The Horde lost pretty much 90% of its cast since wotlk without even counting in the old Horde people from the RTS games. Metzen made a big deal about the Horde under Thrall chosing to be better then ruled by demon corruption yet he continued to hit them with the doofus bat regardless. The reason why I am saying this is the mere fact that at the same time apart from Varian the alliance hasn’t lost even a single important person and their hierarchy still looks the same from when the game originall launched.
Cairne
Vol’jin
Saurfang
Dranosh
Zaela
Sylvanas
Gallywix
Nathanos
Lathos Sunband
Kael’thas
Garrosh
Nazgrim
Malkorok
Rastakhan
AU Durotan
AU Grommash
Broxigar
Orkus
If we go further we can list up the original leaders too
Blackhand
Doomhammer
Kilrogg
Kargath
Gul’dan
Ner’zhul
Tagar
Zuluhed
Grommash
Durotan
Draka
Teron Gorefiend
Nekros Skullcrusher
Cho’gall
Zul’jin
current unknown whereabouts:
Fenris
Samuro
So as you can see here my frustration comes from Blizzard never adressing how badly they treated the Horde and had to repeat the stupid “Horde gone bad and has to redeem itself by attacking their own leaders and people.”
If Blizzard is actually seriours with their plot they need to do better then making us taking orders from Alleria.
but the name of the thread is “The Death of Horde Lore Characters.”
I actually agree with you on this, but…we’re really naming characters that aren’t dead just to pad the numbers? I don’t think that is necessary in this case.
My personal beef on this topic is that Jaina and Genn have been Unrepentant Warmongers for over a decade of expansions and have never suffered any consequence for it. not even as much as an apology to anyone or a sincere acknowledgement of their part in all the Warmongering. (unless it happened in a book that I haven’t read).
Garrosh is dead for his actions. the majority of his Warmongering Loyalists are dead also. Nazgrim died for his actions, and then was repurposed later.
Sylvanas is on forever punishment for her actions. Nathanos is dead for his actions.
Jaina is the now-Beloved Ruler of Her Home Nation.
Genn got to peacefully retire.
Wanda “it doesn’t seem fair”.gif
Yes yes I know, insert 50 hundred thousand justifications for why the Alliance Warmongers are perfect and blameless in every way or whatever.
That was SUCH a dumb narrative direction, but Blizzard really wanted to cash in on Frozen by making Jaina into their personal Elsa.
Remains to be seen. He passed on the crown, sure, but whether he gets to live out his days with afternoon naps in his manor in Gilneas is unclear. If anything, I expect him to die on the altar of character progression for Tess.
Yeah I was reading it and thinking ummmm some of these guys and gals are alive and kicking whats OP on about then realized number padding with a clickbait title so now I’m like “Is that you belular?”
I just find the whole thing so painful. Jania used to be one of my favorite characters after Wc3, her decision to reject her father’s anti-Horde crusade, and decision to kill him seemed like a painful moment of growth for her.
Rolling that back, and having her come to the conclusion that she should have let the old man genocide the greenskins, it just bums me out.
(and yes, yes. I know, blah blah blah her feelings make sense and are justified because of Theramore, still feels bad that rare advocate for peace in the setting was turned into a violent warmonger because of horrific personal trauma. And not in an interesting way, just in a “hey, this sucks and makes me feel bad” kind of way.)
As much as I was hopeful for an interesting avenue of character growth for her, the writers utterly botched it. Jaina as she was in Vanilla would’ve made for an ideal Head of the Council of Six. Ruling Dalaran was absolutely the sort of role she was made for, in my opinion. Granted, back in Vanilla I never thought Dalaran would’ve been neutral, considering how many Horde quests involved attacking and killing them, while some Alliance bases, like Nethergarde, were manned by them.
Jaina becoming the Head of the Council of Six after Theramore’s destruction and then still being pro-peace felt… weird. At that point, her being a warmonger would’ve made sense with her grief still fresh, but its like the Devs messed up the order of events and just wrote off that grief so she could be peaceful until the Horde turned on her a second time.
That period between Theramore and the Purge where she was kosher with the Horde made no sense. Her becoming the Head of the Council of Six after Theramore made no sense either.
Part of me wonders if she wasn’t the Head of the Council sooner because one of the writers want their self-insert in charge instead. Certainly Dalaran being neutral in Wrath would’ve made more sense had she been in charge of it at the time.
No idea. Too many, in my opinion. Mind you, a self-insert isn’t bad until they become a driving force in the narrative and usurp roles other characters were meant to fill. I think of Nathanos and his role as Major-Domo to Sylvanas, and how Varimathras was wasted by doing the predictable thing and betraying Sylvanas and the Horde. It felt like the role was being freed up so Nathanos could take it, rather than an interesting story of Varimathras putting all of his bets behind Sylvanas because he did the one thing he was forbidden to do: betray his kin.
You know, up until the Wrathgate I always thought “well, they’re not gonna have the dreadlord betray Sylvanas. That would just be too obvious, the writers are smart enough not to just do the painfully obvious thing. He’s clearly self-interested, he just believes that his interests lie with being loyal to the Banshee Queen”
fwiw there are characters who were designed as self inserts from the get go (Rhonin was extremely blatant; Danuser has like 2 I think, one of whom basically just shows up to tell hunter players a story about the spirit fox pet) and characters who become writers’ pets (e.g. Nathanos who was just a vanilla quest giver raised to main hunter trainer for forsaken in Cata to Banshee Prince in Stormheim and BFA, or Jaina who was always a big deal but got so many powerups and weird narrative swerves that it just gets comical)
Same here. I honestly thought they had more interesting stories to tell. Why else would Thrall of all people accept a Dreadlord into the Horde? Was Grom’s body even cold when Orcs started following the orders of a demon again?
I’ll be honest, a Lightforged Dreadlord seemed like a meme at first, but then I thought, “Well, maybe he WON’T go the same way as Varimathras? Maybe Blizzard won’t do the obvious thing again?”
Most of your list were either characters that died 20 years ago and weren’t even part of the current Horde, or they were outright, actual villains, or… both. Some were never even Horde to begin with. Others never even existed in the game, they literally existed only in the novels they were created in.
Did you just type ‘Horde characters’ into Wowpedia and pick names of dead ones regardless of how they associated with the Horde?