Why did nearly every other Troll civilization fall apart when separated from the Zandalari?

Lore Story Forum
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The Zandalari have this beautiful, huge city with deep connections with their loa

Now some of this I know has a ‘video game’ reason, because of how WoW’s graphics and art design have improved over the years, and how in-game representations of things aren’t how they are lore-wise (i.e, cities like Zul’Farrak, Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman are probably much more expansive and beautiful than they are in-game), but there are still SO many instances of Trolls living in ruins or very small, limited tribes in select zones over Azeroth, while the Zandalari have this grand city with a powerful navy.

Even with the Troll cities listed above, those tribes had very little actual control over the zones they’re in, all being pretty much confined to the immediate surrounding areas of their respective cities.

The only ones I can really think outside the Zandalari that had these great empires were the Gurubashi and Amani, and even eventually those got seriously downsized and many of their citizens just live in thrown-together villages of straw huts. And I guess of course the Dark Trolls that became Night Elves, but I don’t really count those.

Did the Zandalari just not help them at all?

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I’m not the most versed on troll lore, so someone who is can feel free to correct me, but I’d imagine that it’s a few reasons. When a tribe separated from the Empire, it might have flown in the face of their pride - they would have cared less for an emancipated tribe. Past that, with the rise of numerous threats to the trolls’ holdings - such as the Qiraji, the Pandaren uprising after the death of Lei-Shen, the budding Kaldorei Empire, and although they hardly touched on it, the Legion - it was probably hard for a newly split tribe to construct a new empire in such a hostile world.

I’m positive that a lot of what I just said was wrong, but that’s just my two cents.

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The Zandalari have been isolationists for centuries. Anyone who broke off of them stopped being their problem and they just didn’t bother to support them.

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The downsizing started with the rise of the Kaldorei Empire. The Empire wasn’t within any of the established troll borders but they attacked them anyway. They Trolls was crushed by the Kaldorei and all of their holdings were dwarfed to the point that they made a deal with Azshara to keep what they had left in exchange for peace. That was the start and then the sundering happened with surely only worsened the situation. The tribes were once united as the Empire of Zul but they became isolated and secluded over the centuries prior to the Kaldorei.

The Amani can blame their final downfall on the High Elves and their human allies from Lorderon. The Gurabashi had a civil war and some of them started worshipping Hakkar which got them thrown out and eventually sparked the attention of Ysera.

The Darkkari ice trolls in the North ask held its empire even though the sundering cut off the rest of there kind in the South. The Empire survived as a shadow of itself until the undead ended then and they started killing their own loa. The Zandalari really stayed to themselves. The Sundering left them with an island only. They did help the Gurubashi stop the rise of Hakkar and they helped the Amani with the High Elves but we know how that ended.

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The Zandalari helped the Amani during the Troll Wars and despite this it ended in their defeat and Arathi/Quel’thalas victory. The Amani empire never recovered from the defeat.

When the Gurubashi trolls turned to Hakkar the Zandalari rallied the other tribes in crushing them due to the sheer scale of growing sacrifices that Hakkar kept demanding. And the empire never recovered from that.

The Darkkari actually held their own up until the coming of the Scourge and considering how prideful they were I don’t think they reached out for help or would have accepted help from the Zandalari.

In the Shadows of the Horde novel we learn that at least some of the Zandalari like Khal’ak saw the other tribes as unruly children who would return to the fold when they inevitable failed.

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The Drakkari seemed to do fine when they were alive.

When it comes to “lol troll huts”, take a second to look outside of Dazar’alor. There’s small villages among the Zandalari as well, especially outside of Zuldazar troll settlements don’t really get that big. Seems to be an overall trend with trolls to have cities that age reletively well compared to others that eventually turn to ruin (most likely because of centuries of war with various local threats).

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The Amani were pushed out of their territory as Humans expanded out of Tirisfal and Dwarves expanded out of Dun Morogh. They got pushed up into the Northern Eastern Kingdoms, and then the High Elves showed up. But many Forest Troll tribes continue to live throughout the Eastern Kingdoms.

The Gurubashi empire went on for a while too. Even after the civil war, where they overcame/expelled followers of Hakkar, they continued up until they got their hands on the Tide Stone, which ticked off Neptulon, who made it his goal to end the Empire. And he did.

Zul’Farrak dates back to pre-Sundering times, and while the people have adapted to their former jungle enviroment becoming a desert, they never became Empire builders. Then Goblins, Ogres, Pirates, Dragons, and others moved in, and Zul’Farrak became a common desitnation for mercenaries looking for treasure.

Drakkari were doing okay too, until the Lich King showed up. Things only went downhill from there.

I also think there’s a mischaricterization here about what consitutes “civilization falling apart”. There’s still plenty of Troll civilizations, with religion, art, language, social structure, etc. They just don’t operate under an Imperial governmental structure or all build giant stone temple cities like the Zandalari did/do. They also don’t live in “thrown-together villages of straw huts”. The overwhelming majority of Troll residential buildings -even on Zandalar- are made of wood with thatched/hide roofs, and are in large part influenced by a Pacific Islander aesthetic. This was/is even the case with the Zandalari.

It might also have something to do with the fact that the big stone cities are first and foremost be religious sites that also seem to double as places for people to gather and trade. Like Drazar’alor, with its prominent port, shrines, throne rooms, market places, etc, doesn’t seem to feature any actual residential areas. So even when a city with significant religious/cultural meaning becomes ruins, it doesn’t necessarily lose it’s sacredness and cultural signifigance and the stone sructures were never buildings in which people really “lived” to begin with.

But the real reason why is because when conceptualizing trolls, the folks at Blizzard drew quite a bit from turn the century adventure stories about European explorers finding “lost civilizations” in Africa/Asia/South America. And a lot of the way in which WoW trolls have been portrayed is in service to them playing the same role as indigenous peoples in these tales… So yeah.

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Shadows of the Horde implied that a big part of it was the other empires trying to emulate the hierarchical “tiered” society as the Zandalari, with the smaller tribes basically being treated as lower castes.

When the Zandalari did it, those “lower” castes went out to create their own empires. But when the Gurubashi and Amani did it, there was nowhere for the “lower” tribes to go when frictions arose and they got sick of being pushed around by the bigger, stronger tribes, so those empires became collections of conflicting tribes always fighting over their positions in the empires whenever they couldn’t be convinced to band together against a common foe.

Consequently, while the Zandalari have remained fairly unified under a succession of kings over the ages, the other empires have spent much of their history dealing with internal disunity that’s undermined their efforts to hold onto their ancestral lands. And the Sundering seemed to make it even worse; the last time we saw the Amani or Gurubashi do anything unilaterally was in trying to resist the kaldorei expansion; despite still technically being empires up until the Troll Wars and rise/fall of Hakkar, everything post-Sundering for the forest and jungle trolls has since been preceded by this or that ascendant new warlord having to convince the myriad tribes to work together before any sort of retaliation can be mounted against outside invasion.

Consider that despite technically still being an empire, the Amani couldn’t even manage to unify their people properly to march in force against the high elves until the Zandalari came in and appointed a leader for them. The other forest troll tribes were evidently so unwilling to follow the Amani tribe that it took the blessing of the Zandalari to convince them to do so.

As long as it was just trolls, the Amani and Gurubashi could get away with maintaining their empires in spite of internal strife between their constituent tribes, but as soon as foreign powers rose to challenge them that became a dangerous weakness, because they couldn’t respond quickly and in full force when the main ruling tribes always had to kick off such things by running around talking the resentful smaller tribes into getting on board with a joint offensive.

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What you see currently are just the remmains of the once glorious empires that by plot of Blizzard had been in decadence for centuries (thanks Chronicles). But the Zandalaris were not very active in helping the other tribes as their main focus was the worship of the Loa and only a few ocassions they did help the other tribes (Trolls Wars and against the followers of Hakkar in his first raising)

However this stance is slowly changing and hopefully with Talanji we can see more cooperation between the tribes as they join together to rebuild their past glory in the modern times.

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That actually describes it best

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Trolls became one of the most universally hated races on Azeorth, through a number of reasons, to the point that most people would not have cared if they went extinct, and some actually attempted to bring about just that.

The difference between the Zandalari and the only Troll factions, except for maybe the Darkspear, is that the rest of the Troll factions were sharing major continents with other races that hated them. Whereas the Zandalari were on an island of their own.

For someone to actively try to wipe out the Zandalari, they would have to sail to their island in the ocean, first. Other Troll tribes didn’t have that luxury.

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I don’t think most of the other Troll Tribes ‘fell apart’. But they certainly had serious issues to deal with. The Zandalari have tried to help at various times, but there’s a lot against them. Especially given the distances.

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Try to imagine the history of Azeroth from the perspective of the trolls. Try to imagine the Sundering from their perspective.

More than half of all troll civilization sank into the sea when the elves broke the world with their hubris. Tens of thousands, maybe millions, of people were swallowed up by the sea as vast swaths of territory collapsed. Miles and miles of farmland gone. Hundreds of villages and cities gone.

The Amani, Gurubashi, and Drakkari are now only a fraction of what they once were and are entirely cut off from Zandalar, the land where the troll scholar-caste lives and where all troll knowledge was stored. They are also suddenly separated from each other and likely don’t even know if any other trolls even survived.

Fortunately their capitals survived. Unfortunately the massive loss of rural population means they need to spread out and leave some cities to ruin as they try and support themselves after this massive upheaval.

Then a bunch of weird looking tiny Vrykul start popping up all over. They start to expand and cover huge swaths of territory. Some of your kin start raiding them for precious food during this turbulent time and they raid back in kind. Then a bunch of elves, the people directly responsible for the apocalypse that broke the world, show up and decide to move into some of the ruins you can’t keep populated anymore.

Suddenly you’re sitting in the ruins of your destroyed empire surrounded on all sides by hostiles that don’t see you as a person with a right to exist.

Basically? Trolls are living in a post-apocalyptic setting. They’ve struggled to regain the unity and power they had before they lost some 70-80% of their population and the younger up-start species are taking full advantage of that.

Drakkari, who didn’t have to contend with humans and elves moving into the ruined remains of their broken empire, were actually doing a pretty great job of rebuilding and had a large, thriving civilization with advanced irrigation systems and everything.

Unfortunately the whole “Scourge” thing happened right on their back door and they took the worst of it.

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The Zanadalari are on an island protected by a mighty navy, the other tribes/empires tend to be in locations where they are easily attacked and neighbor powerful enemies. The Amani and Gurubashi were mighty, until the Elves came and Humans rose, then the troll wars broke the Amani, and Stormwind pushed the Gurubashi back until they were contained in Stranglethorn.

The Sand trolls likely were powerful in southern Kalimdor until the war of the shifting sands, when the Qiraji reached Tanaris they likely inflicted severe damage on the sand troll civilization they never recovered from. The Drakkari were mighty in northrend until the Scourge came and cut deep into their empire.

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There’s also the fact that unlike the myriad forest troll tribes in Amani lands and the jungle troll tribes under the Gurubashi, the non-Drakkari ice trolls don’t really seem to live in or around Zul’Drak, instead living in locales that would have been located within the territory of the Amani.

Which suggests the possibility that the Drakkari may have maintained a more consistent level of unity over the ages that the other two empires failed to preserve by basically kicking out the smaller tribes who became unruly instead of having to deal with the generations of inter-tribal divisions that have routinely plagued the Gurubashi and Amani over the millennia.

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That is a possibility. Unfortunately we know almost nothing about the Drakkari’s history. We know the Frostmane broke off some time after the Sundering but not why.

Not having any real competition was likely a huge boon for them though. From what we know they were friendly with the local Wolvar tribes and Vrykul aren’t really empire builders like their descendants. It would be neat to see what Northrend was like before the Scourge messed it up.

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Competition and climate.

The Zandalari share their land with, what, some snakes that until recently kept to themselves, and some foxes in the desert that apparently no one knew existed until very recently. They live in a basically tropical paradise, without much climate issues at all… besides apparently some flooding that stopped immediatel yafter MOP ended, I guess?

meanwhile, the Farraki homeland withered away into an inhospitable desert; they’re bordered on one side of it by cthulhu bugs, and on the other by the earth princess’ mongol mutants. The Drakkari have a similar problem as their chunk of Old Kalimdor floats north and becomes a frostbitten tundra.

The Amani have to put up with constant assaults by humans and elves. The Frostmane and allied tribes were under constant assault by Dwarves. The Dark Trolls were presumably mostly eradicated by Night Elves, and the Third War was just the final blow.

And then you have the Gurubashi who’ve basically spent the whole time killing each other, I guess.

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Is there any source for that? That trolls were attacked during War of Shifting Sands? Becuase as far as I know the bugs from Ahn’Quiraj reached only to Un’goro.

There was an event where the bugs assaulted Farraki and Theka the Martyr sacrified himself to save the city. But there was no more information than that. Farraki were isolated and easy target for various mercenaries, thieves and looters.

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it really is just the scope of the game changing imo
hell thunder bluff is still a bunch of tents

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Dinosaur shortages.

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