But in all fairness to peon taskmasters, Peons really are lazy and were sleeping on the job. And we didn’t give Goblins slums they made them themselves. We gave them some prime real estate in the Valley of Spirits and look what they did to it.
There’s a whole quest chain as part of the Vulpera recruitment scenario about peon’s rights. They formed a Union. (or at least they tried to but Baine ordered that we disrupt that Union because it’s in the Horde’s best interests.) Foreman Magrok is gonna be Warchief one day, the Horde better watch out. We live in a democracy now!
The quest chain is “Peon Promotions” and it’s one of the biggest gags in wow history but it does feel really on the nose with the current state of Blizzard-Activision.
The Horde doesn’t have a problem with poverty or social inequality.
But the Horde does have a negative impact on the environment which is the biggest political criticism of the Horde. From the Goblins and their excessive pollution, to the Orcs and de-forestation, to the Forsaken and their bio-hazard warfare. The Horde is single-handily the biggest internal threat to the planet.
Not sure what’s worse, the Alliance which treats people badly, or the Horde which treats the planet badly. That’s why I personally think the whole “For Azeroth!” show in BFA from the Horde to be hypocritical.
Which races of the Alliance have problems with social inequality and poverty? The Western Territory is mentioned all the time, I don’t remember any other examples.
As I understand it, goblins have no problem with social inequality, since all goblins start from the very bottom, because goblins see a competitor in EVERYONE?
it’s 100% mostly Humans of Stormwind. That’s why this argument is aimed at Ainhin who thinks Humans in wow have never done anything bad ever and anyone who questions the bad things the Humans of Stormwind have ever done is wrong.
He’s the one who brought up Edwin Vancleef, a human, who is outspokenly anti-Alliance, as a negative. Edwin Vancleef was an Alliance hero, and still is. An Alliance hero who dared to stand up against an unjust king and was murdered for it.
the story with Vancleef was: Tiffin Wrynn was way better at politics than Varian was, and she orchestrated that Stormwind be rebuilt using the money from the Aristocracy of Westfall (because that’s where she was from.) It was led by Edwin Vancleef who at the time was good friends with both Varian and Shaw. He had a special relationship with Shaw that goes all the way back to both being trained as rogues under Ravenholdt.
Edwin and his skilled laborers from Westfall rebuilt Stormwind after the Second War. Stormwind was poor at that point and heavily had to borrow from rich aristocrats, and Stormwind was also expected to pay for some of the expenses of the Alliance of Lordaeron such as the building and upkeep of orc concentration camps, the building of strongholds in the blasted lands to watch the Dark Portal etc, so Stormwind at the time was financially stretched really thin. Especially with the strongholds in Blasted Lands because the reasoning was Stormwind would get hit again first. Varian actually got Genn Greymane to pay for most of his share.
Varian was worried that these noble lords would get too much power if Stormwind owed them too much money, and he knew Stormwind wouldn’t be able to pay back for years maybe even decades, so when the time came to pay the workers Varian promised to pay them later. This became a hot political issue because the workers who were mostly farmers needed to be paid for their work now. There was a protest in Stormwind which erupted into violence and an angry worker threw a rock at Varian and Tiffin, hitting Tiffin in the head and killing her via blunt force trauma.
Varian was enraged by the death of Tiffin and outright refused to pay the workers who he blamed for killing Tiffin. the Aristocrats having spent all thier money to rebuild stormwind were now poor and with no promise from the king to repay them back they became political vigilantes led by Edwin Vancleef. The situation in Wesfall is based entirely on the idea that someone had to pay for Tiffin’s death and the people of Westfall are the ones paying for it with their blood, hence the red bandanas, since many workers died to build Stormwind.
Imagine accusing others of being racists and sexists while simultaneously using far-right talking points to defend your video game faction’s slave-based economy
Not even talking about forsaken raising everyone as zombies against their will. If what Arthas did to Sylvanas is so bad then horde has a race of lil’ Arthases running around.
Also if liking Garithos and Daelin makes me a racist then I don’t want to know what Sylvanas fans are.
I feel as if that isn’t fair. WotLK era plot points indicated there’s some gladiator slaves, which are hardly the driving force of the Horde’s entire economy. Slavery hasn’t been mentioned in game for the mainstream Horde since and I doubt it will be any time soon, I suspect Blizzard wants to avoid controversy there.
I’m not trying to excuse the fact that the Horde had or has slaves (I think they should abolish it at this point though). But it’s not central to the Horde economy. The Horde isn’t the Confederate States of America haha
I think Ainhin meant peons, they are basically badly paid/unpaid mentally impaired worker drones who get mocked by everyone. That’s the real big oof in the game, not some gladiator slaves.
This is true for the Kalimdor Horde for the most part, but the EK Horde has been all in on slavery since day one. The Forsaken literally built slave camps for their captives in Hillsbrad and Gilneas, and that isn’t even getting into the violation that raising someone into undeath entails.
Even the Blood Elves employed slave labor until recently.
Like in a lot of cases when discussing the Horde, you’re really talking about two entities. The Kalimdor Horde, which is dysfunctional but at least has significant elements in it who try to do the right thing, and the EK Horde, which is unapologetically opportunistic and ruthless and in many cases, revels in abusing others. The Forsaken are responsible for the bulk of this and its that element of them that turned me off of them early.
Ainhin is trying to point fingers to hid the fact that he doesn’t want to deal with the glaringly obvious truth that the Alliance had concentration camps and that’s just as bad as anything the Horde has done, it might even be worse. He just wants to live in a world of Alliance and human supremacy and doesn’t want to admit the Alliance is also morally grey.
He’s just a kid, mad that his favorites are not the undeniable “good guys” he wants them to be.
And here I was thinking we have no ties to Lordaeron. So what is it? If you are claiming Lordaeron with everything, you get a slice of the internment camp pie too.
I never said the Humans have no history with Lordaeron.
But I side with Lenastus with this, the humans will have a hard time reclaiming Lordaeron now that it belongs to the Forsaken and the Forsaken shouldn’t have to give it up unless by force.
Let’s fight over it again, the Forsaken have been fighting off humans for Lordaeon for 15 years, this isn’t a new fight for them, it’s a fight they have been winning, Calia being the leader of the Forsaken will not change that but you are welcome to your headcanons.
This is also a good point. While in the Alliance (at least among the humans) society seems to be structured around feudal social norms (albeit with more early modern influence than medieval influence given humanity’s increased urbanization and the growing power of its merchant class) the Orcs at the very least are structured as a caste system with a dominant warrior class and martial skill is used for political legitimacy, almost like a Shogunate.