Enough with the slavery, Blizz.

[Caain]

Here's a question that, no doubt, the lore team asks themselves constantly when designing new content; "How can we convince players that these creatures they need to kill are bad?" The lore team's go-to answer, for some time now, has been "fuckit, let's make them slavers,"—and it's become a trope that I'm pretty damn sick of. WoW has an incredible variety of races and monsters, many accompanied by their own fantastic lore. To homogenize them all by saying "hey, its okay to kill these guys, because they're slavers" is boring. Get players to want to dismantle the societies you want them to for more interesting reasons—maybe because this one's a future threat, maybe in this case WE'RE the aggressors, maybe in another case there's a border dispute or a trade disagreement or something. Slavery has become something that Blizzard just tacks on to societies to ensure that players have no qualms about absolutely dismantling them.

Here's a brief list of creatures/societies that often have slaves in WoW.

• Naga: Broken slaves in BC, Alliance/Horde Slaves in Cata.
• Twilight Cult: Slaves of all races in Cata.
• Ragnaros: Dark Iron slaves in Vanilla.
• Vrykrul: Enslave their own race in Brunnhildur.
• The Lich King: Enslaves anything that he kills, through resurrecting them as undead.
• Orcs: Enslave everything from dragons to Ogres. A notable exception is the orcs of the Horde.
• Magnataur: Enslave snowbolds. This is actually a more interesting relationship, since the snowbolds worship the magnataur, so this gets a pass.
• Mogu: The race that literally enslaved every other sentient race of Pandaria. In MoP, they have Tauren and NE slaves as well.
• Ogres: In WoD we find out that, guess what, the Ogre empires are built atop of slavery. One of the dungeons is literally based upon freeing slaves. One of the raids features a gladiator-boss. We might not be killing ogres just because they're slavers, but Blizz sure as hell is going to justify killing them because of the fact.

Notice that the Horde and the Alliance, or any of their allies, never, EVER have slaves. The closest they come, iirc, is when Captain Doran of the Alliance expedition to Pandaria 'forcibly conscripts' Pandaren to build an Alliance base in the Jade Forest, but he was going off the deep end, anyways; and when Okrilla enslaves the ogres of Dreadmaul Hold, but she goes over to the Iron Horde in WoD. The Alliance might occasionally destroy peaceful Tauren villages, and everything that the Forsaken do might be a war crime, but never do either enslave any sentient race. Even the arguably most evil playable society, the Forsaken, are based around the concept that slavery is wrong. Any undead that they resurrect has to option to not join the Forsaken, which you learn if you do the opening quests in Lordaeron.

Notice that slave societies are never redeemed—any peoples who enslave another are 'black-and-white-evil'. Never has one society convinced another to change their ways and free their slaves. Instead, the right thing to do is to destroy slave societies, because obviously they're all irredeemably evil.

Anyways, my point is that slavery is quite frankly an overused trope in WoW. I wish Blizzard's lore team would think up more imaginative reasons to justify killing stuff besides that "HEY THESE GUYS HAVE SLAVES AND THAT'S BAD SO OBVIOUSLY DON'T FEEL GUILT WHEN YOUS KILLS THEM". I'm not asking for WoW to becomes as 'shades of gray' as Game of Thrones (but christ would I love that), but I am asking that it not stay as black and white as LoTR.

[Kelthos]

Well the playable Horde also kidnapped Pandaren children and I doubt they just let them play hide and seek. Probably put them to work.

That being said, you are right. It is becoming something of a cliche they should move away from. *nods*

[Daralii]

Orcs, trolls, goblins, and Forsaken all openly practice slavery. It's a big part of the Horde.

[Immitis]

the alliance has had slaves.

[Wyrt]

Well, at least the orcs aren't enslaving draenei women to rape and breed babies with...

Oh wait, Garona exists in the AU too.

The MU orcs have slaves as well. Remember Varian, Valeera, and Broll?

[Combatbutler]

Orcs, trolls, goblins, and Forsaken all openly practice slavery. It's a big part of the Horde.

Humans also have slavery, though it is not really displayed ingame.

[Santti]

Humans also have slavery, though it is not really displayed ingame.

In Jade Forest, one of the first Horde quests, you have to free Pandaren working on Alliance camp. I think they were enslaved, not sure. Definitely overburdened with work, and happy to get to leave the place.

[Shadowbane]

Pretty sure there are plenty more reasons to kill all those guys you mentioned than solely because they practice slavery. I certainly didn't want to kill them because they were slavers.

I mean, the Scourge take slaves in the Pit of Saron. Is that why we feel compelled or obliged or whatever to kill them? Maybe, but there are far more important reasons that we're already killing them for.

Besides, the Horde and Alliance have made use of slavery too. Aedalas Blackmoore kept Thrall as a gladiator slave, whilst the Horde has the Crimson Ring, a gladiator ring in which a few more gladiator slaves have also participated.

[Wyrt]

In Jade Forest, one of the first Horde quests, you have to free Pandaren working on Alliance camp. I think they were enslaved, not sure. Definitely overburdened with work.

It's not really a good example because the humans there were infected with the sha.

[Lynneiah]

I also don't really get the impression that when we free slaves, we do so because 'slavery is bad' (except for a few cases), but because freeing slaves takes away your enemy's labor force, which is just a sound military strategy all around.

[Caain]

That's right—I'd forgotten that the Alliance at one point had most of the orcs of the present-day Horde in captivity. IIRC, the Alliance never became a slave society, though, based upon the usage of slaves—the orcs were more prisoners than slaves.

[Santti]

It's not really a good example because the humans there were infected with the sha.

Does the Sha work that way? Like you catch it like some sort of virus until you get sick? and the pandaren had to be working there for quite some time, before Horde came there, before all the Horde/Alliance fighting on Pandaria.

[Ealyssa]

Alliance had orc slaves. Thrall's own name is his slave's name...

[Wyrt]

That's right—I'd forgotten that the Alliance at one point had most of the orcs of the present-day Horde in captivity. IIRC, the Alliance never became a slave society, though, based upon the usage of slaves—the orcs were more prisoners than slaves.

There were a few examples of slaves(Blackmoore), but overall the orcs were prisoners, not slaves.

Does the Sha work that way? Like you catch it like some sort of virus until you get sick? and the pandaren had to be working there for quite some time, before Horde came there, before all the Horde/Alliance fighting on Pandaria.

Sha made Taran Zhu try to murder everyone.

[Santti]

Sha made Taran Zhu try to murder everyone.

Yes, I know. But how is that relevant to what I said? :P

[Combatbutler]

Alliance had orc slaves. Thrall's own name is his slave's name...

The human class system is already akin to slavery on top of that, take Taretha for example ,she more or less belonged to blackmoore though she was no slave, her social standing was just so much lower than his.

Though the humans have not displayed any real slavery in years.

[Wyrt]

Yes, I know. But how is that relevant to what I said? :P

The sha make people do things they wouldn't normally do.

Originally the humans asked the pandaren for aid and the pandaren willingly gave it to them. Then the humans got corrupted by the sha and refused to give the pandaren breaks or let them go home.

[Daralii]

Does the Sha work that way? Like you catch it like some sort of virus until you get sick? and the pandaren had to be working there for quite some time, before Horde came there, before all the Horde/Alliance fighting on Pandaria.

They were originally volunteers. As the commander grew more possessed, he started to drive them harder and harder and prevent them from leaving. If you use that as a point against the Alliance, you have to use the Horde capturing and torturing children as a point against them.

One internment camp treated the orcs as slaves. There's nothing anywhere to indicate that it extended beyond Blackmoore.

[Rhlor]

leper gnome slaves in silvermoon

[Combatbutler]

T
One internment camp treated the orcs as slaves. There's nothing anywhere to indicate that it extended beyond Blackmoore.

Blackmoore was responisble for all of them though, which is why he hatched the idea of raising Thrall and use him to lead his little slave army against Lordaeron to take over.