Hello! I’ve been wondering if the value of the High Mountain Tauren and Nightborne joining the horde has been overlooked. Both obviously bring their direct strengths into the horde. The nightborne’s magical prowess and the high mountain’s physical strength/eagles.
But doesn’t they’re inclusion also bring the Broken Isles, and its resources, aggressively under the hordes control? With each zone being relatively neutral, outside of Val’sharah being tied to the night elves, it seems like a huge deal that the horde holds the middle of the isle. But I haven’t seen anything even reference it.
Just seems weird to me, with the broken isles being so close to both Kul Tiras and Zandalar, it would seem easy to abuse the suramar ports to launch attacks or ship resources.
Blizzard has never really focused on previous expansions, but it feels really obvious that just about all of the horde aggression on kul tiras, or the relief to Zandalar, would have come from/through suramar, since it’s so perfectly placed.
Only HM has a hold that could be used as a stronghold for the Horde. Suramar was still in “reparations” according to Thalyssra but honestly that sounded an excuse to not involve in anything
I would argue the Nightborn and Highmountain were effectively used, and immediately with that break out of Talanji. I loved it. It was a great start to the expac. Afterwards, Occuleth and the Nightborn telemancy stuff made a pretty significant impact on travel. Highmountain’s strength seemed to be troops and air power, and they were reflected well. Neither had powerful navies to add to the Horde. Reforming Suramar into some Horde Warport housing an invasion fleet all of a sudden would have been a way to go… but I am glad they did not choose that route.
Well Highmountain is also home to the Trueshot Lodge, not to mention that it’s probably the only zone where you could have resources come from.
Suramar, outside of the city proper, is nothing but ruins and a forest, a little bit of that is owned by the Vrykul. Not to mention the city is still undergoing reparations AFAIK.
2/5 of the Isle are technically (mostly) Horde territory though.
While I debate trueshots claim to highmountain, especially since the Lodge likely split after the war came to ahead and is a base i’d argue that just wouldn’t be able to be held, I do agree that the entire broken isles is likely unable to be used in terms of resources. The Nightborne are Extremely isolationist, to the point that it would be difficult convincing them to even leave their own city and push across the rest of the isles by themselves without major horde support, and the Highmountain and Drogbar, while certainly able to secure Highmountain, i don’t think could push out by themselves.
Wasn’t the reason for Nightborne isolation because of them believing the entire world was destroyed? After joining the Horde the Nightborne have been very exploratory. It’s not just their military, but also their civilians. Org and SMC have been flooding with NB tourist. Zanadaland had a joint archaeological dig with NB and Belfs. Org’s portal room even has Nightborne mages keep a portal on Azuna instead of Suramar. This tells me that they’ve explored enough of the Broken Isles to pinpoint its leylines
I also remember a daily quest in Suramar where we were assigned to kill Harpys for their clothes. It suggest that Nightborne are very open to fashion trends from other societies and are willing to absorb more of the world.
I doubt Odyn would have any problem with HM tauren pushing into his part of the Isles. In fact, he would relish it since it’s more glorious combat. We already saw Bloodtotem participating in his trials, and Vrykul incursions on the HM border pass.
The most questionable part of the Broken Isle for me is the lack of HM druids participating in the Nelfzone. They were personally gifted by Cenarius because of their service. Why didn’t we see any of them there?
Yes but we have seen the Nightbornes work ethic in Zandalar, where they just laze about doing nothing to help move the archeological dig forward, they clearly are unwilling to actually do any manual labor.
Does Suramar have a port? It is on the water but they were in a bubble for ten thousand years. I can’t imagine it is designed to support anything more than fishing ships at most. The nightborne had no need of a navy.
Highmountain was honestly a great asset already. Lasan and his improbably strong eagles that can carry tauren riders were instrumental a few times. Beyond the eagles and their manpower though I am not sure what resources they can provide the Horde doesn’t already have access to.
I guess both are a good source for lumber and drinkable water. If Blizzard tries that path to war again it’ll be even more improbable than it was the first time they tried starving the orcs into war.
Ofcourshe. For 10k years the Nightborne didn’t have a need for hard labor. They had roombas and magic centaurs for house work.
Part of exploring is discovering what might of been lost. In the retaking of Suramar it is was rekindling the interest for archery. In their joint excavations it’s remembering the joys of digging ditches for dinosaurs.
My memory is a little foggy, but didn’t the NB magic the dinosaur skeleton above ground?
To me it seemed like the Mag’har and Lightforged had the biggest impact on the faction war, which was surprising given that they seemed like two of the smallest factions to be recruited. Suddenly their tech seemed to be everywhere.
How did they make an entire ship after coming to azeroth, they never used ships before, and one of such size would require months to make, even with goblin support.
Lightforged are literal space marines. Of course they have the biggest impact of they will have the biggest impact the war. A couple of them even went STEEL RAIN on the Horde in Drustvar and pushed them all out. Luckly for the Horde they only left an army of human male paladins to guard the area after they left. “Give me a hundred Lightforged. Barring that, a thousand regular troops.” -Archmage Y’mera
The Mag’har enjoy the legacy of the Iron Horde. Remember they destroyed the entire Drarnei navy before conquering Shattrath. Iron Horde ship making technology was apparantly so OP we had to convince their chief engineer to work with us in order to craft ships powerful enough to contest them.
There was a Laughing Skull orc in Anyport. It might suggest the Horde recruited the Mag’har before their war campaign. Incursions only happened a patch later. That’s plenty of time for the Mag’har to start creating their tech.
I’d like to believe the Mag’har are the competent version of the Iron Horde if Blizzard didn’t make them stupid like they did to the Legion after Broken Shore, and the Twilight Cult.
No i mean how did they make the ship in such a short period of time, shipbuilding can take months, and thats ignoring the who resource gathering and lack of proper facilities they are likely going to have. it’s a Logistical thing that bugs me.
Iron Horde tech was mostly just stuff originally designed by the Blackfuse Company.
Blizzard has never, ever taken time into the consideration of building things.
To be honest though, I don’t even really view that ship as an Iron Horde ship, I just assume it’s a general Horde ship using the models from WoD, and we already know that the Horde knew how to create them from the Shipyards in WoD.