How Can We Redeem/Rebuild The Horde (Actual Horde Edition)

In the sense Ogun/equivalent is often tied to the dead warriors in IRL African Diasporic, or like Agassou

A “divine ancestor warrior king” that helps Bwonsamdi care for the dead

Just need to verify something: are we expecting just the Alliance to be hilariously racist?

The thing about this is, there’s nothing inherently wrong with portraying colonialism/imperialism and racism in a video game; it’s actually been done to great effect in many other series.

But the stipulation to drawing attention to this is that the victim side has to be given the chance to fight back.

Take “The Founding of Durotar” for example. It was actually interesting to see Daelin Proudmoore waltz through the gates of Theramore Isle, his (frankly quite foreboding) presence heralded by a fleet of 18th-century frigates and a small army of Human Footmen.

It was interesting to see him as a villain whose overall theme was that he was this legendary admiral whose prowess on the water was unmatched, and thus the primary challenge for Thrall and the Horde comes in the form of all these specifically-coastal bases and encampments—the use of ships in particular as a gameplay mechanic was probably used more during the Bonus Orc Campaign than any other in Reign of Chaos or The Frozen Throne.

But what was also interesting to see was that Thrall and the Horde had a chance of fighting back, gaining the upper hand, and ultimately, securing victory against what was (initially) a superior opponent.

With things like The Battle of Dazar’alor, we got none of that; the Horde was portrayed as so clearly-overwhelmed and powerless vs. the mighty Alliance that it was disgraceful to watch.

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Goblins and Gnomes should be mutually racist to comedic effect, sort of like the Gallywix vs Mekkatorque banter but more.

Trolls should still harbor resentment not only to the Alliance as a whole especially the Humans, but also to the Blood Elves and to a lesser extent the Forsaken due to the Amani Troll Wars.

etc.

Side note given Mekkatorque is Iron-Man now, Gazlowe probably needs an Anime-Mech themed a la Gundum powerup.

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No.

Less of the Garithos, more of the Daelin.

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Well I’m not sure we will ever be “fixed”, the problems are pretty big after all.

The power and tech imbalances between the factions are so immense that we can’t really have a cold war. I don’t want to kill half of the Alliance roster because I don’t believe in breaking someone else’s toys to make things better. So I personally would add to the Horde instead of take away from the Alliance.

You could bring back Kael’thas which could dredge up all of the “corrupt” elves out of hiding such as San’layn or Fel Blood.

There is also the choice of recruiting more “races” to beef up the Horde.

  1. Skeletons inspired by liches which obviously bring in liches, proper necromancy, and flying necropolis.
    Mount: Floating throne inspired by a necropolis

  2. Ogres to bring in monstrous units, an ogre empire to unite the ogre clans, and finally a long requested race.
    Mount: Palanquin similarly as seen in WoD.

  3. Ethereals would be a decent choice to give the Horde a subtle highly technological cosmic race that wouldn’t take a way from the Horde’s identity.
    Mount: Cosmic camel.

The only thing I’ll add to the hatred/racist Alliance idea is that all of the horrible atrocities that the Horde had committed are all relatively new/fresh. I believe it hasn’t even been a century since the path of glory.

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This is actually easily fixed.

Alliance has a lazer spaceship? Give the Horde a Necropolis.

Alliance has magical boats? Give the Horde magical sharks and turtles (via Gral and Torga) and slightly less magical boats (Sin’dorei and Forsaken ships, now that Derek is part of the Horde for better or worse).

Etc.

The writers have simply forgotten to write “up” the Horde tech/magic.

Like the fact we had a “Naval battle” expansion and Blizzard tried to convince us the Zandalari are as good at boats as the Kul Tirans when there were two aquatic loa as well as the fact Shaman are traditionally Horde-centric and Kraken are supposed to be subservient to Neptulon is insane.

The counterpart to Magical Boat Society should’ve been Giant Shark Society.

Yes but just let the Forsaken learn things from Maldraxxus

Don’t we have some Ogres part of the Horde now canonically?

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…are we really measuring these deeds by whether 100 years have passed?

Especially considering that neither Thrall’s Horde nor the current Alliance is entirely like their predecessors, which makes this just a bad standard to begin with.

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The thing about making the Alliance hilariously racist is, it doesn’t require much to make them the bad guys that way.

Attempts to justify racism makes you look terrible, so it’s like a perma evil trait.

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I offer Bilgewater Harbor. It’s a cool location, but underused.

So again…

Compare Garithos to Daelin Proudmoore.

I think we both know which villain proved more compelling.

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I think it’s pretty important how fresh these atrocities are. In a single human life we have seen the horde commit several genocides and what ever we want to call what happened with the creation of Garona and how we used Alexstraza.

If this is used as justification of hate I don’t think it’s that unreasonable.

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By that standard, the Horde is completely in the right to hate the Alliance for the internment camps and Daelin Proudmoore’s invasion of Kalimdor, then.

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I didn’t find either of them compelling really. To me, they were just two white dudes angry at those Lowly Savages which isn’t compelling in my book. But that’s just me

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You realize Thrall was a slave and his story is a loose re-telling of the Nat Turner rebellion right?

Like it wasn’t Thrall’s grandpa, it was Thrall.

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Uh

Which one is it lmao

For me Garithos was more “compelling” in the sense of “this dude is completely wrong and just straight up racist lmao”

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Im not even considering compelling. I’m trying to get dirty.

Anything less than unjustifiable racism can lead to people going “he’s right”.

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So I was hoping to spark a small discussion with respect to this topic because I think it’s particularly relevant with respect to the foundation of the Horde.

I know the thread with respect to An’she covered some of these topics so I don’t want to rehash too much of what was already said, but suffice to say, the belief systems of the races within the Horde have been slowly downplayed (with the exception being the Loa recently).

The foundation of these races is really what defines the Horde itself. I mean I can understand why Baine is sitting on a stoop in Oribos (they changed it so he’s now standing) - yes he was discarded as useless by the Jailer, but he has now seen the afterlife and there’s nothing that seems to fit the Tauren narrative. I understand there are infinite realms and we’ve only seen some, and from a gameplay perspective I imagine a realm where Tauren live harmoniously in the plains waiting for cosmological phone calls from their descendants might be a bit dull, but at this point we see Elunes power of the Night Warrior reaches to other worlds - reinforcing the true deity status of Elune (and the status of her chosen people).

But the reason this bullet stuck out was because we do see Baine as the noble savage trope within the Horde as a whole. And that sucks as we see him called the best of us. But it looks like Blizzard is doubling down on “correcting the behavior of savages” concept with Calia Menethil. I’ve rambled about her before but I cannot emphasize how disgusting the idea of her as the leader of the Forsaken is. I would love to see her as a neutral NPC that both Alliance and Horde players quest with and she sees first hand the life of a Forsaken. She finds her husband and child and they reject her as an abomination. Members of the town try to kill her and Voss steps in to save her. She tries to heal some Forsaken with the light and sees them suffer physical pain from it. I think she can serve a purpose - ugh Oribos - but I’m sick of being shown how the Alliance can help correct the terrible behavior of us savages.

Part of that has to do with writing that has literally portrayed us in a barbaric light, but the rest is just repugnant.

//And if we want to touch on some underlying symbolism: Orcs call upon the elements (and Shamanism was originally Horde only), you know, those things the Pantheon walked over and threw into a jail. The same Pantheon that created humans, dwarves, and gnomes. Also Elune - only confirmed deity, patron of the Night Elves - while the Tauren are judged to have a misunderstanding of deities. The Draenei are interconnected with the Light (and so are Paladins - originally Alliance only). I’m not trying to over analyze these details - but when the list of grievances grow, it starts seeming like these are intentional.

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…how does that make Garithos “compelling”?

Daelin Proudmoore literally had to watch his oldest son get incinerated by a red dragon out on the high seas. He had a reason for hating the orcs.

That’s what makes a compelling villain—they’re still a villain because, well…they’re being villainous, but they have a backstory and a reason that you can at least understand, even if you don’t agree with their actions on a moral level.

That’s what we need more of from the Alliance. It’s what we saw all throughout Vanilla - Wrath, especially on the part of Varian.

Not Saturday morning cartoon “I hates mah elves!” shenanigans.

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I’m looking at him right now and he’s sitting. The only time I’ve seen him standing is when the game’s still loading Oribos and it hasn’t given his model the order to sit down yet.

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