Horde's identity without the Alliance?

Lore Story Forum
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This is something I have seen brought up a few times and it also a subject brought up by Horde players who shake their fists at blizzard because once again their story is about being the evil to Alliance’s good.

And I get it. Reading A Good War had me rolling my eyes at unprecedented levels.
So have no doubt on how I think this story began with a pretty dumb premise and Blizzard can’t seem to be able write anything Horde centric without resorting to some sort of Alliance vs Orc war.
Having said that I hope we can push the discussion past this point.

What is Horde’s identity without comparing itself to the Alliance?
The Alliance is not monolithic unlike the Horde but Blizzard has taken measures to solidify them the same way as the Horde. Which has been controversial to say the least.

The Alliance is just that. An alliance. So each member is defined by their kingdom and their own history and background. So a Dwarf player is defined first by Ironforge and Dwarvish history and lore before they belong to the Alliance and the world is full of Dwarvish lore from low level starting zone to later Titan history. And thats just one race.
Some races like Humans are defined much more with their attachement to the Alliance much more than their own past however hence why this Highking business doesn’t fly with most Alliance players.

Ironically Alliance players don’t want to be defined by the Alliance. That’s exactly the opposite for the Horde. At least as I see it.
The Horde emblem, their motto, the organization itself takes more importance than their individual race or members it seems and yet despite having such importance I can’t find anything beyond just the surface level description.

Being an underdog? Well does that mean if the Horde is presented as strong in certain instances then they are losing that identity?
Is it a story of redemption? Well gee, they have done anything but try to redeem themselves and characters like Saurfang falling into the same pitfalls just doesn’t help either.

So what is the Horde? Perhaps defining that we could better understand BFA’s current problem. Because sometimes in fandom we, personally, may be projecting our own mistaken interpretations upon an entity that their creators never intended.
Some Horde posters cheer on Sylvanas while others are disgusted. I would like to understand why this dichotomy exists so prelevently within the Horde playerbase.

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Terrible at picking leaders, thats what they are.

Like, it obvious that they are not the W1-W2 esque demonic infused monsters that existed for bloodlust and power alone, that only knew how to kill, kill, and kill.

But honestly, they’re so bad a picking leaders that the end result is pretty similar- imo if the horde is to move forward they need to do away with the warchief position and install something like a council (as to not have a single fallible individual hold all the power and reflect the diversity of the faction.)

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The Horde is a nation. Specifically, it’s a confederate nation of several racial factions. The different factions come together in the Horde for the purpose of common defense and pooling of resources (“alliance of convenience”). They are willing to trust the Horde with a portion of their sovereignty because they see a shared sense of purpose, camaraderie, and loyalty (“the Horde is family”).

Horde citizens seem to identify simultaneously with their racial factions and with the Horde as a whole. The racial faction is the higher identity, but the Horde is the primary identity.

Most of the Horde’s common institutions exist on the orcish model. Each racial faction has its own local institutions and government.

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This is what they were from Vanilla to Wrath. The Horde was a collection of races that banded together because they all had threats that they couldn’t handle on their own. While some of them were friends, there were others that were clearly only there because they had to be, and I think that’s why the Horde worked.

But then Cataclysm happened, and they went from being underdogs to aspiring world conquerors, and many of the major threats that forced them to seek out allies were dealt with.

You’re also not wrong.

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I think the thing is, the Horde isn’t different from the Alliance at all. It’s part of the tragic element of the story of the two factions. They actually have more in common than not.

The Horde is a faction founded by Orcs, shaped by Orcish culture, as a military coalition united behind a single office, filled by a single individual, the Warchief. The purpose of the Warchief is to fairly look after the interests of the entire Horde, rather than any single group, or to the exclusion of one or more groups.

The Alliance is a faction founded by Humans, shaped by Human culture, as a military coalition united behind a single office, filled by a single individual, the High King (previously the Supreme Allied Commander). The purpose of the High King/S.A.C. is to protect the Alliance’s lands, peoples, and interests without bias, as a whole, rather than focusing on any specific nation’s benefit, or to the exclusion of one or more nations.

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Well, until Garrosh took control that was.

There was the short-lived redemption of that while Voljin was in charge but that didn’t last long.
At least Silvanias PRETENDS to care about the other Races…
sometimes…

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The horde can be defined as the cancer of azeroth.

just look at them trying to win a war at all cost not caring about the world, hopefully they succeed so at least they die.
sadly, is a playable faction.

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It’s very simple.

We have two factions. Both need to be well developed so that the judgment made by NPCs and players immersed in the lore of the opposing faction appear to be at least misleading and distorted.

I’ll try to be very brief. Legion was mostly focused on the Alliance. Zones, characters, leaders, “neutral” protagonists, classhall and bases, etc. At the same time we had little development on the part of the Horde beyond that defeat in Stormheim.

I confess that something that made me long for a faction war expansion at that time was to see more of my own leaders doing something useful and having a developmental focus, like Lor’themar, Baine, etc. (I just did not think I was going to see more of Jaina than my own leaders, and most of the time it would be them running or dying for her in BfA lol #bewarefactionpride).

You can understand a little of where I want to go. The Horde has not had a satisfactory development of its leaders for about three years. Even in this expansion of pseudo faction war we barely know what other leaders are doing and thinking about the war (like Lor’themar, Geya’rah, Thalyssra), the others have not demonstrated or quoted their people and/or interest in defending them (Saurfang, Baine).

It is difficult for us to define ourselves with outdated content, the only ones that are defining us in this expansion are by irony the leaders that are being developed in the Alliance (Greymane, Jaina, Alleria, Turalyon, Anduin…). Under normal circumstances the fallacy of the antagonistic characters would be just some crap with no deep foundations. But as it is the only definition that we have we are emotionally even more linked to the standard of “villain” that we are receiving, besides the always dubious Sylvanas and her actions, and the exhaustive moral judgments of allies that deserted of the Horde without thinking twice and even of Alliance trash mobs.

They are doing a lousy job on one of the most basic things possible on the premise of the game. It is not surprising that the experience (/yawn faction pride) is so unbalanced and uncomfortable for one side.

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Without the Alliance, the Horde is the empire that rules Azeroth with strength and honor.

We are the Klingons without the Federation getting in our way.

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The Horde is defined as ‘That one group of nations that actually tries to better itself and understand the world around it, rather then simply submitting to the powers that be and be consumed by it.’

That’s the way I see them anyway, all the Horde races save the Tauren have a history of rebelling against nature, against the Light, against the things we commonly define as ‘good’ and in that resistance gain a better fundamental understanding of the universe. In this way, despite the recent plotlines of MoP and BfA, the Horde is freedom incarnate.

To be Horde is to command the elements, rather then be commanded by them. It is to draw on the shadow within oneself and shape ones destiny, rather then let destiny shape you, it is to drink in the arcane, the fel, all the wicked little magics that the world would have you stay away from and rebuild a city in a day with them. It is to recognize the world is not your friend, that nature is inherently cruel, that the Light would have you be a slave and the void devour you whole, to be Horde is to know that something exists beyond the narrow vision the planet lays out for us.

But it is not to be conquered by these forces, to the contrary we wield them with a seamless grace that resists temptations that would corrupt the weaker, more ignorant, people of Azeroth. This is because we have suffered, we have endured, to be Horde is a paradox, it is to be a conqueror born of what should be the conquered. The downtrodden, the once corrupted, the once enslaved, those who have been crushed the most by the weight of the world are the ones who are shaped to be it’s strongest. It rejects the notion that the meek shall inherit this earth, that to succeed you must be as a wild horse taken to the bridle, that you must channel your strength in the service of God…or in this case the myriad forces of Azeroth, and instead states that the wildness is what makes us strong.

For to be wild is to be free, to be unshackled, to be unfettered, to embrace life to it’s fullest. To be Horde is to live lives that are painful, brutish, short, but filled with meaning and emotion. To be Horde is to be the storm, to be filled with rage, with sorrow, with hatred, with joy, with love, and to reject the stringent rules that would see these emotions bound and controlled. To be Horde is to not be a slave, not to humanity, not to the Lich King, not to the Legion, and not to yourself.

To be outside the Horde is to be as a slave, to be outside the Horde is to be dead, for those not with us do not truly live. They do not make choices, they do not embrace freedom, they do not shape their own fate, they let fate take them where it may and hope that it does not lead them off a cliff. The Horde is a family, but it is a dysfunctional one: We bicker, we fight, and yes we kill one another, but we do so because what matters first and foremost is our own freedom even from the Horde itself. Brotherhood to it’s logical extreme is for sheep,

This freedom can be used for good, or for evil, for no member of the Horde has the same sense of morality. Each nation is shaped from it’s own unique and wildly different history, each nation has been both oppressed and oppressor, each nation has both the conquerer and the conquered, and it is through this violence we find what bonds us together as well as what sets us apart.

The Horde is too many things to name, but this sense of expression is what sets it apart. Many complain that we oppress ourselves, that we strip ourselves of our cultural identity far more then our rivals ever did, yet between the two of us which of us actually cares about our cultures? which of us will fight with one another and die over those differences? which of us speaks the most loudly when it comes to tradition, to independence, to our right to be something beyond what the world would have us be? To be a member of the Horde is to be culturally rich, diverse, empowered.

To be Horde is to be free, to be outside the Horde is to be as dust.

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How very Roman of you lol! But I actually do like your premise of what the Horde should represent; I just feel like we’ve put increasingly too much emphasis on the fear of being “consumed” by particular blue faction, and less on the “betterment of itself and understanding the world around it”.

As much as I make the comment that the Horde doesn’t have much of an identity left, I will admit that we do have a spectacular foundation for it. The Core Races are SOLID thematically, and every Allied race we’ve gotten has only enhanced (and rounded out) the faction IMO. I really do love the additions of the Highmountain, Nightborne, Mag’har, and Zandalari, AND I think it was because of you Darr that I truly do now want the addition of the Vulpera as the Goblin allied race.

Our remaining representatives (setting aside Sylvie for the moment) are all characters I truly want to see continued to be fleshed out; or ingrained more fully into the Horde (like Rexxar, Voss, Garona, and Gazlowe). Characters like Geya’rah and Mayla need the most work, but there is something to work with there at least; while characters like Nathanos, Rokhan, and Baine I actually like seeing develop. I just wish I didn’t have this sneaking suspicion Saurfang will die soon…

Personally, I just think we need some distance from the Alliance for a while to sort out our own crap; whatever we need for that. We need to realign what we stand FOR before worrying about what we stand AGAINST. I’d like Thrall back in some form (not as the World Shaman, but just as Thrall of the Horde), but I also think the Warchief position needs to be done away with; or overhauled hard to be less of an issue. A bit more emphasis on a Council System would be a nice change of pace (we’ve got the diversity for it); provided factions are even a thing after BfA in any capacity. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I would find that more believable if there was any evidence for it.
If the Horde can’t maintain its strenght and honor with an Alliance to keep it in check what chance does it have to uphold that strenght and honor without it?

This isn’t the Horde’s first rodeo in trying to wipe a people out of existence.

That sounds pretty racist, for a lack of a better word. Seems confrontational based solely on the fact that “if you ain’t part of us then you are against us” and “to be part of us you must bend the knee to our leader the warchief”

In essence, the only way to be free is to surrender your autonomy to our collective which is ruled by a tyrant we elect.

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I agree with the assessment that we focused too much on the fear of the other as opposed to the understanding of the self. When I made that post it was essentially a mental exercise I put myself through when reading the question, what did I FEEL like the Horde was?

When I think Horde I conjure a lot of mental images: War, fire, shadow, earth, explosions, rustic technology, fel fire, arcane magic, mighty fortresses, large campsites in the desert, outlaws like pirates and bandits, lots of colors: Red, green, purple, brown…the list goes on.

When I think about the Horde intensely I can actually crystallize the ideal rather easily, it’s surprisingly well defined when I fixate on what it is. I’m biased of course because my background is red rather then blue, but that is funnily enough not something I can easily do when trying to picture what the Alliance represents.

I think knight in shining armor, blue and gold in the sunlight, and then it kind of…stops.

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Doesn’t really have anything to do with race, you could be a leper gnome for all I care in the Horde, you wouldn’t be the first. Rather it is a condemnation of political ideologies that exist outside the Horde, that the Horde lives it’s life to it’s fullest capacity.

Hell even within the lore the statement ‘The only way to be free is to surrender your autonomy to our collective’ is incorrect. If we don’t like the tyrant in question we kill em, and if they try to enforce their will outside their lands and in ours as the Kor’kron do, we kill them too.

As long as you are strong, you are free.

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That’s the point I am trying to make.

If you join the Alliance you keep your autonomy, your laws, your culture and so on.
IE like Tyrande could freely over-rule Andiun and take her troops home in the middle of a war with zero consequence.

But as demonstrated in the latest Bain cinematics the Horde leaders that disagree are scared from even openly vocalizing any dissent or dissagreement.
They have surrendered far more autonomy to the Horde and its Warchief than they would have if they were part of the Alliance.

So how could the Horde be about freedom when it openly stifles it until someone stands up to yet another tyrant to kill them?
The Horde seems to be run like cartel actually.

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Pretty much because only the Horde would actually have a system where you could fight a leader you disagreed with and still remain part of the Horde. In the Alliance you’re only real recourse if you disagree with the greater Alliance’s motives is to just…well leave and in the process diminish your impact on the world as a whole, something no nation part of a global hegemony would do unless it suddenly craved irrelevancy.

A desire I don’t personally understand, but some people are just fine dying unknown.

Meanwhile the Night Elves, the Gnomes, the Dwarves, the Worgen, are at the end of the day at the mercy of Anduin and Stormwind. Sure Tyrande can stomp her feet, take her army, and go elsewhere…but she’ll still leave a group in Nazmir, in Arathi, in wherever because to actually cut the cord with the Alliance would be a step too far.

Stormwind directs the campaign, Stormwind SI:7 does most of the intel work, Stormwinds 7th legion is their elite task force, and all these multi-racial organizations are owned by the Stormwind brand and directed by Stormwind leaders to fight for a coalition that ultimately sees humans as the first among equals. Could you imagine an event as extreme as Tyrande just booting every Alliance soldier out of Darnassus(Back when it wasn’t a burning stump.) and still being part of the Alliance?

I can’t.

Because the Alliance always settles it’s issues peacefully, rather then fight it compromises, and to a degree it does indeed homogenize the nations under it. It’s not an imposed homogenization mind you, don’t get it twisted, I don’t think the Alliance forces it’s member states to conform…I just think they naturally do so because of how the Alliance is setup and gradually find themselves stripped of identity.

They are after all, a big happy family.

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In other words: The Alliance is a better Horde than Horde. Right now at any rate. Which is rather sad.

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Like the Horde, the Alliance relies on it’s member states for security, resources, and trade. There is, especially with races like the gnomes and the dwarves a massive bargaining chip with their membership. Anyone leaving the alliance could inflict some real pain on the whole body, except maybe the Kaldorei (heheheh) and maybe the worgen who are just a race of hobos at this point. This whole stupid Mak’gora thing is just a romantic leftover from orcish traditions. It’s nice, until you look at how it can be exploited, and then find out how utterly a useless waste it is.

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They could, but I don’t think they would, because their societies have pretty much integrated with Stormwind society, effectively attached at the hip. The thing that best emphasizes the difference between the Horde and Alliance in my mind is what happens when I think of cities and armies.

Bright red and gold eversprings in Silvermoon, dreary purple and green gothic undead, brown and red iron forts for the hardy orcs, brown, light blue, and white tents for the mighty nomadic tauren, etc. When push came to shove I think each of these races would fight to the death to retain it’s theme too, cultural exchanges happen sure, but everyone has their own society that pulls it’s own weight and draws it’s own strength.

When I think of Dwarves, Gnomes, Humans, Dreanei, Lightforged, and even Worgen now I think of a sea of blue and gold. It’s a problem that’s as much meta as it is in lore, I didn’t blink my eyes at Thyalssa implying the Alliance stripped it’s nations of traditions because outside the Night Elves they almost all seemed to be the same thing. The Kaldorei are basically, in my eyes, the last bastion of cultural independence in the Alliance…though the Void Elves and Dark Irons have done a LOT to alleviate that for me.

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The thing is, I wouldn’t say the Alliance strips it’s member-nations of tradition and identity. The Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and High Elves all share very similar cultures and seem homogenous specifically because these races have had thousands of years of friendly relations with one another. Their cultures have been shaped over time, with different facets being adopted by others in new ways.

For example, Elves may be the ones who brought Magic to these races, but when one thinks of a Dwarven Mage, a Gnome Mage, or a Human Mage, they all have subtle differences between them, while still sharing a strong core identity.

As another example, Dwarves are well known for their love of alcohol. Even Dalaran has a Beer Garden (if you’re Alliance), Elves are well known for their wine making, and Humans have Vineyards and grow Barley and Hops and produce their own drinks as well. The races share a love of drinking, but each in their own way.

This is why the Night Elves stick out like a sore thumb. They’ve existed longer than the Alliance has, and neither the Alliance nor the Night Elves have had the time to properly share cultures and traditions. Worgen fit well into that core Alliance grouping because they were Humans to begin with.

Interestingly, the Draenei fit rather well into that core Alliance because much of their culture is already identical to that of the Alliance’s core races. Technology, Magic, Light, etc…

Personally I’ve never seen this as a drawback, but as one of the strengths of the Alliance. They’re bound by more than mutual protection from threats such as the Horde, Scourge, or Burning Legion. They’re bound by friendships, respect, and shared experiences that stretch back well before the Alliance was even founded. The Alliance has this strong, unshakable core that always endures.

The Horde was only barely forming something similar with the Orcs, Darkspear, and Tauren, before WoW’s narrative took it down a path where the Horde would fracture.

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