I presume you've all noticed how each army of the Alliance or Horde is only capable of going about and destroying/purging a city of all life when they do take over, I think this is rubbish because such behavior makes us no better then the random "threats" that we fight daily, while we are proclaimed heroic and what not.

Basically the most humane thing to do when taking over a city is to occupy it with troops and make use of the infrastructure and the native populace, while maintaining a strict military control of varying brutality depending on the circumstances (commander, race , general threat level).

I mean for goodness sakes not even the Naz!'s didn't go about wiping out every city they came across, how the hell can any faction do this and call itself heroic? Also ironically enough the only army which has so far been shown to occupy towns (well only 1 IIRC) rather then flat out annihilate them is the Forsaken's one, take from that what you will.

Last but definitely not the least is that occupation has huge storytelling potential, for example if Taurajo was occupied rather then massacred it could have given a chance for the following scenario to take place:

The tauren quest giver from pre-Cata knows that the threats looming over Taurajo are not over just because the humans have taken over, so he grudgingly, in broken common, asks the Alliance adventurer to help take care of the Quillboar, for example, this could cause people on both sides of the fence to realize that the other side is not so different giving depth to the war.
Or an overworked tauren brave turned forced laborer asks for some tiny bit of assistance from the questing Alliance player, sparking sympathy or drama if it turns out that it wasn't a harmless request.
While on the other side of the spectrum, the Alliance guards could ask for help in finding and crushing a budding resistance movement, for people who find that faction strife is their cup of tea.

I mean the possibilities are endless, I can just see so so many possible scenarios in my head, like the opposing faction going in to spark rebellion in the town, ala WWII undercover partisans, while in the end it could either end up in the town shaking off the oppressors or getting brutally oppressed after failing, the drama potential is huge either way.

And not only that, if occupation was the norm rather then the exception then the actual instances of massive brutality in which a whole town gets destroyed/outright massacred would make a huge boom inciting faction hate/drama on a whole new level compared to what we have now.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

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