A thing I never understood is the love of certain members of the community for the Amani. The Blood elves in particular get framed as brutal colonizers, and the Amani as poor victims who just want their land back. What gets forgotten is that Amani and Amani aligned Forest trolls were extremely hostile, not only against the Horde, but other Forest Trolls as well. And that even before TBC. Examples include the Vilebranch tribe (affiliated with the Amani per Chronicles), who sacrifice and oppress members of the Revantusk, who promptly joined the Horde. Or the Witherbark in the Arathi Highlands, who regularly raid the former internment camp Hammerfall to kick the Orcs out. And again, all of this happened before TBC. The Amani are portrayed in a similar manner to the Scarlet Crusade, who might have sympathetic motives on a superficial level, but are unreasonable in their methods and their hatred. A hatred that includes not just Elves and Humans.
It’s a mixture of things. For some there is fond memories of the Amani from playing the Horde in Warcraft 2 and just feeling they got shafted. Others look at the history and how the High Elves created their kingdoms on sacred troll ruins and feel a sense of outrage for their own reasons. And there are people who in all honesty preferred the days when the Horde were conquers seeking to control Azeroth under the likes of Doomhammer and Blackhand/Gul’dan, and the Amani’s desire to conquer Quel’thalas speaks to them.
“How dare these people try to regain their ancestral lands that some others just came and took from them” Is pretty much what you’re saying. The forest trolls are a harsh culture by our standards, but they mainly tended to their own business before the elves came rolling into Amani land and bulldozed some sacred ruin to them by force. I’d say they got the right to be pissed and try to push the invaders out.
Same goes for the Scarlet Crusade then. Because the Amani are the Scarlet Crusade, but Horde themed. The Scarlets just want their land back, but kill outsiders who they think are betrayers or plagued. The Amani Empire tribes just want their land back, but they kill anyone (troll or not) they consider traitors and sacrifice prisoners to their gods. And then they kill the gods themselves.
The irony here is that the Amani are trolls who hold nothing sacred, not even their own gods.
Taking like 5 minutes to browse various threads I think that, despite several legitimate and earnest actors, that the topic of Trolls and the amani are verging towards a meme due the fact they know they will get positive reinforcement.
“Oh crap Im losing my good will, better say justice for the Amani!”
It’s more like that the Amani got desperate enough to go against their loa and take their power by force. in the larger scheme of things the Amani have been devoted to their loa just like any other troll tribe. Are the Draenei heretics as well for having a sizable portion of them (including 2 of the 3 leaders) align with the legion back on Argus?
The Revantusk did also consider Zul’jin a great hero at least until vanilla.
You also have some weird ideas that sacrifice to the gods are inherently bad it seems like. It’s the base of all troll religion in the exchange and dealing with loa.
Your thinking is too black and white painting literally ALL of them with the same brush.
There’s a few similarities, but they’re not the same. Sure both want to reclaim their land, but in the case of the crusade the ones they’re currently fighting are as native to the land as they are. The thalassian elves and others that later joined in all settled on land that was lived on by the native forest trolls.
A better comparison is how the Alliance fought the orcish Horde for regaining Elwynn forest and Stormwind.
Edit: Judging by your other threads and posts it seems that you’re either a troll or diehard alliance can do no wrong and their enemies are not worth the earth they walk on poster.
Either way, congrats you made me respond
Their ancestors’ grievance was a valid one, but after seven thousand years of go nowhere wars and torture and flaying and enslavement maybe it’s time they dealt with their elf problem another way.
… but then, the Horde killed Zul’jin, and Vol’jin and his Darkspear led their elven allies in their latest stomp of the Amani, so I can’t imagine even the Zandalari could bring them to an accord.
The Zandalari probably threw up their hands at this point and are like There’s no helping these people. They won’t listen to the more seasoned troll tribes
No wonder the Amani have largely been left to defend for themselves
I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’d call Kil’jaeden and Archimonde heretics regarding the Light’s teachings.
From a Troll’s perspective, that might be the case. But why do you expect an Elf to respect such a religion and its sacred places?
I want a separate faction for Forsaken, Blood Elves and Nightborne, since those are my favorite races and I’m tired of Orgrimmar. So, yeah, an Alliance player.
From one perspective high elves were jerks, no denying that. It sort of has the same vibe that you get when you learn Mexico city was built on the flattened ruins of the Aztec capitol of Tenochtitlan.
However, from the Elvish perspective they have been migratory for a long time. They tried settling once before and old god mojo drove several of them nuts. The trolls had been picking them off in night time ambushes for awhile, meaning they didn’t exactly feel sympathetic to trollish perspectives. When they found the large confluence of ley lines—which is a somewhat rare thing it seems—they pounced on it as the chance they had been looking for to rebuild their people and have a home again.
It is one of those instances of actually morally gray world building when you get down to it. Mortally gray stuff by nature is controversial as right and wrong is indistinct.
That’s judging Trolls from a non-Troll perspective. From a Human or Elven point of view, being ruthless when it comes to defending the tribe’s territory, making sacrifices, even resorting to cannibalism at times, are all terrible things. From a Troll point of view ? That’s just the way things are.
The worst things the Amani did was react in an arguably overly aggressive manner to strangers colonizing their sacred lands and sacrifice their gods (if that’s truly what happened) in a desperate attempt to get the power needed to reverse the situation.
The former was especially understandable considering that said strangers were the people who had just freaking blasted the world. The latter is laughable when we, the Horde and Alliance, have no problem having Fel and Void wielders among our ranks.
Even if there was a double standard in the community and we were too lenient with the Amani, which I don’t think is true, it would be perfectly fine, because it would merely compensate for the double standard the game itself constantly inflicts on Trolls. I won’t shed a single tear for the High Elves : the writers treat them well enough.
See, I WAS going to joke and say that’s just a Tuesday for most trolls 
A pretty good Tuesday 
It reminds me of seeing people judge the Aztec as evil because of their human sacrifice. In Aztec culture it was seen as an honor to be sacrificed, and was seen as a rather sacred rite. Morality is a weird soup.
I’d also say the lore suffers a lot from the substantial shift in cosmological underpinnings. Back when a lot of this early lore was written Arcane magic WAS dangerous and evil, it still had strong Warhammer winds of magic vibes to it that have been shifted to what is now Fel magic.
Sacrifice: “But I don’t want to be sacrificed!”
Aztec Priest: “You EGOIST, do you want the sun not to go up tomorrow? Do you WANT all of us to DIE, so YOU may live? Who do you think you are?”
Sacrifice: 
Like I said… A very weird soup
I always thought it was weird that the trolls even still knew it was stolen land after like 7,000 years, and don’t understand why they waited like 5,000 years between SIlvermoon being established and actually striking back with the Troll Wars. 7,000 years ago in real life the Egyptian pyramids didn’t even exist yet, and wouldn’t for another 2,500.
This is more a criticism of Blizzard’s unrealistically massive spans of time than of the trolls. Their sense of scale on the timeline is nonexistent. In a more reasonable time frame (talking centuries rather than millennia) I’d totally be on the Amani’s side, but with such a gigantic gulf I’m instead forced to ask “What were you even doing in between?”
I wonder what you mean by this? Do you mean just Amani fans? Or are you espousing some correlation … for example, left handed people and the dreaded “Amani Apologism?”
If there is drama about them, I did not notice. I do not think of them specifically, much. I do not think of specific tribes much, more like Trolls in general. Perhaps the Zandalari and Darkspear. Maybe Dark Trolls because of their Night Elf links. But the Amani… I guess they annoy me in Dazaralor, if they dismount me.
Understandable! Have a good day, sir.
To me the Amani’s view towards the horde after WC2 is similar to Garithos’s view to the Blood Elves. The Amani were counting on the horde to retake their homeland from the High Elves. However the Horde erupted into in fighting just before they would’ve sacked Lordaeron’s capital. Which led to their defeat (thanks Gul’dan). So the Amani feel betrayed by the Horde. Feeling that the Horde were simply using them as a way to distract the Elves with empty promises (I have no doubt that Doomhammer would’ve lived up to his end of the bargain once Lordaeron fell, as he was a man of “honor”). Even more so after they allowed the High Elves, now Blood Elves into their ranks. This is something Zul’jin mentions in the 2.3 trailer. Likewise how Garithos’s home town was sacked by the Orcs and a nearby Elven force could’ve prevented that from happening. Leading to his innate hatred and mistrust towards Elfs in general. Which would extend to even Dwarfs as seen in the final Sylvanas mission in The Frozen Throne.
I could see them doing small raiding parties etc over those years. It’s just that it took them that long to get a force big enough. Basically they believed they could overwhelm the Elves and their superior magic with numbers. Quantity vs Quality.
I mean that is basically how the Scourge ended up winning against them. Also helped that each elf they killed was another soldier to their army.
What the Amani didn’t expect was the elves teaching Humans how to use magic (beyond the Light anyway). When the second war came around they saw the orcs as a potential ally. But we know how that relationship ended up.
Arcane still has some of that vibe to it. Particularly when it comes to addiction and the fallout of that. As we have seen with the High / Blood Elves and the Nightbourne. Even the Highbourne in Dire Maul were forced to feed off a demon to sustain themselves ever since the OG Well of Eternity was destroyed.
It is what I find interesting with the way Blizzard has gone about with Arcane Magic in WoW. It is basically a magical form of mathematics, the language of the universe. But it can also act like a very addictive drug. Basically saying you can get high and crash on Math.