Morality of the Horde

Lore Story Forum
102

probably nagrand or something, in fact that is where i think saurfang is heading

103

It’d be a decent enough way to explain why Thrall has absolutely zero idea what’s going on (again) if he’s been living in Nagrand with his family.

I’d love to see Thrall come back (I still like him), but I’m not looking forward to having him have a moment over Teldrassil and the war and then be Disappointed at me.

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104

technically you had nothing to do with teldrassil burning, that was sylvanas

105

But how can we have faction pride and morally grey if the NPCs don’t remind us that we’re terrible people?

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106

Tell that to all of the NPCs calling me a monster, they didn’t seem to get that memo.

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107

I sincerely hope that the end game for BFA is not a splitting of the two distinct ideologies of the Horde but rather recognition that both have been fundamental reasons for why people play Horde. I mean that in the meta sense. I enjoy both and it’s rather obnoxious to hear people claim certain races aren’t “true Horde”. Really? Someone who has been playing a Forsaken since Vanilla or a Blood Elf since BC isn’t Horde? If all of the asinine plot arcs in BFA lead to the death of the “true Horde” narrative then I’ll be happy and consider this mess worth it. Whoever gave that interview about how nothing was solved after MoP was correct as there are still Horde players who think half the races don’t belong in their Horde.

Just from lurking for the past month or so I can tell the majority of Horde posters here are of the “noble savage” ideology that Thrall established but there is a contingency of Horde players that do enjoy the savagery without honor. I don’t think it’s very fair to them that they should have a whole expansion telling them that they’re wrong for liking themes that have always been present in the game and turning the paragon of those themes into a raid boss so that Alliance players and half the Horde can feel like heroes. I didn’t like it when they did it to Garrosh and I certainly don’t like it now that it’s Sylvanas’ turn. Obviously, they should have just toned down both characters but it’s a little too late for that.

108

It is entirely possible that a realignment may occur. We may have a weird fusion. Where you can be “Good Horde” , “Bad Horde”, “Good Alliance”, and “Bad Alliance.” Or a removal of All encompassing Factions entirely in favor of mini Factions that give us more choice.

109

Every horde member in the war was responsible for helping Sylvanas get to that point. She didn’t fight her way there solo with a torch in hand.

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110

Technicly no one actually knew she was gonna burn it.

It’s like if i let my friend barrow a gun, which he then uses to kill someone. I didn’t know he was gonna kill someone, so why i will still be held responsible for giving my friend a gun, i will not be accused of assisting in murder.

111

I really hope not. I love being Horde more than I love being an individual race and I would really hate to see that taken away.

112

If your friend had Sylvanas’s track record, she’d most likely be a felon and loaning her a gun would be illegal even if she didn’t kill someone with it. I doubt you could use that as a defense to be found not guilty of accessory to murder. :stuck_out_tongue:

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113

There’s a HUGE difference between the two. Thrall cared about ALL the Horde while Sylvanas’s is primarily concerned with the Forsaken and kinda the Blood elves, but not really.

Thrall was also the savior of the Darkspears’ race, and the Bloodhoof Tauren, and the Bildgewater goblins, and by extension the Forsaken. The only one he wasn’t directly involved in was the Blood elves.

There’s also a difference between admiration and straight up fanaticism, once again, not the same.

One made decisions in pursuit of peace and life, the other in pursuit of war and death.

That’s some straight bogus, Thrall had to deal with mistakes that were only his by extension of his subordinates. Like the aftermath of the Wrathgate incident cuz Sylvanas couldn’t keep a handle on her own people or the whole thing with Garrosh because he wasn’t mentally well enough to hold down house for an expansion before isolating all of his allies and going full-blown genocidal. But in the end, Thrall usuallly does come to face his problems, because he did end up killing Garrosh and he did assign Kor’kron to watch over the Forsakens’ experiments to make sure we didn’t have another incident like Wrathgate.

Meanwhile, we have Sylvanas who can clearly see her allies are beginning to doubt her ability to respect their morality goes on and continues to force the Horde into committing amoral acts until inevitably her most valuable ally abandon she her and some of her other allies are beginning to question her motives even though she knows full-well what buttons she can and cannot push on said allies. Yet she does nothing to address them other than being cold and insulting them or outright ignoring their suggestions.

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114

I think it’s more a case of what you did after. If you stood beside him doing nothing to stop him from shooting that person, then backed his alibi when confronted by the police? You’d definitely be charged for aiding and abetting.

But this would be more like if you gave your friend a gun, helped him break into a house with the intent of roughing the people inside up, and your friend shot everyone inside instead. And you’d definitely be seen as an accomplice.

The reason the entire Horde gets blamed is because Sylvannas didn’t march through Ashenvale and Darkshore alone. We knew she planned to conquer the people. That she instead burned down the tree makes us guilting of aiding and abetting at best, accomplices at worse.

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115

I think the point is - while many Old Horde Rock chewers see Sylvanas fans as mindless obsessed “Waifu” Fans … Sylvanas fans might see the Old Horde Rock chewers as supporters of a racist and failed ideology to an obsessive degree.

It goes both ways.

I dont mind Thrall. But I dont need him lecturing me about anything. He appointed Garrosh in part because he didn’t think the Orcs would follow a non Orc. Instead of choosing one of the better candidates: Cairne or Voljin.

I would listen to Thrall’s counsel, but also keep his track record in mind.

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116

I’m not altogether concerned with what a proponent of slavery thinks about Thrall’s Horde TBH.

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117

Luckily for us all, such a thing no longer exists. Welcome to Sylvanas’s Horde. Enjoy your stay.

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118


It won’t be staying long. :smirk:

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119

I don’t really see it this way.

For starters I’d argue that there never was any support for “not a good guy”. While the Forsaken have always been sketchy, any concept of not being a good guy is obliterated as soon as you start doing any content past the Forsaken-centric quest hubs. And to be fair, this has always yielded some crappy results to a varying degree. The Forsaken quest hubs in WotLK come to mind (I mean, how are we supposed to reconcile helping the Forsaken develop a new Blight and then run off to help the Argent Crusade?).

WoW has historically and consistently wanted us all to be “good guys”, regardless of Horde or Alliance. So I’m not actually sure were you can draw from to say the Horde supported the concept of “savage just to be savage”, unless you only look at tiny portions of game content and choose to ignore story inconsistencies. Though I suppose some people just want to look savage and kill things, so maybe its pretty easy for some to ignore all the story context.

So it doesn’t really surprise me that it looks like most people want to see the Horde be defined as “savage but noble” because that’s what the story has routinely supported. For example, you couldn’t help Putress at the Wrathgate.

Now the claim that certain races aren’t “true Horde” is a bunch of crap though. That just sounds like people who think Garrosh was right, which is a whole extra problem.

I will say that part of the problem though is that Thrall was a terrible leader.

Thrall had a very clear vision for the Horde but he did next to nothing to cultivate that vision. He didn’t have to do anything when it came to welcoming in the tauren or the trolls because, as serendipity would have it, that was what they wanted as well. Otherwise, however, it seems he let his “we welcome the misfits” ideology do the driving and he barely paid lip service to his own vision.

Thrall’s poor leadership and inability to promote his own vision is how we ended up with things like Sylvanas still in charge post Wrathgate, Gallywix as leader of the goblins, and Garrosh as his successor.

For the most part, Thrall’s poor leadership has lead to problems that the story has addressed or aren’t big enough to cause massive ripples (I don’t think people are, or were ever, up in arms over Gallywix for example). But his mistakes with Sylvanas have now come to the fore and they’re causing a big problem.

Why is it a problem? Two-fold.

  1. It provides story support for savage just to be savage. The Forsaken have always been as evil as a PC race gets and now they’re in charge. Where we once had at best minor story bits that let us go along with the machinations of the more sinister aspects of the Forsaken, now it’s front and center.
  2. It imposes “savage just to be savage” story upon people who play the Horde as “savage but noble”. Where once players would probably go through Dragonblight and handwave away how they help the Forsaken, now players would have to handwave away massive swaths of BfA story content to produce the same effect.

These two byproducts of a Sylvanas-led Horde are at complete odds with one another. If this were a movie/book/TV show, this would make for some great conflict. But there are players caught in the middle of this.

You have people that always embraced the “noble savage” definition of the Horde who likely grimace repeatedly as they’re instructed to blight Darkshore, leave allies to die (and possibly get raised as skeletons) at Lordaeron, and so on. You have others who have chosen to ignore the framework the WoW story has provided that can now embrace it because it syncs with how they have been enjoying the game.

While I don’t want to say playing a certain way is more or less legitimate than another, in a sense what’s happened here is a flip flop of what’s being legitimized by the story.

And to bring this back around, presumably the “true Horde” nonsense is a byproduct of this; people who are seeking a path to resolution by carving out the races that Thrall never properly stitched together into the Horde. I don’t blame them for wanting to see the Horde return to “savage but noble” because that’s what I signed up for and what the story told me I was, but I’m not interested in shucking races out of the Horde to resolve the issue.

And… I just wrote a crap ton so I’m going to stop myself now lol

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120

Well thats the Warchief’s motto regardless of who sits on the throne.

However, I am enjoying this moment where the Forsaken made everyone shake in their boots and cry foul.

It’s a nice break to be following Forsaken around as they plague their enemies. Instead of Orc Orc Orc all day. I like experiencing the diversity of the Horde, in aesthetic and philosophy.

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121

I kinda agree, I was really on board with garrosh until he turned against the horde and threw away his honor. Since we got that good honorable orc warmode horde it’s nice to see the forsaken doing forsaken stuff. I just hope it ends better then garrosh did. The entire civil war part is such a waste.

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