Torching Teldrassil (Alliance)

This post (8/31) is part of the Blaugust Reborn event! You can find out more about the event at Belghast’s blog. I (Chestnut) created a Twitter list of all participants. Armagon created an OPML file of all the bloggers to import into your feed reader.

After finishing the Horde portion of War of the Thorns, I thought it only appropriate to complete the Alliance portion before moving onto the Lordaeron counterpart.

As an Alliance player, I came into Astranaar as the wisps are fleeing, and the Horde have poisoned the Elves. It was a fairly saddening scene to come into, and made me angry, quite honestly. Angry that I can choose to not do the quest (Or can I? Can I even play in BfA without doing the quests as Horde?) and miss out on story, or do the quest and be an asshole Horde that ruined things for the Alliance.

I did feel a bit better about the whole bit when I got to ride the Ancient around and smash things. It felt very Lord of the Rings to me, which I appreciated.

The thing that really got to me, though, and made me just stop with some time left on the timer and just cry was trying to evacuate Darnassus. Helping the people just felt so… hopeless. I’m sure it didn’t help being in a weird headspace as of late, but it just struck a chord with me that broke me (even writing about it makes me tear up).

I’ve never seen the Horde as evil. I’ve always seen both sides as extremely grey for different reasons and decisions (I mean, no human being, or humanoid being is perfect), but Sylvanas has pretty much gut punched me with her petty ass decision to torch the tree. Just. Why?

But hey, at least the Hippogryph is pretty awesome! I’ve always loved Hippogryphs. Since I started playing back in Burning Crusade. Zangarmarsh was my favorite zone, mainly due to the Hippogryphs. Plus, I’ve mained a Tauren Druid for the majority of my time in WoW. So they just hold a soft place in my heart.