Why Was The Burning Legion So (In) Effective? - WoW Lore.

Hello guys this is Doronsmovies and today I will be taking about the Burning Legion and how effective or better yet inneffective it was. Very briefly covering the lore, the army structure and past performance. So without further ado, let's get into the lore! The Burning Legion is, in my opinion, the most powerful army in the entire universe in terms of brute force as well as other aspects.

Sure there may be the Void Lords but the Burning Legion was able to mount offensive after offensive and to enslave entire planets while appearing within the material plane. The Legion was initially formed by the fallen titan Sargeras that sought to destroy all the world souls in order to prevent the void from capturing them and taking over the cosmos by creating a dark titan.

A crusade that ended up ultimately failing and creating more atrocities and problems than what they were fighting for. Nonetheless, at their peak they were an impressive army, jaw-dropping in size, with countless races, bases and destroyed worlds left behind.

The demonic army seriously threatened Azeroth and significantly altered its history although it was Azeroth that was ultimately their doom. If you look at it from this perspective we've repelled almost every single Legion attack making them very inneffective in that regard but the reality is was that every single victory was incredibly costly and devastating.

The first Legion invasion was stopped but it lead to a massive shift in power within the native races, the destruction of the well of eternity, the fall of the incredibly powerful night elven empire and ultimately the sundering that reshaped the entire planet and history.

Furthermore Legion attacked through various proxies and while we won it can hardly be called a victory. Much of the Eastern Kingdoms were destroyed by the orcish invasions, subsequently, the Scourge nearly conquered the entire planet and sealed the fate of many human kingdoms.

Then they actually invaded us and defeated our armies on the broken shore inflicting terrible casualties resulting in the death of Vol'Jin and Varian although ultimately the Legion was brought to an end. So while they did suffer many defeats it wouldn't be fair to say they weren't effective but I'd say they weren't very efficient as throughout all the conflicts they were always a giant with seemingly endless manpower and resources but were defeated by mortals and a much, much smaller force.

So let's analyze the army and their performance: Structure wise the Burning Legion is really nothing out of the ordinary, it's your regular dictator absolute power type hierarchy with Sargeras at the top calling all the shots and a few key figures ruling in his stead and coordinating the rest.

Generally, the hierarchy went like this, Sargeras, Kil'Jaeden, Archimonde, various eredar lords, pit lords, nathrezim, doomguards and then the various smaller ranks and overall cannon fodder. However what really made the Legion powerful was their secret services, the manipulation aspect.

They had some of the most intelligent if not the most intelligent races in the entire universe within their ranks. Most notably the eredar and the nathrezim. These guys were geniuses when it came to infiltrating enemy positions, creating inside conflict and destabilizing their defences.

They did everything from killing leaders and taking over factions such as the Scarlet Crusade up to finding bitter individuals and then getting them to unite an entire race to lead an invasion as was the case with Gul'Dan. All of these were incredible successes with minimal investment.

Furthermore, they experimented with undeath and planted the Lich King that only with the help of a few dreadlords took over an entire continent and half of another one in the end having a massive expendable army within the planet. If that is not efficient I don't know what is, the fact that they later rebelled is a story for another time.

Now don't let this covert operations part divert from the fact that they also had the other aspect and that is just sheer raw firepower. They possessed nearly endless sources of unstable and destructive magic as well as countless armies of demons and enslaved races that were incredible warriors.

Their basic footsoldiers - the felguards were quite a match for almost any average warrior on Azeroth, let alone monstrosities like the pitlords, doomguards and their likes. However, their biggest issue was that they could rarely get these guys in place together which is why they ended up resorting so often to covert operations.

It took a lot of energy to summon these powerful beings into Azeroth or wherever they would invade so they could only get them out on the battlefield in limited numbers. The only times on our planet when we have seen massive burning legion invasions was when there was a massive source of power available such as the well of eternity or the Tomb of Sargeras.

This fact alone is really what led to their demise and the only reason why we were able to resist them. Another extremely important aspect is that the Burning Legion was a demonic army and demons could only die within the Twisting Nether. So whoever we killed outside of the Nether would just be reborn and would attack us again in a few years or months.

This made their army essentially endless as most casualties would return to service while for the enemies that wouldn't usually be the case. So with all of these things going for them, how was the Burning Legion defeated especially by us which are statistically ants compared to them? Well, the number one thing is that we capitalized on their weaknesses as much as possible.

Whenever we faced them on equal footing it was trouble such as the Broken Shore. So we would constantly disrupt their attempts to achieve numerical superiority and then we targeted their leaders, the heads of the Burning Legion within the Twisting Nether so that once we defeat them it is over and now a huge blow is dealt to their army structure.

Furthermore, we outmanoeuvred them, organizing an attack on their base of operations on Argus, destroying the spawning engine and ultimately imprisoning Sargeras, in the end bringing the end to their Burning Crusade. So we really played to our advantages and destroyed the brain and the engine instead of facing the massive army head-on.

Nonetheless, this doesn't dispute the fact that the Burning Legion was not incompetent and was incredibly effective, ruling the entire universe for tens of thousands of years having literally no match outside of Void creatures. They significantly damaged us throughout history and almost conquered Azeroth but it was the chink in the armor that dealt the fatal blow to the Burning Legion.