Grom don’t care As much for honor in wc3 though, he was a fan of a good fight hence why he fought anyone he considered a worthy opponent. But he’s not a good representation of orcish honor, he never makes a point in WC3 to talk about honor or the lack there of.
Grom is a representation of Warsong values though.
Yet he still expresses and lives it. Again, Garrosh iterates on it later on, beginning really in the Wrath era for him.
Reign of Chaos wasn’t so much critical of orc culture in general as it was of the warmongering side of orc culture—we see this with Thrall learning shamanism under Drek’Thar in Lord of the Clans and going on to rally and redeem his people from the internment camps.
That’s the point; Grom Hellscream was meant to represent what the Horde was trying to get away from under Thrall—that was the original “Breaking the Cycle,” with Grom sacrificing himself to slay Mannoroth and break the “blood curse” (the orcs’ slavery to the Legion).
You even see this contrast with the Horde fighting to free the Fel Orcs from Magtheridon in Hellfire Peninsula on Outland during The Burning Crusade, and with things like (the real) Kargath Bladefist, one of the original Draenor chieftains, proclaiming in Hellfire Citadel:
Ours is the true Horde! The only Horde!
All of that nuance got tossed out the window when Garrosh was made Warchief, and Warlords just doubled down on it with the implication that orcs are always going to be these bloodthirsty killers and nothing else.
“Thrall, the blood haze is lifted. I have freed myself.”
I agree that it should have ended there, but as we know, Blizzard chose to iterate on it - and I do take issue with framing in this in sole context to the blood curse. As I discussed previously, there was a metaphorical component to it - even if killing a demon isn’t the perfect expression of the rejection of bloodlust as the Orcs’ racial destiny.
Well, it wasn’t so much about Grom killing Mannoroth—although there was symbolism to that, given that Grom actually admitted to Thrall that he and the other Chieftains had submitted themselves willingly—but more so that Grom actually sacrificed himself to do it.
There’s also Mannoroth’s line to consider:
The boy believed you could be saved, but he didn’t know what burns within your soul. Within your heart, you know, we are the same.
So it was all about Grom proving Mannoroth wrong, proving that yes, he was a warrior, but that he was still an honorable orc warrior, not a demon.
Which was pretty important considering Thrall had just recently freed him from being a Chaos Orc.
Agreed - but as I discussed earlier, it wasn’t something limited to the physical but to the notion of bloodlust itself.
Sure, but prior to Warlords of Draenor—or at the very earliest, the novel War Crimes—it was always understood that while orcs could be aggressive, they were never uncontrollably-bloodthirsty to the point of genocide prior to consuming felblood.
Which as we’re told in the novel Illidan, is pretty potent/addictive stuff, even for a demon hunter.
Originally the demon blood instilled such an unnatural bloodlust that goes far beyond normal berserker fury, it got so bad that before the orcs invaded Azeroth they where killing their own because they lacked any foes to be pointed at because they just finished killing all those Draenei.
Grom, nor Garrosh, nor most of WoD’s portrayals of bloodlust were uncontrolled in their bloodlust - but they were ideologically driven towards it upon the culture of strength and honor that the Orcs cultivated - and I want to note that it’s very rare to actually see these people displaying respect for their opponents. It quickly descends into rhetoric of those opponents being “scum”, “pigs”, “mewling”, “weak”, or the like. That’s the twisting of the culture of lionizing honor to “everything my opponents do is without honor” that I was discussing earlier.
Well if you’re a strong warrior and fight opponent who is physically weaker and our way to kill, then yes you’re going to become belligerent to them because they aren’t a worthwhile engagement. Orcs in WC3 got extremely bored of killing Quillboars and Centaurs cause they didn’t push them so they became bored, humans posed a more interesting opponent due to their weapons armor and tactics but where still weaker.
Also honor isn’t a universal concept, it has many interpretations that each culture comes up with.
I do like a little description of the negative effects of being freed from the blood curse that Saurfang told Garrosh, many if not most of the old guard from the horde became very suicidal due to the extreme horror they perpetrated, and many couldn’t deal with the sounds of pigs being brought to slaughter due to it triggering many horrible memories.
Exactly—this is literally the only part of your post that matters.
In Warlords of Draenor.
WoD ruined a loooooooot of orcish lore for me lol, I still play them but it just is meh now.
I don’t like the idea that the Horde needs to be redeemed, especially when it’s internal and coming from Horde characters. That’s the kind of thinking that had them plop their main settlement in the middle of a wasteland with limited resources in the first place - a problem that drove most of the conflict with the Night Elves in the first place and one of the driving reasons why Garrosh decided he need to make the Horde great again.
The message the game seemed to be trying to get across in BFA was that there was no such thing as a just war and that the weak and innocent are the first to suffer no matter who is still standing at the end. In light of that the most I think the Horde can hope for is some kind of reconciliation and non-aggression pact rather than outright redemption and honestly that’s probably the most that they should be striving for in a setting that launches a new world ending threat at them every few years.
That aside, part of my problem with the idea of ‘redeeming’ the Horde is that means different things to different players. For the primarily Alliance player that would mean somehow making things right with the Alliance and even then they recognize that such a feat is likely impossible.
For the Horde player that was a fan of the Warcraft 3 Horde that would mean purging or at least severely limiting the role of the darker elements of the faction that have been prominent and a draw for other fans of the faction since WoW’s inception.
For me, as a Loyalist it would mean the Horde recognizing they were in the wrong to murder their own soldiers and ally with the Alliance to overthrow an unpopular Warchief (again) and install a weak council instead of an actually good Warchief who wants to lead the Horde. Since the narrative presented all of those things as positives that seems severely unlikely.
Then there are the players who don’t really want the Horde redeemed but they do want them punished for the crimes the narrative had them commit. The ‘redemption’ they have in mind all revolves around gutting and humiliating the Horde and putting them essentially under Alliance control - at best.
So I don’t really want the Horde to be redeemed since there’s no way to do it that would actually be satisfying.
Rastakhan died rather quickly (and stupidly) as well
Yeah, he did. And Jaina gets to get away with another crime yet again.
Jaina always got away with any crime.
Even with her biggest one. Betrayal of her people.
Actually, Grom was pushed into it by his son turning him into a Ner’zhul and taking on the role of his KJ. Garrosh used his knowledge of the future and selective visions of the Post 2nd War internment camps to convince his father that if he did not invade Azeroth it would result in the enslavement and extinction of the entire Orcish race. The attack on the Draenei was actually not a genocide attempt in the Iron Horde, but Garrosh making the claim that if the weren’t suppressed and contained they’d get in the way.
Long story short. This sentiment was likely not shared with the majority of the Iron Horde Warlords, but Grommash at the very least was doing what he did purely out of a desire to protect his people. From a fate that his own Son that saved him from the mistake of the Fel convinced him of. Shame none of that really translated in the expansion, but if you’re wondering where “Draenor is Free” came from. The characterization of him in Hellscream is where. The vestige of a once more nuanced story.
EDIT: As for Orcish culture being a big aggro. Outside of when KJ decided to use their health and faith against them for a personal grudge against Velen … Well, yeah? They are a small fish in a very vast, aggressive ocean. Draenor was brutal, cruel, and ruthless. Where even the plants want to eat you. And the Orcs aren’t even close to the top of the Food Chain there. Considering the environmental pressures, some of their cultural norms do make sense. Its groups like the Eradar (that now have TWO genocidal crusades under their belt when Velen isn’t around to lead them) that I wonder where that behavior came from?
No… Reign of Chaos was the Alliance rejecting the idea that the Horde could be anything other than murderous brutes as expressed in the person of Daelin Proudmoore. The Night Elves shared in that rejection which led them to join the Alliance as an aid against a new set of next door neighbors.
The Battle of Hyjal was only a pause while both sides took a breather from major action against each other to lick their wounds. But there was still Forsaken activity in the Plaguelands and the Orcs and Night Elves continued to bump heads in Ashenvale while Proudmore’s leftovers continued to harrass Durotar. And of course the Dwarves were pressing the Tauren in Kalimdor and the Frostwolves in Ateraac Valley.
So there was never a period where the sides left each other alone to give them a chance to “prove their redemption.” The Hot War simply turned into a prolonged Cold War.
So potato, potahto. Got it.
Literally the only reason the night elves were made Alliance was so that neither faction would have complete control over either continent (Eastern Kingdoms vs. Kalimdor).
It was far more a development decision than anything to do with the story.
This is so wrong it’s painful to read.
The Battle of Mt. Hyjal was literally intended to show that the Alliance (Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and High Elves) and the Horde (Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren) could put aside their differences and fight together for the sake of their planet against a mutual foe (Burning Legion).
It was literally about ending the faction conflict, a point that was reinforced with Daelin Proudmoore re-opening hostilities in “Old Hatreds.”
Sure, the Vanilla - Wrath era was a Cold War; that’s an accurate comparison.
The point isn’t that the faction war halted completely. It’s that the scales of morality were more balanced, with neither side being completely right or wrong, as well as the fact that there were moments of ceasing hostilities, but which often failed (though not for lack of trying):
etc.