Blizzard forced the Horde to be ‘fine’ with the ending of the War of Thorns - and in turn the genocide of the Night Elves. This ruined BfA's structural foundation, and wasted the faction conflict expansion's story.

Title says it all pretty much. Long read, so settle in.1 - Setting the ToneThe War of Thorns was a rushed mess that - from a lore standpoint - is painful to even try and respect. Let’s set the tone of the post with a little summary:The Burning Legion was defeated, and the world is at a subtle peace. Families are grieving the loss of the soldier that fell during battle, and the Horde and Alliance are - while at odds due to the events in Stormhiem - on a pretty even base. With Sargares’ sword deep in Azeroth, the world now bleeds Azerite, and both sides are scavenging to get it. Be it whomever is at fault - Alliance spies sabotaging or Goblin miners assaulting any Alliance that got close, tensions were high.Sylvanas Windrunner plants within Saurfang the seeds of doubt in Alliance leadership. Explaining how by alienating the Kaldorei and taking Ashenvale, Darkshore, and Darnasses it would cause a schism within the Alliance while also securing their foothold on Kalimdor. The Kaldorei would cry for vengeance and seek to retake the tree, the Worgen would be appalled at how quickly they would get the help, and it would cause a sense of infighting within the faction. With this in mind, troops were rallied, war machines were built, and the campaign was set for taking the World Tree.After an APPARENTLY SEAMLESS taking of Ashenvale with a perfect alignment of rogues (while murdering several civilians in the process) and moving to invade Darkshore, the Horde had intentions of TAKING the tree. Auberdine - the last line of defense - was taken, and the Horde had complete control over the Night Elven territories.Now, let’s move past all of the messy writing involved in this entire summary and remember this is how it went down, and this is what has - in its most simple of terms - got the Horde to the point of being at the World Tree.2 - Where it all goes wrong.The Sylvanas Warbringer shows us the fruition of the invasion, and at that, where everything comes crashing down from a lore perspective and makes the rest of BfA seem like an absolute wash - at least for the Horde player.Sylvanas Windrunner chose to burn the tree - not out of outrage from a single Kaldorei tilting her to burn it as funny as that seems - but now we know from the motive of siding with Death. However, from the past view, when we first got into BfA without lack of knowledge of the Maw or the Shadowlands expansion, this was here trying to ‘kill hope’ in the Alliance. To show that there truly is no way they can fight the Horde without losing so much in the process.What Blizzard probably assumed was a ‘good’ enough hook was them being the most out of touch with their fanbase in a long time.In the Old Soldier video Saurfang doesn’t explain in outrage at the genociding of the Night Elves, but instead speaks of how ‘They will come for us all’. The statement holds a lot of weight, both from a strategist's point of view given the war that they were in, along with how they were trying to give the feel of the war for the Hordes perspective. It wasn’t anger at Sylvanas’ killing literally only civilians within the tree, it was how stupid she was being because she would have the Alliance rally against the actions of the War of Thorns.The War of Thorns was always painted to have the Horde go along with the war, even when the Horde Player Character was given choice during the War of Thorns. The only reason they were given such a choice was to dwell the rising flame of outrage from the Burning of Teldrassil.3 - The setting of IgnoranceFrom that point on, the Horde’s story was set on completely ignoring the War of Thorns from any kind of standpoint besides the later sets of the War Campaign - where it’s not even brought up but having major lore characters speak out against how ‘The Horde is at a Crossroads once again’. They chose to show to the Horde Player that it’s best to focus on the war now, and not dwell on the actions of the past.They do this BECAUSE if they did, it would look far too much like the growing doubt the Horde Player had in MoP.You didn’t have a Vol’jin to go to and speak about the growing doubt within the Horde, you didn’t have a quest running around with Sylvanas killing people and raising them as skeletal slaves. You didn’t have a quest where Garrosh speaks of turning Pandaria into more fuel for the grand ORCISH Horde machine. You simply had small snippets during the war you were forcefully tossed into that spoke about how ‘some’ people were ‘not happy’ with how the war is going.That is completely on purpose.This was made to terribly cover up the sense of comparison between the two expansions, and make it so that we wouldn’t know the true outcome of the war - even when we all assumed to know how it was going to end. We knew that Sylvanas would not end the expansion as Warchief, and those that did assumed to have some sense of pride that the character had reasoning to have it all make sense. Maybe the Tree was corrupted completely by N’Zoth, maybe it was truly selfish pride in the Forsaken.Or maybe it was just to cover the insane Horde leaders motives for their next plot of the plan. Just like Garrosh (in a sense, even if Garrosh was tossed into his role by a Bronze Drake).This does so much harm in so many directions, it sends me into a gods damned nerdrage induced whirlwind.For one, the Horde seem complacent for the genocide. They seem fine with the war even with it being set on a foundation of the ashes of innocents, even when the majority of the Horde are seeking refuge and a time to build after the terrible war against Sargares’ armies.Second, it makes the entire war for the Horde player seem shaky at best, and most of the time - especially with what Nathanos has you doing for Sylvanas in means to learn and do damage to the Alliance and Kul Tirans - feel dirty. Raising Derek Proudmoore and seeking to turn him into a mind controlled assassin, for one, is already a setting a point for what direction the Horde is going.Third, and this goes back to the main point of the argument, it builds up a sense of forgettable ignorance that makes us continue to shrug off about how the entire war starts. It built up a sense of doubt - it caused the player on the Horde side to think if this war is right - but it was never right to begin with. There is so much wrong with the beginning of the war that it not only makes the Horde player feel like a tool (Which I understand is the point, but it isn’t enjoyable for the fucking FACTION PRIDE expansion), but also makes them seem like an idiot following through with genocide.It’s terrible writing for the sake of keeping the ‘this makes sense’ part of our brain going, and that makes the expansions stories feel lackluster and boring.4 - ConclusionThis built up sense of careless ‘forget the past, focus on the present in the future’ not only made for a terrible experience storywise for the Horde, but also truly was shoddy - and shady - writing on Blizzards end to try and hide the ending of the Fourth War. It made the experience for a large majority of the playerbase angry at the outcome, and made the entire war-section of Battle for Azeroths story absolutely senseless.The Horde feel like mindless tools that follow the command of their selfish Warchief.The Kaldorei feel like a wick for the flames that are promptly forgotten about and achieve vengeance in a single Warfront.The Alliance - truly the only people that got a proper story IMHO for the War Story - feel put to the side and forgotten as the story once more revolves around the Horde and their troubled leadership.All for the sake of making the War Story seemingly not end with a Garrosh 2.0.There was no fair fighting, there was no balanced story that made everything seem morally grey, there WAS no proper storytelling in THE FACTION WAR expansion. It was set on the precident of a terrible point in WoW’s history that made a year of storytelling feel beyond forced because they didn’t want people to compare it to another expansions MUCH BETTER telling of a faction war.But don’t worry, characters like Azshara and N’Zoth were wasted on single patches instead of having their own expansions, and peace is here because of them.Yeah, it’s here with the Kaldorei without a home, forever having a vendetta against the Horde because they seamlessly followed their Warchief into a useless war due to terrible sense of portraying the faction war, and the Horde having a truly permanent stain on their vest with being okay with what happened up until the end. Which is NOT how it should have been, because that is not the modern Horde. It's crappy storytelling to get the expansion from Point A to B in the fastest way possible so that we can take on N'Zoth and segway into Shadowlands. It was done in such a way that makes World of Warcraft NOT feel like a living breathing universe, but a video game. Which, it is, but you want to be immersed by your MASSIVE FANTASY UNIVERSE.This is the type of shit that makes lore junkies like me roll my eyes and say ‘why even bother’ when trying to understand the story because it feels so fake.