Almost all of that was only him in WCIII though. In WoW’s lifespan he failed practically every major hurdle that came before him and the Horde. All of that is practically antithetical to how he’s been since he first left the Horde. Even since he came back in BfA he’s been a lame duck.
His failure was appointing Garrosh Warchief and then not returning after Cataclysm. Theramore wasn’t his fault even if he thinks it is, but he should’ve known better than to appoint Garrosh. Garrosh was trash even in TBC. Shoulda left him in Outland.
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Blizzard can do anything if they want to, but that’s still a horrible argument. I could say that Blizzard will have the Alliance join the Horde because they want to, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t ridiculous.
he’ll fix it if the story demands he fix it.
Also, everyone is going at treng like Blizzard isn’t going to have thrall fix everything.
These past 15 years have all basically been his story. He effed up. He knows he effed up. Saurfang kicked him in the cheeks. He’s about to come kill steal Syvie. You can be unhappy about it like Veloran and Ariel, or you can just accept that it’s happening and be excited that You’re about to get a non-psychotic warchief like Treng.
Based on the writing thus far, i’d side with Treng on this one. Hope for the best. The best you’re gonna be offered is Thrall. May as well accept that
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They may tell me he’s fixed it. But it won’t work, because what’s wrong with the Horde faction in my heart is something that Thrall’s return won’t fix.
That’s what I mean.
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What’s wrong with the horde?
Players and Lore.
World heroes tend to be neutral characters both factions can interact with. Characters like Tirion Fordring is a good example. Both Horde and Alliance interacted with him in Classic and experienced the demise of his son with him. To see him rise and become a powerful character through the use of the Ashbringer made him a world hero.
Thrall failed because he was so iconic to the Horde. He was its face for three pivotal expansions. The Alliance saw him as the leader of the enemy and thus had an ingrained disliking him. Only further exemplified when the Horde hostility showed in contested zones. The attempt to make him a world hero also didn’t work when Thrall began murderstorming the Alliance navy tricked into pursuing him in the Goblin zones.
His progression into world hero was ham-fisted badly. People relying on him in areas that he had no involvement in. Becoming the World Shaman to fight back Deathwing was bad enough. But he gained this sense of great importance without really earning it. His whole story has been divided between great hero of Azeroth and hero of the Horde.
But in the end; Thrall created the Horde. He will never escape its mantle because he invented it. People still see him as the true warchief due to purely his diplomatic desires and more of… “Push comes to shove” temper. A sensible mind is something people wanted and hoped for from Vol’jin but easily lost it in the Legion.
To be honest; A character that only one faction mostly interacts with is a bad option for world heroes. This is why Horde players hated Val’sharah. Working with someone who is openly against them and isn’t a neutral-favoring mind. But enjoy something like Azsuna where it may be flavored Alliance. There’s no genuine gripes as its a faction both groups embrace.
It’s hard to articulate, but … part of the reason I settled into playing Horde originally was because I liked the idea of playing out a redemption arc. The dark past was mostly behind the Horde when I started in BC, and while there were bound to be individuals who messed up (or had different agendas), the faction as a whole was supposed to be proving its value to a world that hated it for its past mistakes.
I didn’t want to have to play through the mistakes and horrors that the playable races will never forgive us for. And Thrall can’t make them go away. Arguably, he indirectly caused some of them by appointing Garrosh–I think his degree of responsibility for Garrosh’s crimes is often overstated, but he doesn’t stand apart from the things that have happened in the playable game, the way he does from the crimes of Old Horde.
The faction fantasy I wanted (and in fact, was promised) just isn’t possible anymore, and Thrall can’t fix that.
Thrall’s greatest flaw as Warchief has always been that he’s never been a very strong leader for the Horde in times where there’s no massive crisis to address. Whenever they got a spare moment to themselves and the Horde a chance to catch their breaths, Garrosh and Sylvanas immediately plotted a new course and launched head-first into fresh conquest. It kept the Horde in a constant crisis-mode that allowed them to centralize all the power around them and their followers, and crack down on dissent with brutal force. They took the name of Warchief pretty literally.
Thrall on the other hand, has always been a leader for the Horde. The one that gets everyone together and organized, and buckles down for the work of nation-building, and then gets bogged down as the Horde pulls itself in a hundred different directions. He got bogged down in nation-building, and didn’t have much vision for it.
He was right about Garrosh, in that Garrosh’s energy gave the Horde more unity of purpose than it did under Thrall. But he mistook that for a positive thing. He took action as the same thing as progress, and the second he turned away from the Horde, a massive war broke out right in the middle of fighting the Twilight’s Hammer and Deathwing.