In one way, the destruction of both Teldrassil and Lordaeron City has balanced things. Aside from Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles in the west and Quel'thalas in the east, each faction more or less has control over one of WOW's original two continents.
It's an idea that less genocidal/ambitious Horde leaders have sometimes proposed as a solution to their conflict - if the Horde were given total control of Kalimdor and left the Eastern Kingdoms to the Alliance, perhaps things might settle down between them. Good fences make good neighbors, the logic goes, and putting an ocean between the factions could theoretically let each side find satisfaction with the territory available to them.
There is, to be fair, a kind of elegance to this as a solution. If each side simply resigns themselves to understanding one continent as belong to the Horde and one to the Alliance, it would deter aggressive action and potentially allow for tensions to cool off to the point where diplomacy could start being more of a thing.
Unfortunately, while this looks decent on paper, there are a lot of problems with it.
First off is the ever-present issue of grievance. Sylvanas just committed an act of genocide against the Night Elves. The Night Elves would be very unlikely to accept their historic territories in Kalimdor even if the War of Thorns had been won with whatever Saurfang considers honor. If the Horde had won without massacring thousands of civilians, you'd still see Kaldorei resisting Horde domination of that territory. But after the burning of Teldrassil, I imagine many Night Elves, even those who wanted peace, would now accept no other outcome than the dismantling of the Horde, the death of Sylvanas and Saurfang, and maybe even the destruction of Orgrimmar.
This is just the latest in a series of grievances the various Alliance races have against the Horde. Its first act as an organization, after all, was an unprovoked war against the Draenei in which just a fraction of the exiled Eredar survived. Add to that the, again, unprovoked war on Stormwind that left the city in ruins, followed by the unprovoked war against the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms. There's the death of Cenarius (which, ok, stings less now that we know he can come back from the dead,) and the... again, unprovoked invasion of Gilneas, and then the destruction of Theramore, attacking the city of a person who had, until that point, always been an advocate for peace with the Horde.
The Horde does have its grievances with the Alliance, and while a lot of them pointedly ignore the reasons (the internment camps, for example, were the bad choice in a bad and worse set of options. They couldn't send the Orcs back to Outland. Would the ideal solution have been to integrate them into human society? I'd play a tabletop RPG set in that alternate history,) some are more legitimate. Take Garithos' treatment of the Blood Elves following the Third War for example, or the Dwarves' unauthorized archaeological excavations in Tauren land. The Forsaken complaint that the living have treated them as if they were just as bad as the Scourge used to hold a lot of weight, though more recently that's like Billy Idol complaining that people act as if his hair is bleached (to be fair, at his age it might not be now. Maybe that's a bad metaphor.)
Likewise, the Blood Elves remember how their ancestors were exiled by not just the Night Elves as a people, but their actual existing leadership, for practicing Arcane Magic, despite the fact that they later embraced it.
Bad blood is, more than anything, the problem at the heart of it all. It's unfortunate that the two sides never seem to let their periods of cooperation wash away that animus, and an area where I think players sometimes feel railroaded by the game's makers (but I digress.) But on top of that are also some less emotional and more practical issues.
Territory is a big one. Let's take the relatively simple one of northern Kalimdor first:
The Tauren lived in central Kalimdor for generations as nomadic tribes, but it was a hard life that required them to constantly fight for survival against marauding centaurs. When the Orcs arrived in Kalimdor, they introduced a more sedentary lifestyle that was also somewhat new to their culture. But such a culture required a system for farming and building. The areas they had were arid, lacking wood for construction and fertile land for food. To the north, however, were lush forests that had been cultivated through druidic magic for thousands of years. Utterly enormous trees were plentiful, meaning easy resources for construction, and presumably the area is also rich in arable land.
The Night Elves did not share that land.
Now, we could debate back and forth whether they should have. On one hand the Horde never once tried asking politely, saying "hey, we're here to fight the Legion. Mind helping us get settled before we do?" On the other hand, why hadn't the Night Elves already extended their resources to help the Tauren, a people they had historically been on good terms with?
You could argue that the Horde was foolish to build Orgrimmar without the resources required to maintain it, but it's not clear there was anywhere else for them to settle. Whose problem that is depends on your point of view.
But when we get into the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms (interesting that the clashes all tend toward the northern parts of the continents,) we have issues that are less about resources than history.
Lordaeron was one of the most important human kingdoms. It was second only to Stormwind in population (if I recall correctly) and was the founding member of the Alliance, using its resources and political sway to get the other kingdoms along with Dun Morogh and Quel'thalas together to face the Horde.
Lordaeron is undeniably historical Alliance territory. But the undead plague and the rise of the Scourge, followed by that of the Forsaken, super-complicates that matter. Generally, we tend to think the Scourge does not deserve any territory - they're evil and should be destroyed. When the people who are now Forsaken first became undead (not counting those who were raised later,) the living humans of Lordaeron were, I think we'd all agree, justified in fighting them and destroying them wherever they could in order to try to purge the undead from the kingdom.
What complicates this is that when they regained their free will, what exactly did that mean for their identity? Were they simply the same people who had always lived there, only rotted and stinky? Were they still the kingdom of Lordaeron? And did they still have a claim to that land?
Setting aside the ethical/moral complications of that, imagine just the logistics. Say your uncle dies and he leaves you his house. You go there, you move in, and you sign the deed to the place. Then your uncle comes back as a rotting corpse. He's still your uncle, but legally, once he died, ownership of that house transferred to you. Are you obligated to give it back - legally, I mean, not morally?
Now, let's imagine that you've actually heard about people rising from the grave as zombies, and not the mindless Romero zombies, but clever and cruel and murderous Scourge who are capable of deception.
Do you even give your uncle a chance to make a case for himself? And if you do, do you believe him?
So that's where we start - living humans have a, frankly, understandably hard time taking the Forsaken at their word. Now let's move forward:
Your uncle, infuriated by the fact that you won't give him your house back (or so he claims,) gathers up a bunch of other zombies and tries to break in, then gets a bunch of plague together and bombards the house with it, trying to kill you.
At this point, do you even care if he's Scourge or not? He's undead, using necromantic weapons in an attempt to kill you.
From his perspective, all he wants is his goddamned house back, but the methods he has taken, which he rationalizes as simple pragmatism, are making it impossible for you to concede that, yeah, technically, this should be his house.
So yes, if the Forsaken had been treated with more trust early on in their development, things might not have gotten nearly so bad. But on the other hand, for the Forsaken to expect such a level of trust is utterly unreasonable. Still, each side sees themselves as the aggrieved, and even though the Scarlet Crusade was largely rejected by the Alliance (their partial acceptance of them was primarily based in ignorance,) the Forsaken couldn't help but see the Scarlets as representing all of the Alliance, and the Alliance couldn't help but see the Forsaken as little better than the Scourge.
Now, to finish things off, let's talk Quel'thalas.
There's bound to be resistance fighters - Night Elves in Kalidmor, and Forsaken in Lordaeron. But one area that is in the middle of some crazy upheaval is Quel'thalas.
Lor'themar is in a really, really bad situation right now. Let's explain:
Silvermoon's biggest ally was Undercity, and while the actual loss of life at the Battle of Lordaeron was small (Sylvanas herself was responsible for a significant fraction of Horde losses,) her relocating to Kalimdor, and indeed the whole potential plan of separating the factions by continent (I assume most people don't know Sylvanas' plan to plague-bomb Stormwind and turn every last human into Forsaken) leaves Lor'themar high and dry. There is basically one tiny pocket of Horde territory left in the Eastern Kingdoms.
So that would be pretty bad. But that's not all.
Given that it's a playable race, we can probably assume that the Void Elves are actually a significant chunk of the Blood Elf population who have rejected the Horde and joined the Alliance. And they're led by Alleria Windrunner, former Ranger-General of Quel'thalas. Throw in the High Elves under Vereesa Windrunner, who never accepted Kael'thas' embrace of fel magic (I don't really know why Vereesa and her Silver Covenant folks didn't suffer magic withdrawal like the Wretched, but maybe the Kirin Tor helped them out with that,) and at least in terms of "number of High Elf factions," the Alliance is currently leading. The Alliance also has two out of three Windrunner sisters.
But the most important thing is that Lor'themar has no home-field advantage. Generally, when fighting a defensive war, you can use your knowledge of the terrain as a big advantage over invaders. You have people who spent their entire lives in your territory and who know every hidden valley to stockpile weapons, or every mountain cave in which to hide out. You know where to force your enemy to strike to put them at disadvantage.
But Lor'themar can't do that. Even if you take the fact that the High Elves and Alleria have been away for so long that Lor'themar had been able to build new defenses and anticipate their potential strategies, the Void Elves have been part of Horde society up until very recently.
In fact, the Void Elves are the only example we have of former Horde members joining the Alliance. The notion that trusted friends and colleagues could use their knowledge against you is not something that the Horde has ever had to deal with.
The Horde's advantage should they ever wish to take Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles is primarily that the Draenei would be unlikely to fight too hard to keep them. I imagine that if it became clear that they were coming for the islands after Teldrassil, Velen would pragmatically evacuate, and the Draenei are very well-practiced in pulling up stakes and leaving - only this time they'd only have to go to the other side of the world rather than find an entirely new one. Frankly I'm surprised that Sylvanas hasn't just raised the possibility to see if she can get them essentially for free.
But the Blood Elves are much more settled down in Quel'thalas, and an evacuation would cause a lot of logistical problems, but also a lot of political ones. The Alliance has proven itself capable of welcoming Sin'dorei back into the fold with open arms. I highly doubt that they'd only let those who embraced the Ren'dorei's weird void magic in either, as those who didn't could just call themselves Quel'dorei.
If the Alliance wanted to play smart in Quel'thalas, they would have Vereesa leading the efforts to re-take Quel'thalas and pitch the Alliance to every Blood Elf she saw. The Void Elves might put some off, but they'd have every tactical advantage they needed, and if Anduin basically says "hey guys, if you join us you'd be under our protection. We're disappointed you went Horde before, but you know there's always a place with us if you want it," it might not convert every last Blood Elves, but you can bet there would be more and more defections, and such a thing could cascade into the Alliance taking Silvermoon.
Lor'themar, I think, has two potential tools he can use to fend such a thing off, but it's no guarantee they would work. First, he'd put the creepiness of the Void Elves center stage. Not only did these elves defect, but they're also harnessing powers that are even less understood than the Fel. The Blood Elves are still trying to cleanse themselves of the Legion's brief but terrible influence on them (and given that some Blood Elves are getting Holy-golden eyes, it seems to be working,) and drinking deep of void-insanity that even gives you weird hair-tentacles sometimes is probably a terrible, terrible idea. The other note, one that I think Lor'themar would be more hesitant to use, is that Sylvanas Windrunner would make it her sworn duty to kill every last elf that defected from her Horde.
But make no mistake: every Ren'dorei or Quel'dorei that shows themselves happy and welcome in the Alliance is going to make it harder for Lor'themar to keep his Sin'dorei loyal to the Horde.
The balance of power has been thrown for a spin, and we're obviously still trying to figure out where it ends up. Undercity was a gambit that did not really pay off for Sylvanas, but I think that Teldrassil, while a moral atrocity, is certainly a strategic gain for the Horde in the short term.
Still, the Horde is poised to lose territory now, and not in a position to gain very much. We'll have to see where things go from here.
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