Taking a deeper look at things, the Horde seems to have much in common with Oceania from the book, 1984. Totalitarianism is a core tenant of the horde. The Warchief cannot be wrong, you follow the Warchief, whether you think they are wrong or not. This is horde policy. Failure to obey the warchief results in your death, possibly the deaths of your family, they’ll even Damnatio memoriae you and try to forget that you ever existed.
The horde also tends to re-write history and alter facts. They glorify Orgrim, Grom Hellscream, and even Kargath Bladefist, while pretending their crimes do not exist. The Crimes these monsters have committed against innocents puts them on the same moral footing as the lords of the burning legion.
The Horde leadership also tends to think the average horde member is a stupid, worthless pawn. From Gul’dan to Garrosh, to Sylvanas, we have endless accounts of Horde leaders abandoning their warriors, sending them on useless suicide attacks, or putting them in situations where they are meant to die so the leader gains evil power.
The Hordes economy cannot survive without war, which is why they must constantly wage war on something or risk total collapse. If they had to they would wage war on the Pandaren, making up stories that they are cunning backstabbing schemers who are plotting something over in pandaria. Remember, dont doubt the Warchief or we’ll unperson you.
Individual societies within the horde also show these traits, showing that the Totalitarian horde draws totalitarian societies into its ranks. Silvermoon has that famous scene where 2 blood elves speak out and are brain washed by a shadow priest and dragged away, presumably to their deaths. We never see them again. The Forsaken also operate on this basis. Brain washing is commonly used, Sylvanas has a personality cult, its claimed one can choose to willingly leave the forsaken, but all instances of this happening, like with Koltira or the undead who chose not to be forsaken in the starter zone, show they are either imprisoned and brainwashed, or killed.
The Warchief can be wrong. If they don’t take the rebuke by words, one can challenge them to Mak’gora. It is not exactly an enlightened answer, but it’s not as if they’re the only people who did it. In our history, we did it a lot too. Dueling for rank and/or disagreements/insults was very common in a lot of European armies and governments, to the point where it had to be banned and even still, it took awhile for it to end. I would not be shocked in the slightest if the human kingdoms in Azeroth had this problem.
They were spurred to action by Mannoroth. Because they were bound by demon blood, they waged war at the behest of their Overlords. What was to be done, once their bonds were severed? No amount of ‘our bad’ would fix what had been done and at that point, it was an effort to survive.
Orgrim was lauded for unseating Gul’dan, as well as freeing the Son of Durotan from captivity, passing the torch onto him to lead the Orcs in a world that was very much alien to them. The way back home was closed, they had to do something. That is heroic.
Grom Hellscream, while hot tempered and heavy handed, was courageous in battle and was willing to bring the fight to the enemy that intended to eradicate them. In his haste to slay a literal demigod that threatened to lay his men to waste, he made the tragic mistake of reforging an old pact that costed them the souls of both himself and his men, which will never really be removed from his name, but to his credit, he accepted his mistakes and gave it all to correct it. Not everyone would be willing to take the responsibility of such a tremendous error, then sacrifice everything to right that wrong. That is admirable and bears a lesson of humility, a healthy thing to have.
This one is not exclusive to the Horde. The origin story of the Defias Brotherhood comes to mind first. The House of Nobles thought almost nothing of their subjects beneath them. Do you know where the word ‘villain’ originates from? The pawns of the highborn are something to use and discard, their lives are short and while the occasional benevolent Lord has some compassion for his subjects, calloused abuse of the little people for the selfish gain of nobility is certainly something within humanity’s wheelhouse.
Not inherently true. Garrosh’s campaign started out of a necessity for example. They live in a barren land and it had just been hit by an apocalyptic force such as Deathwing. They faced a famine and they had to do something, lest they starve to death. They can survive without war. War is, factually, more expensive to wage than it is to maintain trade routes.
They just haven’t been in a situation ‘to’ steer from waging war, because their existence is harsh, unforgiving and the hardships of the world don’t give them a pass.
You can badmouth the Warchief all you want, you just have to be prepared to defend it. Again, nothing outside of the wheelhouse of humanity, as violence was a common resolution to conflict in our history, it stands to reason that humanity would suffer the same problem in Azeroth- and judging by the conflict between the Kingdoms during the time of the Alliance of Lordaeron, that gives me all the more reason to believe as much. The little people might end it in an inglorious squabble, people of high birth might challenge the aggressor to a duel to the death.
The former, I believe, is a cult quest line. The latter is objectively false until BFA/Before the Storm’s drastic 180 where they need to asspull a villain out of nowhere. The Forsaken do not brain wash people. Free will is a core identity of their civilization and is reflected well in their society, where outlooks on life and religion are drastically different and oftentimes opposed by one another. From the moment they pop out of the grave to the moment they go back, there is always a choice. One can even find their own way, if they’d like, of their own accord. Most don’t, because they either feel a loyalty to Sylvanas for granting them a second chance at life and/or leading them whilst they found themselves in control of their faculties again, or they simply have nowhere else to go and depend upon each other for survival.
What you’re listing is flaws. These flaws mark a few men and their effects are seen more commonly because they’re in prominent positions while people are watching them, but not a single civilization is exempt from having flawed men.
Having flawed members of an otherwise honest society, 1984 it does not make.
Demon blood didn’t come into play until they prepared to march on Shattrath, which was the last major battle of the Draenor campaign. Their only “overlords” up to that point were a geriatric warlock and a hologram.
Demonic corruption didn’t start with the demon blood but with warlock magic that, yes, was fed into Orc society by demonic overlords. The demon blood just pushed the Orcs into a killing frenzy and further bound them to the Legion.
Acting as if the demons were not responsible for the Orcs attacking the Draenei is disingenuous even if Gladwell got the details wrong.
She’s also changed her mind about that. She’s formally a member of t hat faction now, she takes her marching orders from Blightcaller, and she kills Alliance with glee.
That said though, she keeps the promise she made to Zelling even after his destruction.
Kil’Jaeden also put them on that path, whom Gul’dan is an agent of. They weren’t always on the warpath with the Draenei.
Which leads to another point I brought up;
You can accept the wrong-doings of the past and move on. That is absolutely an option. Wallowing in remorse and trying to make it up to someone you have so horridly wronged, that will settle for nothing less than the absolute destruction of you and the party you represent, is detrimental to living.
Just as long as they have a voucher from someone trusted that these allies really are of good moral character. It worked with the night elves’ backing of the worgen even if all pre-Cata encounters with worgen ended up with faces being eaten or attempted face eating.
Now it’s working with Alleria and the void elves even though they still like to digiblast their enemies into the void to spend an eternity of cold, dark, tentacle horror. Seriously, just how the F the light-forged okay with this? Did Alleria threaten Turalyon with no sexy-time unless he convinced his army of draenei fanatics to turn a blind eye? /headscratch
Maybe at one point with Garrosh or Sylvanas this might have been true but now Horde has the Vulpera on their team. They’re neither “strong” or “powerful” the way your average orcs thinks of it but possess a resourcefulness to them that just might make them one of the most useful races the Horde’s had in years.
What does all of this mean? Basically it just means that the factions are steadily breaking out of their cliche’ bubbles and starting to branch out a bit with no guarantees of going any further. Everyone knows that Blizzard likes to spontaneously toss in things that smell cool but are terrible at following up.
Don’t expect to see that Alliance civil war that might have happened when the ultrazealout draenei suddenly realized their palling around with void sucking sociopath elves any time soon.