The New 'World of Warcraft' Storyline Made Me Feel Like a War Criminal

When the goblin set fire to the building I’d just pulled half-dead Elven civilians from, I started to feel bad about myself. I was playing World of Warcraft, digging into a game I loved a decade ago but hadn’t played since. I reconnected with old friends, rediscovered old areas, and learned all the weird and fun ways the game had changed in ten years. Then something that happened that made me pay attention to the game’s story—something I never did the last time I played it. The game made me an accomplice to war crimes in Azeroth.

World of Warcraft is steeped in several decades of lore, but at its core it’s always been about the Horde versus the Alliance. The Alliance is a collection of classic fantasy races such as Night Elves, Humans, and Dwarves while the Horde is a collection of oddities such as the Undead, Orcs, and Trolls. Players pick a faction and race when they begin the game—I’ve always played the Horde. They looked cooler and were morally grey, but never outright evil. Until now.

In the game’s story, the Horde and the Alliance have just finished a huge war against a common foe. Once they won, however, they quickly turned against each other. In the runup to the release of the game’s upcoming seventh expansion Battle for Azeroth, players are participating in quests that tell the story about how the newest war starts.

An Undead named Sylvanas Windrunner leads the Horde. During the most recent section of quests, she burned down a Night Elf holy site and their capital city of Darnassus. I, and millions of other Horde players, helped her do it. Over the past 14 years, countless players have spent thousands of hours moving through Darnassus’ nooks and crannies. It was an iconic location. Now, when you look in its direction, all you see is a burning pire.

I felt terrible playing through those missions. The shock of it pulled me out of what I call WoW stupor. When I play a game like WoW, I tend to ignore the bulk of the story. I’m going through the motions, clicking on quests, killing monsters, and often watching a documentary or listening to a podcast while I play. WoW helps me disengage and wind down. Now that Sylvanas has burned Darnassus, I’m playing to find out what happens next. I’m finally invested in the story Blizzard is telling.

As shocking as these events were for me, Alliance players had it worse. I reached out to my friend Daniel, a long time Night Elf player, to find out how the burning of Darnassus felt from his perspective. Over Facebook, he told me he felt like he was watching a war crime “and seeing a refugee crisis in the making.”

This is a sentiment that’s being widely shared in the World of Warcraft community, with various players considering whether Sylvanas’s actions constitute war crimes, and whether they’ve been made complicit in going along with them.

Horde players watch tree-city burning. Alliance players experience it. The game gave Daniel a quest to evacuate more than 900 civilians from Darnassus, but it’s impossible to complete. “It took me a minute to realize there was a timer,” Daniel said. “I saved like 20 people… the highest I've seen on the forums was 100.” As the city burns and civilians die, the Alliance players save who they can but eventually pass out from smoke inhalation, only to wake up later as a portal opens that can move them to safety.

“All the alliance characters I ever put any real time into were Night Elves so that was an extra special gut punch for me,” Daniel said. “It was the home of their temples and wildlife and literal ancestral spirits.” The destruction of such an iconic location has struck a nerve with the fans. Some players are removing pieces of their armor as symbolic act of defiance against her leadership—an act of solidarity with a member of the Horde leadership who disagreed with Sylvanas.

The story, and the accompanying community reactions, have me excited for the game in a way I never was before. World of Warcraft has always been a story-heavy game, but it always felt like a remix of other, better, fantasy stories. But Blizzard has spent the past 14 years developing these characters and using an MMO to tell a story about war and the toll it takes on those who fight it.

I started playing World of Warcraft again because all of my friends were returning and it seemed like it’d be fun to come back to a game I hadn’t played in a decade. I wanted to see what was new and feel something familiar. The game I loved is gone and what has taken its place is different and much better. I expected the graphics, systems and gameplay to get better, but I did not expect that Blizzard would draw me in with a compelling story.

WoW fans are divided on the Burning of Darnassus. Some think it’s the natural evolution of Sylvanas’ character while others think it’s sloppy writing that doesn’t make sense. Blizzard writer Chris Metzen got on Twitter to tell everyone to take a deep breath and enjoy the ride. When I came back to WoW, I knew players would be arguing about the game online, but I never expected its story to be one of the most hotly debated topics. I love it.