Ah, that makes it OK…
What are you smoking? It’s never even touched on. In fact, Cenarius returns and says he made a mistake!
And rightfully so, but in MoP, not Cata when the invasion of Ashenvale took place.
It’s entire purpose was a catalyst for Saurfang’s orcish honor storyline… You are going to claim it’s about “The evils of the horde” when it’s entire narrative purpose was to kick off a storyline about the preservation of the Horde’s honor and moral code?
That’s blatantly not true. Practically any nelf lore that came out of Legion went to the Nightborne, who ultimately went Horde by the end.
It doesn’t change the fact that the Night Elves had to give away land that was rightfully there, after fighting tooth and nail for two expansions to kick the Horde out.
That is literally the justification for War of Thorns. The justification for the Horde to attack Ashenvale in Cata was food shortage. The Horde always gets a cop-out for all their misdeeds.
That is literally every time Ashenvale is invaded. Every time.
I just don’t consider openly hostile, armed and threatening mobs children.
“Killing you be easy” is not dialogue for a child.
Young warriors, more like.
Because it’s quite literally not what we are told. Chronicle paints the sequence of events to indicate that it was Troll aggression that sparked the conflict between Azshara’s empire and the Empire of Zul.
It’s not like Azshara has ever been portrayed as a benevolent ruler though. Why is it that Garrosh’s overthrow is vindication for the Night elves, even when it was done so completely irrelevant to his crimes against the Kaldorei people. But when we talk about Azshara, her dethroning is not just recourse to her alleged crimes against the trolls?
I call that double standards. Your bias is showing.
The Horde, generally speaking.
You mean like Val’sharah, who we share with all the Druidic Horde races and Gilneans for some reason?
Or Azuna and Suramar? Which is primarily Nightborne, who went Horde?
Sure, Nelves get some zone that is not at all dedicated to us, despite what you may perceive. Which is not at all like Stranglethorn, Zul’Drak, Zandalar as a whole. Not at all like how Trolls get mandatory Dungeons and Raids contributing to their lore every expansion.
Not like how Orcs got an entire expansion dedicated to them.
Written by a sexist who sent an Orc back in time to be the main hero of the story. Yes, just what I wanted, a novel that takes away Nelf history and rewrites it with a big-dicked orc to be the hero for all the helpless elves. Who promptly build a statue to his honor. Yes, please, I want more of that. 
No, but it is a correct fact.
So an irrelevant correct fact?
It is relevant to correct errors. Otherwise mistakes perpetuate.
Lmao. I have to admit she don’t miss sometimes.
“Friend”? Hardly. Barely even forgiving much less a “friend.”
You mean after a decade of the Forsaken BEING monsters who shouldn’t have a right to kill, pillage and torture humans who have never done anything to them. When the only difference between the Forsaken and the Lich King Is the monster controlling them, it kind of understandable why the Humans would see them as their enemies.
Again, your own racist perception filtering your view.
And repeating the same (false) diatribe won’t magically make it true. You actually have prove your claims for them to hold any merit.
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After being rebuffed in seeking a positive relationship, the Forsaken have treated the humans pretty much the same way the humans have treated them.
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Not really… The Scarlets make sense. But when the Forsaken openly practice slavery, torture, cannibalism, and use chemical weapons on innocent, civilian populations, it is difficult to be sympathetic.
I say this as a fan of the Forsaken. It is okay to like the bad guys, just don’t fool yourself, they are bad guys.
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When you don’t even take prisoners, claims that the other side treats prisoners poorly doesn’t count for much. I see nothing that says humans would have any issue with it, except they aren’t willing to let them live long enough. Enslaving a monster, rather than killing it, would be regraded as too much of a mercy.
And humans have shown no evidence that they are even willing to see a Forsaken as a civilian. Everyone that would be a civilian in human society is just another “monster”.
The issue isn’t so much the Forsaken being nasty, its the hypocrisy of listing “crimes” that the Alliance has no problem with when they do them.
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The Horde “gets a cop out” in that it’s deeds do not lead to its destruction. It just stumbles along being villain batted.
See, my complaint is not simply that Trolls kill/get killed, or die or lose or anything like that. It’s entirely about the framing. That Trolls are generally written deliberately to dehumanize them and make them deserving of such slaughter and that their killers are being reasonable and right in doing so.
It’s no coincidence that the “Horde invades Ashenvale” coincides with “The Horde gets the Villain bat.”
Yes, ‘young warriors’ half the size of adults called “whelps”. Basically child combatants. Like, how is it not messed up that Blizzard chose to write this and that, when faced with these young combatants, decides the best way the quest should go is for us to kill them?
Azshara was as being portrayed benevolent… up until she attacked Night Elves. Can’t you see that the one thing all these bad guys share in common is that they’re framed as bad for acting against Night Elves in a way they aren’t framed as bad when their actions are directed against the savages, who are framed as deserving it.
And as I’ve said repeatedly, the issue is with the framing and portrayal. Blizzard presents us examples of genocide/colonialism and tries to create narratives or frame things in such away that it’s actually good sometimes. All depending on who is involved.
So the Horde isn’t a race.
The Nightborne are extant members of the old Kal’dorei empire and important to Night Elf lore. As are Illdain, Maiev, Tyrande, and Malfurion are major players in the story while it remains on Azeroth. Surumar is literally Tyrande’s home town.
And again, you completely ignore the framing and context in which Stranglethorn, Zul’gurub, Zul’Aman, Zul’Farak, Zul’Drak exist: places where we just run in and kill all the natives and loot the place.
Zandalar was indeed a massive shift in how Blizzard does this. I repeatedly call it out as my favorite thing about BfA in every “What do you like best about BfA” thread. I praise them on their portrayal of Bwonsamdi, especially as compared to how many other works use the Baron Samedi. I’d like to see more like it. I really wish that after setting up how close so many of these characters were to the afterlife, that they play such a relatively minor role in Shadowlands. I consider it wasted potential.
Broxigar appears in one book in the trilogy. And indeed, Orcs had their expansion as the big bad evil Horde 2.0. Again, you try to ignore the framing and context in how these characters and races are used.
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So, innocent civilians deserve to be punished for the things the Scarlets did? Many of those slaves probably came from Gilneas and Hillsbrad, who really didn’t fight the Forsaken beyond defending their own territory.
Or to dangerous to be merciful to a being that, as far as they could know, was still a pawn of the Scourge and hell bent on extermination all life.
The unfortunate case for the Forsaken is that they inherited the sins of the Scourge. When your entire Kingdom has been ravaged by the undead, it makes sense why that would be. The Forsaken never really tried to differentiate themselves from the Scourge to the Living either. Their first diplomacy with the Alliance was an arrangement with Garithos to help him rid Lordaeron of the Scourge and the Dreadlords. An arrangement Sylvanas had no intention of honoring.
Sort of shoots the persecution argument in the foot when you consider that.
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What part of this “diatribe” is false? That this trope exists? That its roots lie in racist portrayals of indigenous peoples in media? That Blizzard regularly applies it to Trolls and other peoples in WoW?
And noticing all this and pointing out that it’s an ugly trope that WoW shouldn’t perpetuate is me being the racist?
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Except the Forsaken go out of their way to take prisoners to enslave and experiment on. The fact the Alliance doesn’t do this when they could is actually good indication they don’t want to.
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We literally just put Saurfang in prison. The Alliance can and does take prisoners(Talanji being another example). The worse that could be said is if certain commanders consider the enemy “too dangerous” to imprison(like Rogers).
I’d also point the whole Horde motto of “victory or death” doesnt make it ideal to have prisoners of war.
As an added note. During the Pandaren into quest the Alliance was actually transporting prisoners of war before the airship crash landed.
You can say that, but you have yet to actually provide evidence of that. Actually, the evidence you do provide is that Trolls kill/get kills and lose things.
You claim “That is not my complaint” but then use that “noncompliant” as the justification for what your complaint actually is… So your complaint is precisely what you claim it isn’t…
That is not why the Horde was Villian batted thought. Ashenvale was invaded in Cata, and every Horde player was making justifications for it, and debating every and all claims that Garrosh was bad for doing it.
Garrosh was Villain batted in MoP, when he bombed a human territory. Because God forbid anything bad happens to the humans.
Or young warriors?
How old are they? Prepubescents? Adolescents? Young adult? If you want to claim these are children, then give me an age range. Otherwise, saying they are late/teens or young adults is just as viable of an interpretation.
How? You claim she was imperialist and expanded into Troll territory, or you claim she is benevolent? Which is it?
As I mentioned above, it is never BECAUSE they attacked the night elves. When it comes to the Night Elves, it is usually not mentioned at all, and only takes some other event to trigger the Villain bat. Typically for the purpose of launching a story arch completely unrelated to Night Elves.
Nice cop out.
And Blood Elves.
And it belongs to the Horde now.
You mean the places we go and help the natives fight off the evil sect of their people who are aiding the ambitions of wicked gods and powers?
You mean the places where the Horde (Including Darkspear Trolls) are just as eager and willing participants?
And effectively rewrote the most vital part of nelf history in glorifying an orc male as the savior of the female dominated race of elf maidens…
You are ignoring the framing and context when it suits your needs.
Even though they helped us defeat the Legion at the end, and joined the Horde in BfA.
And its not like these Orc characters were already villains in the lore. It’s not like they were Villain batted out of the blue, they had been villains since 1995.
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I explain that it’s the reasoning and contextualizing of why the Trolls lose things. Because it’s repeatedly framed as the Trolls being horrible terrible people who force the otherwise good noble people to do bad things to them. I also point out how even when the Alliance is tasked with helping Vol’jin, the game goes out of its way to portray him has filthy and having bad diction in a way it never does for any other opposite faction NPC.
If we’re going to have Azshara kill Trolls and take their lands, don’t be afraid to call it genocide and colonization. And if that’ a bad thing, call her out as being bad- don’t try to explain how all she ever wanted was peace or had no interest in conquest.
If you’re going to have characters commit genocide/colonization, then have some characters framed as good and upstanding call them out. Have the leader who engages in genocide noted as engaging in genocide when they engage in the genocide. Don’t try to twist how the situation is presented to try and suggest there was no choice but for the good people to do it to the bad.
And if you aren’t going to do that, then lay off the genocide/colonization. No, I don’t mean try to use euphemisms. And yeah, that goes for Horde as well!
Cataclysm is the beginning of where Garrosh started being Villain batted and treated as a warmonger. In addition to having him invade Ashenvale, he also started becoming a huge jerk to all the other Horde leaders, is challenged to Mok’gora a couple of times. By the time of MoP, the Horde is in full on rebellion, but it was all laid down in Cataclysm.
Sure, the hardcore Garrosh fanboys argued that Garrosh was in the right, but they were wrong then too. They hung desperately onto that one “honorable” Garrosh quest, as evidence that he was really going to get better. But he never did.
Well there’s three different heights for Frostmane, with one using the full sized Troll model, one using a slightly smaller one, and the whelps using the absolute smallest one at half the height of the full size model. The term “whelp” is also used repeatedly in WoW to describe pre-pubescent and adolescent and other juvenile of many non-humanoid creatures.
So likely prepubescent/adolescent, as they’re only half their adult size. Teenagers are closer to adult size than pubescent/adolescents, so those would be the mid-sized models. And the full size models represent young adults to adults.
The invasions into Ashenvale is the moment when the other Horde leaders started to call Garrosh out on being a violent warmonger and turning on him. Sylvanas’ invasion into and burning of Teldrassil is when Saurfang goes off on her.
Blizzard milks the plight of the Night Elves for sympathy and to add fuel to the fire of why we should hate characters in a way it doesn’t with Trolls and many other “tribal” races that we routinely slaughter.
WoW basis who is good/bad far less on what they do, but rather who they are and who they do it to.
We’re here talking about how Trolls and Night Elves and individual races get treated in the narrative and you’re trying to use the Nightborne being Horde to suggest that they’re somehow not related to the Night Elves as being still living former members of the Kal’dorei Empire.
And speaking of Blood Elves, they too did the same thing to the Amani that the Kal’dorei Empire did to the Zandalari and other tribes. And it’s framed in much the same way. I don’t give Blizzard’s handling of the Blood Elves a free pass here either.
But since their victims were Trolls, Blizzard seems to.
Yep! It’s messed up and I call it out when it happens there. In fact, most of the slaughter in Stranglethorn Vale is carried out by the Horde. And I have stated that it’s bad that Blizzard doesn’t ever frame the Horde killing Trolls in Stranglethorn or Alterac Valley the same way they frame Horde killing Humans/Elves in Stormwind or Ashenvale.
He does not rerwite the whole story. He rewrites a small part of it and the overall story continues to focus on Tyrande, Illidan, and Malfurion and their efforts to save the world from the Legion. Not that it really makes it any more of a lame thing to do. You’re definitely right in that it was crappy storytelling.
So they were or weren’t they villain batted? And when? You don’t see how their characterization seems to flip flop, not based on their actual actions, so much as who the recipient of those actions are?
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You mean the trailer for Zul’Aman, when it was Zul’jinn listing off the tragedy of his life and the incursion he has suffered, and how he sees the Horde as traitors? He was supposed to be a horrible person doing horrible things?
Let me guess, you are going to loop back around to him being an innocent troll who we raid and loot.
Which is it? Because once again, your complaints contradict and the only binding element of them is Trolls losing things. Which I have already explained, is the core of your complaint, despite your unwillingness to admit it.
We cant say that definitively. Empires fall, especially empires who make a stupid alliance with Lei Shen that gets their entire armies destroyed.
Again, it is such a childish thing to expect. The only acceptable interpretation of the lore is that Azshara was an oppressor, and the Elves were mass exterminating trolls. It couldn’t at all be possible that the rising population of the Elves and declining military might of the old Troll Empire, came into an inevitable conflict. Like history has shown countless times. How is that story making the trolls out to be deserving of that fate?
It just says there was troll aggression. Which could be in the form of, sure, the encroachment of elven settlers. Imperial Pride left from a long dead age. We don’t know the reasons, only they cast the first stone, and they lost. There is no blame, there is no struggle of good and evil… The entire premise of your claim is baseless.
Yet you insist that your own headcanon is the only valid interpretation. That the only acceptable story here is that the Kaldorei empire was a geocidal, meat grinder of Troll bodies. That took the land by force of arms. And not by merely migrating into the land once held by the already long declining troll empire.
And you dare call me entitled? Childish.
In Cata, that was debatable. Carine accused him of something he didn’t do. Vol’jinn threatened him baselessly, and by his own admission, unjustly. He criticized Sylvanas, who was literally raising the dead like the Scourge. And deploying Blight on civilian populations. Garrosh was a war monger, but not at all yet being portrayed as a villain. We know from the mouth of the Devs that his Villainizing wasn’t yet set in stone. That there were multiple directions they could have taken him.
So the fact is, Garrosh was Villain batted NOT for his invasion of Ashenvale, but for things he did in MoP. Period.
No no no, it wasn’t hardcore Garrosh fan boys. It was the majority of the Horde player base. I was there, I played during Cata. You cannot tell me that the majority of the player base wasn’t hyped for a strong, orc Warcheif that was going to be harder on the Alliance than the near pacifistic Thrall.
People who play the Horde want to be conquerors. Yet they always complain when they don’t get to conquer without reciprocation. Just like you are doing now.
Like Wrathion?
So you don’t actually know. You are just assuming and applying headcanon. Got it.
No it wasn’t… It was when the Twilight Hammer attacked and skinned night elf DRUIDS, and blamed it on the Warsong. That is why Carine was so upset, because they were neutral and he as falsely led to believe it was done by Garrosh’s orders.
They CREATE the plight of the Night Elves solely for the purpose of Horde and Human story telling. Don’t make it our like the Night Elves have it off so great. We are the punching bag for stories that aren’t even ours. Night Elves don’t even have their own history. That too was stolen by an orc time traveler.
I bet you think Blood Elves are Night Elf lore too. More to that, All elf lore is troll lore.
Prove it. More headcanon.
It’s exactly the same. Your entire premise is baseless. You can make all the declarative statements you want. provide proof.
Of course it does. An orc becomes the savior of Azeroth during the War of the Ancients, and a statue is erected in his honor. It could of easily been a Tauren, if Blizzard wanted to include a Horde race. At least that would be lore consistent. But no, Blizzard time traveled a damn orc in there. Who had an axe personally made by Cenarius. Which completely muddies the first contact with the Orcs in WC3…
More like hero-batted. Villains since 1995, made to be heroes at the last moment to appease Horde players.
Edit: And out of everything you have said, the most offensive thing has been your spelling of Kaldorei with an apostrophe…
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Ain’t that the truth.
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Right. And no one else puts forward their own interests before others. Azeroth would be completely selfless if not for Night Elves. 
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