Morality of the Horde

How about we just bring back Vol’jin as warchief and pretend nothing ever happened.

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Those seem like good examples but its also important to note that theyre few and far between from what Blizz has currently portrayed the Forsaken as. It would be different if they werent as murderous or misanthropic as the company loves them to be and had more of a victimization angle to them. Imo their story ended with WOTLK even more so when the Angery Corpse Elf impaled herself after Arthas death. Ever since Cata theyve just been one note

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Just to add, another reason why the forsaken didn’t seem as unpalatable to the Horde as they do now? The original forsaken really were a persecuted people. The forsaken were largely made up of risen Lordaeronians, living in their old homeland. Yet they were attacked by former residents of Lordaeron who wanted to kick the forsaken out of the human kingdom of Lordaeron. Their own claims to the land were ignored. Then they had the Scarlet Crusade literally in their back yard who didn’t care about whose land it was, they just wanted to kill all zombies. No matter what they did, people wouldn’t view them as anything but remnants of the Scourge.

To a group of trolls cast out of their lands and a bunch of orcs literally cut off from their own and recently escaped from prison camps? That’s a story they can absolutely relate to, a story they could understand. It was a variation of their own story.

And even the tauren saw something in the forsaken. Up til relatively recent, the only major city with a noteworthy population of undead beyond the eastern kingdoms was in Thunder Bluff. The tauren believed there’d be a way to heal the forsaken, seeing them not as monsters but as afflicted by a disease or curse.

This image of the forsaken as murder hobos who want to blight your lands and steal your corpses? That only came about in Cata. Even in Wrath, the Wrathgate was clearly portrayed as the actions of a rebel faction (though allegedly new lore’s going to say Sylvannas masterminded it for reason) and not the actions of the forsaken as a whole.

So why would the Horde allow the forsaken to be a part of their collective? A better question is, why wouldn’t they?

God I’m nostalgic for the days when Blizzard wasn’t retconning everyone and every group into a two-dimentional DnD morality alignment box.

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Well, just as they’ve neatly forgotten all the cool things and themes that make up Night Elves, they’ve done it to the Forsaken. That doesn’t make it any less of a problem.

I’ll always strive for the original idea of the Forsaken, not what’s ‘trendy and rule of cool’. This Christmas would be complete for me if they retconned a great deal of BtS (and maybe all of BFA? that’d be nice) and sow on a lot of patches to this deflating balloon of a fragile story to make it more compliant on established lore.

Apparently that’s a high bar for a team who’s motto is “continuity is a shackle to our creativity”. (Which it is. That’s its purpose. It’s to shackle you so that you commit to what’s already established in the story.)

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Tru. Tons of race and story aspects have been flanderized to hell and back, crapped on or forgotten.

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The core of the Horde narrative had been mostly about orcs for … pretty much this whole time right?? The fact that the Forsaken narrative is the center of the Horde at this point means that of course bad things were going to happen as they still represent death. regardless if they can do positive things in the world they really can’t escape the negative in that they are a part of death’s cosmic force. It’s really not that difficult to grasp why someone would want a little change in the story. But it’s also easy for me to realize your point of view in that you want to stand with an “honorable” and good Horde.

I believe Blizzard’s intention was to pit Horde players against each other with this narrative.

Yea… the only foot they had in EK… where the Alliance is centered…let’s not forget their blight. Wasn’t their war tech and the orcs mechanisms the only kind of weapons they were using up until cataclysm? Bc I really don’t recall seeing any troll or tauren stuff back then or even now…

The blight actually only came about in Wrath. Their war tech pre-Wrath, really pre-Cata for active use beyond Putress, was the same as everyone else in the Horde; catapults and ballista. So you could say their war tech and the orcs’ was all the Horde used pre-Cata, but you could say all the war tech used was the trolls’ and orcs’, since it literally was the same weaponry the whole Horde used. As for who innovated Hordeside catapults and ballista… I think that was actually the goblins who gave them that tech.

As for this part:

It’s pretty irrelevant from a PR perspective. Both factions had one group on the “other guys’” continent. Hell, the forsaken were actually further from the nearest major Alliance settlement (Menethil Harbor in Wetlands) than the Kaldorie were from Orgrimmar, so I don’t see the Alliance realistically feeling at the time that the Horde were breathing down their necks.

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Ah you’re right, I forgot about that.

I swear I remember someone in-game mentioning the UC was a strong foothold in EK for the Horde.

Weird you would think Undead would be the Horde equivalent to how prominent the humans are for the Alliance.

Whether she turned against them - or they turned against her - is a question the OP is broaching.

If Sylvanas and the Forsaken have been consistent to the Horde, and put in the position to lead it by the Warchief, it is the Horde who is turning on them.

Sylvanas makes it clear to Saurfang that the Horde would find his plans for conquest more agreeable than hers. That is plain.

I wonder if that is a subtle admission to herself that even she can’t trust herself. An admission that if she were to truly rule and command without a buffer, she could be insanely ruthless. Commiting actions she knows would be horrendous.

As if asking Saurfang to plan the war was not only strategic, but also an attempt to spare the Night Elves her unleashed insanity. And when Saurfang allowed Malfurion to escape - she went full Sylvanas.

Because just as Sylvanas made the Forsaken completely, entirely, and wholly only about herself, she is making the Horde the same way. We don’t care if you want to play a villain. If we wanted to play villains, we would’ve rolled Forsaken. Instead, we chose the heroic races of Thrall’s Horde.

Even the blood elves got that heroic shine in Mists of Pandaria.

That doesn’t really have to do with what I was asking, but cool.
I was generally curious on why the sudden negativity towards them when they have leadership as opposed to when they didn’t but were essentially creating the same heinous acts on a smaller scale.

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And Thrall’s Horde wasn’t completely about him? There isn’t much difference between the two.

They’re both saviors of their races. They both have cult like followings. They both make completely stupid decisions that they claim are the best for the Horde. I could go on for awhile here. Honestly, the only difference between the two is Sylvanas pays for her mistakes while Thrall runs away from them.

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Yes it does.

We don’t have a problem with people playing villains. We have a problem with those villains taking over our faction and forcing us to be villains along with them when that isn’t what our faction is about.

The dude never left his throne room, roflmao.

He did in BC to go to Nagrand.

Not to mention all the crap in Cata that we try to forget.

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My b.

There was the shadow council. There was Garrosh. There was Grom. Drek’thar. Saurfang commanded more respect during vanilla. Tons of orc heroes that Thrall shared the spotlight with.

More importantly, some orcs like Garrosh competed with him and had their own followings.

What Forsaken competes with Sylvanas and has their own following in canon?

I never understand how people claim to speak for others so.

The Faction is about what Blizzard makes it - the Horde is not what ever misguided purposes drew you to play it.

And the Horde has followed many villains. It seems to be partially about that.

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Not according to the latest blizzcon. :rofl:

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Varimathras and Putress, Warden Stilllwater, the Desolate Council, that one dude that shot her in the head. Lets not forget Koltira as well.

She has more than enough that compete with her.

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I wasn’t asking what you preferred to play, but thanks for sharing!
I was asking about the Horde characters and players thoughts of that race, there was a change in their perception of them when Sylvanas started to lead the Horde. Or at least in BFA.

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Were canonically obeying their Queen.

A guy Sylvanas had killed.

A council Sylvanas had killed.

A guy who killed her, and then she killed.

Are you not seeing the revolving pattern?

Every forsaken story is thoroughly employed with and revolves around Sylvanas. Zelling is the closest one to not being that way, but Lilian is employed against her will by Sylvanas so I’m sure that’s going to come up if Sylvanas doesn’t kill Zelling’s family for “holding onto the past” which is illegal in Forsaken culture atm.

Koltira is not Forsaken.

So, as we can see, she does not.

Dude she mass murdered the night elves because a night elf gave her some clap back. Then she mass murdered, mass damned, and mass enslaved the Horde. Then she continued intentionally and willfully killing the planet after being told that mining Azerite is killing the planet.

What more do you want?

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