So what did the Mag'har do to Draenor?

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Got Honorbound to exalted on my Hordie, so I unlocked the Mag’har. Was actually very curious about this quest chain so after the hour of running around Azeroth like a chicken with my head cut off, getting to the actual scenario…one thing became glaringly apparent.

Grom and his Mag’har did something to Draenor.

It’s established that the Mag’har are having a heck of a time getting enough sustenance. The Lightbound NPCs yell out about how the land is desiccated due to the Mag’har’s hate, and even Yrel remarks that it was the Mag’har who squeezed the life out of the land - and the implication that it’s not restricted to just Gorgrond.

Let’s not kid ourselves about this - the Horde and all its associated members are monsters in the writing. So despite the Mag’har being adamant about the “tyranny of the Light” - and Mag’har Darkcasters making a point to you to not corrupt “their” land - there’s a pretty big side of this story that we have yet to see.

My guess is Grom got arrogant after kicking out the Legion. There’s a very casual mention about how the Mag’har has subjugated the Ogres and that they have to keep putting down uprisings. I think Grom went to war with the Botani, and it backfired on him. He won the war, but did catastrophic damage to Draenor in the process.

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The big issue with this is that implies it was actually the Mag’har did something to it.

One rumor is that the Light corruption causes it’s own issues, and the reason we never saw it is because the only other place with serious Army of Light presence was Argus.

Basically, the current rumor is that this has been left entirely to speculation for a reveal down the line when we’re interacting more with Prime Naaru, Tyrant Yrel and other manners that paint a less pleasing image for the Light.

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They’re ORCS. Being 100% serious right now, but in the main universe they blew up their planet. So yeah, I’m naturally biased to the idea that the Orcs are the ones at fault because historically, they have been.

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Oh I know and fully argee there is a reason to believe that.

This being said, I’m also theorizing for ideas that would actually provide genuine interest that break the current mold of things and look at new ground that has not been walked about 50 times prior.

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I’ve also heard people speculate that Draenor is collapsing because, well, it shouldn’t exist. A bronze dragon forced this alternate reality from whatever time and universe it belonged to into our own, and now it is fading back out of existence, not due to anything the Mag’har or the Draenei did, but simply because it doesn’t belong here.

I find that theory to be the most compelling, because the Mag’har killing the entire planet simply due to killing Botani and industralizing is… well, it could happen, but pollution and deforestation can’t really kill a planet in 30 years. And the Mag’har accusation that the Draenei are responsible doesn’t make sense to me either, because even at its worst the Light is not a force of decay, the Light is Life. AU Lightmother may try to make you into a scary dogmatic zealot, but I don’t think she could or would make a planet into a wasteland–the Light doesn’t work that way.

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Oh now that’s a neat angle.

And the idea that the planet should not exist and the universe is correcting itself would give the Light Mother a bit of a purpose to the aggressive proselytizing.

The world is doomed. She starts giving Yrel visions of a grand destiny among the stars. Something to hope for, something to build towards. And it kind of works, because some Orcs (Including Hellscream’s offspring) join them. But the Mag’har don’t, and so they start aggressively expanding the influence.

Not for some future conquest, but to give the denizens of Draenor a small modicum of peace and serenity as it shuffles towards oblivion.

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The mag’har took the Arakkoa’s rightful clay. So, they were punished and destroyed.

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this is so much better than “what if the good guyz was the bad guys??”

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Bad writing.

In all seriousness I’ve heard a lot of theories. The one I like most is that both sides are wrong as hell and it has nothing to do with either of them (Presently at least) and that is was linked back to the Iron Horde, more specifically Ner’zhul and his void shenanigans. He was basically breaking reality and delving into some dark stuff, and I suppose its possible he did some damage on a irreparable level which kinda put the planet into a ‘slow death’ spiral.

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i like every idea that isn’t “the Light is evil too”

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I personally liked the scenario. It was goofy, and didn’t make sense, but hey. At least it wasn’t “We’ve never OFFICIALLY been invited. Maybe you should do that.” (Low blow.)

But in all seriousness, the Orcs were, in our timeline, destined to destroy their own world, as Miko pointed out. And that was with Blackhand as our leader. Blackhand, as far as I can see, wasn’t that bad of a leader. He kept things in line, was logical, and though he had pride he never wanted to be ‘da bestest ork in orkdom’.

Then we have Grom, who leads the Iron Horde. The same Grom who was kept his title by virtue of being feared, who drank the blood on the grounds of ‘Why not?’ (Weakness or something but originally he just wanted to be da bestest ork in orkdom)

My personal theory is this: many Draenei would not forget what the Iron Horde did to many of them, and may not see the distinction between Gul’dan’s orcs and Grom’s orcs. Not to mention, the Iron Horde is very militarized and ‘gunpowdered’. If Grom went to war with the Botani, as Vanndrel pointed out, then he, being the genius tactician he always was (the same guy who said “Hey, that’s a Demigod? Time to cleave-sheave-my-reeves”) probably allowed the use of flamethrowers in the Evergrowth or other places of Draenor. Those fires ran rampant, probably killed a lot more than was expected, and maybe a lot of innocents got hurt.

Not to mention the rebellions. If they’re having dissenters, all it takes is six orcs to dress up as Blackrock Orcs and attack the Draenei to put more pressure on both sides. Draenor is not a happy place to exist in, and we didn’t do it any favors by being there. Plus, in our timeline, the Draenei and Orcs were never ‘buddies’. They co-existed, mostly because the Orcs could never dream of sacking their cities and taking them over. They did not have the military might to do so, divided and unempowered by Mountain Dew.

Then again, the Draenei in this particular scenario as it was presented did have to deal with the Legion. Sure, we beat them back side by side, but the Naaru saw how easily the orcs could be swayed to conquest. They let destruction come to Draenor, and thus they could pose a threat to the rest of the universe. Whether that is right or wrong it is a decent enough point to start building resentment–on top of whatever else might have happened.

Edit: To add more to the side in favor of the Mag’har being relatively innocent in this conflict, since I noticed my post is pretty much ‘This is what the orcs could’ve done bad all the time’ (I am trying to be unbias in this theorycrafting) the Draenei could believe the orcs caused MORE destruction by fighting back. If the Orcs refused to be Lightbound, and fought back with all their destructive potential, than they did indeed help destroy Draenor further in an attempt to try and suvrvive.

Facetiousness aside, I am mostly rambling at this point. But to answer the original question: A lot of things, but no one can tell. Draenor is a savage world, and you give a race born from that savagery the capabilities to enhance their chances of survival on a destructive level.

Tl;dr: I have no idea, but two peoples who’ve lived side by side after committing atrocities against one another, on varying levels, are NOT going to be friends no matter what happens. And Draenei live a long, long time. They’re not going to forget this as easily as a finite race who replaces itself every 70-100 years.

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Personally?

A side effect of the immense amount of Fel brought to bear in Tanaan Jungle, killing a Demon Lord of Archimonde’s potential on the planet and having the Twisting Nether open up, even for a short period of time, to the planet with so much Fel behind it, the creation of an unstable Gate to summon Archimonde at the end of the Black Temple, the destruction of the original Black Gate by the Horde and Alliance to stymie the Iron Horde would all have done damage to the planet.

Then there’s also the Rangari who mention in quest-text that attempting to use the old technologies of Argus on Draenor was dangerous, as the planet was different and the crystal magi-tech of the Eredar didn’t interact well with Draenor’s native energies.

We’ve also seen that the Army of Light does not give a fig-leaf about anything but winning their war.

I’d argue that the Iron Horde, and then Fel Horde, caused a large amount of ecological damage, and with the Botani pushed back and so much power invested into the Horde Champion, there was a resulting ‘low’ in the planet’s natural and native Spirit Energy, a fate that even the Titan who came to Draenor so long ago feared because it could cause the planet to die and become a sterile, lifeless ball of rock.

So the Draenei and the Frost Wolves, with those Iron Horde who surrendered and attempted to atone, went about fortifying Draenor against the Legion and trying to mend their wounds, both physical and diplomatic. And to get this done in a hurry, and considering we see the Army of Light led by High Comrade Sister Glorious Leader Yrel fielding the same kind of mechs that the Army of Light we met, mechs that run on pure Light energy, it is not inconceivable that the Draenei decided to discard the Rangaris’ concerns, and later those of the Mag’har, in an effort to get the job done in a hurry.

Now, we’ve also seen Velen channelling a massive amount of Light, and including his own life-force in the process, to return a Dark Naaru to the Light, and the Naaru speaks to us later on with Velen’s spectral form and voice, presumably to honor the Prophet but presumably also because, like all Naaru, they feed on souls, or ‘Life’, since Life is the Light, and Light is Life, and no matter how many times the two are exchanged, nothing is lost.

And the words the Prophet said are haunting. It implies that the Light can consume Life to increase its power, but that the Light’s limitation is how much Life is in the universe.

So between the damage the Fel and Iron Horde did to the ecosystem, which is what the Draenei blame the Mag’har we recruit for, and the siphoning of Draenor’s natural energies, energies which are not nearly as bountiful or so quick to self-regenerate as the Spirit Energies of a world carrying a Titan’s World-Soul like Azeroth and Argus, the Draenei and their supporters began to drain the planet’s very life-essence to fuel their machines while in turn, the Mother of Light began slowly draining the life-force of the life-forms on the planet to bolster her own powers and empower the Army of Light further, considering what happened in our timeline.

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Another is cause its a Dreanor that shouldnt exist and was alt time line made it was made without the essence of a titan soul inside and without such never had the ability to create and sustain life of its own

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I dunno, I find the ‘most holy of all subjects of worship’ being oppressive and justifying a purge to be pretty on-par with religion IRL and a better route for the story to take than “Light ALWAYS GUD”, especially given that the Naaru have always been shown to have been willing to have people die to fulfill a vision because it was the ‘light’s grand design’.

I also like the idea that the one thing that comforted people in the overwhelming fight against the dark forces of the cosmos is itself something we must be wary of as a plot point. Being able to stand alone against the most powerful forces in the universe without even a light to guide us makes us kind of badasses when you think about it.

Now, whether or not Blizzard executes this well…That’s what I don’t trust.

(This is more a response to the general disapproval of the tyranny of light subplot being built up, which honestly, is one of the few things I am liking about the lore these days so I just disagree, personally. As for what is causing issues on AU draenor, I’m with the idea that it was never supposed to exist and so it’s unraveling)

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I don’t reckon it was the Light - or at least, I don’t think it’d make sense.

In the Plaguelands, outposts held by practitioners of the Light were the only places to have ANY degree of untainted life. Argent and Scarlet holdings were largely still verdant, at least to some extent.

To later find out the Light actually destroys the natural world just… doesn’t quite align, for me.

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Except that’s never been the case in WoW. From the Vanilla Scarlets to the Blood Elves siphoning Light energy off a captive Naaru…the Light has been established as being a neutral force. It’s the motivations of the wielder that determine whether or not the Light is used for good or ill.

Don’t forget Xe’ra was more than willing to aggressively “heal” Illidan - something the Mag’har scenario decided to call back with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. “We ARE our scars!”

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This thread makes me think about how hard it must be to RP an AU Mag’har, since your character would know all sorts of things about what is happening on Draenor that are just totally unexplored in the lore.

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My Mag’har (Not Zawi here) Just takes the approach of “I don’t want to talk about it.” Which is so frustrating for me as someone who likes to have fully constructed backstories. To the point where I am probably going to retcon her to being a Outland Mag’har.

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I honestly just assumed it was Gul’dan’s Fel magic carrying over. It’s what killed the original Draenor.

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That tipping point wasn’t reached until Gul’dan raised a Mountain with Fel Energy on the original Draenor - something he never did in the AU.

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