How can we redeem/rebuild the Horde?

Lore Story Forum
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In Warcraft 2, the Horde were the bad guys. There was no doubt about that. They were servants of demons, they made the first death knights, and the Reign of Chaos campaign: The Colonization of Kalimdor had to deal heavily with that history.

Blizzard approached that by portraying two characters - Thrall, who wanted an independent Horde that was safe from the humans, free from demonic corruption, and that was going to move away from its violent, bloodthirsty past. Then there’s Grom, who also wants to be free from demonic corruption - but is proud of his role as a warrior, and like most Orcs: craves battle.

Here we have the theme for our conflict: Bloodlust.

This conflict comes to a head when Grom finds that there are humans in Kalimdor, and immediately slides into his old ways. When the humans are defeated, Thrall angrily confronts him and sends Grom north because Grom’s bloodlust is a liability he can’t afford. This puts Grom in immediate conflict with the Night Elves, and soon with Cenarius, who refers to the Orcs as “demon spawned wretches”. Grom’s angry retort to this is “We are free, Demigod!”. Cenarius laughs at him and comments that despite what Grom may believe “you are as bloodthirsty as the demons ever were”.

There it is again - Bloodlust. Orcs are bloodthirsty. Demons are bloodthirsty. Therefore Orcs are the same as demons - at least as Cenarius frames it. The Orcs have learned nothing from Warcraft 2, and now Grom works for Mannoroth again.

After rescuing Grom from Mannoroth’s influence, Thrall leads Grom to face Mannoroth, who proceeds to beat the tar out of them. When Mannoroth thinks he’s won, he taunts Grom. “[Thrall] he didn’t know the fire that burns within your soul. That in your heart we are the same.”

Boom. The central theme tears to the forefront yet again. We aren’t talking about just Grom here. We are talking about the Orcs. Thrall tried to save them, but he didn’t know them. They couldn’t be saved, because they are bloodthirsty, and this makes them the same as demons. Mannoroth has won, the Orcs will be slaves and conquerors.

But this, this last insult is what causes Grom to have his second wind. At the last possible moment, with a last desperate attack - one that ends up killing him. Grom puts his axe right in Mannoroth’s chest with a howl of rage - and if I am to translate the Orcish?

We are NOT the same!

This was the moment of the Orcs’ redemption. Grom had freed them from an existence doomed to mindless bloodlust. Thrall’s Horde would survive, his vision would live on.

But, unfortunately, as a later Warchief of the Horde would remind us, nothing lasts. Not the progress that the Orcs had made - not the feeling that their story had been told and they could now move on to a new chapter - and not the writing team. As we moved into 2010 we started a conversation that might go something like this:

CDev (Cataclysm): Good news everyone! Remember Grom Hellscream? Well, we know that you loved his impolite son, and he’s now warchief! He’s invading Ashenvale now, isn’t he bloodthirsty? He’s also bringing the whole Horde with him. Oh, and HE doesn’t have the demon blood excuse, he’s making his own decisions!

Horde: Well, come on. It’s not as though he didn’t have good reasons. The Orcs were starving and the Night Elves withheld trade. Besides, didn’t the Alliance technically attack first? Aren’t they in the Barrens? Have you SEEN Camp Taurajo?

CDev (Pandaria): But those aren’t his only reasons! He’s also working with Old Gods and a lot of bad dudes. Vol’jin thinks he’s leading the Horde down a dark path and Garrosh tried to do him in like a Russian opposition leader! He’s not just aggressive, he’s evil! Raid your own capitol to stop him!

Horde: Okay, well, that… sucked. But, we have a new warchief - and this was just one bad apple of an Orc, it doesn’t speak to…

CDev (WOD): They’re all like that. All Orcs are like that, except for like, one clan. No demon corruption required.

Horde: Well… at least…

CDev (Legion): By the way we killed Vol’jin and replaced him with the Undead Leader who thought Garrosh was an amateur and has no reservations about raising the dead or using chemical weapons.

Horde: But see, we’re fighting demons now, and we really think that the Horde should get some more content to represent our stake in that and to celebrate our themes. We think…

CDev (BFA): Your theme is bloodlust. The Horde just followed the Dark Lady into a war where her objective is literally to kill as many people as possible - which we kicked off with this beautiful limited edition T-rated genocide. Here’s a cinematic series about another Orc who tries to save the Horde. Most of the Horde will disagree with him until the very end, at which point we’ll axe him and establish that the Horde stopped its war only because Sylvanas insulted them.

So here we are again.

Mannoroth Sylvanas won. The Orcs The Horde are is the same as him her.

But, what about that Saurfang guy? Didn’t he confront Sylvanas out in front of Orgrimmar, much like Grom confronted Mannoroth? Why, translating his Orcish, when Sylvanas said the Horde was nothing, Saurfang got his second wind and declared "The Horde is SOMETHIII-"

Then he died. The end! Off to Shadowlands! Better stop Sylvanas from … I don’t know, something about free will? Predetermination? Gut bacteria? Aliens?

Okay, back to Saurfang. Saurfang was ineffective. He cried a lot, he existed to shame the Horde playerbase for actions they were forced to take, and then he died at the end after apologizing to the Horde’s faction rival for those actions that the Horde was forced to take. Most egregiously, I think - the Horde as represented didn’t have a change of heart because they realized their error and rejected it. The Horde stopped fighting because Sylvanas abandoned them, and it was no longer in their interests to fight.

… and that is not redemption. That is not learning. That is not narrative progress. That’s the writers ending the story as quickly as they could without regard for picking up their mess so that they could toy with this new expansion concept. Meanwhile, the scars are still there, and I see them when I talk to Horde players. This thread was the outcome of one such conversation.

What would be redemption? Well, let’s go back to refuting Sylvanas’s point - seriously this time. What IS the Horde? Why are they there? Warcraft 3 sure told us what they weren’t, but thinking back on it - when did WoW tell us what they were? Like, why does the faction exist, what is its point? Is it the wild beast that Tyrande mentioned? This dangerous thing waiting for someone to ride around and cause destruction with? Well that can’t be right, because if we conclude that, then it’s hard to understand why it has the right to exist. Why DOES it have the right to exist?

Because half of the playerbase likes aggressive themes and they pay $15/month? I think that explanation, while correct, isn’t something that we can say is enough anymore. We need a better answer to this question, something that underlines the Horde’s indispensability, its relatedness, and its identity. It’s an answer that I don’t think the Alliance should accept - just as Daelin Proudmoore didn’t accept that the Orcs had changed - but it’s something that the players should accept - and it should be a strong refutation of the idea that the Horde is just a weapon for someone to use for their own ends.

Sorry for the ramble - ultimately I can’t say that I can answer the question of what that refutation should be, or even if I’m heading in the right direction. But that’s why I created this thread. I wanted to start this conversation and gather your thoughts.

So, please. Let’s hear them.

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The problem is blizzard departed from what was the orcs having already being redeemed and this thrust into the roles of villains again, and apparently there where plans to make Garrosh actually grow as a character (as per interviews with Affrasiabi or however his name is spelt) that denoted he at least has plans to bring Garrosh into a redeemed role as well.

But blizzard feels the need to demonize one faction, beating them with the villain bat every chance they get. (No I’ve always felt Syl was a villain, and I knew her becoming warchief was an awful call.)

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We’re definitely in the “no right answer” territory here.

If Blizzard sacrifices Sylvanas (to Anduin, to Tyrande, or even to Horde players/NPCs), they piss off the Forsaken playerbase.

If Blizzard makes Sylvanas a Kerrigan, they’ve marginalized/downplayed a very real, very murderous act of genocide, which will never go away or be forgotten by players on either side.

There’s honestly no good answer to this, simply because the Burning of Teldrassil (which was just about the worst idea ever for this very reason) was the catalyst for all of this.

Pretty much the only way I could even imagine “making things right” (if I were intoxicated or on drugs) would involve Sylvanas sacrificing herself to destroy the Jailer, use his death/afterlife powers to revive Teldrassil and/or resurrect her victims, or something to that effect.

Which she likely won’t do, because she’s far too egotistical and self-absorbed to even contemplate such a thing.

Either way, between Tyrande being one of the few major racial characters to accurately represent the feelings of her respective playerbase in a long time (in this case, outrage), the initial Burning itself, and now everything with the Jailer, there is no scenario where Sylvanas gets to survive Shadowlands at this point.

There can’t be.

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I suggest re education camps

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Horde don’t need to redeem themselves in the eyes of the Alliance, either its characters or players. The Horde owes the Alliance nothing. The Horde needs to decide for itself what it is and if the Alliance (characters or players) doesn’t like it they can pound sand.

:pancakes:

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I actually like this answer, because it dovetails into what I explained earlier - that the Alliance should not accept whatever answer the Horde came up with. Yes, I think the Horde should exist for itself and not for the Alliance.

So what should that look like?

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Maybe something like an internment camp or something like that. :thinking::thinking:

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No, just camps to educate them on what is right and wrong

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Adding to my earlier point, the reason I brought up Sylvanas vs. Tyrande is because they effectively were the major faces of the Horde and Alliance in Battle for Azeroth, respectively.

But then the downside to that, of course—and this is what really rubs Alliance players the wrong way—can effectively be summed up as:

Horde: Well, we pushed Sylvanas out of Orgrimmar and started another revolution.

Alliance: Ok, but you still chose to follow her to Teldrassil. You still chose to follow her after Teldrassil. And you did all this long after Garrosh.

Horde: But at least she’s not the Warchief anymore!

Sylvanas does make a convenient scapegoat, but the real beef with the Horde is still the same beef that Alliance players had with them back in Mists: the fact that they willingly chose to follow a mass murderer even after said Warchief had launched an incredibly-barbaric attack upon the other faction.

It’s almost impossible not to have an ongoing faction conflict with something like that, even with their attempt at a “diplomatic solution.”

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Willingly is such a strong word, narratively railroaded to follow a character though seems more apt.

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It’s key here that we separate the Horde from its players.

The in-narrative faction was willing.
The playerbase largely wasn’t.

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Oh I know, I’m one of those horde players that haaaaaaaated the war of thorns. Killed my fantasy of the noble Savage even more so then Garrosh, the problem is players don’t have a choice when the writers want to retread old stories for nostalgia thus making the horde constantly seem like it has an identity crisis every expac.

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Yeah, but this thread isn’t just about retreading the problem. I think that’s already been done. I want to turn our conversation to what the solution to this problem is.

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I mean, sorry if this sounds harsh, but welcome to World of Warcraft?

What you’re getting at is pretty much the way the entire game has been set up, from the very beginning:

Your leaders call you “Champion,” “Hero of your people,” etc., but then your character has no real agency in what they do to serve their people.

You or I don’t get to choose not to serve Malfurion and Tyrande or Illidan, respectively; they’re our leaders, ergo we serve them unquestioningly. The same goes for draenei with Velen, tauren with Baine, etc.: our leaders decide who we are in the world of Azeroth, not us. Our agency stops after character customization.

Which, I mean…we can have that discussion about how much player agency truly matters, and how Teldrassil has started to expose that, but this is not even remotely a new phenomenon.

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Eh, it wasn’t that way before Cataclysm - I was here to witness that change. Narrative driven storytelling causing player-agency problems in an MMO is a serious issue. But that concept as an issue is a better topic for a devoted thread.

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I died with Saurfang. It was a perfect metaphor. Kudos to the writing team.

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There’s no reasonable solution, the only thing that can be turned into a horde “redemption” is punishing the player base by making the horde pay recompense, whether its land or not and I feel the hordes players have been punished enough after being demonized in bfa for years and not given a story to be proud of which was a promise by blizz in interviews for bfa.

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Nope, I’m not going to accept this. I understand where the sentiment is coming from, but this post isn’t for simply stating how bad things are, and then throwing our hands up. If you feel that way regardless, okay, but I’m still going to ask that we be a little more creative and a little less deterministic than “there is no answer”.

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You were asking what the main problem was, I would argue this is a huge part of it:

Right here. If Erriden is playing an orc, he doesn’t get to pull a Saurfang—or even be better than Saurfang—and say to Nathanos or Saurfang, “Nope. I don’t want to invade Teldrassil. It’s not right. It’s not honorable. I made a lot of night elf friends in my Order Hall during the fight against the Legion.”

No, his orc toon is told by his superiors, “You’re going to help us conquer Teldrassil,” “you’re going to defend the creature that burned down Teldrassil,” “you’re going to do this, that, and the other thing,” and the only way for him as a player to advance the story is for his character to smile, nod, and blindly follow orders.

And while this is equally true of both factions, it’s an even uglier truth for the Horde given the writers’ ongoing inability to decide whether they think it’s the “evil monster faction” or not.

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Unsubscribe.

Or beg them to hire new writers. I have absolutely 0 faith in their current writing team, past or present. I simply lack the confidence that they have the ability to write anything other than rule of cool or blow it up lol followed by corny melodrama.

But I also lack confidence in their ability to hire writers, given the people writing the new novels. It’s simply a loss. The game has horrendous plot development and dialogue. It always will. The end.

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