How the hell will the orcs redeem themselves when all this is done?

[Aleksej89]

There was not a point in azeroth history when orcs were "good" or even viewed as anything but savage and barbaric.

They don't have much (if any) redemption to do - garrosh is the typical orc, the orcs following him are also typical of the orcish horde... it is just orcs being orcs, no idea why do you think they need redemption OR to what should they be redeemed to, as saints???

[Faroth]

Only two night elves in the entirety of wow's timeline can be considered xenophobic, and they are both considered evil as well. Staghelm and Maiev don't represent the Night Elves in any way, shape or form. They aren't fearful of outsiders and never have been, however they see trends and mistakes being made that they made long ago and will try to correct them.

I meant based on WC3, it was a direction that Blizz could have capitalized on to make the NEs the more fringe member of the Alliance and allowing them to have the grittier side for the Alliance to have some questionable acts.

And honestly, NEs were perfect for it. Nature protection (violently in many cases), somewhat judgmental of the "baby races," a completely different view on right/wrong/morality, seemingly bipolar to human view but perfectly natural from NE view when you consider nature's capability of a gentle rain to a raging hurricane.

I'm not saying NEs ARE any of these things, I'm just giving a few examples of how the NEs could have been developed to be the Alliance's "shade of gray" race counter to how Forsaken were the fringe group in the Horde since a lot of people say the Alliance has less interesting angles due to being "the good guys" most of the time.

---------- Post added 2013-05-24 at 06:52 PM ----------

Nice post from Zulkhan, but a few points I somewhat disagree with.

In Wow the only bad orcs are in the Burning Blade, a demon-lovers organization with both humans and orcs inside it.

Not all the orcs were under the demon blood's curse, such as Orgrim Doomhammer who refused to drink it. Some also drank it willingly, knowing what it meant. I wouldn't say the entirety of the orcish Horde are free from guilt in the actions that were taken and the atrocities that were committed. Burning Blade, cabals, and the Twilight Cult all have a strong share of orc representation. The night elves actually had the least appearances in any "bad" groups until Cataclysm.

The Alliance on the other hand had the last remnants of the Silver Hard becoming the crazy zealots of the Scarlet Crusade.

This implies the Silver Hand became the Scarlet Crusade. That's not entirely true. Some were members, many weren't, but they were initially founded with the sole purpose of driving the Scourge from Lordaeron; noble intentions, but infiltration of a Dreadlord tends to muck those up quickly.

In Wotlk we have the first true questionable Horde activities, like the Garrosh violent attitude in war and the betrayal of the Forsaken, still, the main villain is Arthas the Lich King, we also have the completely mad crusaders becoming warlocks under the influence of Mal'ganis.

The Forsaken were up to questionable activities before Wrath. The beginnings of the plague Putress used were seeds planted in Classic. Otherwise, I'll agree Horde/Alliance were basically both fairly on the up and up and just had squabbles with one another.

In Cata we have Garrosh doing nasty things, still in the "gray" area and nothing truly evil, while the Alliance have two relevant figures like Benedictus, Fandral and a good number of night elf druids (becoming Druids of the Flame) becoming the servants of the entities that want to bring the end of the world (Deathwing and Ragnaros); all of this while Thrall became essentially the hero of the expansion.

You can't dismiss the multitude of orcs (and humans, and other races) in the Twilight Hammer if you're going to lump off a bunch of night elves for the druids of the flame.
Benedictus was supposed to have a Horde counterpart in Aethas betraying the Horde, but they decided to shoe horn an Alliance problem into a foe for Thrall to take care of. Fandral I think most Alliance are okay with him being a villain. He was a jerk for years.

So, no, i think that the Alliance plagued us with a lot of villains.

But you dismiss the fact that when you talk about the Horde, you do have to remember it splintered. The original Horde has given us plenty of villains in the Blackrock Orcs and the Armani trolls as well, both Horde members. The actions of the Dragonmaw shouldn't be ignored, and they've rejoined the Horde under Garrosh where they were once pretty much blacklisted by the Horde.

First, Arthas has never been condemned or "fought", simply Uther and Jaina avoided any responsibility for the mess in Stratholme, leaving all the shit to Arthas, they just said "nuh nuh nuh this is not the right thing to do" without proposing nothing else, especially Uther did the morale-keeper with no ideas at all. Arthas took an extreme and creepy decision, indeed, still, no matter how terrible and murderous could it be, there were no other choices or alternatives, while the two "good guys" FLED (excatly, not "stood up") and turned their back to the mess, hoping that things turned good by their own. Cute.

Arthas was indeed condemned by the Alliance, pretty much when he returned as a DK and assassinated his father. The problem was, there was little that could be done to organize any counter against him at that point. The Scourge was already on the verge of bringing down the kingdom, Arthas just sped things up. As for Uther and Jaina, there wasn't much they COULD do. The prince still had sovereign right of the kingdom and while Uther outranked him as a paladin, disbanding the Silver Hand resolved that rather quick. To actively stop him at that point would be an act of treason and there is also the debate over what else could have been done counter to Arthas' purge. (I love moral quandries with no "right" answer in stories).

Arthas was not the rotten apple of the Alliance, this is what the Alliance in their bigotry loves to belive, with their "hand-wave" attitude, but while Arthas was indeed a flawed character, he became so single-minded in what was right to do in Stratholme because of his traumatic experience in Hearthglen, in which he saw his own people and soldiers becoming Scourge under his eyes, an experience that nor Jaina or Uther had. But a lot of other humans had the potential for taking evil decisions for the supposed good, in the right circumstances; and the birth of the Scarlet Crusade is the absurdly obvious prove of it. They were what remained of the Silver Hand, the same order of Arthas, that went through the same horrible and traumatic experiences, becoming consumed by hatred and obsession excatly like him; but what makes the Scarlet Crusade much more worse than Arthas is that they NEVER questioned themselves, for this they are capable of using the Light, while Arthas was losing his tie with it.

Arthas also sort of lost his soul. That's a black mark on the "use the light" thing as he was a Death Knight after taking up Frostmourne. He had full use of the Light prior to taking up Frostmourne. And again, the Scarlet Crusade's frenzy was also driven on by a Dreadlord too. You can't just simply ignore that.

The Scarlet Crusade considered themselves Alliance, while the Alliance on the other side of Khaz Modan just hande-waved them like they were not their businesses, "we have nothing to do with crazy zealots", despite the fact that those crazy zealots were the respected members of the Silver Hand, before the Scourge apocalypse.

Again, not all members were Silver Hand paladins. They grew in the remnants of Lordaeron too. And the Alliance didn't just hand wave it. They were scattered and broken. They couldn't exactly rally up and take care of the problem. The high elves were lost, Lordaeron was destroyed, Arathi didn't have a presence, and Ironforge and Stormwind would have learned about the extent of what happened far after events were in motion. Stormwind was barely maintaining itself with a missing king and a meddling black dragon controlling the kingdom. So it's not as if the Alliance said the Scarlet Crusade were okay and not their problem.

This is the reason for which humans, instead of the orcs, don't have decent gray zones. They have their Church of "goodness", having a faith in it that touch fanatism sometimes, and for this some of them become bigoted and easy to prejudice or obsession, and these guys just fall from the complete "good" to the complete evil, because fanatism when twisted and corrupted become madness. This happened with Arthas, with the Scarlet Crusade and with Benedictus, and everytime the Alliance just dismiss them as "rotten apples", because they are against their ideals. But those guys followed those ideals too. But it's simply too easy talk of goodness and happy things when things are all quite and good. It's much more harder do it so when things completely screw up, and only the strongest and greatest, like Tirion (just an example), are able to remain steady in their convinctions through all the shit brutally threw in their face.

And this is indeed the problem. Blizzard goes from one end of the spectrum to the other, but there is definitely some strong areas for shades of gray with the belief of self righteousness to allow the Alliance a little more gritty approach to some things. Unfortunately, Blizzard writes them as pure good or batshit crazy evil with little in between.

But the others ? Many of them just fill their mouth with the great ideals of goodness, ready to throw out them from the window when the situation is too dire for have the balls to honour them. And compared to these, Arthas looks like the best one in comparison.

Examples?

So no, the Alliance doesn't have the characterisation of "good", they just have a more hidden and insidious evil, that show itself in the weaker minds and souls of their kind when things screw up, and is called bigotry, for bigotry the Alliance have only great heroes and mad villains with little place for true gray areas (with few exceptions), with the last ones promptly discarded as "traitors" of their way of life, and of course the lack of it in the Horde is the reason for which the Horde never really do real good or real evil by their own, they used to care for survival, not follow higher ideals.

I like this description!

What changed with Garrosh before Theramore was that Garrosh put the "survival way of life" to an aggressive and prideful state, completely different by the constant and quite struggle for survival of Thrall, and for this the orcs follow him, because they don't belive he do it for bad reasons, but for the sake of his people.

I'd say Garrosh went from "survival" to doing what he felt necessary to make a BETTER life for his people. The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

[darkwarrior42]

There was not a point in azeroth history when orcs were "good" or even viewed as anything but savage and barbaric.

They don't have much (if any) redemption to do - garrosh is the typical orc, the orcs following him are also typical of the orcish horde... it is just orcs being orcs, no idea why do you think they need redemption OR to what should they be redeemed to, as saints???

Because Blizzard wants to have it both ways: they want the Horde to be savage without being evil, so no players have to be "the bad guys".... they also believe the story is more interesting if neither of the two sides at war is evil. While they would normally be correct, if neither side is evil or has evil intent, then there has to be VERY compelling reasons for the war to happen at all, and we haven't seen anything in the Warcraft universe that would be anywhere near compelling enough for the Horde and the Alliance to be at war... unless one side or the other either is evil, or has evil leaders. (During Wrath, Varian definitely qualified. During Cataclysm, both sides definitely qualified. These days, it's just Garrosh, with a possible argument for Jaina... Varian at some point decided he didn't need to kill everyone in the Horde. I'm assuming that happened in the books, but since it was never mentioned in-game I just consider it more poor character development on Blizzard's part.)

Either they need to let one side or the other actually be evil, or they need to let the war actually come to an end, or they need to come up with a GOOD reason for the Horde and Alliance to be at war. (Racism doesn't count, nor does "LOL ORCS ARE ALIENS", particularly considering that the Tauren, Goblins, Trolls, Blood Elves, and Pandaren are definitely NOT aliens.)

[Aquamonkey]

-Thrall being kidnapped was by one opportune Alliance captain, the rest following orders. Also, he was the leader of the HORDE, the enemy faction to Alliance.

No he wasn't. He had given up his position as Warchief and was on his way to the maelstrom to save the planet when the Alliance attacked him.

---------- Post added 2013-05-24 at 01:05 PM ----------

also the hate between Japanses and Chinese even though WW2 was many decades ago
Old Hatrds dont die easily

The hatred between the Japanese and Chinese goes back way further than WW2.

---------- Post added 2013-05-24 at 01:08 PM ----------

Not all the orcs were under the demon blood's curse, such as Orgrim Doomhammer who refused to drink it. Some also drank it willingly, knowing what it meant. I wouldn't say the entirety of the orcish Horde are free from guilt in the actions that were taken and the atrocities that were committed. Burning Blade, cabals, and the Twilight Cult all have a strong share of orc representation. The night elves actually had the least appearances in any "bad" groups until Cataclysm.

Nobody drank it knowing what it meant. Gul'dan lied to everyone when he presented the blood for the chieftains to drink. Only one person knew what it meant (Durotan) and he refused to drink.

[Trassk]

Because not every aspect of Thrall's life needs to be the full focus of every patch in every expansion? While I agree that the story of Warcraft is essentially centered on Thrall as the central protagonist since his introduction, it's not necessary for us to dwell on him for every aspect of the story. It's a major piece for him, though, and I'd actually almost be interested to see a short story regarding his first months as a father and his thoughts surrounding the events leading to 5.3 and 5.4 written by Metzen.



And I want to reiterate the orcs redeem themselves by sending out gift baskets.
Everyone likes gift baskets.

I'm not expecting them to do something for us to dwell on or be put in front of us. But at least give us something on the side to elaborate the character into this important progression. After all, we've had stories about so little with certain characters as there emotional feelings about the past, which amounts to nothing in the current story (like Sylvanas or vol'jins past), and yet they skip on seeing one of warcrafts main heroes becoming a father? And given how we've had to deal with seeing Varian and his golden child son all the time, its be at least something as a counterpoint to that story to show a horde perspective of fatherhood (that doesn't go horribly wrong, like the Grom - garrosh ratio)

[Drummerboy]

The orcs will be redeemed through near-genocide.

Everyone keeps asking who's gonna be warchief without considering one possibility: there will be no need for a warchief as there won't be enough orcs left.

I'm starting to think it's possible there will not be an Orgrimmar. One could argue the fact that Blizzard finished "Orgrimmar construction" just recently as they wanted it finished before it's layed to waste. And in attacking Orgimmar many orcs will be killed leaving them to scatter and become the new "refugees".

With few orcs left who will want to rebuild that broken city much less lead it. Thrall might come back as a spiritual leader but the post of warchief could likely cease to exist. The alliance certainly isn't going to allow a new warchief to be instated.

/TinFoilHat

[Deleted]

"Oh, we didn't have anything to do with that" doesn't just resolve things. I mean, it does in WoW storylines far too much, but logically it shouldn't.

It did several times in our own history, how is it illogical?

Orgrimmar is a police state, with Garrosh shutting down all of his internal opposition. Seriously, the nation of Orgrimmar is right now a complete copy of any 20th century totalitarian regime.

[Dreknar20]

With few orcs left who will want to rebuild that broken city much less lead it. Thrall might come back as a spiritual leader but the post of warchief could likely cease to exist. The alliance certainly isn't going to allow a new warchief to be instated.

You do realize the Horde will continue to exist right? Its half the playerbase

---------- Post added 2013-05-24 at 09:53 PM ----------

VERY compelling reasons for the war to happen at all, and we haven't seen anything in the Warcraft universe that would be anywhere near compelling enough for the Horde and the Alliance to be at war

There are plenty of old and new hatrds between the Horde and Alliance, they have a very bumpy history

[Trassk]

With few orcs left who will want to rebuild that broken city much less lead it. Thrall might come back as a spiritual leader but the post of warchief could likely cease to exist. The alliance certainly isn't going to allow a new warchief to be instated.

/TinFoilHat

You do understand that its the kor'kohn we're fighting against, not the entire orc race. There are countless orc citizens, and orcs not in close proximity to orgirmmar to be counted under the kor'kohn movement.
however, given the kor'kohn that will die in this, the orcs will need new soldiers to replace the dead, and under new leadership.

[Talen]

In the bonus campaign the orcs are under attack by the humans of Daelin Proudmoore, blind to reasoning that died like morons. Not technically villains, still humans that died in a very bad light.

Did you play Cataclysm? Daelin was actually proved right.

In Wotlk we have the first true questionable Horde activities

The "questionable" activities in Vanilla don't count - why?

You are comparing the uncomparable, and for this your argument is flawed. First, Arthas has never been condemned or "fought"

Stormwind alone lost 50,000 dead fighting Arthas. Hard to argue they agree with him.

Arthas was not the rotten apple of the Alliance, this is what the Alliance in their bigotry loves to belive

Yeah. The Alliance has welcomed into its ranks demons, undead and cursed savages. They are of course, racist bigots for doing so.

They were what remained of the Silver Hand

No...they weren't. What remained of the Silver Hand eventually got folded into the Argent Crusade.

So no, the Alliance doesn't have the characterisation of "good", they just have a more hidden and insidious evil, that show itself in the weaker minds and souls of their kind when things screw up, and is called bigotry, for bigotry the Alliance have only great heroes and mad villains with little place for true gray areas (with few exceptions), with the last ones promptly discarded as "traitors" of their way of life, and of course the lack of it in the Horde is the reason for which the Horde never really do real good or real evil by their own, they used to care for survival, not follow higher ideals.

That's quite a twisted set of reasons and one that contradicts the actual in game evidence. The Alliance has individuals that are bad. That are evil. That are racist. But the values of the Alliance, and the values most of its people hold dear and have fought and even died for are not. You are trying to tar the entire faction with the deed of individuals. "Arthas was evil therefore millions of other humans must also be evil" is a false argument but its the one you are making. "The Alliance is evil - they just hide it better" is similarly dubious.

EJL

[Dreknar20]

Did you play Cataclysm? Daelin was actually proved right.

Thats an incredibly broad view
Thats like saying Garrosh was proven right in that the Alliance would not stop fighting them

---------- Post added 2013-05-24 at 10:31 PM ----------

Stormwind alone lost 50,000 dead fighting Arthas. Hard to argue they agree with him.

They had no apprant qualm for all the things he did in the human campaign

---------- Post added 2013-05-24 at 10:33 PM ----------

But the values of the Alliance, and the values most of its people hold dear and have fought and even died for are not. You are trying to tar the entire faction with the deed of individuals.

and how is that little different from this discussion over Orcs

[leaks]

No...they weren't. What remained of the Silver Hand eventually got folded into the Argent Crusade.

No, the Argent Dawn was an offshoot of the Scarlet Crusade. They left because they didn't like what they were becoming and they were originally allies for awhile. Both groups were formed from the Silver Hand.

[Dreknar20]

No, the Argent Dawn was an offshoot of the Scarlet Crusade. They left because they didn't like what they were becoming and they were originally allies for awhile. Both groups were formed from the Silver Hand.

Likewise the insignia/symbol of the Scarlet Crusade is an off-color version of the Lorderon one

[delus]

I think the orc race will push itself to near extinction under Garrosh's lead. A new culture will arise, a shamanistic one like Thrall envisioned but one that is fearful of glorifying war. The time for the wars has come to an end and in doing so there is no need for equality among the Alliance and Horde. That does not necessarily have to end up in a "world of peacecraft" situation. There are worse things out there than each other. Playing all through Wrath proved this worked. In fact, the whole "lets put the war back in warcraft" mentality has proved to be a colossal failure.

[Dreknar20]

. In fact, the whole "lets put the war back in warcraft" mentality has proved to be a colossal failure.

why? I throughly enjoy killin Alliance NPCs.
My favorite scenarios to do are the ones that involve the war ex. Domination Point / Little Patience

[delus]

why? I throughly enjoy killin Alliance NPCs.
My favorite scenarios to do are the ones that involve the war ex. Domination Point / Little Patience

Maybe it was playing WC3. Maybe it was playing in TBC but I like the recurring theme of old enemies being forced to work with each other to beat overwhelming odds. Don't get me wrong, the whole expansion and the leadership of Hellscream have served up the idea of how pointless war for the sake of war is.

[Dreknar20]

Maybe it was playing WC3. Maybe it was playing in TBC .

even in WC3 you killed humans. TBC there was still tensions and conflict between the factions.

And War is never pointless. People dont go out to end people's lives for only little to no reason.
Reasons may be petty but they are hardly pointless
"Emperors and cobblers are made from the same mold. The very things that cause neighboors to argue spark wars between princes"

[fenixazul]

By mating with Trolls and Taurens, to get Green Cows and Uglier trolls breed

[delus]

even in WC3 you killed humans. TBC there was still tensions and conflict between the factions.

And War is never pointless. People dont go out to end people's lives for only little to no reason.
Reasons may be petty but they are hardly pointless
"Emperors and cobblers are made from the same mold. The very things that cause neighboors to argue spark wars between princes"

[Talen]

Thats an incredibly broad view
Thats like saying Garrosh was proven right in that the Alliance would not stop fighting them

Daelin said the Orcs would always be threat and needed to be neutralised to keep the Alliance safe. He said this after Thrall freed his people, threatened war against Lordaeron, attacked a harbor town and stole some ships. He also had first hand knowledge that the Orcs had returned before when the Alliance "just let them go" and the Orcs culture is not one that values peace across all the Clans.

He ended up dead because his daughter wanted to give peace a chance.

Garrosh said the Alliance is richer than the Orcs and the Orcs deserved to take that wealth because the Alliance was weak.
Was he right?

They had no apprant qualm for all the things he did in the human campaign

Which mostly involved hunting down undead, the Scourge amnd Dreadlords.

There are two instances which people throw up ehre.

First: Stratholme. A terrible act. However, it appears to have been completely necessary. He does not appears to have any means available to him to spare the city or its inhabitants. No quarantine was viable. Blockading the city wasn't possible. Letting the Scourge grow to the extent it would have would likely have doomed the nation.

Second; He killed the mercenaries he hired and stranded his troops. This action is very much against the values of the Alliance but its act reflects on Arthas, no the Alliance.

and how is that little different from this discussion over Orcs

Because you are tying to comapre the actiosn of a few individuals who act contrary to the beliefs and values of their factions and many tens of thouands of others in that faction, with individuals who embody the belifes and vlaues of their own faction.

Arthas at the end did not embody the Alliance. He did not uphold its values and the Alliance rejected him and fought him. The same is true for other individuals. Indioviduals become villains, but the faction itself manages to remain relatively free of tranish from their actions because they do act as individuals.

The Horde is different. The protagonists here tend to embody the values of the Horde society instead of being its antithesis. They aren't individuals atypcial of the faction and they aren't rejected by their faction. Indeed, as Garrosh shows, they are often embarced and celebrated by their faction.

And that is why the Horde can find it difficult to separate itself from actions we see as evil. They often end up embracing and celebrating actions the Alliance would shun.

EJL