...you mean doing something out of spite would be spiteful?

Pull the other.

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Disgruntled Forsaken Stable Master
"Blacker than a moonless night, hotter and more bitter than hell itself... That is coffee."

Because, exclusively under the purview of lore, it's a great bastion and geographic jumping-off point with which to suddenly attack Forsaken-Elven lands in a future date, when/if the Alliance is prepared to fight its next war against the Horde.

At least one Horde skinning instructor jokes about how they should skin humans, if anyone would buy them. I wouldn't mind if a some Alliance NPCs in Stromgarde and Gilneas made a few black jokes about wiping the Horde out of the Eastern Kingdoms.

EDIT: Easily beaten to it.

I would've agreed with you 100% on this point, bolded bit especially (because it's not really open to debate given the past context) before Wolfheart.

But Wolfheart made it -perfectly- clear Blizzard don't give 2 shits about Varian's history with Lordaeron anymore, if they even remember it at all infact. I was waiting, that entire book, for Varian to throw Terenas' name at Greymane. It never happened. I'm still angry about that, but it doesn't change anything.

Moving on, but still on the same topic/s; I actually think the "Gameplay reasons" excuse is bullshit when you look at the money Blizzard has made, and continues to make, from WoW and all the WarCraft franchises cash-cows. The fact it's going to take as long as it does to get WoD - a medicore expansion with the worst Lore to date - from Siege of Orgrimmar already shows us that the Blizzard Development side of things is a, to put it politely, bit of a mess.

Alas, it's not happening, we all know that, so no sense wasting too much good energy on it. Let's try focus on stuff we have an outside chance of seeing happen in WoW's lifetime.

So you're enticed by the forbidden fruit?

Varian doesn't have any personal history with Lordaeron. He is Lo'grosh the only begotten son of Elune and Wolfgodman, placed on this world as an orcish gladiator slave. When he found out about a Stormwind prince who had died in recent history, he adopted the prince's name and showed up demanding the Alliance yield to him as their high king. When they refused, he devastated Stormwind City--destroying the barracks and park in particular. So that they would forever remember who had conquered them, Varian then built a great statue-fountain of himself outside his palace, using broken pieces of Stormwind Keep and parts of Danath's statue. He heard about how Bolvar and the PlayerCharacter defeated Onyxia, and he liked the story so much that he proclaimed he was the hero who had done everything, and the kingdom would remember the story that way under pain of death.

(Also I think he had two bipolar versions running around or something, but I never really understood what was happening there and it was resolved before I came back to the franchise, so I mainly pretend it never happened.)

To be honest, it's not as though Blizzard cannot fix what they've broken. They just need to be willing to get out of their Horde comfort zone and start writing the narrative in a cohesive and consistent manner. It's about time the lines were drawn in the land. If Blizzard is unwilling to make the war an actual war unless it affects the Alliance, then it's doomed. I honestly don't care about the, "Horde has less zones/cities," bullshit excuse. Theramore got nuked. Why couldn't the Bilgewater city in Azshara have gotten nuked? It seems to be about as large and so forth. Send the Skyfire over it and drop the bomb.

Forsaken use blight and raise the undead? Where are the paladins burning the Forsaken to ashes? Heck, where is the Ashbringer?


We're past the point where reasonable reaction is a possibility. Instead we're at a point where the factions of the world can make gestures in reaction to the War. This is the time for the Cenarion Circle to rejoin the Alliance, forcefully push any remnant Horde from Ashenvale, and regrow the forest. This is the time for the Argent Crusade to rejoin the Alliance, forcefully remove the Forsaken from Western Plaguelands, take the Bulwark and Andorhal, and create fortifications as part of the Alliance's plans to contain the Forsaken. This is the time for the Earthen Ring to rejoin the Horde and begin cleaning up the mess that is the Southfury River, the Barrens, and so forth.

This is the point in time where the game world should be reflecting all these things and more. We should see Stromgarde retaken, along with the land east of the river in Hillsbrad, at the -least-. We should see Alterac taken, being rebuilt as an Alliance bastion. We should see New Southshore being built in Hillsbrad as a much larger port. We should see Gilneas restored, with the Greymane Wall repaired and territory up to Shadowfang Keep back in their hands. We should see Dalaran return to it's crater.

I think all Alliance races should start marrying humans. It's time to breed out that non-human nonsense. They're old enough to get over their rebellious teenager phase and start acting like responsible adults.

That would be glorious.

Once again, the Horde was spared by the might of the Alliance!

What's behind the void zones...

The knight from your avatar is probably a Forsaken now.

Kill all Forsaken.

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"Noble countrymen, evil is upon us. Darkness has befallen our shores. Rise and slay thy enemies� strike, strike so others shall live. The meek shall not fade into the night� live my brethren, live." - King Terenas Menethil II

Killing medical personal and chaplains is a war crime.

This is why the Alliance doesn't win BGs.

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You are right Fojar.

Kill all Forsaken.

Honestly, at this time, I expect Blizzard to do that. It seems like the only part of the player base they care about is the Horde player base. After the last few expansions, it's fairly clear they don;t give a damn about the Alliance player base considering the story they have written for it or just left out. That's not to say the Horde didn't get a good story, many Horde players clearly didn't like the Horde story in Cata and MoP, but Blizzard tried to relive the glory days of WC2 and give the Horde a story they thought the Horde player would like. Many Horde players have liked it, many have not. But at least Blizzard tried with the Horde. With the Alliance, they damned near dropped it all, concentrating on finishing Horde areas and questing before starting on Alliance questing, Alliance story lines dropped or forgotten about, Alliance leaders forgetting or flat out ignoring certain provocations to concentrate on others.

So it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Blizzard did give Stromgarde to the forsaken and ignores any Alliance development other than the Alliance shrugging its shoulders and deciding that it's not worth the cost in lives to push out and destroy the forsaken. This ignores the fact that the Burning Legion is far larger and more dangerous than any player faction, so why is the Alliance willing to fighting he Legion to the bitter end, but is not willing to do the same to the Horde/orc/forsaken which are much smaller threats?

Non-specific excuse!

*runs away*

What would that have achieved? There was nothing that any monarch could have done to save King Terenas. He was killed in cold-blood by his son on his throne. Plus, what weight would Terenas's name have against Genn? Genn did not exactly think highly of Terenas or Lordaeron.

I was expecting Varian to point out how much Terenas meant to him/his gratitude to the man, and how "when his lands were beset by the Scourge, you simply left him and his people to their death. You coward!"

I'm not saying that would've been an exactly fair or 100% correct statement, but I would've expected it to of been touched on. If only because, ya know, it IS nice to see/hear of things from the older WarCraft games/books.

It should exist, but we can pretty safely assume that it never will. Remember that whole debacle where someone datamined a map that hinted at a Stromgarde scenario? After pages upon pages of excited speculation from both Alliance and Horde players, the devs set Lore into the thread to let everyone know that not only was there no Stromgarde scenario the next patch, but they had no intention of ever doing a Stromgarde scenario. It wasn't even a case where they say "we'd like to do this eventually, but we won't be able to in the near future." It was flat-out "this is not even on the list of things we'd like to eventually do."

Yes, it's dumb. It was one of the few things in months, maybe even years, that generated mostly positive feedback, and not only did they not re-think their decision to not do a scenario, but they went out of their way to tell the players that unless Hell freezes over, Stromgarde is going to remain in Vanilla-era limbo for the rest of WoW's existence.

The only way Stromgarde is going to make a bigger impact in WoW is when you can play as a Stromgarde.

It was the only way that Gilneas was brought back into the Alliance, but they had to become worgen since human = Stormwind.

So what can we transform the Stromgardians into so that they have a bigger impact in WoW?

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Demons. The Shadow Council did it.

You don't want to commit war crimes do you?

Hey, yesterday I was saving all the poor, widdle elves from Dalaran, and they told me to kill Alliance clerics! *gasp*

Will the guys in the white coats come to collect me now? *shudder*

PJ, are you fraternizing with the enemy again?