Next thing I’d do to begin repairing some of the damage is my personal biggest bugbear, undoing the very moment the Horde died in my heart.
It’s not getting duped by an evil warchief again. That absolutely hurt and the damage done was catestrophic. But the Horde, for me, still existed…
Right until the single most iconic position within the Horde just got thrown in the history bin all casual-like, and replaced by a committee.
We went from a Warchief to a senate. That freaking sucks donkey bits. That is as anti-Horde as it gets. That takes the foundation of the Horde, a unified body under a single main leader, and turns it into a debate club.
So we need a new Warchief. And someone asked who should sit in that big chair a couple days ago and I had no one. No leader currently in the Horde works in that position. They all have problems.
So I got to thinking. If no current leader, then what about a relatively unknown? What if it’s a new-ish character, but one intimately tied to the lore through blood, a character who hasn’t been over-developed, who could be molded by the writers and devs to be all that Thrall wanted to be, but without the baggage. And I came up with an option that would work for me.
Durak, son of Thrall.
Obviously there’d need to be a hero’s journey, a story that pushes him forward into the narrative from a relatively unknown into what the Warchief should be. This is too big a task for me to bother trying to type here, but it’s very doable. Maybe don’t let Golden write it, because we don’t need brown, orcy Anduin.
So we give him the hero’s journey, but explicitly not with the motivation to become Warchief. Just to be worthy of his father’s ideals, if not actions. Sorta like a better done Garrosh, but not idealizing a legitimate war criminal. Then you have some crisis happen, Thrall’s off doing f’all where ever, the Committee on Horde Affairs is locked trying to decide what to do and how to do it, and Durak and some other young orcs step up to handle the situation because it needs handling.
And this is the important part, and probably the most controversial; they work with Alliance forces to handle the situation. They work with them openly, fully cooperation. Durak offers the senior Alliance commander in the situation his advice, but when the senior leader goes with a different plan, the Horde forces don’t get all grumble-y. They understand the senior leader has wisdom and experience, and they listen. They listen, they try it, the Alliance plan doesn’t work. Preferably because of some factor the Alliance leader could not have foreseen. The leader seemlessly tries Durak’s plan, no pause or hesitation, and it works.
This is to establish that this group, led by these people, are not repeating the mistakes of their ancestors. They will work together because working together is what needs to happen. They won’t let blustering egos get in the way of success, of victory. The Alliance will treat them like peers, not potential future criminals or guilty because of their forefathers.
Durak then returns home, situation handled, and the Horde Senate has started fraying badly. There’s no unifying voice. The people are fed up. And here comes Durak, the Situation Handler, with stories of being able to work with strangers (the Alliance), being able to listen to others and follow advice and the plans of others (Alliance commander), to avoid the pitfalls of hubris (not bragging that their plan worked), and to have done so for the good of the Horde.
Yadda yadda yadda, bolstered by the people, we need a unifying voice. Durak then goes through some trials, never explicitly told for what (but we all know), he passes them, the final test is against his father Thrall, a duel, they get in the dueling arena and Durak… Won’t. He doesn’t want to fight his father. Horde should never fight Horde unless absolutely necessary. He will not submit to a test that requires him to shed his father’s blood.
Boom. Warchief.
… I’m not sold on that last bit, but some confrontation between the soon-to-be new Warchief and the most iconic one needs to happen to make it all official and I’m typing this by the seat of my pants.
Warchief Durak. And his first order of business is hammering out an official diplomatic relationship with the Alliance. Not a peace treaty; both sides should need time for that, and a lot of it. But official communications with whoever is the leader of the Alliance at the time (unless Blizzard fixes that by removing the High King bullcarp), so that miscommunicaions between the two have a proper avenue for discussion.
And then that’s it for Horde-Alliance interactions, at least for a while. The next couple of expansions should have seperate leveling experiences, even if they’re in the same zones. The way you rebuild these two groups isn’t by having Big Name NPCs showing up all the forever; you tell stories with them, individually. You tell an Alliance story here, and a Horde story there. They can overlap when we deal with the Token Neutral Group Leading the Battle like the Argent Crusade and Army of the Legionfall, but you still give the factions their own story.
And you use the Horde story to not just highlight Durak. Those soldiers who handled The Situation with him? Bring them in too. A new warchief should come with new pals of other races, and you use the leveling campaign to build them up. Introduce them with Durak’s arc, build them up over time.
As for the Horde Council? Keep it. Second most controversial thing I’m putting in this post, but keep it. It’s now an advisory council, so we still have moments with the Old Guard NPCs, and they’re still important. Warchiefs have advisors, and Durak wants to represent all of the Horde, so all of the Horde should have a voice. The Advisory Council (needs a better name) is that voice.
…
So that’s my warchief rant.
I’ve got other thoughts, but I’m not sure how interesting any of these thoughts are, so I’ll keep them to myself for now.