Nu-Blizzard goes out of its way to talk about how horde characters like baine love the alliance. How shaw has powerful friends of the alliance in the higher eschelons of Silvermoon. Nu-Blizzard loves the alliance and it’s plain to see.
But we never, ever are given reasons why the horde wants to be horde. We know how baine feels about anduin, but how does he feel about Rokhan? Thrall? Lorthemar?
It’s like they only want the horde to be an evil villain for the alliance to trample and correct, and it’s so tiresome.
Apologies for typos, on phone.
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Thrall isn’t impressed with him.
“Thrall understood that to other humans Wrynn was said to be pleasing-looking, but to the orc, Anduin simply looked like a small, pink boy swallowed by clunky armor.”
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Ye but I was asking about baine’s opinion on horde characters, not horde characters on anduin.
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I think I recall called Blizzard out on this @ Blizzcon before BFA, stating they better not hit Horde with the villain bat and make it a MoP 2.0 ending, and Blizzard responded that the expansion would be “Morally grey” … Then, well … Basically lied and did exactly what everyone predicted. lol
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The Vulpera clearly saw a mess that needed fixing. And they refuse to take no for an answer.
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Nu-Blizzard is obsessed with the Wrynns, Human Potential™,and Stormwind. It’s not enough that other Alliance races are shackled to them, the Horde must join our misery.
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Considering Baine is the leader with the least patriotism among us his opinion doesen’t matter. Any argument trying to use him as example fails in a show of bad faith for the faction. All Horde races matter their reason for being part of it are irrelevant.
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I have an orc character that I RP sometimes.
He is a Gladiator with the Crimson Ring. He was a Worg Rider with the Warsong Clan during the events of Warcraft 3. Alongside Grommash, he drank the Blood of Mannoroth and became a Chaos orc. In the aftermath of the battle between the corrupted Warsong and the Horde+Alliance, he exchanged hands from a prisoner of war to a Slave of the Crimson Ring.
He followed Thrall to Kalimdor, alongside Hellscream because he resonated with the idea “Never again will our people live in chains” that Thrall spouted. Having been fleeing interment from the Humans his entire life.
Now forced to fight in the arena for the entertainment of his so-called “Brothers and Sisters of the Horde” he finds himself reminiscing about the days where he could still feel the demonfire in his veins. To him, that was freedom. An existence that was wholly his own.
“They said I was made a slave to the Legion… But I never felt chained until my own people put me in them.”
So, yeah, just because you are a Horde race doesn’t mean you have to like the Horde.
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That’s all well and good for RP characters, but I think Treng was talking about the game not doing a good job of showing why the horde races as a whole actually want to stay together. We’re supposed to believe they want to, but it seems like there’s a severe lack of that in the face of two self-cannibalizing faction wars. It’s a faction pride complaint, really.
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Well I think it is relevant because it plays on the inconsistencies of Blizzard writing. The hypocrisy of the Horde being built with a foundation of freedom from those who would see them chained, when actively participating in the slave trade.
This is Vanilla WoW stuff, so it’s not like the Horde was ever this cohesive thing. Since the very beginning, they have always been this rag-tag team of misfits who united for the sake of mutual survival, not necessarily because they share values, or have aligned goals beyond survival.
The simple answer is really… the races of the Horde don’t necessarily -want- to stay together. We have no reason to think they ever did. The Tauren only stuck around because of a blood oath. The Trolls and Goblins are refugees with nowhere else to go. It’s never been a matter of want but necessity. And at this point, for many it must just feel like the way of things. The average orc, troll, tauren are probably much more concerned about crops, quillboar and centaur rather than independence. The fact that the Horde breaks down and has a rebellion every time a Warcheif goes off the rails and starts needless wars, supports that I think.
Did blizz write it that way on purpose? Probably not. But it’s the last near 20 years of lore.
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In my headcanon slavery doesen’t exist in the Horde since Blizzard used it as a tool to make the Horde look bad. This nonsense is not canon.
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They are a group of monsters and outcasts that have a common enemy.
Shared hatreds are the strongest bonding force in the universe. Much more so than love.
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There is no inherent hypocrisy. Declaring that yourself would not be chained is not an implicit promise not to chain people yourself.
Neither the Alliance nor the Horde feel that they have to justify themselves to the other faction. They aren’t arguing a case with a third party who has power over both.
That is not what Thrall claimed though. He said “Never again will our people live in chains” then turns a blind eye to his people being chained…
You’ll have to source that claim. It’s not like the Alliance is building new internment camps nor is Thrall herding his people into them.
Also remember that in the context, “our people” referred to orcs only.
What do you want me to source? The Thrall said “Our people will never again live in chains” or that Slavery is still in practice within the Horde?
Slavery was only introduced to make Varian look good. Previous to the comic it was officially outlawed.
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Maybe… Blizzard does a lot to make favored characters look good at the expense of other races. Like the “A Little Patience” Scenario with Tyrande. And the fact that the Horde was able to Blizz through all the way to Darkshore in one Questchain during War of Thorns, despite Garrosh failing to get through Ashenvale twice over the course of 4 years.
Despite that, it’s still the lore we have. Canonically, the Crimson Ring operate in Ogrimmar, train their slaves in the Rings of Valor, literally buy slaves from Ogrimmar prisons.
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https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Slavery#cite_note-7
Even the wiki mentions that it is odd that Thrall would allow this and just got handwaved by Blizzard.
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Yeah
But it’s still canon.
Like, we should all be aware by now that Blizzard sucks at narrative consistency. Warcraft is a hot mess of inconsistencies, bad storytelling, and even worse world building. Imo, the only way you can fix it at this point is do a hard reset of WoW, start over completely from scratch.
But Blizzard does not seem to have any intention of doing that, and in fact, do not even show any intent on clarifying inconsistencies of old lore. They just crank out expansions and are on record saying they don’t want to be boxed in by old lore and thus will continue to write in inconsistencies and break continuity in order to tell the undoubtly bad story they want to tell.
So, we are stuck with it. It’s the lore. If you are completely unwilling to rationalize it, then play a different game.
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