I finished part 2 of War of Thorns.  It is much too short.  3 quests, all done within 10 minutes (solely because the last one has a 3 minute timer).

New Warbringers video is part of that quest line.  Spoilers ahoy.

The lore nut in me sees no logic in this.  This feels a tad too much like a rehash of the Garrosh storyline, though that had some decent defense.  This… this has no justification whatsoever.  Of all the opportunities to show the Horde having growth, the lessons learned post-Garrosh, this just throws it all out the window.  Maybe this is a way to bring Thrall back into the picture?  Did we not just do this dance?

A bit more.  In this 2nd act, you can see that Saurfang is acting under the concept of honor and is torn with Sylvanas – there are many orcs that are in this line of thought.  The Tauren are not for this either.  Trolls under Vol’jin were trying a different path, one much different than this.  Goblins… no idea.  They only care about making money.  Blood Elves are a bit of a mystery… they were from here after all.  Finally the forsaken are clearly going to follow their queen.  I dunno, that seems to split the Horde pretty much in the middle, if not 80% against this.  Of course, that’s only if you care about lore at all.

Final bit, in this tiny set piece, there’s no logic in destroying one city when the faction captial still stands.  I will agree it hurt the Alliance, but it’s pretty clear that there’s at least one counterstrike (Lordaeron for starters).

From an in-game lens, this more or less splits both continents into Horde / Alliance.  Given that leveling is scaled throughout, it means that 1-60 you’ll only ever see your faction. BC/WotLK is the first time you’ll see another faction, which is odd.  It does line up with the BfA island being split.

Long-term, we all know this is an Old Gods expansion.  Dollars to donuts, Sylvanas just became a raid boss when that reveal is done.  Maybe there will be some justification of these actions at that point.  Until then, the Horde is painted as the instigators and the bad guys.  There’s no shades of grey here.  I’d like to say that there’s a larger storyline, some redemption arc for Sylvanas.  Time will tell.

I can’t say that I’m disappointed, as my expectations for this entire line were extremely low.  Seems the initial reactions are similar.

In contrast to the previous Warbringers vid (Jaina), this is extremely deflating.