The orcs were trading some time after vanilla, as well as allowed to hunt for food in Ashenvale, but the night elves revoked that after the Wrathgate incident. That was supposed to be the impetus for the invasion in Cata; from the orcs’ point of view, the nelves cut them off to let them starve to death.
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Warsong Gulch?
I agree with you that singling out the Orcs is hard to justify, given that so many others have done just as bad. (And it is sad to see Blizzard tied to their villain baiting.). But it is also irrelevant to the bigger issue. Assigning guilt to people based on the race they were born into is racist.
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Warsong Gulch takes place during vanilla.
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Also, even if what you say is 100% true, Velen welcoming them back is not the same as the Alliance as a whole welcoming them back.
Blizzard veiws “redemption” as simply joining Alliance or Horde.
Thats it.
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We’re talking about a fictional universe in which we can definitely say events either did or did not happen. I’m not assigning guilt to individuals based on being an orc or not, I’m pointing out the fundamentally flawed institutions Orcs support which perpetuates a culture of violence and warmongering.
My point is Warsong Gulch was open conflict between the Orcs and Night Elves, with the Orcs cutting into Ashenvale for lumber.
I’m waiting to get one that’s worse than “DRAENOR IS FREE!”
At least this guy is actually repentant for what he did, acknowledges how horrible it was and that he can never make amends for it, and he was not redeemed or forgiven in any way.
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Yes, the one guy. That’s entirely the problem lol
Let’s look at this. “Orcs support”. You are assuming that every Orc supports those institutions. And decided they are guilty because of the race they were born into.
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You tell em!
Besides, im sure somewhere in lore a Orc at the very least apologized and attempted to right the wrongs they did.
Quote me where I assign guilt to an individual Orc that isn’t Garrosh or one of the other Warchiefs who directly carried out and perpetuated acts of violence, conquering, and attempted genocide.
No one here is arguing every single member of a specific race is the same. In fact, I’m arguing that Blizzard needed to show more than just a single man’ari wanted things to change. Blizzard needs to show that man’ari defected before the Legion fell and were on their own and struggling to survive to make up for what they did for thousands of years.
Also, the man’ari aren’t born as such. Each man’ari actively chose to join the Legion and actively continued to serve the Legion’s cause.
Man’ari joining the draenei? Never heard of it. Sounds like some fan fiction much like the Shadowlands thing.
Sure, Thrall did. Until they allowed Garrosh to rise to power. And then Sylvannas later. Orcs aren’t a case of “Wow we really messed up that one time” they continued to do so which points to larger institutional problems. Garrosh doesn’t exist in a vacuum without the attempted conquest of Azeroth before him. Sylvannas doesn’t exist in a vacuum without Garrosh before her. The Iron Horde doesn’t exist in a vacuum where the MU orcs didn’t also invade and attempted to conquer Azeroth.
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Glib, but you are still assigning guilt on a racial basis. “Orcs” don’t need to apologize. Being born into the “wrong” race doesn’t mean you have to appologize for something you personally didn’t do.
Substitute some the word “Orc” for some modern racial group and see how it sounds.
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They were tricked!
You know how the saying goes: “Trick me into committing genocide 4 times, shame on you.”
The term Orcs or Orc here is used to describe the Orc government (Horde) not Individuals or an individual.
The Horde did nothing wrong! Not never! They were tricked I tell you, TRICKED.
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The fact that no meaningful change happened after the first, second, or even third instance of conquest, genocide, and warmongering points to a larger institutional problem. I will keep repeating that. If the orcs wanted to change, they could have made it happen. We can split hairs about individual orcs who disagreed, but at the end of the day, the orcs as a whole made no attempt to change things.
Edit: Change seemed to be possible under Thrall but Thrall kept too many of the old institutions in place so that when he left, they went right back to following a warmonger.
First of all, if you are talking about “redemption”, that is a moral judgement. An Orc who opposed, or didn’t even just didn’t participate, in all of that has no need of redemption.
This is the point I really wanted to make. As an aside, one can talk about Orc social structures and whether they lead to bad outcomes, if you drop the moral aspect. (To say a “society” needs redemption has the same problem as saying a race needs "redemption.). Though I’m not convinced that track record is really worse than the human one.
The society that existed before Thrall doesn’t exist anymore. The “Warchief” mode is nothing more than an elected king. Something that doesn’t have a really different track record that hereditary kings and theocracies (which most Alliance societies use). There has been more bad luck in who they ended up with, but that is actually Blizzard deciding villain bat the Horde…
[Edit}. And, I forgot to note, that system doesn’t exist anymore either.
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Again, glib. And mostly wrong. But to the point.
To equate responsibility of every member of a race to the actions of a government (even a democratic one, let alone a non-democratic one) is just another way of pushing racial guilt.
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