Here’s a direct transcript (made by me) of a part of the developer Q&A from April 26, 2018.
http://www.wowhead.com/news=283905/liveblog-of-the-april-26-battle-for-azeroth-beta-q-a-with-ion-hazzikostas
Video only: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254739285
Starts at 1:13:17
Q. “The intro quests on the beta are painting the Horde in a negative light. Should I be worried about my faction turning evil?”
Ion: Evil’s, you know, it’s a matter of perspective.
Josh: There’s probably a ton of Alliance players that are like, “What are you even talking about? You’ve been evil the whole time.”
Ion: No one told you? “Are we the bad guys?”* So, some have said—I think the attribution of the quote is all over the place, but—“All that is needed for evil to prosper is for the good men of the world to do nothing.” The Horde has many facets to it, and there are aspects of what the Forsaken have represented for a long time that have not necessarily been directly in line with what the Tauren represent, for example. I mean, compare the events at the Wrathgate to what you know about Tauren culture. Yet there’s been this uneasy partnership between these groups for some time. And, you know, there are similar tensions and similar discordance that we see throughout the other factions. These entities aren’t monolithic.
That said, evil—again, it’s–there’s a lot of harsh things that happen in war in general. You know, when groups are fighting for survival, at the end of the day, they resort to desperate measures when it, you know, when it comes to the choice between that and extinction. There’s a lot of story to tell going forward. I don’t want to dig too far into this, but—
Josh: Sure.
Ion: Both sides should be worried about this. I think it’s—Azeroth is a world of grey. It’s never been a world of “black or white.” I think that’s one of the things that was a defining aspect of the franchise from its earliest days, right? You looked at “Warcraft: Orcs and Humans” and the stories told in that world, and you looked at, you know, these noble, recognizable folks who look like us and these giant, green, brutish monsters and naturally might assume, “Well, okay, right, humans are are the good guys and orcs are evil because they look like monsters.” But that’s not what Warcraft is about. There’s more nuance, and that’s not changing any time soon.
*Almost certainly a reference to this comedy sketch:
