I know that the player themselves gets all their Azerite and gear from various sources and doesn’t need the Global Goblin Azerite Mining Corporation, but the Horde as a whole seems to have been using them to procure the lion’s share of the Azerite used in the war machines, super soldier programs, and cool lanterns that they used on a day-to-day basis. The only thing Gallywix seems to have desired is gold, treasure, profitable items or treasure, etc. and since he was in charge of most - if not all - the Azerite mining operations across Azeroth he was presumably getting paid for his trouble in managing this worldwide enterprise. Problem is: by who?
Sylvanas seemed to care little for any matters of being Warchief beyond killing her enemies, friends, innocents, and a few puppies, so I find it entirely believable that she would be willing to let the Horde foot Gallywix’s bill. She was probably planning on leaving anyway, so why would she care? She probably didn’t even use her own gold.
I posit to you that the expansion after next will involve the player finding out that the Horde as we knew it is broke as heck, and they’ll all elect Gallywix Warchief to fix the economy, even though he broke it in the first place. Maybe Thrall can open a noodle shop in Pandaria if he feels like it too.
Okay, that last bit turned into a bit of a joke, but straight up I think the Horde broke as heck from paying the goblins for all their stuff and won’t have money to pay their soldiers, smiths, crafters, portal wizards, and zepplin captains. Not 100% on that, but that might cause some riots, maybe an attempted coup, or just plain desertion due to not being able to feed their families.
Gazlowe is taking care of the financial matters, besides Gallywix quit the Horde which means validation of the debt that Sylvanas took is now zero, nada.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Gallywix took anything that wasn’t nailed down when he fled and left them destitute. It’s very much what the worst of Goblinkind would do.
The finances of both the Horde and the Alliance make little sense and are best ignored.
Consider that both factions have effectively been fighting several continuous total wars for around 12ish years now. (War against the Illidari/Legion, War against the scourge, war against the Twilight’s Hammer and each other, Pandaria campaign, war against the Iron Horde, 2nd war against the Legion, and finally second war against each other).
The only realistic way they could have bankrolled such an enormous, continuous war effort is through plundering to high hell literally every single new continent each expansion takes place on.
The material costs alone of each war would have required staggering amounts of resources (untold amounts of weapons/armor for soldiers, enormous stores of resources for the complex and expensive war machines both factions develop, staggering amounts of gold to provide salaries to soldiers, sailors, engineers, etc and compensation to war widows, as well as bankroll the various necessities of running an army).
Both factions should have been effectively bankrupt following the conclusion of the war with the legion (an enemy force who staged invasions in every zone of Azeroth which would have resulted in widespread decimation of populations and resources) and thus the entirety of BFA can logically be said to be predicated on an impossibility (that is that either faction could wage war at all).
Horde always had a garbage economy compared to the Alliance. One of the reasons why Garrosh started his war was because of resources. I like to headcanon that the Horde raids most of their resources because their land is poor.
Mulgore looks like it’d be great farmland though. Honestly the Horde nation I see as being comprised of like Mulgore, Barrens, Durotar and Azshara. Those zones taken together and connected by the roads and zeppelins should be self sustaining.
Hmm … not sure you can support 5 different Kalimdor Horde groups with a single Steppe Plain. Especially considering the Horde’s overtaxing Mulgore’s water supply was one of the points of contention that pushed many Tauren into wanting to leave the Horde. While Blizzard clearly doesn’t care about these things outside of the few instances they mention them, the Kalimdor Horde especially is trying to survive in some really harsh terrain. The Horde is pretty poor.
The only thing the Horde seems to have in abundance right now is mineral resources. Fresh Water, Arable Land, Lumber, Food … there was a nuanced Faction Conflict premise centered around the Horde’s issues with all these essentials. But … seems Blizz only thinks in Micheal Bay.
Honestly, you just nailed the entirety of all lore in WoW.
It’s just the rule of cool; accessible soldiers and funds are treated on an “at need” basis. If Blizz needs to extend a war, magically there are more soldiers.
Money doesn’t exist, I’m pretty sure. We’ve just been imagining it.
Why not? How large are the population of said groups, and how large is Mulgore? It’s not like the Barrens, regardless of it’s name, is entirely unable to produce either. It has farms, and with the Gold Road, Ratchet, and Crossroads, it’s a center of major trade activity as well. Why can’t Azshara produce any sort of crop at all, either? The Darkspear also have Echo Isles, retaken, and we don’t know what comes out of there. We have 3 major Horde zones capable of production, connected by road and even air travel, with coastal access for every zone except Mulgore too (I mean, they don’t have a large port, but why not build one??). Only Durotar being a true desert (and we still got peons picking cactus apples!).
So really it just boils down to: what is the population of each Horde race in Kalimdor, and what is the productive capacity of these territories? We don’t have any of these answers despite what you asserted. It’s all head canon one way or the other until Blizzard decides to tell a story, one way or the other. One arc, the Horde is starving, the next they are not. Your head canon says the population of Orcs, Taurens, Goblins, and Trolls is too large and the FIVE zones under the Hordes belt too unproductive to feed them. My head canon begs to differ and says with enough ingenuity (hello, don’t we have goblins??) we can start producing enough bread to feed all of Orgrimmar and Thunderbluff, with significant surplus!
The economy has only ever really mattered when it concerns the Alliance, and even then, it only seems to come up sparingly, like in Cata era Westfall and the like.
Since the end of Wrath the Horde’s been caught in this endless loop of going to war to take more resources while also only needing those extra resources because they’re going to war. At the same time, most of the Horde races are quite different in terms of what their needs would be compared to say humans, dwarves, or gnomes, where they probably barely even need or use coin normally, but it’s kept in for gameplay purposes.
Either way, the Horde more than likely isn’t broke, and resources shouldn’t be an issue considering their allied races, with some exceptions, control large swathes of land to be used as well. Even if the nelves booted them out of Azshara, Ashenvale, and Stonetalon, they would still have a ton of options otherwise, including up in Northrend.
Vulpera are scavengers… expert scavengers. but ecnomically they’ve never progressed beyond hunter/gather stage. They know virtually nothing of agriculture and less of industry.
Why specifically? In “As our Fathers Before Us” the use of Mulgore’s subterranean water supplies was one of the points of contention for the Tauren. Also, yeah, conceptually the Kalimdor Horde is in a tough place when it comes to essential natural resources. Outside of Azshara and Mulgore, the entirety of the Kalimdor Horde lives in some of the most destitute landscapes on Azeroth.
They SHOULD have food supply issues. They SHOULD have arable land issues. They SHOULD have fresh water issues. They certainly SHOULD have lumber issues. On top of this, the Alliance has abundance on anything the Horde could possibly trade with them to make up for these deficiencies; so they have little reason to trade with the Horde themselves.
The Faction Conflict could be nuanced and work if Blizz centered it around these sort of issues that real life communities have to deal with. Its not flashy sure, but it is something that should effect a growing civilization trying to survive and grow in a wasteland so environmentally wrecked that even the NEs couldn’t fix it. But, can’t have that I suppose.
The Horde has always been a poor cousin materially compared to the Alliance. You even saw this in Warlords of Draenor when you compare the two garrison styles. They start out pretty close to the same at level 1, but at garrison level 2 you really see the difference. Alliance Garrisons have full scultped stone buildings…even a fountain! the Horde Garrison doesn’t really get beyond wood, furs, and sticks it’s central feature is a campfire.
Causes your assuming a lot and cata was the start of a global crisis there was cata quests that said the alliance had no food too but you don’t see anyone saying they still don’t.
How much population land can support would be a fun thing to figure out if we had numbers for anything