Enough with the slavery, Blizz.

[Lynneiah]

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

More specifically, 'thrall' literally means 'slave'. But Thrall and Blackmore were exceptions when it comes to overt slavery in human lands, however as Combatbulter said, most (all?) human kingdoms have feudal-style serfdom, which is very similar to slavery, if not technically a variation of the same thing.

[Combatbutler]

leper gnome slaves in silvermoon

Ah almost forgot about these guys.

[Immitis]

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.

the sha manifests when people have negative thoughts and emotions, which then amplify those emotions and cause people to do and think more negative thoughts, which empowers the sha more which then allows the sha to use those thoughts and emotions and afflict them to other people. and it just grows stronger and stronger until it can just do whatever it wants

[Kelthos]

I think what we can take away from this and all the comments is that slavery is everywhere in Azeroth and everyone is a horrible person.

[Combatbutler]

I think what we can take away from this and all the comments is that slavery is everywhere in Azeroth and everyone is a horrible person.

Slavery is quite common, just as racism. This does not make them horrible people, just products of their social norms.

[Verdugo]

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.

But all that slavery makes it feel like if there was some kind of universal evil checklist. Why the fuck scourge enslaves living when they can turn them into obedient workforce that doesnt need food, drink or sleep.

[Wyrt]

But all that slavery makes it feel like if there was some kind of universal evil checklist. Why the fuck scourge enslaves living when they can turn them into obedient workforce that doesnt need food, drink or sleep.

I don't know, the Scourge did employ living people in the Cult of the Damned, so maybe they were trying to break the slaves so they'd join the cult?

[Combatbutler]

But all that slavery makes it feel like if there was some kind of universal evil checklist. Why the fuck scourge enslaves living when they can turn them into obedient workforce that doesnt need food, drink or sleep.

They are simply being cruel, first let them work themselves to death, then rezz them and let them continue to work there.

[thoruga]

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.

So you didn't kill Twilight Cultists because they want to basically destroy the world but because they're slavers. Kudos to you

[Rhlor]

I think what we can take away from this and all the comments is that slavery is everywhere in Azeroth and everyone is a horrible person.

george Washington had slaves that makes bad person?

[Florena]

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.

Pretty much how I feel. Not once can I recall an enemy, certainly not a major main threat, that we only fought 'because they have slaves' with the exception of MAYBE Illidan because the entire questline of the Black Temple was ultimately about freeing the Broken from him and blizz offered little else than 'he's crazy' for why he's opposing us, though at least his minions are up to evil things to help motivate it.

The Naga? Slavers yes, they're also stealing all the water out of Zangarmarsh, attack your boat in Vash'jir, etc. It's not the only evil thing they do.

Iron Horde? Taking slaves is secondary to the main reason we're fighting them, that being their sudden and unprovoked invasion of Azeroth.

The Dark Irons had slaves but few if any quests were about saving slaves, you were sent to BRD and the surrounding zones for other purposes for the most part.

I can't think of any evil force in WoW where the main, let alone only, justification for fighting them was 'they're slavers.'

[Arrashi]

What's wrong with slavery ? In fact it would be cool if they allow us to take slaves on draenor and use them as cheap labor and cannon fodder in our garrisons.

Also i really wanted a rickshaw mount pulled by pandaren slave.
Or even better a litter carried by 4 panda slaves.

[jbombard]

So like the evil bad guys should be like "oh yeah were evil, but slavery... c'mon that's over the top, we'll just stick to annihilation of life on Azeroth"?

Evil and slavery are pretty much hand and hand, if you are evil it seems appropriate that would dominate and bend people to your will.

[Deleted]

Slavery being a common thing in fantasy is nothing new.

I'm okay with it. Nothing pumps up my righteous fury levels like a group of people who think slavery is awesome. Shitkicking the Mogu was especially therapeutic in that regard.

[Golden Yak]

A lot of those races are evil for a lot of different reasons. They aren't about to pass up free labor. Would it be realistic for someone like, say, the naga to go around saying 'we want to flood the surface, destroy the kingdoms there, and conquer the world in the name of our glorious queen Azshara, but enforced servitude is just unconscionable.'

[Deleted]

I guess because a lot of bad people in history make people work for them to get their evil castles built.

I guess it's the thought that if you do not defeat these people they will enslave everyone you love and work them to death. What do you want them to do?

Just because it's a bit of a theme doesn't mean it's a bad thing, it's how a lot of things work; you're a big strong thing of evil, but you're also too lazy to build your evil society yourself, so you get slaves. I think it's more unsettling than 'Yeah we like our evil overlord so we built him an evil throne room to sit in while we worship him' it's a way to get you to think 'Gosh he's willing to enslave people and work them to death to get things done! Best kill him!' so you are right that it is a theme, but I don't see much alternative if you think logically about how this empire is going to get something done without working their own people to death for the things they want.

[Escepticus]

The trols have a gnome slave in Zabra'jin village, Zangarmash.

[Victorias]

Goblins have slaves. On Kezan they had trolls mining for them.

[Arrashi]

Goblins have slaves. On Kezan they had trolls mining for them.

They aren't slaves. They are low salary workers.

[RoKPaNda]

It's not a Blizzard thing, it's kind of a fantasy staple. The amount of slavery in fantasy in general is pretty crazy, but it's a convenient mechanic to get people to dislike an "evil" character. It's something that people can understand fairly easily, slaver = horrible person. It's particularly useful if you have a character that's not very likable.