what if turalyon somehow brokered a deal with the gurubashi against the horde? helping rebuild zul gurub in exchange for defending stormwind and attacking grom gol base camp.that’d be cool.
next faction war things need to be shook up. we need to draw new alliances in the sand and stop with the same old humans vs monsters trope.
The Gurubashi that were forced to jungles of Stranglethorn by the Stormwind humans and were nearly wiped out by Medivh when they assailed the city’s walls?
I don’t think they’re the best of friends. They’d be more likely to side with the group that sided with Zandalar and their Loa.
The Zandalari who paid mercenaries to raid and pillage Zul Gurub because the Gurubashi were worshiping Hakkar? I think they’d be more likely to take a peace offering from their immediate neighbors to establish trade and a military pact beneficial to both the Gurubashi Empire and the Kingdom of Stormwind.
Teaming up with Stormwind would be a curve ball and the kind of shake up of the stale faction conflict that this games story needs.
It’d be pretty against the long established aspect of Trolls holding long stranding grudges.
I mean, yeah? Depending on how you swing it, it was the Zandalari going, “We saved your souls from the heretical ways of the Atal’ai, even if you did not like how we went about it” compared to an enemy who has literally always been an enemy and nothing but an enemy.
I don’t see the problem with that. With certain posters hemming and hawing about Trolls having to “adapt” by joining the factions… yet the only faction they’re allowed to join is the Horde. Why can’t the Gurubashi “adapt” by joining their imemdiate neighbors?
There are people who want Amani Trolls on the Horde despite their long standing grudge against the High/Blood Elves… Zandalari joined the Horde without even mentioning the Nightborne even though they were just as much of Azsharas Empire as the Kaldorei, you know, the Empire the Zandalari hate…
These lore rules are being inconsistently enforced. Also, RULE OF COOL. It would be cool to see Gurubashi warriors fight alongside Stormwindian Knights. Change of pace.
Compared to a neighbor that, while having “always been an enemy”, makes more reasonable sense to become allied with because they can much easier trade and mutually defend each others borders.
Not everything needs to change.
Oh, is this a reactionary post?
I’m not speaking for anyone else.
They can. Whether they should is another question.
Good for them.
It has been 10,000 years without contact.
Not all narrative concepts should be consistently adhered to.
Sometimes change is fine. Sometimes too much change isn’t.
There’s no hard and fast objective judgment to when it is fine.
No it would not.
By the same token, you could say that the Night Elves should join the Horde now. Sure, they tried to obliterate them and nearly succeeded, but they’re neighbors. And they could protect and trade with one another!
Not entirely no. I think it would be a cool idea. I am just pointing out what other posters have said and how my idea is not in theory inconsistent with their same arguments. One of those posters liked the first reply to my post too.
Not sure why that matters. You said its Troll thing to have long standing grudges. That’s a long standing grudge.
That’s just your opinion.
They could have at one time certainly. The difference I think is the severity of the action and the time period, and the fact the Night Elves still have the Alliance.
Burning of Teldrassil was like yesterday. Medivh is dead, and has been for awhile.
Night Elves still have the Alliance, they’re still in the Alliance, they would have to break that to join the people who just burned down their home.
Gurubashi are a part of nothing. They currently have no allies. They could side with their neighbors who, while having been enemies in the past, have not committed any greater offenses against them than the Horde have in recent times, the Horde who are much further away and contain the Darkspear Trolls whom do not like the Gurubashi themselves.
From the looks of it you guys simply just don’t want the Alliance muddied up with a Troll race, and you’re using “Lore consistency” as an excuse.
I don’t really see the relevance.
I’d like you think you can appreciate the concept of time.
And that you can understand the difference between long standing grudges and grudges that last forever.
This has been addressed regardless.
And? Was that not obvious?
The Amani recognized the High Elves were Elves, a race they didn’t like, after thousands of years.
Ultimately most replies to my topic are gonna come down to this 
People who don’t want the Alliance muddied with Trolls, and people who want the Horde to still be the exclusive faction of such races despite writing at length about how it’s bad to color code the factions or w/e 
I think if they were trying to introduce a troll type to the Alliance, dark trolls might be interesting. Then again, only one has been confirmed to exist, and she’s in Zandalar.
Ten thousand years isn’t three thousand years.
But this was already addressed.
Narrative writing is not a science.
The only reason you are making this argument is to troll.
See how useless random ad hominems are?
I’d be fine with Trolls on the Alliance with the right context.
You kept doing this strawman where you reference other peoples’ arguments when talking to me.
That’d be cool too. Show how they are friendly with the Night Elves.
The Dev team obviously wants to break with some of the established lore themes and go in their own direction, I just wish they’d do it more in these kinds of ways.
It’s still an insanely long period of time.
And if it’s already been addressed, why were you the one to first bring it up? You said my suggestion breaks with long established theme of Trolls holding long standing grudges, but when I point to examples of those themes already having been in some ways broken you hem haw around.
Why is my suggestion a too sudden and fast of a change? It really isn’t in my opinion. The Gurubashi haven’t really been shown to be doing much since Cataclysm when they were simple raid fodder. Picking them back up and developing them with new leadership, and having that leadership be smart enough to see the benefits of allying with Stormwind, is in my opinion not at all “too fast and too much change”. We already see lots of retcons occurring with the new direction of the Lore. The only thing I can see that makes it “too fast and too much change” is simply because it’d be breaking tropes about the factions.
What context?
And yet less than a third of the other time.
It was the same explanation the entire time. That there’s nuance in how these things are applied. Hence why I said this several times.
Because the comparisons you’ve made are individuals getting over a 10,000 year old grudge versus individuals who have been fighting over the same grudge within the last few years.
Again, Cataclysm was five years ago in-game. There’s no strength comparing it to 10,000 years. By your own comments and the lore, the Amani were upset for three thousand years between the Kal’dorei and then seeing the exiles. I don’t know how you can view these as comparable lengths of time.
A lot of the newer retcons suck.
A number of them. A random scenario? The Alliance find some Dark Trolls living in caves on an island and recruit them working together on some mission that required them to be there. That’s a lazy off-hand concept.
My point is these long standing grudges in some cases have already been able to be ignored or broken, and therefor it wouldn’t be as big of a leap, to me, for the Gurubashi to get over their grudge with Stormwind.
None the less they set a precedent for how this games Lore can be developed in different directions at any time depending on new teams being hired.
Edit to address this:
That comment is there for others to see it when reading through the conversation, and to maybe think about it and have some self awareness.
Except the leap you’re prefacing is between getting over a 10,000 year old grudge and getting over one that’s been ongoing as short as five years ago. That’s like .05% of the time.
Yeah, and that sucks.
Well maybe tag comments not directed to the person you’re talking to.
About this too, is it really ever played up as such? Yeah I know that there was battles between Stormwind and the Gurubashi… but is this really played up as a huge grudge anywhere in the lore and questing? Or do we just assume such a grudge exists because “Trolls”.
From my memory of the Gurubashi is they’re always just presented as generic villains who are wanted dead because they worship Hakkar, compared to say the grudge between the Amani and Thalassians which got its own cinematic and lore focus.
Honestly, putting on my Doyle hat for a second here, jungle trolls use the same skin and everything as the Darkspear tribe. What would be the point of adding a troll race that is the same as a playable race already in the game?
Forest trolls might be another interesting place to go. With Zandalar joining the Horde, they’re also allying with the blood elves, who the forest trolls despise. I could see some forest trolls throwing in with Stormwind as a “screw you” to Dazar’Alor and Quel’thalas. Plus, they use distinct models (another “buff” alliance race would be pretty cool too).
This is the first argument that I accept in terms of making the Gurubashi a playable Alliance race. They’d be too similar to Darkspear models, being the same type of Troll.
This would be cool too though.