to destroy it, but she sure did plan to invade it and kill a bunch of elves. The motivations are still out of whack and if the Alliance were going to use anywhere as a port, it’d be somewhere that isn’t over a thousand miles in the opposite direction of where the Azerite is.
Honestly, it’s just a badly written scenario tbh. It would’ve made more sense for this war to have started out in a neutral port closer to Silithus and have it actually escalate and then give some genuine motivations for going around attacking the night elves who honestly wouldn’t want to get involved in shipping the lifeblood of a planet around, even for their own side.
Don’t worry man enslaving an entire race and likely turning them into undead to fuel your war machine is NOT AS BAD as wanting to burn the tree down. Its okay because burning all the innocents was an ACCIDENT and NOT INTENDED, only ENSLAVEMENT was intended.
So unless you have contacts on the Alliance side or have personally
spoken to King Anduin, your character shouldn’t have any reason to
disbelieve Sylvanas.
So you mean like every Death Knight, Paladin, Demon Hunter, Druid, Shaman, Rouge, Warlock, Mage, and Monk? Or a great deal of Hunters and Priests?
Because almost every class has an interfaction order, and it’s almost like our characters have been working exclusively with them over the invasion of Azeroth to defeat the Burning Legion.
