From Kiraser’s thread ( seems I can’t directly quote Community Council topics ) :
The book portrays the tribe as its peace-loving iteration from Classic and uses some impressive mental gymnastics to achieve this goal. The deceased chieftain from Cata is mentioned: but neither the cause of his death nor his title… the Soulripper. It’s mentioned how the tribe does everything to honor agreements with both the Horde and the kaldorei: then how did they end up trying to genocide the elves two times in a row?
There’s nothing wrong with trying to reintroduce the original portrayal of the Shatterspear from 2004, and it’s indeed sad that they were turned into such monsters without any explanation. But changing them back without any explanation is not a solution either. Now their lore is even more confusing. The original tribe lore now exists only in web archives, while the new one is actually in-game. I guess the better solution would be to tie in both takes together: what if the tribe had different subgroups, some inner conflict, something that provoked them?
I want to say that I agree with this 100%.
As a troll fan first and foremost, the Shatterspear have always frustrated me because no matter how much I want to root for them I have to admit that the story pretty much made them villains without a cause.
Apparently they lived in Night Elf territory for a long time and were peaceful, until Garrosh paid them a visit and then they suddenly weren’t anymore and the writers never bothered to give a reason for this change of heart except for the usual “trolls are inherently evil and do evil things”.
Now, with the Exploring Kalimdor book we do indeed get one new important information, namely that they made a contract with the Night Elves that said they would leave them alone under the condition that they never leave the valley.
Now take a moment and think about what that means.
Trolls are territorital by nature but usually content to stay in their usual turf, unless circumstances force them otherwise.
Food shortage for example. The valley is small, there’s a lake to fish but that’s pretty much it, no hunting grounds really to secure supplies. So maybe they were just hungry.
Or maybe the contract with the Night Elves was made a long time ago and following generations were wondering: why are we supposed to stay in a small valley when a whole world is waiting for us outside?
So eventually, either need or curiosity won out and some of them ventured out- just to be killed by Night Elves.
Which would be well in their right because there was a contract, and besides, why would they care if some trolls lived or died?
But of course, such an incident must cause resentment and explain why the Shatterspear were so easily willing to join Garrosh’s war efforts.
A morally gray situation, if you will. But no.
The Exploring Kalimdor book was a good opportunity to expand on this and give both sides reasons and justification, but they wasted it. Instead they settled to explain nothing at all and just reset the status back to zero as if nothing happened.
Which makes the Shatterspear still look evil for no reason and additionally, the Night Elves look dumb to accept their continuing presence in Darkshore. Disappointing.
