Don’t forget sending the player on a suicide mission early in wrath out of spite.
“Massive Cowards” - Knowing when to retreat. It was doomed.
Or the goblin heavy artillery cannon in Azshara.
Or the DK’s start rezzing everyone who fell then and there against the legion? (Maybe our dks don’t have the juice?)
Broxigar would have stayed - I dare say Ogrim, Grommash too. Especially a chance to face off with the orc (Gul’dan) that brought his people so much suffering. Straight up, that would have been a good death.
But, yes, strategically a retreat allows for their resources to be used again.
That’s what alliance did, too.
Stayed to help the Alliance?
They wouldn’t have shown up in the first place.
No, stayed to face off against Gul’dan. They wouldn’t have cared for alliance. Ogrim was so infuriated with Gul’dan in the second war that he compromised his capital city siege to hunt him down.
No, definitely not stating they would have done that for alliance, not even for Azeroth. But for their people.
It couldn’t be written that way from a plot standpoint because voljin needed to die to make Sylvanas the warchief. Which is a shame because as much as i like Sylvanas, Vol’jin never got his real Warchief moment, to me.
Legion be all: When you play Civilization on the easy setting and you’re Ghandi using B2 spirits against hoplites.
I mean there was death? Their warchief literally died over it… There was only loss and death for both factions unfortunately… And doubly unfortunate that the horde lost yet another decent character…
The opportunity would have come out of left field & completely contradicted his earlier iterations. My entire point is that there’s nothing in Vol’jin’s history that would indicate he is a good strategist, diplomat or leader.
If you were obviously talking about NPCs, you would have clarified that. Personally, I think you didn’t clarify that because you are a blatant and obvious LIAR, see:
Wow, look at that, what you said here isn’t remotely ambiguous, there’s no room to backpedal & reframe.
No, it didn’t. You were right, Brewa is just a sleazy, dishonest liar. That’s why he stopped replying to me about Garrosh the moment I dropped citations.
Thanks for citing a conversation where Vol’jin was objectively wrong, having both talked back to Garrosh to begin with & threatened to assassinate him.
But either way, I know you want to reframe this discussion as “Horde NPCs didn’t like Garrosh!!!” Again, I have to point out that you only changed to this subject once players spoke up saying that liked Garrosh, and your first contention, as I’ve demonstrated above was that “players did not” like Garrosh.
However, even when it comes to this new, more favorable position that you tried shifting to, you’re still totally wrong.
“Glory” demonstrates the unpopularity of Thrall’s ideology among some rank and file Horde members, as does “Heart of War.” These stories, however, present only individual accounts and serve to lay the groundwork for the groundswell of pro-Garrosh ideology we see later. In “The Shattering” we see that the arena in Orgrimmar is packed for ideological reasons with a large section of the audience being there to support Garrosh because they endorse his ideology and back the new over the old. “Tides of War,” despite showing dissent to Garrosh’s rule, still runs with the position that Garrosh holds favor with the majority. After the bombing of Theramore, dissidents are the ones who gather in Razor Hill, while Garrosh’s supporters stage a much larger celebration in Orgrimmar.
Also, not only did you dishonestly try shifting the conversation to a new topic, and not only are you wrong about this new topic, but this new topic also doesn’t even matter. It turns out (and you would know this if you actually read source material and quest text, instead of citing forum tropes and “WHOAH SO EPIC” dialogue scenes), that the position of Warchief does not gain legitimacy from popular mandate. That’s not how it works, go read the Blood Oath of the Horde.
Groundhog Year where forum posts are reborn each year
Perhaps you should have played the horse side of the story. Then you’d know what really happened.
It should have been like this:
Horde and Alliance leaders and their champions return home from a long two year campaign, only to find they’ve been gone for 10 years in Azerothian time. During that time, both Horde and Alliance have merged. Turns out, the lowly peasants and peons got along with each other and developed their own conjoined society, despite their “heroic” leaders’ past failures. Now, it’s up to the old leaders and heroes to reincorporate into the decade old culture of the new Federation. No king. No warchief. A council of 10 that uses the “10th Man Rule”. (Yes, from World War Z)
If nine of us who get the same information arrived at the same conclusion, it’s the duty of the tenth man to disagree. No matter how improbable it may seem. The tenth man has to start thinking about the assumption that the other nine are wrong.
I think that would have been the best solution to the game’s problem of an always looming faction war/conflict. Let’s just fast forward to the solution we want, then come up with the way it happened after the fact, instead of trying to build it over a few years where different writers might change the course of the story (see BFA and SL).
But there was evidence for his battle prowess. His entire book about him repelling Zandalari invasion while having minimal sources and manpower.
He repelling troll invasions behind Garrosh back in Cata also using minimal resources. The Darksears raided Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman.
Even his minimal appearance in WoD was showing him priotizing achiving his aims without needlessly wasting troops.
His abilitiy to use various Horde troops to use thier potential to full capacity. like Sending Gob Squad to infiltrate Orgrimmar.
That was the difference between him and Garrosh. Garrosh didn’t care for culties, and he was wayy to happy to waste soldiers left and right as it was shown in Ashenvalte questing where he already put a wanted poster on the player character before player could’ve even prove his inncoence, and Twilight Highlands fiasco.
Your biased take clouds your judgement. Vol’Jin had achievements, they were not that much in display, but they were there.
And it’s very odd that Trol’Kalar was retconned becuase it was meant to be used in Zul’Gurub raid and in Chronicles that raid was said to be done by the Horde.
Vol’Jin was also named by Molthor on Yojamba Isles in classic. How would “Hand of Rastakhan” know about him without him interacting with him.
This is why Vol’Jin’s death was a total waste, he was robbed of spotlight where he could truly shine and show his caabilities. His death was such a BS becuase literally everything about him had to be contrived to make it happen.
He survived stab to the neck with poison specially made for him, but he couldn’t suvive made up fel infection - and for Priest questline we had np. curing Draenei from it without even artifact?
He was able to repell barrage of strikes but he was surprised by the strike from the front?
He named Sylvanas Warchief even if she was the last person he would ever trust?
He was killed so Sylvanas would take the reigns over.
Because the writers play alliance
This is hardly an achievement considering both Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman had both been sacked, had their outlying settlements raided, and their entire political leadership killed just 3 & 2 years prior, especially considering Vol’jin had been tipped off to their plans because he was invited to the Zandalari meeting, by virtue of being a Troll. Zul’Gurub itself was canonically stated to still be in ruins with places like Shadra’zaar being totally blocked off by rubble. And nevermind the fact that, when it came to subduing these two cities, he required assistance not only from the Farstriders, but from Silver Covenant rangers as well.
In short, he kicked two city-states that had capitulated just 2 years ago, while they were down and pulled it off because he was acting on insider information that was given to him by virtue of his race. Hardly an accomplishment.
What was his big achievement back when Zul’Gurub was actually a threat? He sent Zengu to retrieve a sword in Arathi, something he branded as a superweapon. The mission failed, and the Dark Rangers refer to his handpicked agent as “foolish.”
Vol’jin wasn’t directing matters in WoD. Draenor was not Northrend, Vol’jin was not Garrosh. Vol’jin was initially cut off from the campaign in Draenor, and showed up much later to promote the player & encourage them to build a dockyard. Why he’d suggest building a navy when we’re fighting a continental war is anyone’s guess.
And really, what does “prioritizing achieving his aims without needlessly wasting troops” even mean? Is wanting to achieve one’s aims some unique trait? Is wanting to minimize one’s own casualties something that only skilled people do? No, this is “basic warfare 101.” It’s not a unique trait to Vol’jin, it’s something that you could apply to literally every single mortal Warcraft Character in any sort of command role.
It is astounding that you are trying to spin “Enforcing laws against Fel Magic” as “wasting soldiers left and right.” Enforcing commonsensical laws is not the same thing as ordering a charge across No Man’s Land to take a few inches of territory in 1916 France.
You mean the ordeal where Garrosh accomplished all strategic objectives despite a traitor literally informing the Black Dragonflight of his flight path? Yeah, sure, I’ll take that one. This is the difference between Garrosh and Vol’jin: Garrosh scores victories even when his enemies have insider information. Vol’jin requires insider information for his victories.
Trol’kalar wasn’t a retcon. The story just progressed. In PreBC, the player is tasked by Zengu to retieve Trol’kalar, the player does this, Zengu takes the sword and plans to depart Arathi for Grom’gol.
The Horde then (canonically) storms Zul’Gurub, sacks the city & kills off its political class & their God. Trol’kalar is never mentioned either in-game or in any further short stories.
In Cataclysm, we get an update. It turns out the reason we didn’t hear anything about Trol’kalar when we were doing the heavy lifting in Zul’Gurub is because Vol’jin’s special agent failed. Zengu was given the sword, went to leave Arathi by himself & almost immediately got killed by Humans. Vol’jin couldn’t even bother arranging an escort for his handpicked man, deep in hostile territory, sent to steal an artifact, that Vol’jin had personally identified as a superweapon, from a fallen Kingdom with significant hostile forces. In the end, his “contribution” wasn’t even necessary. Zul’Gurub fell without his help.
I don’t know though, when going over all of this, I still can’t decide whether my favorite Vol’jin moment is when he taps the Brewfest Keg, or when he directs artillery at broken ruins in Lordaeron while we have to fight a literal coup and demonic invasion underground, you know in the Undercity.
A mistranslation into the common language.
It actually means: ‘My victory or your death’
Orcs do not consider losing.
We killed like a million demons, and then realized that the Alliance wasn’t good enough to take down a single Orc. We decided to back off knowing that we would eventually have to solo the expansion.
All part of our plan to kill Varian. Victory and Death achieved.
Enforcing wouldn’t be an issue, the issue was that Garrosh deemed you guilty without giving you real chance to prove your innocence. Showing that he was overly too happy waste soldiers. Garrosh said himself that he will spare you but once you deliver the proof of innocencehe informs you that he already set bounty on your head. So he told you one thing and started doing another.
Garrosh wouldn’t have wasted his troops if he didn’t send off antire fleet after the Alliance right after he entered Twilight Highlands. Everyone acted on Garrosh orders, not the traitor’s. The casulties wouldn’t be this severe if Garrosh simply wouldn’t act dumb.
Well it was, because it was assumed that Darkspears were in possession of the sword. The whole questline was for this sword to get used. The Cataclysm update was super dumb narrative decision to diminish the Darkspear accomplishments. It’s especially painful becuase the questline was itself was very paintful to accomplish back in vanilla. Lots of going back and forth and lots of obstacles to overcome.
Besides it’s very dumb to blame Vol’Jin for failure of his people, if that is the case then Garrosh has even more failures under his belt, and that is diretion you really don’t want to take.
Anyway bottomline is that Vol’Jin DID HAVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS. His campaigns were a succes, no matter how you try to downgrade it. He reclaimed Echo Isles, he stopped Zandalari twice, he overthrew Garrosh, and Draenor campaign was a success becuase he elected you - a player - to for a general. So that means he was good at management.
Could’ve been done better? Yes of course. It wouldn’t been better to see more of him in action. There is always room for improvement in WoW, especially when trolls are concerned as Blizzard is always underdelivering when it comes for writing for them- as even Darkspear heritage questline shows.
But saying that Vol’Jin didn’t achieve anything of worth is just balant lie that comes from a bias. There is entire book that describes not onl his battle prowess and tactics but also his philosophy. And that book was primary a reason for hype for his reign.
With that being said, I don’t think his accomplishments should grant him ascension to Loa, I was expecting for him to do much more to earn it. And to be honest I’d rather if developers would stop this farce already. Damage was done, and even if he would return, it likely wouldn’t change anything. It was once in a lifetime chance to write truly proactive Darkspears, and it ended before it really started.