Everytime Garrosh comes up, there’s a lot of misunderstandings that stem from limited perspectives.
Unfortunately, to understand Garrosh you need to look behind the scenes.
Garrosh was planned to be a flawed character who got a redemption arc and became a hero. This is what his character was about from BC to the first half of Cataclysm. Garrosh was not planned to be a villain until he was written to be a villain in MoP.
There’s not only ample hints at this in game, but there are, rather explicitly, quotes from developers saying as much.
But that said, since then, Blizzard have been quietly retconning and removing content to make Garrosh seem like he was always planned to be a villain. These are lies. See linked thread.
There’s two theories as to why he became a villain:
- For WoD to happen so they could cash in on the Warcraft movie.
- Because a lot of players didn’t like Garrosh because he was mean to them in BC or Wrath (it’s worth noting that completing the full Horde Nagrand questchain actually changes Garrosh’s dialogue towards your character so that he’s actually respectful, but I digress).
But, in typical Blizzard fashion, it’s possible that what we’re seeing is a second reversal.
A lot of players remembered what Garrosh was supposed to be and expressed misgivings. It looks especially bad after doing the same thing with Sylvanas.
It’s possible that the Timelines line and Shadowlands will finally give some closure to a character they wasted because they thought Grom was cool.