How WoW could (should) have been set up

[Amigoltu]

It is quite possible, that this is the perspective of someone, who has played Warcraft III before trying out World of Warcraft (haven't played WCI and II). Maybe those, who played earlier WC games could even say similar things about WCIII. But the very setting of World of Warcraft always troubled me, with how... illogical it was as a continuation of WC3 story.

What I am presenting may or may not be viable for an MMO, but (I think) it would make much more sense for a sequel of Warcraft III story.

Spoiler: The Problems

Spoiler: The political state of the world

To start, this quote at the beginning of the intro cinematic:

"4 years have passed [...] the tenuous pact between horde and alliance has all but evaporated."

How did that happen? By the end of RoC, humans, orcs and night elves have, as Medivh put it - "discarded their old hatreds and stood united against a common foe". Not only that, but the orcs have left the Eastern Kingdoms and travelled to the previously called "forgotten lands of Kalimdor". Thus, not only were humans and orcs now allied, but also - they had no more territorial, or other kinds of disputes. It was not a "tenuous pact". There was no logical reason for the two factions to fight anymore. But it goes further than that - the faction allegiances also make no sense. Which brings me to the next section.

Spoiler: The races and factions

Night Elf:
Why in the world did Night Elves join Alliance? Night elves were a neutral race, that either wasn't aware of the war between Horde and Alliance, or wasn't concerned with it. Granted, Grom Hellscream has managed to rile them up quite bad, however, by the end of RoC three things happened:

1. It was made clear, that Grom Hellscream did not represent the will of the Horde. Also, he was crazed by the demon blood in his veins
2. The Horde has made an alliance with the Night Elves and helped them save the entire world.
3. Grom Hellscream sacrificed himself to destroy a powerful and high-ranking demon.

And what could have happened after that? Night Elves got angry at Warsong Lumber Camps? Those camps should have gone down with Grom, first of all. Secondly, Thrall was always a diplomatic leader - he wouldn't have allowed those camps to keep on running, especially not when he had an alliance with the Elves.

Blood Elf:
Why in the world did Blood Elves join Horde? If Blood Elves were even aware of Horde's existence in Kalimdor, they would only be aware that the Horde consisted of orcs, who were essentially left-overs from the Second Invasion. Why in the world would they even attempt to make contact or befriend the Horde? And the Horde itself likely wouldn't be aware of Blood Elves' existence at all.

I realize, that the Blood Elves were not thinking very highly of the Alliance (though, for the most part, their problems begin and end with Lord Garithos), but joining the Horde wouldn't be their solution. At least not so soon.

Forsaken:
Much the same thing applies to Sylvanas, as does to the Blood Elves - IF she was aware of the existence of the Horde at all, she would only know them as left-overs from the Second Invasion. Not the kind of people she'd ally with. Not to mention, that the Horde themselves wouldn't allow an Undead to go anywhere near them. Especially considering, that we are talking about the time after TfT - the Lich King and the Scourge should be stronger than ever.

Also... Should Forsaken even exist?
After all, Sylvanas only got back her own mind because Illidan managed to damage the Frozen Throne with the Eye of Sargeras, making Ner'zhul's power "leak out". Simply said - Ner'zhul was getting weaker. However, after Arthas reached the Frozen Throne and fused with Ner'zhul, the Lich King got more powerful than ever before.

Consider that even before this merging, the Dreadlords were getting worried that Ner'zhul was getting too powerful. If I remember correctly, this worry was shared by Kil'jaeden himself. Which is why Kil'jaeden ordered Illidan to destroy the Frozen Throne in the first place (which suggests that current Lich King may rival Kil'jaeden in power, but that is another discussion).

Anyways, simply said - after Arthas became the Lich King, he very possibly would take all of Forsaken back under mental control. (though exactly how this control works was never properly explained)

Spoiler: The Ideas

To begin, if we still set the story at the same time (4 years after WCIII), I believe that the story shouldn't focus on the conflict between Horde and Alliance at all. The main focus of the sequel to WCIII should be the menace of the Lich King, who would now have become stronger than ever before, and would surely be amassing forces to descend upon the world of the living. Which includes retaking control of all the undead in the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, (possibly) including the Forsaken.

This essentially eliminates the need to explore the possible race and faction allegiances. However, if we were to suspend our disbelief for a moment, and say that some sort of conflict DID occur between Horde and Alliance this soon (for whatever reason), this is how factions should look, in my view:

Spoiler: Race/faction allegiances

Horde:

• Orcs
• Trolls
• Tauren

Alliance:

• Humans
• Dwarves
• (?) Gnomes
  (Did gnomes even exist before WoW? I got the impression, that dwarves were technophiles of Alliance)

The Night Elves:
They would remain neutral. They had an alliance with both orcs and humans. They'd have no reason to prefer either one, and such petty wars would be of no concern to them.
The faction should be non-playable or in mercenary mode - players can choose either faction.

The Blood Elves:
They would remain neutral. They could stay with the Alliance, but would at least try to stay out of the conflict as much as they could. Also, they'd have their hands full with restoring Quel'thalas. And also, they would be cut-off from the rest of the nations by the plaguelands.
The faction should be in mercenary mode.

The Forsaken:
They should be hostile to both. As said before, the most likely scenario - entire Forsaken would be taken back under Lich King's mental control. And if not - they'd be indistinguishable from the Scourge. They ARE the Scourge, technically.
The faction should be non-playable and hostile.

The Draenei:
I guess I forgot to talk about these guys. Well, considering the alternative story - they'd likely meet the Night Elves (neutral) first. So, quite possibly, they'd also be neutral in the war between Horde and Alliance. They'd be neutral, but considering that they were refugees who just crashed in Azeroth - hardly they'd split themselves to fight in either faction. Still, for gameplay reasons...
The faction should be non-playable or in mercenary mode.

Considering how powerful the Lich King should have become, I don't even think he should be defeated in a single expansion (or ever).
The story could begin with the Scourge having already descended upon Eastern Kingdoms (and from there spreading to Kalimdor), and Alliance would be hard-pressed to keep them from spreading further south from the Plaguelands.

The end goal of this first game (Vanilla) would possibly be to advance far enough into the Plaguelands to reach ruins of Lordaeron, where either Sylvanas/Varimathras or Balnazzar would be the final boss of the expansion.
(Alternatively, this could be the middle point of the Vanilla game, and the end goal of the game could be to rid the plaguelands of the Undead, and thus, isolate the Scourge in Northrend.)

As for later expansions - war with the Scourge would come to a stalemate, with the Scourge not being able to get an inch in Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor, and likewise - the Living not being able to make any ground in Northrend.

This looming threat of the Scourge would become a constant. That is, until Sargeras himself would become aware of what's happened and would (attempt to) claim the power of the Lich King for himself, or help the Lich King finally annihilate the Living in Azeroth.

 

[quakeprp]

I also agree with you man, the story of classic wow was not as good as I expected. Whats worse is that the new plot from Shadowlands and bfa is far more illogical.

 

[Amigoltu]

I also agree with you man, the story of classic wow was not as good as I expected. Whats worse is that the new plot from Shadowlands and bfa is far more illogical.

Yeah, I realize that a game needs to remain relevant, and thus, needs to innovate. But at the same time, I believe that in their haste to introduce and deal with every major villain (Final bosses of each expansion only lasting 1 expansion), Blizzard has arrived at a dead-end.

The only thing they can do now, is to either make completely bogus story development (like Shadowlands), or take the fan suggestion and re-release the older expansions, hyping them up of course. Remember Brack's words? "You think you do, but you don't." Ironic.

At the same time, maybe that's not entirely right... I do think there's another way - more risky way. They could redo the story. Make it a better sequel. Maybe something like a "parallel universe". That would be way better than just re-releasing older expansions. But of course, it would require making something new, and something rather risky, as well. And big companies don't do "risky". It's a BIG no no.

 

[MasterBlaster]

How did that happen? By the end of RoC, humans, orcs and night elves have, as Medivh put it - "discarded their old hatreds and stood united against a common foe".

So it would make more sense to you that Humans suddenly forgot how their homeland was ravaged by the Horde or Orcs forgot how they were forced into internment by the Alliance simply because they had to team up against one common threat? I'm sorry, but that's just bullshit.

The reality is that the Orcs and the Humans stood together mostly because of Jaina and Thrall. If you look at the first mission of the Night Elf campaign (i.e. the Paladin having to break up an argument between the Grunt and the Footman), it's pretty obvious that while both factions worked together, there was still a lot of mistrust and resentment on both sides. And that makes sense, because forgiving past grievances is generally very difficult and takes way more than a brief period of pretty much forced cooperation (I say that it was forced, because - let's face it - the only reason why Orcs and Humans worked together wasn't that their leaders simply wanted to, but because they had to due to Legion).

Expecting that this would be enough to make everything okay isn't reasonable - it wasn't and realistically, it couldn't have been. Being able to "discard old hatreds" to form a temporary alliance of necessity is one thing, working through issues and reaching a lasting improvement in bilateral relations is another. Moreover, if you play through TFT, you'll notice that Jaina clearly didn't represent the entire Alliance as evidenced by Kul'tirans attacking the Horde.

With all of this in mind, I read Medivh's quote as Orcs, Humans and Night Elves being sensible enough to work together when they have to, but not suddenly becoming friends. Thus the assumption that the peace between the two races was shaky is logical, because the reality is that, as I've said before, it was Thrall and Jaina who pushed for peace, while among their people there were surely many who despite working together at Mount Hyjal still harbored deep hatred to their old foes. As such, it's not difficult that some argued for war, some tried to provoke it, or got pissed when some relatively minor conflict arose, etc. All of these things would make the peace tenous.

Thus, not only were humans and orcs now allied, but also - they had no more territorial, or other kinds of disputes.

Kalimdor isn't particularly rich in resources, so they absolutely had disputes - access to water, food, wood, etc. And that's on top of a plethora of other things that might go wrong when you live in proximity to each other. I mean, maybe some rogue Orcs who still had a hate boner for the Alliance raided some small settlement? Or maybe some Alliance thieves murdered some Orcs? Lots of things that could have happened, sparking smaller scale conflicts that fueled the deeply seeded resentment.

Why in the world did Night Elves join Alliance? Night elves were a neutral race, that either wasn't aware of the war between Horde and Alliance, or wasn't concerned with it.

They weren't concerned with the Horde and the Alliance until they pretty much strarted neighbouring both factions. Why did they join the Alliance, though? Because politically it was a smart choice. The Horde was closer and likely wanted resources that the Night Elves had (e.g. trees from Ashenvale). And...

Granted, Grom Hellscream has managed to rile them up quite bad

You're vastly underplaying what Grom did - he didn't just "rile them up quite bad", he murdered their demigod, a.k.a. one of the beings most respected and beloved by the Night Elves. And sure, you can say that he did it, because demon blood and that he didn't represent the will of the Horde, but at the same time - he was once part of the Horde and he drank demon blood willingly, setting a very dangerous precedent, i.e. if one group of Orcs went rogue and got themselves corrupted, it's something that clearly was possible and that could one day happen again. The same couldn't be said about the Alliance, so if the Night Elves were to ally someone - the Alliance was the obvious choice.

The Horde has made an alliance with the Night Elves and helped them save the entire world.

So did the Alliance. And let's not forget - the only reason why the Night Elves survived was because they allied themselves with other races, which is a huge reason to not want to stay neutral. And if they wanted to seek allies, the Alliance was - as I said above - the natural choice. Obviously, that doesn't mean that the Night Elves shouldn't also aim for good relations with the Horde, but then - why not have them as a part of the Alliance, rather than a neutral entity?

Grom Hellscream sacrificed himself to destroy a powerful and high-ranking demon.

That's completely irrelevant, because Grom wasn't the only Orc that was prone to corruption, so his death, even if it was a noble sacrifice, might show that Orcs can be noble, but doesn't erase the fact that they can also be extremely dangerous and one day become a massive threat (again!).

And what could have happened after that? Night Elves got angry at Warsong Lumber Camps?

As far as I remember, the Orcs really needed these resources, so they couldn't just forget about them and while Thrall tried to solve this issue diplomatically, which eventually lead to Night Elves forfeiting Azshara to the Orcs, it quickly became apparent that it wasn't enough, because while the Orcs were great at chopping down trees, they sucked at taking care of the land and making sure that it can provide for them in the long run. The logical implications of that were that the Horde would sooner or later demand even more land and resources. And the Night Elves simply couldn't and/or didn't want to give more, so there was a risk that at some point the Orcs might want to take it by force.

Oh, and also - the lumber mills were run by the Warsong Clan that Thrall had a rather poor history controlling, which was yet another reason to seek allies. After all, what if the Warsong went rogue again? Or due to being resource starved turned on Thrall and took over? Or if Thrall ended up handing over the Horde to someone less peaceful? And what if that's just the tip of the iceberg and the other clans weren't too loyal either? No matter how you put it - from the Night Elves' perspective, the Orcs couldn't have been a stable and reliable neighbour and that warranted seeking allies to protect from the potential Horde threat in the future.

---

All of these thing combined show that the Night Elves joining the Alliance (or allying themselves closely with Jaina) was an absolutely logical move. Simply put, Mount Hyjal has shown that the Night Elves could benefit a lot from having allies and they had two options: a) a fairly unknown race that didn't cause them much harm and helped against the Legion or b) a race that is prone to corruption, has members that can go rogue, is closer and wants their resources, is destructive to the land and likes fighting, has killed their beloved demigod and was a big threat in the past, etc. The choice was obvious.

---

I'll respond to the rest tomorrow, because it's darn late

 

[Amigoltu]

And while you are busy trying to answer the rest of the post, I shall sneakily answer this reply of yours!

Before I begin...
You are seemingly neglecting to acknowledge how miserable and taxing large scale war is. Considering that orcs just fled to Kalimdor, and were trying to create their home there, the LAST thing they'd want is another war. Same with the humans - they were still recovering from the Second Invasion and what Arthas did. They have lost one of their largest Kingdoms. The biggest one, in fact. For Kingdom of Lordaeron was even larger than the Kingdom of Stormwind.

Keep this in mind, while reading through the rest.

So it would make more sense to you that Humans suddenly forgot how their homeland was ravaged by the Horde or Orcs forgot how they were forced into internment by the Alliance simply because they had to team up against one common threat? I'm sorry, but that's just bullshit.

Yes, it would. Without the aid of one another, both Orcs and Humans would have perished. Along with the Elves and the entire world. That is not "just a team up". They owe their very lives to each other. Not to mention, that by that time, it was made clear for both, that both sides were justified in the war previously:

• Humans were, of course, defending their home. And even after largely ending the Second Invasion, what should humans have done with the orcs? Just release them out to the country? Not possible. They were still a dangerous enemy.
  Slaughter them? Possible.
  But in the end, they chose a more merciful way - to keep orcs alive and imprison them instead.
• Orcs' own world was dying. They needed a new place to live. It was simply survival. And the thing that made the situation even worse, was that most of the orcs were crazed by the demon blood and magics.

Neither side really had any beef with one another after the Invasion was done. Remember how Thrall escaped from the Eastern Kingdoms in the beginning of RoC campaign? He wasn't seeking revenge at all. He just wanted a home for his people.

The reality is that the Orcs and the Humans stood together mostly because of Jaina and Thrall.

Yes, and those two were the leaders of their respective factions. If they can co-exist, so can their factions.

[...]it's pretty obvious that while both factions worked together, there was still a lot of mistrust and resentment on both sides.

Oh indeed, but just the fact, that they DID work together there, when they were enemies before, speaks volumes.

With all of this in mind, I read Medivh's quote as Orcs, Humans and Night Elves being sensible enough to work together when they have to, but not suddenly becoming friends.

"Discarded their old hatreds" implies more than just being civil for that 1 time. I am not saying they will become friends. I am saying they become allies and, for reasons stated later (and before), have no more incentive to fight one another.

Kalimdor isn't particularly rich in resources, so they absolutely had disputes - access to water, food, wood, etc.

Kalimdor was HUGE. Larger than WoW makes it out to be. And it had plenty of resources. It wasn't a wasteland, wasn't a desert. Plenty of creatures, intelligent and not so, already lived there. And these resources weren't just in Ashenvale forest. Thus, considering that an ocean now separated the Horde and the Alliance, and they had truce going on between them (with their leaders actually being friends and good diplomats), there was no reason to start wars.

They weren't concerned with the Horde and the Alliance until they pretty much strarted neighbouring both factions.

They still weren't concerned then, either. Night Elves only cared to protect themselves and their lands. Which also included protecting the world from the invasion of the Burning Legion and later - invasion of the Scourge. Night Elves didn't have any stakes in the war between Horde and Alliance, and still had no reason to join either side.

You're vastly underplaying what Grom did - he didn't just "rile them up quite bad", he murdered their demigod [...]

And the rest of the Orcs weren't responsible for that, which is why Malfurion and Tyrande have let go of their hatred for them. As for Grom - he redeemed himself by dying.

Also, Night Elves were an old and wise species. And now that they have let go of their Immortality, do you really think they'd waste their lives in a pointless war of revenge against the Horde? Absolutely not. War is not a kid's game. And lives were too precious for Night Elves to throw away on a whim.

So did the Alliance. And let's not forget - the only reason why the Night Elves survived was because they allied themselves with other races, which is a huge reason to not want to stay neutral.

The opposite - it's a huge reason to STAY neutral. Because Night Elves owed to both Horde and Alliance, as did the other two to each other. Especially considering, that, as you pointed out, the Horde was much closer to Night Elves than Alliance. Why in the world would Night Elves fight their very neighbours, who helped save them?

As far as I remember, the Orcs really needed these resources, so they couldn't just forget about them and while Thrall tried to solve this issue diplomatically, which eventually lead to Night Elves forfeiting Azshara to the Orcs, it quickly became apparent that it wasn't enough, because while the Orcs were great at chopping down trees, they sucked at taking care of the land and making sure that it can provide for them in the long run.

Few short points about this:

• Kalimdor was not limited to Ashenvale, Barrens and (later) Durotar;
• Ashenvale and Azshara were not the only areas with trees;
• Tauren have existed there for... millennia and were very close to Elves, in terms of views;
• Tauren joined the Horde;
• Thrall gathered wisdom from Cairne and applied it.
• Thrall was a good diplomat.

Also, saying that orcs were not good at managing the land seems... ridiculous. Orcs were tribesmen before coming to Azeroth. Being much like Elves, though not as advanced... So like tauren. They'd know how manage their land. Especially with the help of tauren.

As for the Warsong Clan... First of all, without demons blood corrupting them, they'd be far more manageable. Secondly, they would need a new leader, and Thrall was already warchief. Lastly, Thrall would punish them severely if they were endangering peace, and thus, endangering the entire Horde. Thrall proved he's capable of this when he defeated Grom.

I'll respond to the rest tomorrow, because it's darn late

I very much await.

 

[Venombite]

Considering that now, we go to a place where souls of beings that died go, and team up with either Angels, Necromancers, weird beings from vintage Disney, or Vampires and help them all either stop the master of Hell, not actually the Devil but something similar, allied with Sylvanas, or break their ties to him. And in the end Anduin, a living human king, becomes evil and assassinates the Archangel, but doesn't kill her, to steal some mark from her chest.....

Yeah, finding any logic has become pretty much ridiculous.

 

[MasterBlaster]

I'll respond to your answer eventually - probably not today, because it takes time to write huge posts like these ones

Still, I just want to say that I do appreciate a fun discussion

--- Part 2 of my original answer ---

Why in the world did Blood Elves join Horde? If Blood Elves were even aware of Horde's existence in Kalimdor, they would only be aware that the Horde consisted of orcs, who were essentially left-overs from the Second Invasion.

Now, this is something that I can agree on - the Blood Elves joining the Horde was bizarre, but my issue with it is a bit different than yours and has more to do with the Forsaken than the Elves. How so?

As far as I know, the main reasons why the Blood Elves joined the Horde were that a) they were heavily lobbied to do so by the Forsaken who helped them a couple of times, b) the Amani trolls (which were the driving force behind High Elf issues with the Horde) no longer being a part of the faction and c) Quel'thalas being in such a poor state that it needed allies, preferably nearby. All of these are fair, but...

The Blood Elves had probably the most reasons to hate the undead and while the Forsaken were no longer a part of the Scourge and were led by Sylvanas, I find it very hard to believe that the Blood Elves could ever consider them as anything else than abominations and enemies, let alone view them as trustworthy enough to be allies. If anything, I think that the Forsaken being a part of the Horde should be a huge reason for the Blood Elves to NOT join the faction, regardless of how hard Sylvanas tried to picture her people in a good light.

Moreover, Sylvanas allied herself with Garithos when she was fighting the Dreadlords only to later betray him. It's possible and even likely that some of Garithos' men escaped and spread their story, meaning that the news of Sylvanas' treachery and untrustworthiness probably reached the Blood Elves at some point. If so, it makes it even more strange that the Blood Elves chose to trust the Forsaken.

And then there's the fact that even though Garithos was a xenophobic jackass, that's still not as bad as allying with Amani Trolls and invading your homeland, which is what the Horde did. And remember, Garithos was just one person, not even a king, but a simple general, so while I understand that his actions might have been taken badly by the Blood Elves, they weren't representative of the rest of the Alliance, e.g. the Dwarves or Stormwind, for instance. As a result, Alliance still should have been the preferred option for the Blood Elves.

The only reasonable argument for joining the Horde was that the Forsaken were close and could more easily help Quel'thalas if needed, but that's not really much to go by. Because of this, I think Blood Elves should have stayed conveniently neutral, i.e. accepted help from the Horde and the Forsaken (because they really needed it), but avoided straight up joining the faction for a long, long time, if ever.

Much the same thing applies to Sylvanas, as does to the Blood Elves - IF she was aware of the existence of the Horde at all, she would only know them as left-overs from the Second Invasion. Not the kind of people she'd ally with. Not to mention, that the Horde themselves wouldn't allow an Undead to go anywhere near them.

The Forsaken had to ally someone. Why? Because they were hated by the living due to being Undead, so chances were that sooner or later someone would come after them, e.g. maybe the Alliance would try to retake Lordaeron? Or maybe the Blood Elves and/or other human nations of the Eastern Kingdoms would decide that they don't want to have undead as neighbours? And then there also was the Lich King. Not only could he one day choose to attack the Forsaken, but Sylvanas wanted to get her revenge on him.

Now, the Forsaken couldn't reproduce or even raise new soldiers, so their numbers were finite. And while playing TFT, I didn't get the impression that they were insanely numerous either, especially after going through a civil war. They didn't have the strenght to defeat the Lich King and even if they were strong enough to defend against the living for a while, sooner or later their numbers would dwindle enough to no longer be able to handle Lordaeron. In other words - alone, the Forsaken were absolutely screwed. They needed allies.

And here's the thing - Sylvanas actually attempted to join the Alliance on the basis that since the Forsaken are mostly reanimated people of Lordaeron then they should be reckognized as the nation's rightful successors and allowed to "rejoin" the Alliance. That was her first choice and she sent emissaries to Stormwind, but if I remember right, they were killed on sight. Then it became apparent that the Alliance was a no go and Sylvanas approached the Horde. She simply had no other choice.

Now, why did the Horde take Sylvanas? That's a bit sketchy, but again: it actually was logical. For starters, the Horde wasn't as hurt by the Scourge as the Alliance. I mean, yeah, the Undead fought for the Legion and thus against the Horde, but they were mostly just fodder, so I wouldn't say that the Horde should "hate" the Undead on a personal level... if not for the fact that the Undead were undead, i.e. in the eyes of the living: disgusting, evil abominations. But then, the Orcs also had a history of being considered evil, so there's that.

What I'm getting at is that out of the two factions, Horde was far, far more likely to accept the Forsaken. But why would they? Politics. The Horde didn't have any holdings in Eastern Kingdoms, which means that the Alliance - which still mostly hated the Horde and could one day follow in Kul'tiras footsteps, i.e. go to Kalimdor to seek retribution for past grievances, had a huge strategic advantage. I mean, with Jaina and the Night Elves, the Alliance could strike at the Horde easily, while most of their own homeland was relatively safe.

That's where the Forsaken come in - by joining the Horde, they provided a very valuable beachhead in Eastern Kingdoms. That's huge. And ultimately, the Forsaken were in Eastern Kingdoms, i.e. even if they proved to be evil, they were far enough to not be a massive threat to the Horde or chose to betray them like they did with Garithos.

With all that in mind - why wouldn't the Horde take the Forsaken? Because they were "abominations"? Well, maybe. Still I think that given the political ramifications, it made some sense that the Horde accepted the Forsaken.

---

And as for the Forsaken staying free - I think it was possible, but the explanation that the Forsaken magically no longer could be controlled was bullshit. In my opinion a much better way to justify that would be to have Varimathras do something to make Forsaken immune to being mind controlled. After all, the Lich King was created by the Legion and the Dreadlords were meant to be his jailers, so it would actually make quite a lot of sense if Varimathras knew how to do it.

---

As for your other ideas - I disagree that the Scourge should be a recurring threat, because that's just boring, but I do agree that breaking up defeating Arthas into 2 or maybe even 3 expansion (obviously not one after another, but spread out) would have been a lot better than us just going to Northrend and killing the Lich King like it was nothing. And as for races - Night Elves in the Alliance, Forsaken stay hostile (Horde gets Ogres instead), Blood Elves stay neutral. And yes, the peace is tenous and eventually Horde and Alliance start fighting again.

 

[Amigoltu]

To answer the "Part 2 of your original answer", I present...

Part 2 of my 1st reply:

The only reasonable argument for joining the Horde was that the Forsaken were close and could more easily help Quel'thalas if needed, but that's not really much to go by. Because of this, I think Blood Elves should have stayed conveniently neutral, i.e. accepted help from the Horde and the Forsaken (because they really needed it), but avoided straight up joining the faction for a long, long time, if ever.

I see we mostly agree on Blood Elves, and them being even further dissuaded from joining the Horde because of Forsaken, was a fair point.

However, there are a few things to point out:
First of all, would the Blood Elves really need that help so much now, that Amani trolls have been defeated anyways? If I remember correctly, High Elf and Human coalition destroyed the Amani trolls (for the most part) long before Arthas' rampage in Quel'thalas.

Secondly, even if they did, who would they turn to? Again, how did Blood Elves even come in contact with the Horde? And why would they even try to make an alliance with leftovers-of-burning-legion from across the ocean? Warcraft, even with all it's magic, was not modern times - communication over such distances was difficult and traversing them physically was even harder.

The Forsaken had to ally someone. Why? Because they were hated by the living due to being Undead, so chances were that sooner or later someone would come after them

If, for the time being, we ignore the more likely possibility that Sylvanas and entire Forsaken would have been taken back under LK's mental control, then...

I can agree that the Alliance would most likely not have aided Sylvanas. However, would Sylvanas try to contact the Horde? Two recurring problems come up - her lack of knowledge about the Horde, and the distance between them. Those two problems alone are big enough, that I believe, Sylvanas would have tried something different before that. For example:

• Try to split the Human kingdoms sneakily - find or found organizations similar to Cult of the Damned.
• Turn different kingdoms (like Stromgarde and Stormwind) against one another.
• Use magic to make agents of Forsaken look like humans.
• (?)Try to aid the remnants of Amani. (Not sure if there are enough of them to matter)
• Turn to Blood Elves - Sylvanas could meet them personally (maybe), in disguise that would make her look more like her Elven form.
• Don't align with anyone - use disguises and magic to hide away in the Plaguelands or elsewhere. Wait out for a good opportunity to weaken human kingdoms or get more troops. Or both.

Any of these, and possibly more, would have come before even considering to contact the Horde.

Now, the Forsaken couldn't reproduce or even raise new soldiers, so their numbers were finite.

If we are still ignoring the possibility of Forsaken not being taken back under LK's control, then we also can accept that Forsaken can Raise dead on their own. Thus, they shouldn't run out of troops as long as there are enough corpses/graveyards for them to harvest.

(Now that I think about it - this could tie into Forsaken pitting humans against one another. Starting a war in Eastern Kingdoms would give the Forsaken plenty of corpses to harvest.)

The Horde didn't have any holdings in Eastern Kingdoms

Why would they need them? They are stronger when on the defensive in Kalimdor (attacking/besieging party is always at a disadvantage) and they have no need for anything in Eastern Kingdoms.

Alliance - which still mostly hated the Horde and could one day follow in Kul'tiras footsteps, i.e. go to Kalimdor to seek retribution for past grievances

That is not happening, not any time soon at least. Jaina allowed defeat of Admiral Proudmoore (her own father) in order to keep the peace with the Horde. And she made a permanent station in Theramore Island instead, to keep the peace. Alliance wouldn't go against her.

As for your other ideas - I disagree that the Scourge should be a recurring threat, because that's just boring

Alright, on the one hand, this may be subjective. For me, the idea of the Scourge being a permanent threat would be interesting.

On the other hand - realistically, how would the forces of the Living make any ground in Northrend? Arthas, after fusing with Ner'zhul, became (one of) the most powerful being on Azeroth. And not only had the armies of undead humans at his disposal, but also nerubians, as well as his agents in Eastern Kingdoms - if I am not mistaken, Cult of the Damned was still alive, disguised among humans. Not to mention all the Undead still left in Eastern Kingdoms.

Who knows? Maybe Arthas would have even lured a relatively powerful human warrior to him, only to utterly defeat him and turn into his champion (like what was done to him), in order to renew his conquest of the Eastern Kingdoms.

Either way, I don't see the forces of the Living actually taking him out in Northrend. Not without another powerful artifact like Eye of Sargeras.

And yes, the peace is tenous and eventually Horde and Alliance start fighting again.

Nope As explained in Part 1 of my 1st reply.