That Anduin cutscene where Varian's spirit shows up just gave me the feels, and literally made me smile. So I decided to ask which of the poster children of strength and manliness, as well as former heads of state, of the Alliance and Horde respectively do you think ended better?
I know this is going to seem very obvious to most people. I know a lot of people hate how Thrall kind of steals our kill on Garrosh, but the Nagrand cutscene is by far one of my favorites.
Meanwhile Varian is my favorite character hands down, and I think the best original WoW character period, having no links to WC3. I mean besides him taking credit for killing Onyxia despite being MIA from Vanilla until the start of Wrath, nothing poor was done to his character and we see great development. Whenever I see him split his swords in two to take on the Legion alone in his final fight, makes me proud that I main a warrior.
"For the Alliance!"
Garrosh on the other hand was hands down my least favorite character until his showdown with Thrall. I mean the guy never made any damn sense to me. He starts off as a whiny pansy in Outland until he meets Thrall. After which he's just an unreasonable brute that wants to fight anything that isn't the Horde. His disdain for the Alliance has no credence, he hates the Alliance just because they are a rival faction. Now when you encounter Varian early on he is also a cause for tension between the Horde and Alliance at the Wrathgate, but unlike Garrosh, he has every damn reason to hate the Horde. The original Horde killed his father, razed his city to the ground, killed his surrogate Father Lothar, all before reaching adulthood. Then he's forced to fight in orc arenas, and the Forsaken are responsible for the death of his best friend Bolvar. Yet despite all of this we see Varian develop into a reasonable ruler, in large part due to his son. And we see all of Varian's development in game.
You need to do some serious lore digging to understand WTF is Garrosh's problem. The Heart of War, short story, gives me the most context as to the kind of person Garrosh was when he first joined the Horde. https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/st...osh-hellscream
But all I can really grab from this though is that Garrosh is just an old school orc with daddy issues. There is no diplomacy in Draenor/Outland, Orcs or Ogre's do something you don't like? Bash them over the head until they cry uncle, now this is fine. What's not fine is Thrall decided it would be a brilliant idea to let that knucklehead lead the Horde, over the more experienced Cairne or Saurfang (I mean what could possibly go wrong with giving Garrosh an entire Horde?).
Cata tries to give Garry some redeeming qualities, ones that were displayed in the Heart of War short story, such as his Honor. But in MoP the guy goes off the deep end. His showdown with Thrall just seem to display that the pressures of leadership were too much for him.
"You made me Warchief!"
"You left me, to pick up your pieces!"
"You FAILED MEEEEEE!"
I mean Thrall was like a brother to Garrosh, who yanked him out of his apathy, only to leave him to become Green Jesus, but instead of returning after saving the world, he runs off to go make babies with Aggra.
I mean the fact that it's in Garrosh's final moments I kind of finally make me like him and miss him, says something about his ending.