Uh, okay, so

I mean, it’s not really “evil.” It’s not immoral, it’s not particularly wicked or cruel. There was no supernatural tomfoolery from the Legion. There was a defense system in place, Doomhammer had it removed, and Gul’dan figured out a more pragmatic solution than just throwing them in the ditch.

It becomes a moral issue when you forcibly mutate a population, but I don’t even think we’re told that ogres were against being turned into more powerful, more intelligent versions of themselves. I haven’t read Tides of Darkness in about 10 years.

Ah yes, the classic “It wasn’t Doomhammer - it was Gul’dan!” excuse. And it is an excuse because while Gul’dan is an acknowledged Evil Dude™, Doomhammer was Warchief.

To put it in perspective, Slyvanas didn’t technically order the execution of Night Elf capitves in Darkshore, but nobody quibbles on the definitions that the atrocity is to be laid at Sylvanas’ feet.

The Runestones were what the ancient Highborne utilized to protect their realm from the gaze of the Burning Legion. It literally masked the presence of the Sunwell and made things safer for the Highborne to continue practicing arcane magic.

By dismantling those Runestones (And later Blood Elves repurposing what few remained to defend against the Scourge), that exposed the Sunwell to the Legion. You can argue the events of WarCraft III were a direct result of Doomhammer - remember retconned into being one of the Good Guys - authorizing the dismantling of the obviously deliberately placed Ward Stones.

And of course, that’s ignoring his more grievous crime, the assassination of Anduin Lothar. Yes, I know that too has been retconned into an honorable duel at the base of Blackrock Mountain, but in this case, I choose to deny the validity of that retcon.

I played that mission growing up. I remember reloading time and time again, desperately trying to type in god mode cheat code before Lothar died. While now-a-days that mission is fairly generic and the build up almost non-existent, that was a powerful video game moment for me growing up. The first time a hero lost due to his own virtue, trusting Doomhammer to honor the truce. It was actually an important lesson for young me to learn, years before Mengsk turned out to be an absolute madman in StarCraft.

So while it is a bit of a dumb hill to die on for a guy who understands the franchise is ultimately Blizzard’s to do with what they will and by and large accommodates retcons, I will never allow that part of Doomhammer’s character to be handwaved away.

As my character would point out if it ever came up in RP, he was there. He knows what actually happened to Lothar, and who was responsible. The story change was Turyalon’s idea, to prevent the Alliance from systematically butchering the Horde prisoners.

I’m not absolving Doomhammer of using the runestones at all. Orgrim was originally just going to throw them away or have them completely destroyed. Orgrim’s guilty for doing a lot of things against his ‘better judgement’

Like leaving Gul’dan alive in the first place, and giving him enough of a leash that he was able to abscond with several ships to the Tomb of Sargearas.

Either way;

Yeah, dismantling the Runestones did a lot of negative things. But with his current level of knowledge; All that was there were trolls that would be a powerful ally, a need for a new home, the mess his old boss left, and the really weird electric fence.

But I feel that WCIII’s Scourge/Elf story line would have happened regardless of the Runestone silliness. After all, they still needed an elven traitor to get through the more powerful defenses of the weird elf-gate things that we never saw or heard mentioned ever again, and Kel’thuzad was the one that ended up making a good deal of the plans, iirc.

Well. I can’t say anything about that, other thanl; I totally get Blizzard changing things and being upset about it. There’s been a lot of things that Blizzard changed that have actually completely broken characters I had been actively playing lol.

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We need a hot spring-centric expansion.

The war is over so everyone goes on a nice needed vacation and has a good time.

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I am 100% on board for a Beach Episode Expansion.

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:exploding_head:

Using a magic resource is not evil.

Using your enemy’s defenses against them is not evil.

Neutralizing an enemy’s defenses for your allies is not evil. (Unless they’re forsaken, then you should know that things are about to get dialed up to 100.)

He’s responsible for weakening the defenses, it was his active choice, but I wouldn’t call it an evil decision. Flat out destroying them would have been completely and utterly wasteful.

Edit: To alter just a bit here; because magic’s weird.

Using the FEL as a resource knowingly is pretty evil, knowing what it does.
Using void magics (? sometimes ?) is evil (unless Blizzard says its not…? Sometimes?) is evil.

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is this before or after they hauled in a bunch of dragons to burn down Quel’Thalas

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It’s neat how actions in pursuit of evil aren’t evil, just a good use of resources.

Like, say, forcibly enslaving a corpse to do the bidding of Sylvanas?

Cool, there went my entire response.

I’d guess before. Which should have made the dragons excessive as all hell, as the trolls said “we got this!” when they most certainly did not.

Now, unless I’m wrong, which it’s possible that I am. 100%. Because retcons have happened, the First and Second War have like… three storylines to keep straight.
(And, apparently, Doomhammer was sent up north to talk to the trolls by Blackhand at somepoint, when when the point of view switches back to the Second War [again, I could be misremembering because Tides of Darkness was LARGELY boring as hell as a book] Doomhammer is the Warchief??? I think I’m remembering that right?)

But the elves were already part of the Alliance and a big threat. The Trolls hated the elves fact that anything lived around them, and were in the perfect place to harass both the dwarves and the elves. The trolls (as I said above) thought that “okay. We’ll ally with you. If you give us a shot at the elves, which are already[*] your enemy. Just open the door.”

Whcih they did.

I’m not really sure how neutralizing a magic defense, then using it, is really evil. Given that the paladins of the Silver Hand literally did the same thing… but that’s okay?

Use Magic Item =/= Raise Undead.
(Unless that magic item specifically raises undead.)

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What’s the difference between the Orcs and the paladins of the Silver Hand?

Still magic repurposed toward villainous ends. It doesn’t count this time?

but the orcs using full force and means to attack in hopes of killing off all the quel’dorei for the amani wasn’t evil because they were just “using resources” to help their new allies, right

I think one of the biggest crimes (of lore) is people forget this actually happened.

I’m not weighing in on the ‘What’s good, what’s evil, what’s neutral’ argument at all, but I will say the orcs attacking Quel’thalas doesn’t get brought up enough.

I mean, that’s where we mass produced two headed ogres. And we killed most of the male (except 1) Windrunners (If I recall correctly).

It was a pretty cool event in Tides of Darkness (Novel). Just from a Second War ‘This was a cool moment’ view. Made the elves actually care about the Horde as a threat. Anastarian be like:

Nah, blood, we cool.
Yo, homie, Trolls up in this forest.
Bruuuuuh. Ain’t flyin’ on my turf.

[proceeds to snap his fingers in unison with his court and walk out to the frontlines]

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Outside of the fact that one survived long enough to have more bad writing attached to them? Humans/Dwarves/and Elves to Orcs.

One has also been riding the demonic corruption fence, except for the leader who said the idea was alright… who was one of (maybe), like, 4 orcs at the time that thought with as much of a clear head as Blizzard would allow.

Orcs: Took an elven runestone meant for protection and warding, used it to forge a weapon to give them a chance of surviving the Alliance’s superior magic.

Silver Hand: Took the Dark Crystal from the skeksi a warlock’s body. Sat on it for about… 20 years? Blasted it with holy energy, and accidentally made a light crystal that a dwarf poured “all of his hate into” to forge a weapon out of to cull the undead’s superior numbers.

I don’t know. I feel like it’s more like saying “the person that invented dynamite is evil because he invented dynamite and it was used by faction X rather than Y.”

Hell, even what you quoted of mine is inaccurate… because I just remembered; Apparently some forms of necromancy are fine and dandy.

In war, pretty much everything can be considered evil. Regardless of your stance, in war you’re killing people and ruining people’s lives and a large portion of these onesided assaults comes from the fact that Warcraft wasn’t even supposed to be Warcraft, so they’ve had to retroactively make it so the orcs were less insane.

Which, given what they had and what the narrative had been? They did a pretty decent job. Not a great one, but decent. The “Law and Chaos;Good and Evil” argument is pointless in the long run for WoW because Blizzard decided that it’s not as simple as that. Each side is going to have its own customs and views, and this was a period where (iirc) Legion influence was fading off because Doomhammer wiped out the Shadow Council so the Horde could get back on track. Something he had intended to do, before Durotan was assassinated, and we’re not given a reason why the war continued other than to draw our own conclusions…

Which, if a 7 foot tall murder beast walked up to me and said; “So, turns out we were all just played. Don’t worry, I killed the first guy, the other is in a coma right now. But we still need a place to live, can we crash in your backyard that we just completely demolished because of a massive wave of hatred that’s been working through our minds? We did just kinda come from a dying world and just had a pretty nasty war.” (Yes, a war they started because the Orc Pope said the draenei were going to genocide them.)

I’d probably freak the hell out and react as most people would; Try to get them away from my people.

Yeah; Elven point of view: Absolutely terrible and evil, because it lead to one of the most devastating defeats in recent history.
Human point of view: Still evil, we still have orcs squatting in Stormwind.
Dwarves point of view: Evil, because they’re aiding the Amani.

Orcs; We’re stuck here, because we can’t go home. Diplomacy is probably out of the question now. And our enemies suddenly have a lot of new allies.
Because that’s the narrative Blizzard wanted to push, and it’s actually somewhat interesting to me. Because it applies motives beyond “WAR. WAR. WAR. WAR. WAR. KILL. KILL. KILL.”

It’s one of three things I remember with decent clarity from the book.

  1. Quel’thalas.
  2. Gul’dan acting like he couldn’t hear the dragon rider.
  3. Doomhammer sending the Black Tooth Grin to kill Gul’daniel.
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especially the Horde prior to Warcraft 3

Of all the takes I expected to hear from this discussion, “the night elves did nothing wrong” isn’t the one I expected.

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In the context of Warcraft 1&2; Yeh. As a faction, definitely. – I just refuse that using the stones, in and of itself, was evil.

Best spin someone can put on them: Manipulated into bad, then had to continue doing bad because they needed a new planet and knew that diplomacy wouldn’t have worked.

Worst spin: Orcs are really, really, really, really, really, really easy to direct and have no basis or concept of alignment whatsoever so everything seems like a really good idea until its not, because they have the agency of children.

I’d shoot at the orcs too, tbh. S***s scary. Probably from a really, really, really long way away.

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don’t make me post Bo Burnham

I’m imagining you tucking in an orc for bed who’s wearing footy pajamas.

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Garrosh in jammies

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