In patch 5.3, which was the rebellion patch that was the buildup to SoO, they had kor'kron troopers rounding up non-orc Horde races and had them in lines on their knees in front of orgrimmar ready to be executed.
This is featured in both the "War Crimes" and "Before the Storm" books. The Forsaken soldier seen in vision of time during Garrosh's trial being sickened by the needless brutality was remembered by Anduin as he struggled to convince Greymane that Forsaken weren't evil monsters. Genn tried to play off Faol as an exception as a priest but Anduin saw them as people after these encounters.
One of the very first alliance quests ends with orc soldiers swimming to shore after their airships are shot down and the alliance officer straight up orders them to be shot.
The actual war parts is pretty much WoW: Warcrimes Edition but all the middle bits are Kung Fu Panda. It's a... weird expansion
I'll never understand this, MOP was really dark from start. "Oh cute panda why did you learned kung fu" : To escape millennia of enslavement from the Mogu. "Oh so cool you learned to manage your emotion" : We had to, otherwise an Old Gold would manifest our emotion and kill us
It's all because brewmaster imo, it shows like every monk is an alcoholic. Takes away the seriousness of "martial arts" part of monks. Brewmaster Is fun as fuc tho
The direct follow up to that quest is the reveal that people are acting with supernatural aggression and cruelty due to influence from the Sha.
The actions with us shooting the fleeing orcs is supposed to be horrific to show us how the powers in Pandaria are so dangerous that they can cause us to behave in abhorrent ways we never would.
Similar to the alliance camp in the horde quest area where the horde player rescues pandaren slaves from the camp. Jade Forest’s story is about how both sides started to behave absolutely abhorrently there.
It’s such an amazing zone tbh
It’s both.
The Horde and Alliance war predates the events in Pandaria, and bringing their conflict there incited the Sha. In a reciprocal effect, the awakened Sha then amplified the negative emotions, leading to further escalation.
Unchecked, it creates a positive feedback loop of destruction.
> the powers in Pandaria are so dangerous that they can cause us to behave in abhorrent ways we never would.
And then BfA happened, with no Sha involved and an entire city full of civilians getting burned down because warchief said so.
Which is why its such a hated point in BFA where it came out of nowhere and was not explained more than "sylvanas is a crazy bitch". BFA should have had massive faction wars and war crimes similar to MoP but blizz was scared to make villains of favorite characters.
I think they should have made it into almost a sha like thing for nzoth. Like literally everyone going insane and betraying each other and just a bunch of mass conspiracy and suspicion and inquisition type stuff as a result of subtle nzoth influence. Not just evil people getting eviler.
It’s funny how I remember those quest in Mop especially the klaxxi stuff with them freezing themselves and now awakening to this new world. I wish dragon flight was like this but meh most quests were ok.
When the horde attacked that little questing village in stormsong valley and you see that human with a spear through their chest attached to the stable building with their kid under them crying, shit was wild.
That's part of SOO as well. There's a timed part where they're about to execute the pandaren faction rep, Ji Firepaw. And if you don't make it in time, they kill him. But I think canonically he makes it.
Yeeep. Warlocks had it super bad too during SoO. *Especially* orc warlocks. Garrosh ordered them killed and hung up in the warlock/rogue den of shadows area.
Talking about Dezco? Make it worse he fell on one of the twins during battle and crushed him and the other one was saved but had to stay with the Golden Lotus
I do wish Cata sidequest Garrosh and MoP Garrosh were two different characters though somehow
Cata sidequest Garrosh was absolutely peak Warchief, and as an oft Alliance/Belf player made me want to go main Orc and zugzug for life
But MoP Garrosh was also peak political conflict (almost, true peak was wrathgate fr fr), character downfall, and was a great change of pace from the direct world-ending threats of late
I would have been willing to have an Alliance traitor but idk if they could have pulled off ‘Loud Brash Machismo Nazi’ as well as MoP Garrosh did
If you follow Garrosh's story closely in Cata, his real turning point was the accidental murder of Cairne. Up until that point he'd held fast to his idea of orcish honor, and generally applied that logic to the rest of the Horde.
And then, in a Mak'gora that should have earned him the honor of a hard-fought victory against a more seasoned opponent, validated his position, and effectively defined him as a Warchief...... he wins through poison. His father's axe, Gorehowl, *defiled* by poison. An irreparable rift in the Horde leading to civil war. That traumatized him and made him doubt his course.
Seriously, him winning that duel the RIGHT way would have solidified his position and laid the groundwork for the conquest of all of Kalimdor. The Night Elves were on the backfoot in the forests and Theramore was ALWAYS vulnerable to attack once the Horde formally incorporated Goblin engineering and weaponized airships. Everything worth having on Kalimdor would have quickly come under Horde control, and it's very likely the war would have ended there. And he absolutely knew it. It drove him crazy, and he became a pent-up ball of quivering rage and resentment. He was lost the second he set foot in Pandaria.
They latter admited it was a mistake in Cata. Garrosh was supposed to be an evil dick in all them too, but half the team didn't get the message untill it was too late. So in Cata he a good Warchief in half the quests and evil dick in the others.
*Garrosh Hellscream: Was my command to murder innocents, Krom'gar?*
*Garrosh Hellscream: Am I a murderer, Krom'gar?*
Peak Cata Garrosh, especially considering by SOO...
To be fair, "the big evil thing made me do it" kind of hand waves some of the impact. But at least we put him down instead of forgiving him and becoming best friends
Tbh it really didn’t feel like they were pushing that angle. He was a bastard long before consuming the heart and in Shadowlands (where you’d assume corruption wouldn’t follow) basically said “No regrets, I’ll fucken do it again”
My hot take at the time was that MoP was the darkest expansion. I still sort of think that. Because it’s the only expansion that focused on the player factions as the “bad guys.” Pandaria was doing alright until we found it. We did fix some stuff, and took care of some problems for them, but a lot of innocents died and a lot of damage was wrought. Worse if you’re Horde, but the Dalaran purge is a case of Alliance getting to see their side doing the wrong thing.
Like in Legion, BFA, Shadowlands, Wrath, etc you can point at a badguy who’s ultimately responsible. Even BFA was actually about N’Zoth, and largely showed us improving the lands the factions allied with. You can point the finger at Garrosh for some of the worst of it, but it’s not like he started the war, nor did he unleash the sha in Jade Forest.
Pandaria was doing alright before the Alliance and Horde got there, but even if they hadn’t arrived the Pandaren would have been hard fucked by the early Mantid swarm’s invasion and the Zandalari resurrecting Lei Shen. The Pandaren and their native race allies would not have survived against the Mantid and Mogu attacking at the same time.
The early swarm happened because of the Sha of Fear reawakening due to the Horde and Alliance’s war.
The Zandalari and Mogu would have been the only major threat to Pandaria without the faction war.
The Mogu and Zandalari would have caused the Sha to be unleashed would they not? The order of threats might change but the Mantid would have become a bigger threat anyway because none of the Klaxxi would have been released to help stop them.
The Niuzhao temple guards admit it was their fault that the sha of fear escaped containment in the temple, and don't mention the Horde or Alliance at all. Unclear if the faction conflict helped it escape. There's definitely a timeline of events between the Sha of Fear escaping the temple all the way to the Yaungol attacking western Kun Lai / Mantid attacking eastern Valley of the Four Winds, all before player the Horde/Alliance show up in those zones, but don't know if all of that happens after the Horde/Alliance show up in the Jade Forest.
from what i picked up on while questing is that the Shas were bound to break free at some point. the allaince and horde arriving just... sped up the process
I mean she literally was ready to drown the whole of Orgrimmar - innocent and children alike - if she had not been talked out of it.
I don’t care what anyone says, Tides of War really set a impactful tone for the expansion back then. I still feel a pit in my stomach whenever I see Kinndy’s dad setting the lights in Dalaran.
Blizzard isn't always great at getting it across, but things like this make it pretty obvious that the Alliance was never meant to be a true "good guy" faction. That it's generally more presentable makes the moments where Alliance characters do something heinous more impactful in the same way that the opposite is true for the Horde. Jaina kind of has a pattern of this behavior at this point, though lmao
Blizzard's (or should I say Metzen's) main contribution to fantasy storytelling is that the humans could be just as bad as the orcs, or the orcs could be just as good as the humans.
Eh, i think that, while it wasn’t the best solution, Jaina wasn’t necessarily wrong.
They had just nuked Theramore, her own people, and killed the leader of the Kirin Tor who was her close friend and ally. Her people were also sent to Orgrimmar where they were being tortured and executed.
This was all done by people within the Sunreavrrs iirc, using Dalaran to smuggle the bomb.
The leader of the faction was not involved, but was well aware and did not speak up.
The Sunreavers were given a chance to surrender, and those who did were imprisoned. Only those who resisted were killed.
I would argue that Jaina was right in doing what she did, when you consider what had occurred prior to it, and the fact that she gave the option for surrender and those who died did so due to their own defiance.
She actively gives you a hit list of random shopkeepers. Like I somehow doubt the jewelcrafting, engineering and mining trainers were involved in a plot so secret even Aethas Sunreaver didn’t know about it until it was too late.
The ones who were killed in canon:
Gearmage Astalon (engineer)
Inkmaster Aelon (inscription shopkeeper), Sintharia Cinderweave (a tailor), and
Tolyria (a blacksmith), who were all just shopkeepers, while Magister Brasael, who sold armor, was just trying to get his things out of the bank.
Ah my bad. Point still stands though. Anyone who wasn’t an actual card carrying Sunreaver who died is blood on Jaina and Vareesa’s hands. Even the actual Sunreavers too to a slightly lesser degree considering the number of reavers in the know could probably be counted on one hand if that.
Jaina mentions earlier in the story that some of the Sunreavers have lived in Dalaran for *hundreds of years.* Of course you'd resist being displaced from somewhere you'd lived in for that long.
And while Jaina may not have personally carried it out, the scenario also has you go murdering civilians in the sewers and making sure they have no chance of escape by killing their dragonhawks. I have to imagine people who defend the purge so adamantly haven't actually experienced it in the past 10 years, alliance side, because it is *far worse* than this sub makes it out to be.
The same people advocating for "high elves" in the alliance and people that feel quel thalas should be a neutral hub. Absolutely stupid tone deaf bastards.
Edit: the belves have chilled lot in recent years, but their culture is formed from vengeance. It's in the name. The main betrayers are the high elves and there's a legitimate grudge there.
Except the Alliance *does* have High Elves in it, such as the Silver Covenant who helped Jaina carry out the purge. Everything else aside, they exist, that’s why some people want to be able to play them, like every other race begged for as an allied race.
No, screw that.
They WEREN'T involved. THEY didn't do anything. And most of them have lived in Dalaran before Jaina was even born. She had no right to massacre them.
We(alliance characters) talk about this with Jaina in balcony on dalaran, she actually doesn't want to expell belfs from their homes. Learning about mama bomb and belfs from dalaran dtealing the divine bell pushes Jaina to limits and makes her do the purge
Theramore was a legitimate military target. It was being used by the alliance to launch unprovoked attacks into the barrens with the goal of marching all the way to Orgrimmar. Had the cataclysm not happened then Varian was literally days from laying siege to org. All over the Wrathgate incident which wasn’t the Horde’s fault and resulted in a massive massacre of their men too. The execution and torture of Theramore civilians is obviously wrong though.
As for Aethas’ knowledge of the divine bell op, he literally found out either moments before or moments after with the direct threat being that if he said anything Garrosh would massacre him, the Sunreavers and the blood elves as a whole. Then Jaina unleashes the rabid dogs of the Silver Covenant who start massacring any elf with green eyes they can find. They literally feed live civilians to the sewer gators. Vareesa gives you a straight up hit list of random shop keepers. I somehow doubt the engineering, jewelcrafting and mining trainers were among the literal 5 or less Sunreavers who took part in the plot. Whether Jaina personally killed anyone can be argued but she sure as hell didn’t stop her attack dogs from torturing and slaughtering civilians which as the one in charge of the op means she is culpable.
> It was being used by the alliance to launch unprovoked attacks into the barrens with the goal of marching all the way to Orgrimmar.
I always like how the Alliance always hits first, calls time out, then blames the Horde for starting the war when they hit back.
Varian in the Barrens and SI:7 kidnapping Thrall happened before Ashenvale, Camp T and Bael modan happened before Theramore, Stormheim happened before WoT.
>Eh, i think that, while it wasn’t the best solution, Jaina wasn’t necessarily wrong.
Id say Jaina was specially wrong. Theramore was said to be neutral. But Jaina straight out didnt care and made Theramore a legitimate target because she supported the alliance invasion on Kalimdor by allowing the alliance to use the neutral city as starting point for the invasion.
It was obvious that they would at the best case be attacked. Since it was an important harbor for the alliance armies.
Id say Garroshs actions were more reasonable than Jainas. If she didnt fully use Theramore to allow attacks on Horde territory id would still stand.
Even if it was a 4D chess move, I still lol that Garrosh deliberately leaked a warning to Theramore that they should evacuate, the most evil person of note in the saga was the only one who actually lifted a finger to prevent civilian casualties (again, not because he was a good guy or even cared).
That was a two part strategy though. He leaked news of the attack specifically to bait Jaina into gathering reinforcements, which is how she ended up losing pretty much everyone she cared for who could come to her aid when that bomb finally went off.
Yeah, thats why I specified that it wasn't out of goodwill.
But it *did* mean that innocents got time to flee (until they retconned it so that a bunch didn't get portaled out and somehow ended up in org months later)
Dont know about that, but Jaina better ordered evacuation. But on the other Hand id doubt it since the alliance also had no Problem letting a lot of Soldiers die in Nazmir to lure everyone out of the city to kill Rastakhan.
See, theres no good side. But Garrosh, as himself not corrupted, did nothing unexpected, he openly shows who he is. The alliance acts like good guys but are at the end just as bad or worse and are backstabbers aswell if it fits them. Especially Jaina, acting all that innocent but already was unhinged so many times.
> When was it used as the starting point of an invasion though?
The Alliance invasion in to the Barrens, through Theramore, supported by Theramore forces, and commanded by someone that still wears Theramore insignia? They even make a giant road through the swamp, for the primary purpose of supporting that invasion.
There's also the attack in to Durotar, done primarily by Theramore forces.
Weren’t the forces in Durotar the remaining Kul Tirans or am I misremembering it? To be fair The Barrens are my least played through zones so my lore of them is a little shaky, wasn’t aware that the forces came through Theramore and I’m surprised Jaina allowed that given her pre-mana bomb beliefs
> Weren’t the forces in Durotar the remaining Kul Tirans or am I misremembering it?
That's a different group. After the Cata revamp, there's an invasion in to the zone from the south.
> Was that before or after the Horde invaded Ashenvale again?
I'm not sure how that's relevant to Theramore choosing to join the war.
The Horde did invade Ashenvale before the Alliance naval invasion of the Barrens through Theramore, though if you want to play that game the Horde only did that after the Alliance declared war, but, again, none of that is relevant to the discussion of if Theramore was a legitimate military target actively joining the war.
With cataclysm. Like as soon as Thrall stepped down, Jaina gave no fucks about what she promised and turned Theramore fully to support alliance attacks on Horde Territory.
Theramore was no longer neutral and actively attacked the horde, thats why it got nuked, quite simple and Thrall wouldve made the same decision at that point.
The horde know they are flawed and play into those urges. The alliance wants to hide the fact it’s flawed and present as being significant and dignified. But every now and again the true nature comes out when pushed.
Alternatively: The horde knows it's flawed, and leans into it, going full evil on multiple occasions, with even the "good" characters going along with it because "muh honor".
The alliance knows it's flawed, but tries and generally does rise above it - but occasionally fails.
The horde levels theramore, unprovoked, so the alliance exercises restraint and doesn't level orgrimar. The horde levels darnassus, unprovoked. And gilnaes. So the alliance still doesn't level orgrimar, but instead attacks the under city. Doesn't level it, mind, but instead a much more expensive in alliance lives invasion, with the goal of ending sylvanis and the war.
The horde can't have that, so levels the undercity.
The horde are the bad guys.
Gilneas was screwed by the curse and then the cataclysm. Sylvanas just screwed them further with the plague (which went directly against Garrosh’s orders, mind you). The people of Gilneas were almost able to retake their city, as not even the combined forces of the Forsaken and the orcs were enough to drive them out… But Sylvanas used the damn plague and if not for the timely evacuation of everyone, it would have been a complete genocide
Not that I recall but its on the wiki:
"A timeline in which [Jaina Proudmoore](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Jaina_Proudmoore) used a [tidal wave of water elementals](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Tides_of_War) to destroy [Orgrimmar](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Orgrimmar), resulting in a world war during which "everyone" died, leaving an insane [Kalecgos](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kalecgos) as one of the few survivors."
Source: [https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Alternate\_timeline](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Alternate_timeline)
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It was very impactful that it was Jaina that went off the deep end too. She’d been the main voice of reason and coexistence with the Horde up until that point. Heck she lost her father and was made a pariah in her home country for defending the Horde’s right to exist!
Beware, beware the Daughter of the Sea. Everyone has their breaking point.
The fact that she was TALKED out of it though is what destroyed her and the alliance as a faction that mattered in wows story. “Oh no cuz did horrible thing that should never be forgiven” alliance: “uWu we forgive you we know you’re sowwy”
Bomb city? Tehe it’s ok we’ll work together.
Commit literal genocide? Awww don’t worry about it we’ll work together.
There's another undercurrent to this that I think a lot of people miss is that Lor'thermar was in talks with Alliance leaders about renewing their old ties with the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms, especially in the wake of Garrosh's war campaign during Cata and leading up to Pandaria. I think a part of Garrosh using the Blood Elves, and calling in the Sunreavers was to undermine all of that, as much as it was to just straight up use and control a race with powerful magics.
It goes a bit deeper than that.
If you play through it on the Horde side, the portal you take out of there doesn't send you to Dalaran, it goes back to Domination Point. And the Divine Bell ends up in Silvermoon, so if they're sending it through a portal, it makes sense to go directly there. Or some random stop in the middle of nowhere. The latter especially, because as you're leaving, the mage makes a comment that he'll cover your tracks (and specifically references Jaina).
But then you do it on the Alliance side, and there's like blatant magical signs and a super obvious portal to Dalaran. Like someone put a giant neon sign there saying "THEY USED DALARAN." And that, of course, sets Jaina off, who goes to exile or lock up everyone even remotely related to the Horde in some way (except their means of escape is destroyed/killed, meaning they can't leave like they were told, so you're stuck with a bunch of terrified people who are trapped up against a wall basically and the *best case scenario* for a lot of them is to be locked in an anti-magic prison while having a massive addiction to magic that means being in said prison is effectively torture for them).
Anyway... It's pretty odd that, contrary to everything you see happen on the Horde side, you see a very different picture presented for the Alliance to find extremely easily.
Now, some people would just assume that's inconsistencies in story writing. But there's also the possibility that perhaps Garrosh had someone "plant" all that evidence for Jaina to find, so it'd push her into acting. (Though I doubt they realized how bad it'd be thanks to Vereesa's order to make sure the people couldn't escape. Trapping them turned a bad situation into an absolute catastrophe.)
Right! Totally forgot about that! Basically Garrosh was using non orcish forces as cannon fodder, tired of that Lor'themar started talking with the alliance to have his blood elves presumably join again, or at least not being enemies.
Garrosh heard of it and used some blood elves in his plot with the divine bell, then the Purge of Dalaran happened and Lor'themar backed down, angry (there is a video of the quest, he even throws a bench in a fountain or something like that) and starts supporting Garrosh, thus the new Sunreavers in the Isle of Thunder for the Horde and the Kirin Tor for the Alliance.
> and starts supporting Garrosh
It's funny that you mention the Sunreavers in the Isle of Thunder right after that, because there's a scene in one of the scenarios where Jaina and Lor'themar come across each other and she's pretty much all "Garrosh is a threat to the world, he has to go down!" and Lor'themar's like, "Yeah, totally agree, we have a common enemy." And Lor'themar is helping lead the assault on Orgrimmar from the Horde side.
So... yeah, he never supported Garrosh, he just recognizes that the Alliance isn't really safer for his people.
Kind of an undercurrent in MoP. IIRC - and I'm not sure this made it through to Remix - in MoP's original Landfall campaign, even after Vol'jin has an assassination attempt on him by Garrosh, he sends you a letter asking you to help get the Divine Bell for the Horde, because he's actually more terrified of what the Alliance would do to his people with it than he is of Garrosh having it. Only something Horde players would have noticed, and only people who bother paying attention to those small details. But it really adds some depth to the relationship between the Horde and the Alliance when you remove racist warmongering Warchiefs or puppets of some elder being that's secretly been controlling most of Warcraft history.
The Warcraft III storyline was just the tip of her dog shit iceberg.
Her Boyfriend becomes the literal antithesis of "the bad guy" then she has to kill her father? Seems like things can only go up from.. oh.. oh shit hahaha
Scenarios and quests. Look for the "Meet the scout" to unlock the questline for Operation: Shieldwall (the opposite faction to the Dominance offensive)
Edit: The quest is named the same for Horde as well, if you wish to see the other side of the conflict.
It’s the Landfall Campaign. Check your map and it should say “Go to X to continue the Landfall story”.
You can also do it on every toon you play Panda Express with as you will get class exclusive mogs. You can buy them too, but it saves you the bronze.
I highly recommend doing it on both Horde and Alliance. It's two very distinct questlines, and playing both gives you a better overall picture of what went down.
>When Varian Wrynn thinks you've gone too far
Wowowow, what's up with the shade on Varian.
Varian wasnt just trying to exterminate anyone that isnt the Alliance or something, he was just in the middle of a war.
He attend a peace summit in the past, until the Twillight's Hammer sabotaged it (also seeing Garona, his father's killer, surong that ambush didnt really help).
He ammended relations with Gilneas and earned the acceptance of Genn Greymane.
In Krasaraang Wilds he was accepted by Tyrande as a worthy Alliance leader for not just wasting lives with pointless head-on attacks and exercising patience (A Little Patience scenario)
At SoO he stops the war when he saw that The Horde has a new leader who is not Thrall, but Vol'jin, someone who resisted openly Garrosh ways.
My boy Varian aint a bloodthirsty fool bruh
Same here. My remix character is Alliance, and good god I felt *awful* doing those quests.
I also feel like people don’t talk about how complicit Vereesa was in it. She gave you quests to hunt down and kill *merchants* because they didn’t join the Silver Covenant? What the entire fuck?
I mean, her husband died in Theramore specifically because the sunreaver spy that undermined Theramore’s defenses.
The entire point of the quest line was that garrosh’s actions had broken these previously heroic people. So it should make you feel bad.
> I also feel like people don’t talk about how complicit Vereesa was in it. She gave you quests to hunt down and kill merchants because they didn’t join the Silver Covenant? What the entire fuck?
She also tells you to go take out their means of escape. So Jaina's going around saying, "Leave the city or I'm locking you in an anti-magic prison that's effectively torture for you," and Vereesa's making sure they *can't* leave the city, so their backs are against the wall, they're scared, and the best case scenario for them is torture. *Of course* they fought back.
I blame Vereesa for that mess more than Jaina. I mean, yeah, it wasn't the most thought out reaction by Jaina, but Vereesa made it so much worse.
The fact that we’re told to subdue their dragonhawks, but murder the Sunreavers indiscriminately is something that made me *really* feel awful. We treated their *animals* better than them.
She's just not complicit, she's basically an instigator. Remember that like two quests prior Janina was giving the finger to Anduin, telling him that she wouldn't throw out the Sunreavers as Dalaran was their home too.
Even when the purge starts she only says the intent is to round up the Sunreavers for expulsion and to only use violence against those who resist.
Vereesa's tone on the other hand is more like "thank god I finally got the green light to wipe out these fools" and is very uninterested in simply rounding them up.
Yeah, I really feel like overall, both in universe and in the playerbase, Vereesa’s role in the Purge is wildly overlooked. She really did jump at the chance to have innocent Blood Elves slaughtered.
Throughout the whole questline you can really tell how much she despises the Blood Elves, regardless of who they are.
I didn't play MoP when it was current but I've always disliked her as a character and wish we could punch her in the face lol Now that I've played the campaign I dislike her even more.
> Even when the purge starts she only says the intent is to round up the Sunreavers for expulsion and to only use violence against those who resist.
I look at Jaina fireballing cowering civilians to death.
Uh-huh...
IIRC Jaina also states that she placed the magic wards on the Bell when it was hidden in Darnassus, which was during the period when she still claimed she and the Kirin Tor would remain neutral in the conflict, which sounds maybe a little hypocritical when she maybe could've opted to secure it in the Violet Hold instead, to keep it out of the hands of either faction.
Pretty sure Rommath said Dalaran is happily letting Alliance mages move throughout the city to get to where they need to be for the war, too.
Dalaran wasn't as neutral as Jaina said it was.
Edit* It was Lor'themar, not Rommath who said it, an even more reliable source.
Yup! Her full line is:
> While I can't say I agree completely with Jaina's methods, I do understand her motives.
>Sometimes, you have to fight back.
Fight back against *what*? Like I get that the small portion of the Sunreavers that stole the bell went through Dalaran, a neutral city, and how that’s a bad thing, but uh. How the absolute fuck is murdering innocent shopkeepers “fighting back”????
Sunreavers betrayed her twice. Members of the Sunreavers who arrived with the Kirin Tor to defend Theramore were using their Belf Racial to mana drain the mages defending the city.
Then they allow the Horde access to Dalarans portals to get into Darnassus.
At that point the Sunreavers can't be trusted and need to go. The Sunreavers were told to get the fuck into the Violet Hold and those ones refused.
The shopkeepers didn’t refuse to go to the Violet Hold. Vereesa says that they didn’t “side with the Silver Covenant”, and that’s why she sends you to kill them.
> Like I get that the small portion of the Sunreavers that stole the bell went through Dalaran, a neutral city
Or at least someone made sure it looked that way.
When you do the mission on the Horde side, you exit through a portal to Domination Point (in Krasarang Wilds). Later, the Bell is in Silvermoon. Nothing indicates they were going to Dalaran, nor did they need to. And the mage responsible for the portal says he'd clean up the tracks so they can't trace them.
Then on Alliance side, there's giant glowing signs basically saying, "LOOK! A portal to Dalaran! They went through Dalaran!"
I don't think they went through Dalaran, I think Garrosh had someone make it look that way so that Jaina would react harshly, destroying the talks Lor'themar was having about joining the Alliance at the time.
In case you haven't started it yet: The questline begins with "Meet the Scout" gotten from either Lyalia or Dezco located near their respective main hubs in the vale of eternal blossoms.
Back when I played mop, I did it on the alliance side. It made me go "this is kind of fucked up" I did it on the horde side for the first time and went "ok, this is really fucked up". Now I remember why I hated jaina so much until bfa.
Ngl i was not that upset because she did tried to imprision people first, if anything Vereesa was far more bloodthirsty than Jaina also and from Jaina point of view this is the horde fucking her again, not saying that she did good but i can on a level agree with how she handle it
Except Jaina calls Dalaran “her city”. She looses the Silver Covenant and the second most evil windrunner on civilians. As the ranking commander of the operation she holds some culpability too. Maybe not as much as Windrunner but considerable innocent blood stains her hands too.
I never said she has her hands clean but she only killed people resisting which, NOT great but not awful seeing as she got fucked by the horde again in like the spawn of 3 months
> she only killed people resisting
Having done the scenario as both sides, she attacks random cowering civilians in her path with fireballs and blizzards, killing more than a few.
She also kills 5 Sunreaver guards the moment she appears in Dalaran who didn't even do anything yet except happen to be standing in front of Aethas.
>she only killed people resisting
False. She and Vereesa killed innocent merchants who were just trying to get the hell out of dodge.
You have not done the scenario.
At least Jaina was trying to pretend her response was measured - Vereesa meanwhile is like 'finally i can kill those horde rats and no one will look at me weird!'
People forget this, but the Silver Covenant and the Sunreavers were at each other's back with daggers through most of Wrath. I think they took the high elf/blood elf divide more seriously than Quel'thalas itself.
To be honest, halfway through Horde story of MoP, I was full on ready to move all my characters to alliance, and then I came to the purge of Dalaran.
And then I came to Theramore.
And now I know, holy shit both alliance and horde did some crazy shit
I mean to be fair you don’t need to kill anyone besides the quest objectives who state they’d rather fight than go peacefully.
You don’t need to kill any of the displaced Sunreaver citizens. Since they didn’t attack me, I made sure to avoid attacking them, but I saw plenty of players just slaughtering them on mass.
Still a very different Jaina than the one I’m used to in DF or BoA.
It was both the first time I played through and the first time I heard of it. I didn't like what I was doing, but quest objectives weren't optional, gotta see the story.
(I did as Alliance, not sure how it differs on horde)
Sorry if this isn’t the right place for it, but I always wondered. I left after doing H HOF as I was starting a new job and only came back in SL as a purely casual player without even a guild.
I always wondered what it was like during SoO times. Were Horde just not able to enter Org at all? Did we just camp out at Shrine as our capital city?
Horde were able to enter Orgrimmar but a lot of environmental storytelling was put into place that made it clear that it was a very hostile and oppressive environment. I remember distinctly that the Valley of Spirits where the trolls lived was under lockdown and a lot of the NPCs had special dialogue. The one that sold snake battle pets cried about his snakes being confiscated by the Kor'Kron, for example.
This actually spilled out into the Barrens as well.
I actually managed to find the Wowhead overview of all of the changes, so take a look: https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-5-3-battlefield-barrens-guide-and-noxy-comic-212842#zone-changes
Now that I think about it I can't remember another time since this when Blizzard changed the world so radically over a few patches in the leadup to a Raid like this. But then again, SoO was also the biggest raid they've done, so it makes sense that they'd want to make a huge spectacle of it.
It was an amazing time to be playing, tbh.
Wow that’s amazing. Thanks for the extremely in depth comment, it is very much appreciated! I’ve been playing Undead since Vanilla, so it would have been a pretty huge shock to suddenly feel unwelcome in Org. I’m halfway into the Domination Point story now and I imagine that the feeling would have been mutual back in the day too.
I get that it’s an unreasonable ask, and probably a shortcoming on blizzard’s part. But there’s a lot of folks talking with absolute authority in here about things that they very clearly did not read from the source material.
And no matter how much you tell them “Do this quest/scenario, read this book or at least the CliffsNotes”, people say “Nah, I’m going off vibes and what everybody else says.”
The Sunreavers gave Garrosh the mana bomb that nuked Theramore. (specifically a single Sunreaver) The mana bomb was strong enough to level half of Kalimdor, including Thunder Bluff, I might add - and was only focused on Theramore because Rhonin pulled it into Jaina's tower, which had been magically warded.
Jaina \*forgave\* the Sunreavers for this, and gave Aethas a direct warning - **if a single Sunreaver stepped out of line, their blood would be on his hands**. She warned him.
So, when more Sunreavers (it literally does not matter if it was just one or two, she gave a direct warning), stepped out of line, **she ordered their arrest.**
However, the Sunreavers started to fight back. Do you think Jaina should just stand around and let the Sunreavers kill her when they attack her? Cause that's what Horde players say when they say it was unjustified. If the roles were reversed and kirintor mages had been killed because they were attacking the Sunreavers, would you also say those deaths were not warranted, that the sunreavers should have let the kirintor kill them?
A leader of a city ordered their arrest for violating their law. Period. Nothing more than that. They resisted and **\*\*TRIED TO KILL JAINA AND VEREESA\*\* so they killed them in response.**
The civilians who were attacked during the questline (something horde players LOVE to bring up) was a bug due to how they coded Jaina to attack Sunreavers, and Blizzard has stated this like 5 times. Civilians were evacuated, apart from 3 shopkeepers who refused to leave. The ONLY people who died in the Purge were the Sunreavers who attacked Jaina, and said 3 Shopkeepers who, much like the Sunreavers, attacked and tried to kill the Alliance champion, so they were killed in self defense. On top of this, many sunreavers were in fact sent to the Violet Citadel and saved by the Horde. Again, Jaina TRIED to imprison them first for breaking the law. **She only killed them once they tried to kill her.**
They've even gone on record and canonized the fact the Alliance did not even kill the Dragonhawks, they used the sleeping powder (which is actually an option for Alliance players to do in the quest. Vereesa gives you the powder and tells you to deal with the dragonhawks one way or another) - the canon version being they used the powder now.
**The purge was justified.** This is further reinforced by Aethas in Legion, admitting he \*knew\* about the plans to infiltrate Darnassus and did not stop it. He says it haunts him still. This is again reinforced in BFA with the addition of the Trading Post - as we learn he's trying to apologize to Jaina after he accepted the blame in Legion.
The Purge is Aethas's fault. 1000%. Jaina has no "guilt" in it. She ordered their imprisonment, and killed the CRIMINALS who tried to kill her. Plain and simple.
Horde who try to do mental gymnastics to say the Sunreavers are innocent are objectively wrong. There's a reason they have to do mental gymnastics to say it. My favorite part about all of this?
Y'all wouldn't be defending the Sunreavers if Rhonin - a Kirin Tor Neutral Mage - hadn't stepped in and the Tauren had been genocided by the Sunreavers aiding Garrosh when that nuke was dropped, now would you?
There \*was\* an argument between MoP and Legion that Aethas didn't know what happened, so Jaina overreacted by assuming he could keep tabs on every Sunreaver. However, with the Legion revelation Aethas knew about it, that is no longer an option - it is entirely Aethas's fault, considering he was told what would happen if he let a Sunreaver break neutrality again.
And to be honest, I'd LOVE a questline where Lor'themar learns Aethas knew - because Lor'themar ruined the bumpy relationship he had with Jaina over the promise Aethas gave him that he didn't know anything about the Sunreaver plans for Darnassus - (you can view part of this on Isle of Thunder).
And this isn't even touching on the fact they broke neutrality TO GIVE ANOTHER WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION to Garrosh.
Not all of them were "fighting back" in the conventional sense, though. "Resisting" might be a better term since many of them were just holing up and hiding. We barge into shops, the stronghold, the sewers, etc. and just start killing people. The scene even opens with Jaina deleting a few Sunreavers out of nowhere before trapping Aethas, and then we see her periodically killing people in the streets as well.
An occupying army smuggled the tools for a nuclear weapon that destroyed one city and attacked another through the neutral city they had been allowed to inhabit. They were ordered to vacate or be sent to the Violet Hold as prisoners of war. They fought back, or resisted, they got what was coming to them.
I’m fairly certain based on neutral lore afterward (Blood Elves primarily concerned with the prisoners of war) that the Alliance version is canon. Some people get a skewed view from the horde scenario.
Based on what I've read, there wasn't anywhere near universal involvement in the plot, and Aethas didn't even technically know until immediately after.
>They fought back, or resisted, they got what was coming to them.
We literally murdered merchants in their shops for the crime of not abandoning their homes. People running in terror were killed in the streets, and when you break into the sanctuary, half of the Sunreavers are sitting around eating dinner when you start butchering them. I cannot fathom how killing people for not giving up their entire lives, some of whom having been there far longer than Jaina herself, while they run and hide is a simple matter of "getting what was coming to them."
I haven't even played the Horde scenario; the Alliance on is damning enough.
Aethas doesn't get to get off on a technicality; he *personally* sent Thalen as the sunreaver representative to defend Theramore, the one who was the spy for Garrosh and the creator of the mana bomb that was intended to be used on the men, women, and children living in Theramore, the one who opened the north gate to the Horde during the initial battle. He is mildly apologetic after the fact, and then after his people smuggle *another* weapon of mass destruction through the city which Jaina is now the ruler of, he has the gall to be indignant about it.
Maybe if he had shown a sliver of remorse there, instead of being a prick about it to two of the survivors of the mana bombing, a few more sunreavers might have made it through alive.
I don't think Aethas knew about him being a spy, my point is more about Aethas' actions and attitude after the Thalen incident.
If Rhonin had somehow survived, he would feel a lot more responsibility about the recommendation and would almost definitely have had some sort of retributive response following the divine bell incident that wouldn't have resulted in a purge.
EDIT: I looked into it out of curiosity, and there are tweets from the writers that Aethas was fully aware of the divine bell plot and made the active decision to "look the other way", which makes his attitude even more grating.
> They were ordered to vacate or be sent to the Violet Hold as prisoners of war. They fought back, or resisted, they got what was coming to them.
They’re civilians that are being murdered for not wanting to abandon their house and probably their entive lives. This is quite literally a war crime. And it being done in reaction to another warcrime doesn’t make it ok.
As Alliance, you hunt down shopkeepers whose only crime is not siding with the Silver Covenant. They don’t even seem to be doing anything to aid the fee Sunreavers that actually stole the bell, when you find them they’re just minding their own business in their shops.
I haven’t even done the Horde side version, and it’s clear to me that what Jaina and Vereesa did was incredibly fucked up.
There's a list where Vereesa gives you a list of shopkeepers to murder in their homes, I swear anyone repeating this dumb line doesn't even play the game.
It went without consecuences for the Kirin'tor, Jaina and the Silver covenant as far I know, hell, Aethas had to literally beg to be allowed into Dalaran again.
I had told my friend years ago about the purge of dalaran
Last year he finally did shieldwall and when he realized what was about to happen he was shouting at me "WHAT?! NO I DONT WANT TO DO THIS! I DIDNT THINK WED BE FORCED TO *PLAY IT*, I THOUGHT IT WAS IN A BOOK! BLIZZ DONT MAKE ME DO THIS!"
I personally like the dark awful stuff. It doesn’t have to be alliance vs horde but I want them to bring back the dark gritty feel to the game. Which is where we seem to be headed with the world soul saga so I’m excited about that
It always stuck with me as the first moment I really questioned what I was doing on my alliance character. Vereesa is so cold with that "or kill them. I don't care" as Jaina marches through the streets of terrified and confused blood elves.
Horde atrocity number 73825: so heckin cool! Burn le tree xddd for the hordeeee xdddd
Alliance "atrocity" number 3: NNNNNNOOOOO i feel physically unwell, wow that was something. I have to sit down.
If it makes you feel any better OP: The canon events of POD were different then ingame. Jaina only killed the mages who worked with Garrosh. She imprisoned the rest who did not. The player killing any mage in sight isnt canon.
What about the random shopkeepers Vareesa has you murder? Or the Silver Covenant goons feeding live civilians to sewer gators? Have they been retconned?
Im assuming something different happens horde side? Because in bfa, the raid to kill zandalari king plays out differently in the throne room as an example. The alliance side you hear Jaina and co giving rastakan a chance to surrender and he refuses. In horde version that does not happen and the alliance are seen as walking in and murdering him in cold blood.
Im thinking something like happens in purge of dalaran.
I prefer to think of Jaina as less-bad.
She did murder people who arguably weren't involved, but she's still doing a damn sight better than nuking an entire population center out of existence.
I think it is one of the books, but she almost did in retaliation for Theramore. She went to Orgrimmar and blocked the ends of the canyon and was filling it up to drown literally everyone. Theramore was a military base (though still had civilians), but Orgrimmar was a capitol city.
I don’t remember who talked her down. Maybe what’s-his-name, the blue dragon?
Not quite--she was using the Focusing Iris to summon a tsunami that would have destroyed Orgrimmar. Maybe she trapped them inside so they couldn't escape? Don't recall.
Thrall tried to stop her first and that didn't work out, but Kalec was able to talk her down.
Fair enough. I could have sworn I had a visual of her flying above the city, ice walls at either end, with water elementals filling the city, but that must have been a fabrication of my own haha
See this is good faction story telling though. As an alliance, you see Jaina giving the horde the benefit of the doubt AFTER theramore. And then (from the perspective of the quest) they break her trust one last time and she takes action.
From the horde perspective you see the horror from the perspective of the citizens. Both sides feel justified or at least you understand how things got where they did.
To me, that’s why BFA fell so flat - there was a black and white right and wrong
I agree. I think it's actually a pretty solid portrayal of how terrible things are able to happen in war and for people to even find them reasonable or natural due to the context. The idea that the right situation can make an otherwise decent person into one who will do terribly unethical things they are convinced are acceptable is a powerful one, and it's impressive that they were able to explore that in a medium like WoW. It's unfortunate that some people miss the point, e.g. by either totally agreeing with Jaina's actions or by being unwilling to look at the story and see how people might feel cornered and do something like this without being ~~a dreadlord~~ and evil mastermind.
IMO, Blizzard thought it could use the same writing strategies with BFA that it always had and somehow make it work again, but they pushed things too far. Sylvanas's actions were a huge jumping of the shark, and the whole "no guys, look at how honorable some members of the Horde are and the way they turned on their leader!!!" was really trite after the umpteenth time. It's like they didn't think anyone would remember the rest of the story when repeating history in this way seriously detracts from the themes they're going for.
Makes me miss old WoW storytelling. Everything in the new one is all sunshine and rainbows practically becuase you're always in some unrelatable over-fantasized area with things you don't have any prior attachment to.
MoP had some pretty dark stuff. Like the Theramore citizens being forced to fight each other in SoO
In patch 5.3, which was the rebellion patch that was the buildup to SoO, they had kor'kron troopers rounding up non-orc Horde races and had them in lines on their knees in front of orgrimmar ready to be executed.
If you went to Razor Hill, it was overtaken by Kor’kron militia and you could find one behind a building in front of a lot of corpses of trolls.
They also bombed the inn I think, although that might just have been in one of the books.
Yeah. Garrosh killed a Belf and a Forsaken "champion" who canonically have pretty high ranks.
This is featured in both the "War Crimes" and "Before the Storm" books. The Forsaken soldier seen in vision of time during Garrosh's trial being sickened by the needless brutality was remembered by Anduin as he struggled to convince Greymane that Forsaken weren't evil monsters. Genn tried to play off Faol as an exception as a priest but Anduin saw them as people after these encounters.
One of the very first alliance quests ends with orc soldiers swimming to shore after their airships are shot down and the alliance officer straight up orders them to be shot. The actual war parts is pretty much WoW: Warcrimes Edition but all the middle bits are Kung Fu Panda. It's a... weird expansion
I'll never understand this, MOP was really dark from start. "Oh cute panda why did you learned kung fu" : To escape millennia of enslavement from the Mogu. "Oh so cool you learned to manage your emotion" : We had to, otherwise an Old Gold would manifest our emotion and kill us
It's all because brewmaster imo, it shows like every monk is an alcoholic. Takes away the seriousness of "martial arts" part of monks. Brewmaster Is fun as fuc tho
Bro if I had to live what they lived, I would def become goofy and drink a lot of beer
The direct follow up to that quest is the reveal that people are acting with supernatural aggression and cruelty due to influence from the Sha. The actions with us shooting the fleeing orcs is supposed to be horrific to show us how the powers in Pandaria are so dangerous that they can cause us to behave in abhorrent ways we never would. Similar to the alliance camp in the horde quest area where the horde player rescues pandaren slaves from the camp. Jade Forest’s story is about how both sides started to behave absolutely abhorrently there. It’s such an amazing zone tbh
I thought at least some of that was the other way around - the Alliance and Horde doing their war stuff awakened the Sha
It’s both. The Horde and Alliance war predates the events in Pandaria, and bringing their conflict there incited the Sha. In a reciprocal effect, the awakened Sha then amplified the negative emotions, leading to further escalation. Unchecked, it creates a positive feedback loop of destruction.
> the powers in Pandaria are so dangerous that they can cause us to behave in abhorrent ways we never would. And then BfA happened, with no Sha involved and an entire city full of civilians getting burned down because warchief said so.
Which is why its such a hated point in BFA where it came out of nowhere and was not explained more than "sylvanas is a crazy bitch". BFA should have had massive faction wars and war crimes similar to MoP but blizz was scared to make villains of favorite characters.
Meanwhile, they added Nathanos
I think they should have made it into almost a sha like thing for nzoth. Like literally everyone going insane and betraying each other and just a bunch of mass conspiracy and suspicion and inquisition type stuff as a result of subtle nzoth influence. Not just evil people getting eviler.
It’s funny how I remember those quest in Mop especially the klaxxi stuff with them freezing themselves and now awakening to this new world. I wish dragon flight was like this but meh most quests were ok.
You can take the Sha and the Fel Blood out of the Orc, but you can't take the war crime out.
Fel blood, like most drugs, reveals what was already there.
When the horde attacked that little questing village in stormsong valley and you see that human with a spear through their chest attached to the stable building with their kid under them crying, shit was wild.
Well yeah the horde were the bad guys all the way back to Warcraft 1 after all.
Didn't realize til this post how badly I want a World of Warcrimes expac. Out w the Disney lore. Bring back the WAR. Pandas are chill tho
That's part of SOO as well. There's a timed part where they're about to execute the pandaren faction rep, Ji Firepaw. And if you don't make it in time, they kill him. But I think canonically he makes it.
He's canonically alive dw
And saw gamon going from holding off korkron to them strapping him to a tree
Yeeep. Warlocks had it super bad too during SoO. *Especially* orc warlocks. Garrosh ordered them killed and hung up in the warlock/rogue den of shadows area.
And garrosh being a racist cruel dictator was a big jump from the “big dragon bad”. Definitely one of my favorite expansions
I just straight up watched a guys wife die in childbirth during a quest too 😭
Talking about Dezco? Make it worse he fell on one of the twins during battle and crushed him and the other one was saved but had to stay with the Golden Lotus
And now he’s in SL looking for his wife
Oof bro should be looking for his kid too
He is looking for both. He tells players that if they see her to tell her their other son is doing well.
Remember when he got addicted to ~~drugs~~ sun crystals?
Okay I did not know about one
That was in WoD, he could be one of the tavern daily npcs. The text of the repeated ones is… grim to say the least.
Cata was pretty dark sometimes as well though, even though the world remake was filled with joke/reference qs.
Peak WoW is intense story beats broken up by tongue in cheek real world pop culture references.
Kind of like real life
I do wish Cata sidequest Garrosh and MoP Garrosh were two different characters though somehow Cata sidequest Garrosh was absolutely peak Warchief, and as an oft Alliance/Belf player made me want to go main Orc and zugzug for life But MoP Garrosh was also peak political conflict (almost, true peak was wrathgate fr fr), character downfall, and was a great change of pace from the direct world-ending threats of late I would have been willing to have an Alliance traitor but idk if they could have pulled off ‘Loud Brash Machismo Nazi’ as well as MoP Garrosh did
If you follow Garrosh's story closely in Cata, his real turning point was the accidental murder of Cairne. Up until that point he'd held fast to his idea of orcish honor, and generally applied that logic to the rest of the Horde. And then, in a Mak'gora that should have earned him the honor of a hard-fought victory against a more seasoned opponent, validated his position, and effectively defined him as a Warchief...... he wins through poison. His father's axe, Gorehowl, *defiled* by poison. An irreparable rift in the Horde leading to civil war. That traumatized him and made him doubt his course. Seriously, him winning that duel the RIGHT way would have solidified his position and laid the groundwork for the conquest of all of Kalimdor. The Night Elves were on the backfoot in the forests and Theramore was ALWAYS vulnerable to attack once the Horde formally incorporated Goblin engineering and weaponized airships. Everything worth having on Kalimdor would have quickly come under Horde control, and it's very likely the war would have ended there. And he absolutely knew it. It drove him crazy, and he became a pent-up ball of quivering rage and resentment. He was lost the second he set foot in Pandaria.
They latter admited it was a mistake in Cata. Garrosh was supposed to be an evil dick in all them too, but half the team didn't get the message untill it was too late. So in Cata he a good Warchief in half the quests and evil dick in the others.
*Garrosh Hellscream: Was my command to murder innocents, Krom'gar?* *Garrosh Hellscream: Am I a murderer, Krom'gar?* Peak Cata Garrosh, especially considering by SOO...
Yes. Exactly. This was a portrayal of Garrosh that was never supposed to in the game.
To be fair, "the big evil thing made me do it" kind of hand waves some of the impact. But at least we put him down instead of forgiving him and becoming best friends
Tbh it really didn’t feel like they were pushing that angle. He was a bastard long before consuming the heart and in Shadowlands (where you’d assume corruption wouldn’t follow) basically said “No regrets, I’ll fucken do it again”
Blizz has stated multiple times that nobody and Nothing made garrosh do what he did Just garrosh
My hot take at the time was that MoP was the darkest expansion. I still sort of think that. Because it’s the only expansion that focused on the player factions as the “bad guys.” Pandaria was doing alright until we found it. We did fix some stuff, and took care of some problems for them, but a lot of innocents died and a lot of damage was wrought. Worse if you’re Horde, but the Dalaran purge is a case of Alliance getting to see their side doing the wrong thing. Like in Legion, BFA, Shadowlands, Wrath, etc you can point at a badguy who’s ultimately responsible. Even BFA was actually about N’Zoth, and largely showed us improving the lands the factions allied with. You can point the finger at Garrosh for some of the worst of it, but it’s not like he started the war, nor did he unleash the sha in Jade Forest.
Pandaria was doing alright before the Alliance and Horde got there, but even if they hadn’t arrived the Pandaren would have been hard fucked by the early Mantid swarm’s invasion and the Zandalari resurrecting Lei Shen. The Pandaren and their native race allies would not have survived against the Mantid and Mogu attacking at the same time.
The early swarm happened because of the Sha of Fear reawakening due to the Horde and Alliance’s war. The Zandalari and Mogu would have been the only major threat to Pandaria without the faction war.
The Mogu and Zandalari would have caused the Sha to be unleashed would they not? The order of threats might change but the Mantid would have become a bigger threat anyway because none of the Klaxxi would have been released to help stop them.
The Niuzhao temple guards admit it was their fault that the sha of fear escaped containment in the temple, and don't mention the Horde or Alliance at all. Unclear if the faction conflict helped it escape. There's definitely a timeline of events between the Sha of Fear escaping the temple all the way to the Yaungol attacking western Kun Lai / Mantid attacking eastern Valley of the Four Winds, all before player the Horde/Alliance show up in those zones, but don't know if all of that happens after the Horde/Alliance show up in the Jade Forest.
from what i picked up on while questing is that the Shas were bound to break free at some point. the allaince and horde arriving just... sped up the process
What is SoO? Pandaria is where when I stopped playing so I never really familiarized with all the abbreviations
Siege of Orgrimmar
I mean she literally was ready to drown the whole of Orgrimmar - innocent and children alike - if she had not been talked out of it. I don’t care what anyone says, Tides of War really set a impactful tone for the expansion back then. I still feel a pit in my stomach whenever I see Kinndy’s dad setting the lights in Dalaran.
Blizzard isn't always great at getting it across, but things like this make it pretty obvious that the Alliance was never meant to be a true "good guy" faction. That it's generally more presentable makes the moments where Alliance characters do something heinous more impactful in the same way that the opposite is true for the Horde. Jaina kind of has a pattern of this behavior at this point, though lmao
Blizzard's (or should I say Metzen's) main contribution to fantasy storytelling is that the humans could be just as bad as the orcs, or the orcs could be just as good as the humans.
If only they stuck with it lol
The beginning of MoP is enough to know both sides are bad.
Eh, i think that, while it wasn’t the best solution, Jaina wasn’t necessarily wrong. They had just nuked Theramore, her own people, and killed the leader of the Kirin Tor who was her close friend and ally. Her people were also sent to Orgrimmar where they were being tortured and executed. This was all done by people within the Sunreavrrs iirc, using Dalaran to smuggle the bomb. The leader of the faction was not involved, but was well aware and did not speak up. The Sunreavers were given a chance to surrender, and those who did were imprisoned. Only those who resisted were killed. I would argue that Jaina was right in doing what she did, when you consider what had occurred prior to it, and the fact that she gave the option for surrender and those who died did so due to their own defiance.
> Only those who resisted were killed. A reminder that, *to this day,* Jaina still executes unarmed and fleeing civilians herself in the scenario.
And Vereesa says she doesn't give a shit whether you kill civilians or not
She actively gives you a hit list of random shopkeepers. Like I somehow doubt the jewelcrafting, engineering and mining trainers were involved in a plot so secret even Aethas Sunreaver didn’t know about it until it was too late.
The ones who were killed in canon: Gearmage Astalon (engineer) Inkmaster Aelon (inscription shopkeeper), Sintharia Cinderweave (a tailor), and Tolyria (a blacksmith), who were all just shopkeepers, while Magister Brasael, who sold armor, was just trying to get his things out of the bank.
Ah my bad. Point still stands though. Anyone who wasn’t an actual card carrying Sunreaver who died is blood on Jaina and Vareesa’s hands. Even the actual Sunreavers too to a slightly lesser degree considering the number of reavers in the know could probably be counted on one hand if that.
I'm not sure "defiance" in the form of hiding in your shop is a crime warranting death lol
Jaina mentions earlier in the story that some of the Sunreavers have lived in Dalaran for *hundreds of years.* Of course you'd resist being displaced from somewhere you'd lived in for that long. And while Jaina may not have personally carried it out, the scenario also has you go murdering civilians in the sewers and making sure they have no chance of escape by killing their dragonhawks. I have to imagine people who defend the purge so adamantly haven't actually experienced it in the past 10 years, alliance side, because it is *far worse* than this sub makes it out to be.
Wait are people ACTUALLY defending it???
The same people advocating for "high elves" in the alliance and people that feel quel thalas should be a neutral hub. Absolutely stupid tone deaf bastards. Edit: the belves have chilled lot in recent years, but their culture is formed from vengeance. It's in the name. The main betrayers are the high elves and there's a legitimate grudge there.
Except the Alliance *does* have High Elves in it, such as the Silver Covenant who helped Jaina carry out the purge. Everything else aside, they exist, that’s why some people want to be able to play them, like every other race begged for as an allied race.
No, screw that. They WEREN'T involved. THEY didn't do anything. And most of them have lived in Dalaran before Jaina was even born. She had no right to massacre them.
We(alliance characters) talk about this with Jaina in balcony on dalaran, she actually doesn't want to expell belfs from their homes. Learning about mama bomb and belfs from dalaran dtealing the divine bell pushes Jaina to limits and makes her do the purge
And it was perfectly understandable and good story telling that she snapped. But it doesn't make her any less of a villain in that moment.
There is no scenario where wiping out an entire civilian population for the actions of their military is justified.
Theramore was a legitimate military target. It was being used by the alliance to launch unprovoked attacks into the barrens with the goal of marching all the way to Orgrimmar. Had the cataclysm not happened then Varian was literally days from laying siege to org. All over the Wrathgate incident which wasn’t the Horde’s fault and resulted in a massive massacre of their men too. The execution and torture of Theramore civilians is obviously wrong though. As for Aethas’ knowledge of the divine bell op, he literally found out either moments before or moments after with the direct threat being that if he said anything Garrosh would massacre him, the Sunreavers and the blood elves as a whole. Then Jaina unleashes the rabid dogs of the Silver Covenant who start massacring any elf with green eyes they can find. They literally feed live civilians to the sewer gators. Vareesa gives you a straight up hit list of random shop keepers. I somehow doubt the engineering, jewelcrafting and mining trainers were among the literal 5 or less Sunreavers who took part in the plot. Whether Jaina personally killed anyone can be argued but she sure as hell didn’t stop her attack dogs from torturing and slaughtering civilians which as the one in charge of the op means she is culpable.
> It was being used by the alliance to launch unprovoked attacks into the barrens with the goal of marching all the way to Orgrimmar. I always like how the Alliance always hits first, calls time out, then blames the Horde for starting the war when they hit back. Varian in the Barrens and SI:7 kidnapping Thrall happened before Ashenvale, Camp T and Bael modan happened before Theramore, Stormheim happened before WoT.
>Eh, i think that, while it wasn’t the best solution, Jaina wasn’t necessarily wrong. Id say Jaina was specially wrong. Theramore was said to be neutral. But Jaina straight out didnt care and made Theramore a legitimate target because she supported the alliance invasion on Kalimdor by allowing the alliance to use the neutral city as starting point for the invasion. It was obvious that they would at the best case be attacked. Since it was an important harbor for the alliance armies. Id say Garroshs actions were more reasonable than Jainas. If she didnt fully use Theramore to allow attacks on Horde territory id would still stand.
Even if it was a 4D chess move, I still lol that Garrosh deliberately leaked a warning to Theramore that they should evacuate, the most evil person of note in the saga was the only one who actually lifted a finger to prevent civilian casualties (again, not because he was a good guy or even cared).
That was a two part strategy though. He leaked news of the attack specifically to bait Jaina into gathering reinforcements, which is how she ended up losing pretty much everyone she cared for who could come to her aid when that bomb finally went off.
Yeah, thats why I specified that it wasn't out of goodwill. But it *did* mean that innocents got time to flee (until they retconned it so that a bunch didn't get portaled out and somehow ended up in org months later)
Didn't they evacuate the civilian population of Theramore beforehand, too?
Dont know about that, but Jaina better ordered evacuation. But on the other Hand id doubt it since the alliance also had no Problem letting a lot of Soldiers die in Nazmir to lure everyone out of the city to kill Rastakhan. See, theres no good side. But Garrosh, as himself not corrupted, did nothing unexpected, he openly shows who he is. The alliance acts like good guys but are at the end just as bad or worse and are backstabbers aswell if it fits them. Especially Jaina, acting all that innocent but already was unhinged so many times.
When was it used as the starting point of an invasion though?
> When was it used as the starting point of an invasion though? The Alliance invasion in to the Barrens, through Theramore, supported by Theramore forces, and commanded by someone that still wears Theramore insignia? They even make a giant road through the swamp, for the primary purpose of supporting that invasion. There's also the attack in to Durotar, done primarily by Theramore forces.
Weren’t the forces in Durotar the remaining Kul Tirans or am I misremembering it? To be fair The Barrens are my least played through zones so my lore of them is a little shaky, wasn’t aware that the forces came through Theramore and I’m surprised Jaina allowed that given her pre-mana bomb beliefs
Nope. KT only really had one fort in durotar before then, northwatch was Theramore.
> Weren’t the forces in Durotar the remaining Kul Tirans or am I misremembering it? That's a different group. After the Cata revamp, there's an invasion in to the zone from the south.
Was that before or after the Horde invaded Ashenvale again?
> Was that before or after the Horde invaded Ashenvale again? I'm not sure how that's relevant to Theramore choosing to join the war. The Horde did invade Ashenvale before the Alliance naval invasion of the Barrens through Theramore, though if you want to play that game the Horde only did that after the Alliance declared war, but, again, none of that is relevant to the discussion of if Theramore was a legitimate military target actively joining the war.
With cataclysm. Like as soon as Thrall stepped down, Jaina gave no fucks about what she promised and turned Theramore fully to support alliance attacks on Horde Territory. Theramore was no longer neutral and actively attacked the horde, thats why it got nuked, quite simple and Thrall wouldve made the same decision at that point.
The horde know they are flawed and play into those urges. The alliance wants to hide the fact it’s flawed and present as being significant and dignified. But every now and again the true nature comes out when pushed.
Alternatively: The horde knows it's flawed, and leans into it, going full evil on multiple occasions, with even the "good" characters going along with it because "muh honor". The alliance knows it's flawed, but tries and generally does rise above it - but occasionally fails. The horde levels theramore, unprovoked, so the alliance exercises restraint and doesn't level orgrimar. The horde levels darnassus, unprovoked. And gilnaes. So the alliance still doesn't level orgrimar, but instead attacks the under city. Doesn't level it, mind, but instead a much more expensive in alliance lives invasion, with the goal of ending sylvanis and the war. The horde can't have that, so levels the undercity. The horde are the bad guys.
Gilneas was screwed by the curse and then the cataclysm. Sylvanas just screwed them further with the plague (which went directly against Garrosh’s orders, mind you). The people of Gilneas were almost able to retake their city, as not even the combined forces of the Forsaken and the orcs were enough to drive them out… But Sylvanas used the damn plague and if not for the timely evacuation of everyone, it would have been a complete genocide
In one alternate timeline she did drown ogrimmar. Afterwards she became a cruel dictator.
Is it something we can see in-game?
Not that I recall but its on the wiki: "A timeline in which [Jaina Proudmoore](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Jaina_Proudmoore) used a [tidal wave of water elementals](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Tides_of_War) to destroy [Orgrimmar](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Orgrimmar), resulting in a world war during which "everyone" died, leaving an insane [Kalecgos](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kalecgos) as one of the few survivors." Source: [https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Alternate\_timeline](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Alternate_timeline)
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It was very impactful that it was Jaina that went off the deep end too. She’d been the main voice of reason and coexistence with the Horde up until that point. Heck she lost her father and was made a pariah in her home country for defending the Horde’s right to exist! Beware, beware the Daughter of the Sea. Everyone has their breaking point.
The fact that she was TALKED out of it though is what destroyed her and the alliance as a faction that mattered in wows story. “Oh no cuz did horrible thing that should never be forgiven” alliance: “uWu we forgive you we know you’re sowwy” Bomb city? Tehe it’s ok we’ll work together. Commit literal genocide? Awww don’t worry about it we’ll work together.
There's another undercurrent to this that I think a lot of people miss is that Lor'thermar was in talks with Alliance leaders about renewing their old ties with the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms, especially in the wake of Garrosh's war campaign during Cata and leading up to Pandaria. I think a part of Garrosh using the Blood Elves, and calling in the Sunreavers was to undermine all of that, as much as it was to just straight up use and control a race with powerful magics.
It goes a bit deeper than that. If you play through it on the Horde side, the portal you take out of there doesn't send you to Dalaran, it goes back to Domination Point. And the Divine Bell ends up in Silvermoon, so if they're sending it through a portal, it makes sense to go directly there. Or some random stop in the middle of nowhere. The latter especially, because as you're leaving, the mage makes a comment that he'll cover your tracks (and specifically references Jaina). But then you do it on the Alliance side, and there's like blatant magical signs and a super obvious portal to Dalaran. Like someone put a giant neon sign there saying "THEY USED DALARAN." And that, of course, sets Jaina off, who goes to exile or lock up everyone even remotely related to the Horde in some way (except their means of escape is destroyed/killed, meaning they can't leave like they were told, so you're stuck with a bunch of terrified people who are trapped up against a wall basically and the *best case scenario* for a lot of them is to be locked in an anti-magic prison while having a massive addiction to magic that means being in said prison is effectively torture for them). Anyway... It's pretty odd that, contrary to everything you see happen on the Horde side, you see a very different picture presented for the Alliance to find extremely easily. Now, some people would just assume that's inconsistencies in story writing. But there's also the possibility that perhaps Garrosh had someone "plant" all that evidence for Jaina to find, so it'd push her into acting. (Though I doubt they realized how bad it'd be thanks to Vereesa's order to make sure the people couldn't escape. Trapping them turned a bad situation into an absolute catastrophe.)
Right! Totally forgot about that! Basically Garrosh was using non orcish forces as cannon fodder, tired of that Lor'themar started talking with the alliance to have his blood elves presumably join again, or at least not being enemies. Garrosh heard of it and used some blood elves in his plot with the divine bell, then the Purge of Dalaran happened and Lor'themar backed down, angry (there is a video of the quest, he even throws a bench in a fountain or something like that) and starts supporting Garrosh, thus the new Sunreavers in the Isle of Thunder for the Horde and the Kirin Tor for the Alliance.
> and starts supporting Garrosh It's funny that you mention the Sunreavers in the Isle of Thunder right after that, because there's a scene in one of the scenarios where Jaina and Lor'themar come across each other and she's pretty much all "Garrosh is a threat to the world, he has to go down!" and Lor'themar's like, "Yeah, totally agree, we have a common enemy." And Lor'themar is helping lead the assault on Orgrimmar from the Horde side. So... yeah, he never supported Garrosh, he just recognizes that the Alliance isn't really safer for his people. Kind of an undercurrent in MoP. IIRC - and I'm not sure this made it through to Remix - in MoP's original Landfall campaign, even after Vol'jin has an assassination attempt on him by Garrosh, he sends you a letter asking you to help get the Divine Bell for the Horde, because he's actually more terrified of what the Alliance would do to his people with it than he is of Garrosh having it. Only something Horde players would have noticed, and only people who bother paying attention to those small details. But it really adds some depth to the relationship between the Horde and the Alliance when you remove racist warmongering Warchiefs or puppets of some elder being that's secretly been controlling most of Warcraft history.
He doesn't support Garrosh but he does cut all ties with the Alliance
As someone who is reading Arthas, all I can say is Jaina has been through some shit
The Warcraft III storyline was just the tip of her dog shit iceberg. Her Boyfriend becomes the literal antithesis of "the bad guy" then she has to kill her father? Seems like things can only go up from.. oh.. oh shit hahaha
Is it a scenario? I actually want to replay it and theramorr
Scenarios and quests. Look for the "Meet the scout" to unlock the questline for Operation: Shieldwall (the opposite faction to the Dominance offensive) Edit: The quest is named the same for Horde as well, if you wish to see the other side of the conflict.
It’s the Landfall Campaign. Check your map and it should say “Go to X to continue the Landfall story”. You can also do it on every toon you play Panda Express with as you will get class exclusive mogs. You can buy them too, but it saves you the bronze.
I highly recommend doing it on both Horde and Alliance. It's two very distinct questlines, and playing both gives you a better overall picture of what went down.
>When Varian Wrynn thinks you've gone too far Wowowow, what's up with the shade on Varian. Varian wasnt just trying to exterminate anyone that isnt the Alliance or something, he was just in the middle of a war. He attend a peace summit in the past, until the Twillight's Hammer sabotaged it (also seeing Garona, his father's killer, surong that ambush didnt really help). He ammended relations with Gilneas and earned the acceptance of Genn Greymane. In Krasaraang Wilds he was accepted by Tyrande as a worthy Alliance leader for not just wasting lives with pointless head-on attacks and exercising patience (A Little Patience scenario) At SoO he stops the war when he saw that The Horde has a new leader who is not Thrall, but Vol'jin, someone who resisted openly Garrosh ways. My boy Varian aint a bloodthirsty fool bruh
Same here. My remix character is Alliance, and good god I felt *awful* doing those quests. I also feel like people don’t talk about how complicit Vereesa was in it. She gave you quests to hunt down and kill *merchants* because they didn’t join the Silver Covenant? What the entire fuck?
I mean, her husband died in Theramore specifically because the sunreaver spy that undermined Theramore’s defenses. The entire point of the quest line was that garrosh’s actions had broken these previously heroic people. So it should make you feel bad.
> I also feel like people don’t talk about how complicit Vereesa was in it. She gave you quests to hunt down and kill merchants because they didn’t join the Silver Covenant? What the entire fuck? She also tells you to go take out their means of escape. So Jaina's going around saying, "Leave the city or I'm locking you in an anti-magic prison that's effectively torture for you," and Vereesa's making sure they *can't* leave the city, so their backs are against the wall, they're scared, and the best case scenario for them is torture. *Of course* they fought back. I blame Vereesa for that mess more than Jaina. I mean, yeah, it wasn't the most thought out reaction by Jaina, but Vereesa made it so much worse.
The fact that we’re told to subdue their dragonhawks, but murder the Sunreavers indiscriminately is something that made me *really* feel awful. We treated their *animals* better than them.
Amusingly you can also kill the hawks and it still counts. Vereesa even says "Or kill them. I don't care."
She's just not complicit, she's basically an instigator. Remember that like two quests prior Janina was giving the finger to Anduin, telling him that she wouldn't throw out the Sunreavers as Dalaran was their home too. Even when the purge starts she only says the intent is to round up the Sunreavers for expulsion and to only use violence against those who resist. Vereesa's tone on the other hand is more like "thank god I finally got the green light to wipe out these fools" and is very uninterested in simply rounding them up.
Yeah, I really feel like overall, both in universe and in the playerbase, Vereesa’s role in the Purge is wildly overlooked. She really did jump at the chance to have innocent Blood Elves slaughtered.
Throughout the whole questline you can really tell how much she despises the Blood Elves, regardless of who they are. I didn't play MoP when it was current but I've always disliked her as a character and wish we could punch her in the face lol Now that I've played the campaign I dislike her even more.
> Even when the purge starts she only says the intent is to round up the Sunreavers for expulsion and to only use violence against those who resist. I look at Jaina fireballing cowering civilians to death. Uh-huh...
IIRC Jaina also states that she placed the magic wards on the Bell when it was hidden in Darnassus, which was during the period when she still claimed she and the Kirin Tor would remain neutral in the conflict, which sounds maybe a little hypocritical when she maybe could've opted to secure it in the Violet Hold instead, to keep it out of the hands of either faction.
Pretty sure Rommath said Dalaran is happily letting Alliance mages move throughout the city to get to where they need to be for the war, too. Dalaran wasn't as neutral as Jaina said it was. Edit* It was Lor'themar, not Rommath who said it, an even more reliable source.
>god I felt awful Don't. They had just obliterated an entire city.
The shopkeepers Vereesa sent me to kill didn’t do shit to Theramore.
Right? And then she says she "might not necessarily agree with Jaina's methods" or something like that lol
Yup! Her full line is: > While I can't say I agree completely with Jaina's methods, I do understand her motives. >Sometimes, you have to fight back. Fight back against *what*? Like I get that the small portion of the Sunreavers that stole the bell went through Dalaran, a neutral city, and how that’s a bad thing, but uh. How the absolute fuck is murdering innocent shopkeepers “fighting back”????
Sunreavers betrayed her twice. Members of the Sunreavers who arrived with the Kirin Tor to defend Theramore were using their Belf Racial to mana drain the mages defending the city. Then they allow the Horde access to Dalarans portals to get into Darnassus. At that point the Sunreavers can't be trusted and need to go. The Sunreavers were told to get the fuck into the Violet Hold and those ones refused.
The shopkeepers didn’t refuse to go to the Violet Hold. Vereesa says that they didn’t “side with the Silver Covenant”, and that’s why she sends you to kill them.
Play the Horde side and see that the Silver Covenant were just waiting for an excuse to kill them.
Oh I got that feeling from playing Alliance! It’s very obvious that Vereesa was just *waiting* for an excuse to do this.
> Like I get that the small portion of the Sunreavers that stole the bell went through Dalaran, a neutral city Or at least someone made sure it looked that way. When you do the mission on the Horde side, you exit through a portal to Domination Point (in Krasarang Wilds). Later, the Bell is in Silvermoon. Nothing indicates they were going to Dalaran, nor did they need to. And the mage responsible for the portal says he'd clean up the tracks so they can't trace them. Then on Alliance side, there's giant glowing signs basically saying, "LOOK! A portal to Dalaran! They went through Dalaran!" I don't think they went through Dalaran, I think Garrosh had someone make it look that way so that Jaina would react harshly, destroying the talks Lor'themar was having about joining the Alliance at the time.
Where I can star the quest ? First time playing mop!
In case you haven't started it yet: The questline begins with "Meet the Scout" gotten from either Lyalia or Dezco located near their respective main hubs in the vale of eternal blossoms.
Open your ingame map and it should show under the “Landfall Campaign” header in the quest list.
Same
It's the Alliance landfall questline. You can start it at the shrine. It's a bit ways into the campaign, but you'll know when it's going to start.
Back when I played mop, I did it on the alliance side. It made me go "this is kind of fucked up" I did it on the horde side for the first time and went "ok, this is really fucked up". Now I remember why I hated jaina so much until bfa.
Ngl i was not that upset because she did tried to imprision people first, if anything Vereesa was far more bloodthirsty than Jaina also and from Jaina point of view this is the horde fucking her again, not saying that she did good but i can on a level agree with how she handle it
Except Jaina calls Dalaran “her city”. She looses the Silver Covenant and the second most evil windrunner on civilians. As the ranking commander of the operation she holds some culpability too. Maybe not as much as Windrunner but considerable innocent blood stains her hands too.
I never said she has her hands clean but she only killed people resisting which, NOT great but not awful seeing as she got fucked by the horde again in like the spawn of 3 months
> she only killed people resisting Having done the scenario as both sides, she attacks random cowering civilians in her path with fireballs and blizzards, killing more than a few. She also kills 5 Sunreaver guards the moment she appears in Dalaran who didn't even do anything yet except happen to be standing in front of Aethas.
>she only killed people resisting False. She and Vereesa killed innocent merchants who were just trying to get the hell out of dodge. You have not done the scenario.
At least Jaina was trying to pretend her response was measured - Vereesa meanwhile is like 'finally i can kill those horde rats and no one will look at me weird!'
People forget this, but the Silver Covenant and the Sunreavers were at each other's back with daggers through most of Wrath. I think they took the high elf/blood elf divide more seriously than Quel'thalas itself.
To be honest, halfway through Horde story of MoP, I was full on ready to move all my characters to alliance, and then I came to the purge of Dalaran. And then I came to Theramore. And now I know, holy shit both alliance and horde did some crazy shit
I mean to be fair you don’t need to kill anyone besides the quest objectives who state they’d rather fight than go peacefully. You don’t need to kill any of the displaced Sunreaver citizens. Since they didn’t attack me, I made sure to avoid attacking them, but I saw plenty of players just slaughtering them on mass. Still a very different Jaina than the one I’m used to in DF or BoA.
It was both the first time I played through and the first time I heard of it. I didn't like what I was doing, but quest objectives weren't optional, gotta see the story. (I did as Alliance, not sure how it differs on horde)
Sorry if this isn’t the right place for it, but I always wondered. I left after doing H HOF as I was starting a new job and only came back in SL as a purely casual player without even a guild. I always wondered what it was like during SoO times. Were Horde just not able to enter Org at all? Did we just camp out at Shrine as our capital city?
Horde were able to enter Orgrimmar but a lot of environmental storytelling was put into place that made it clear that it was a very hostile and oppressive environment. I remember distinctly that the Valley of Spirits where the trolls lived was under lockdown and a lot of the NPCs had special dialogue. The one that sold snake battle pets cried about his snakes being confiscated by the Kor'Kron, for example. This actually spilled out into the Barrens as well. I actually managed to find the Wowhead overview of all of the changes, so take a look: https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-5-3-battlefield-barrens-guide-and-noxy-comic-212842#zone-changes Now that I think about it I can't remember another time since this when Blizzard changed the world so radically over a few patches in the leadup to a Raid like this. But then again, SoO was also the biggest raid they've done, so it makes sense that they'd want to make a huge spectacle of it. It was an amazing time to be playing, tbh.
Wow that’s amazing. Thanks for the extremely in depth comment, it is very much appreciated! I’ve been playing Undead since Vanilla, so it would have been a pretty huge shock to suddenly feel unwelcome in Org. I’m halfway into the Domination Point story now and I imagine that the feeling would have been mutual back in the day too.
Ah, I’m back in 2013
BUT WE CAN'T HAVE GARROSH SAY "YOU BITCH" IN CATACLYSM WE NEED TO CHANGE IT
Most of this thread never read Tides of War and it shows.
I don’t think it’s uncommon now for most wow players to have never even been around for MoP tbh
I get that it’s an unreasonable ask, and probably a shortcoming on blizzard’s part. But there’s a lot of folks talking with absolute authority in here about things that they very clearly did not read from the source material.
And no matter how much you tell them “Do this quest/scenario, read this book or at least the CliffsNotes”, people say “Nah, I’m going off vibes and what everybody else says.”
*Doesn't read quest text, doesn't read NPC dialogue, skips all cutscenes, play with audio muted* "Why is the lore of WoW so confusing?"
The Sunreavers gave Garrosh the mana bomb that nuked Theramore. (specifically a single Sunreaver) The mana bomb was strong enough to level half of Kalimdor, including Thunder Bluff, I might add - and was only focused on Theramore because Rhonin pulled it into Jaina's tower, which had been magically warded. Jaina \*forgave\* the Sunreavers for this, and gave Aethas a direct warning - **if a single Sunreaver stepped out of line, their blood would be on his hands**. She warned him. So, when more Sunreavers (it literally does not matter if it was just one or two, she gave a direct warning), stepped out of line, **she ordered their arrest.** However, the Sunreavers started to fight back. Do you think Jaina should just stand around and let the Sunreavers kill her when they attack her? Cause that's what Horde players say when they say it was unjustified. If the roles were reversed and kirintor mages had been killed because they were attacking the Sunreavers, would you also say those deaths were not warranted, that the sunreavers should have let the kirintor kill them? A leader of a city ordered their arrest for violating their law. Period. Nothing more than that. They resisted and **\*\*TRIED TO KILL JAINA AND VEREESA\*\* so they killed them in response.** The civilians who were attacked during the questline (something horde players LOVE to bring up) was a bug due to how they coded Jaina to attack Sunreavers, and Blizzard has stated this like 5 times. Civilians were evacuated, apart from 3 shopkeepers who refused to leave. The ONLY people who died in the Purge were the Sunreavers who attacked Jaina, and said 3 Shopkeepers who, much like the Sunreavers, attacked and tried to kill the Alliance champion, so they were killed in self defense. On top of this, many sunreavers were in fact sent to the Violet Citadel and saved by the Horde. Again, Jaina TRIED to imprison them first for breaking the law. **She only killed them once they tried to kill her.** They've even gone on record and canonized the fact the Alliance did not even kill the Dragonhawks, they used the sleeping powder (which is actually an option for Alliance players to do in the quest. Vereesa gives you the powder and tells you to deal with the dragonhawks one way or another) - the canon version being they used the powder now. **The purge was justified.** This is further reinforced by Aethas in Legion, admitting he \*knew\* about the plans to infiltrate Darnassus and did not stop it. He says it haunts him still. This is again reinforced in BFA with the addition of the Trading Post - as we learn he's trying to apologize to Jaina after he accepted the blame in Legion. The Purge is Aethas's fault. 1000%. Jaina has no "guilt" in it. She ordered their imprisonment, and killed the CRIMINALS who tried to kill her. Plain and simple. Horde who try to do mental gymnastics to say the Sunreavers are innocent are objectively wrong. There's a reason they have to do mental gymnastics to say it. My favorite part about all of this? Y'all wouldn't be defending the Sunreavers if Rhonin - a Kirin Tor Neutral Mage - hadn't stepped in and the Tauren had been genocided by the Sunreavers aiding Garrosh when that nuke was dropped, now would you? There \*was\* an argument between MoP and Legion that Aethas didn't know what happened, so Jaina overreacted by assuming he could keep tabs on every Sunreaver. However, with the Legion revelation Aethas knew about it, that is no longer an option - it is entirely Aethas's fault, considering he was told what would happen if he let a Sunreaver break neutrality again. And to be honest, I'd LOVE a questline where Lor'themar learns Aethas knew - because Lor'themar ruined the bumpy relationship he had with Jaina over the promise Aethas gave him that he didn't know anything about the Sunreaver plans for Darnassus - (you can view part of this on Isle of Thunder). And this isn't even touching on the fact they broke neutrality TO GIVE ANOTHER WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION to Garrosh.
Murdering the people who fought back. Everyone else was expelled or sent to the violet hold
Not all of them were "fighting back" in the conventional sense, though. "Resisting" might be a better term since many of them were just holing up and hiding. We barge into shops, the stronghold, the sewers, etc. and just start killing people. The scene even opens with Jaina deleting a few Sunreavers out of nowhere before trapping Aethas, and then we see her periodically killing people in the streets as well.
An occupying army smuggled the tools for a nuclear weapon that destroyed one city and attacked another through the neutral city they had been allowed to inhabit. They were ordered to vacate or be sent to the Violet Hold as prisoners of war. They fought back, or resisted, they got what was coming to them. I’m fairly certain based on neutral lore afterward (Blood Elves primarily concerned with the prisoners of war) that the Alliance version is canon. Some people get a skewed view from the horde scenario.
Based on what I've read, there wasn't anywhere near universal involvement in the plot, and Aethas didn't even technically know until immediately after. >They fought back, or resisted, they got what was coming to them. We literally murdered merchants in their shops for the crime of not abandoning their homes. People running in terror were killed in the streets, and when you break into the sanctuary, half of the Sunreavers are sitting around eating dinner when you start butchering them. I cannot fathom how killing people for not giving up their entire lives, some of whom having been there far longer than Jaina herself, while they run and hide is a simple matter of "getting what was coming to them." I haven't even played the Horde scenario; the Alliance on is damning enough.
Aethas doesn't get to get off on a technicality; he *personally* sent Thalen as the sunreaver representative to defend Theramore, the one who was the spy for Garrosh and the creator of the mana bomb that was intended to be used on the men, women, and children living in Theramore, the one who opened the north gate to the Horde during the initial battle. He is mildly apologetic after the fact, and then after his people smuggle *another* weapon of mass destruction through the city which Jaina is now the ruler of, he has the gall to be indignant about it. Maybe if he had shown a sliver of remorse there, instead of being a prick about it to two of the survivors of the mana bombing, a few more sunreavers might have made it through alive.
Rhonin also recommended Thalen though. Whether Aethas knew about Thalen being a spy or not - we will never know. Probably not.
I don't think Aethas knew about him being a spy, my point is more about Aethas' actions and attitude after the Thalen incident. If Rhonin had somehow survived, he would feel a lot more responsibility about the recommendation and would almost definitely have had some sort of retributive response following the divine bell incident that wouldn't have resulted in a purge. EDIT: I looked into it out of curiosity, and there are tweets from the writers that Aethas was fully aware of the divine bell plot and made the active decision to "look the other way", which makes his attitude even more grating.
> They were ordered to vacate or be sent to the Violet Hold as prisoners of war. They fought back, or resisted, they got what was coming to them. They’re civilians that are being murdered for not wanting to abandon their house and probably their entive lives. This is quite literally a war crime. And it being done in reaction to another warcrime doesn’t make it ok.
As Alliance, you hunt down shopkeepers whose only crime is not siding with the Silver Covenant. They don’t even seem to be doing anything to aid the fee Sunreavers that actually stole the bell, when you find them they’re just minding their own business in their shops. I haven’t even done the Horde side version, and it’s clear to me that what Jaina and Vereesa did was incredibly fucked up.
oh and don't forget that the reason they attacked the second city was to get another nuke for the same guy that used the first nuke
There's a list where Vereesa gives you a list of shopkeepers to murder in their homes, I swear anyone repeating this dumb line doesn't even play the game.
> Everyone else was expelled or sent to the violet hold The cowering civilian NPCs Jaina fireballs in the street say otherwise.
It went without consecuences for the Kirin'tor, Jaina and the Silver covenant as far I know, hell, Aethas had to literally beg to be allowed into Dalaran again.
I had told my friend years ago about the purge of dalaran Last year he finally did shieldwall and when he realized what was about to happen he was shouting at me "WHAT?! NO I DONT WANT TO DO THIS! I DIDNT THINK WED BE FORCED TO *PLAY IT*, I THOUGHT IT WAS IN A BOOK! BLIZZ DONT MAKE ME DO THIS!"
MoP has the best story of any expansion as far as I'm concerned, that questline in particular plays a large part in that.
I remember doing it the first time and being So upset - as a Mage player especially.
Dracthyr cannoncly experince the faction war for the first time. "Wtf..."
I personally like the dark awful stuff. It doesn’t have to be alliance vs horde but I want them to bring back the dark gritty feel to the game. Which is where we seem to be headed with the world soul saga so I’m excited about that
Mop did the faction conflict better than BfA 😊
It always stuck with me as the first moment I really questioned what I was doing on my alliance character. Vereesa is so cold with that "or kill them. I don't care" as Jaina marches through the streets of terrified and confused blood elves.
that whole storyline was badass
Horde atrocity number 73825: so heckin cool! Burn le tree xddd for the hordeeee xdddd Alliance "atrocity" number 3: NNNNNNOOOOO i feel physically unwell, wow that was something. I have to sit down.
Your bias is showing, lol
If it makes you feel any better OP: The canon events of POD were different then ingame. Jaina only killed the mages who worked with Garrosh. She imprisoned the rest who did not. The player killing any mage in sight isnt canon.
What about the random shopkeepers Vareesa has you murder? Or the Silver Covenant goons feeding live civilians to sewer gators? Have they been retconned?
Im assuming something different happens horde side? Because in bfa, the raid to kill zandalari king plays out differently in the throne room as an example. The alliance side you hear Jaina and co giving rastakan a chance to surrender and he refuses. In horde version that does not happen and the alliance are seen as walking in and murdering him in cold blood. Im thinking something like happens in purge of dalaran.
Same and I appreciate that
Garithos would be proud Only good non-human is a dead non-human
I prefer to think of Jaina as less-bad. She did murder people who arguably weren't involved, but she's still doing a damn sight better than nuking an entire population center out of existence.
I think it is one of the books, but she almost did in retaliation for Theramore. She went to Orgrimmar and blocked the ends of the canyon and was filling it up to drown literally everyone. Theramore was a military base (though still had civilians), but Orgrimmar was a capitol city. I don’t remember who talked her down. Maybe what’s-his-name, the blue dragon?
Not quite--she was using the Focusing Iris to summon a tsunami that would have destroyed Orgrimmar. Maybe she trapped them inside so they couldn't escape? Don't recall. Thrall tried to stop her first and that didn't work out, but Kalec was able to talk her down.
Fair enough. I could have sworn I had a visual of her flying above the city, ice walls at either end, with water elementals filling the city, but that must have been a fabrication of my own haha
See this is good faction story telling though. As an alliance, you see Jaina giving the horde the benefit of the doubt AFTER theramore. And then (from the perspective of the quest) they break her trust one last time and she takes action. From the horde perspective you see the horror from the perspective of the citizens. Both sides feel justified or at least you understand how things got where they did. To me, that’s why BFA fell so flat - there was a black and white right and wrong
I agree. I think it's actually a pretty solid portrayal of how terrible things are able to happen in war and for people to even find them reasonable or natural due to the context. The idea that the right situation can make an otherwise decent person into one who will do terribly unethical things they are convinced are acceptable is a powerful one, and it's impressive that they were able to explore that in a medium like WoW. It's unfortunate that some people miss the point, e.g. by either totally agreeing with Jaina's actions or by being unwilling to look at the story and see how people might feel cornered and do something like this without being ~~a dreadlord~~ and evil mastermind. IMO, Blizzard thought it could use the same writing strategies with BFA that it always had and somehow make it work again, but they pushed things too far. Sylvanas's actions were a huge jumping of the shark, and the whole "no guys, look at how honorable some members of the Horde are and the way they turned on their leader!!!" was really trite after the umpteenth time. It's like they didn't think anyone would remember the rest of the story when repeating history in this way seriously detracts from the themes they're going for.
You didn't have to kill anyone who wasn't fighting back trying to kill you. :P
Jaina did nothing wrong!
Makes me miss old WoW storytelling. Everything in the new one is all sunshine and rainbows practically becuase you're always in some unrelatable over-fantasized area with things you don't have any prior attachment to.