Sylvanas didn’t ruin the Horde, Thrall Did...

[Hubbl3]

Maybe thrall was brainwashed by the old god's all along so they could create an army strong enough and than turn them with the void.

Yes, every bad decision someone makes in WoW is because of corruption. No one is responsible for their actions. :P

[sighy]

Thrall nor Garrosh forced Sylvanas to use chemical warfare which killed both Horde and Alliance and raised them as undead.

Saurfang still has honor.

Sylvanas is a political statement, based purely on reactions such as Baine, Nathanos, and Saurfang. It shows 3 distinct types of people involved in war. Those who are active dissenters (Saurfang) and those who are fanatical followers (Nathanos), and those like Baine who reluctantly follow because they are shamed into helping (Sylvanas dangles helping the living over the dead in a cutscene and you can see Baines reaction, as he values life but wants the Horde to be the Horde again.)

Sylvanas is a snapshot of a tyrannical leader, akin to Hitler.

Oh really? Putting the historical yardsticks aside. How exactly is she oppressing the Horde? Remember that the move you are condemning is coup de grace of that battle, if you exclude the obvious deus ex machina. Yes her approach to military leadership is more akin to Sun Tzu or Machiavelli than your typical fantasy knight, who values his "honor" to a suicidal degree. She makes the aliance bleed, for every step taken and would have won the battle 3 times, if you exclude stupid deus ex machinas.

[Dellis0991]

Godfrey should've made sure she stayed down.

[Super Dickmann]

I don't remember anything about "Heart of War" saying the Orcs as a whole were starving. The land they settled was desolate, yes; but pretty much everyone in Orgrimmar seems to be hale and hearty enough. It's not a land of plenty, but neither is it completely barren. You also have to consider the source of the condemnation of Thrall coming as it does from Krenna, an Orc with a chip on her shoulder large enough to be seen from space. I don't agree with either Thrall or Gorgonna's stance on racial penance for the Orcs, either; but this is also somewhat unrelated to Thrall's cultural reclamation of the Orcs' heritage.

I disagree with your last point that it's unrelated. Guilt and deprivation as part of their culture is core to what Thrall wanted to do. What he did bring back can't be divorced from it since they're part of a package deal. Krenna is aggressive, yes, but her claims, if not her attitude towards those claims, are proven to be true by the narrative. Durotar is not self-sufficient and geographically can't be and this was deliberate. Thrall does not act against Alliance aggression and is reliant on their support to keep his people going. These are confirmed by Gorgonna and Thrall and observed by Garrosh. They were on a sustenance level and that was because of imports. When those imports ended because the Alliance consolidated with Varian's return, this ceased to be reliable, hence why we see reactions to the living conditions and Thrall's attitude, in Heart of War, Glory and Shattering.

I mean the Orcish tradition - referring back to the Orcish Horde of the First and Second War, not the Horde of WoW. Thrall re-instituted Orcish customs that had been forgotten or fallen by the wayside due to the demonic corruption. The Om'riggor and Shamanism, primarily. The clan-structure was seen as a weakness that had kept the Orcs apart, and so was largely abandoned as an artifact of the past.

That's true, he did bring these things back. I'm not going to argue that Thrall was all bad or that he invented these things entirely out of whole cloth, but he had a very un-orcish perspective as things went on. And the clan identity part was especially key, since the problem with it was exactly what Thrall replicated in his leadership style by not actually binding any of the component races together. Garrosh tried with force, Sylvanas tried with self-interest and trickery and Vol'jin did so by design, but Thrall was neglectful and in the process caused many of the problems going forward. He actually has that problem in common with Sylvanas. Both significantly expanded the Horde, but did so by incorporating races that didn't align with what their leaders wanted to do, which ended up biting them in the ass.

Saurfang was encountered deep into the Underhold with Thrall, so his opposition to Garrosh's Horde seem pretty evident. Beyond that, you're making a wide swath of unsupported or anecdotal assumptions about the possible leadership of Saurfang. This is also veering far and wide from the original point.

His opposition was a last-minute thing. I actually don't mind Saurfang not opposing Garrosh because he didn't disagree with what he was doing up to a point, but we're told that's not the case and that Saurfang was heavily against Garrosh, yet he did nothing outside the literal last minute. Everything else I've said of Saurfang is just what we see happen in-game and finding what 'his' Horde that he wants back is by process of elimination.

[Minikin]

In fairness, those threads will only die down if people stop posting excuses to hate on her for the same regurgitated shit we see 100 times every day. Oh look, it's another thread about Teldrassil. Oh look, it's another thread about why Garrosh was better. Oh look, it's another thread about Desolate Council. And on and on and on it goes. Cut out that repetitive dead-horse beating and you'll see all these so-called "defense" threads drop too. Everyone wins.

I agree 100%. Ppl don't understand that as a character she is totally normal. All that she has done is what she's supposed to do anyway.

Ppl can either revel in the horde (far more fun) or be constantly confused (and type up PhD level essays on some forums about it)

[Deleted]

Sylvanas is a snapshot of a tyrannical leader, akin to Hitler.

Definition of "Tyrant":

"A person who governs oppressively, unjustly, and arbitrarily; despot"

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/di...english/tyrant

In no way shape or form is Sylvanas a "tyrant" - people who use this buzzword either have no idea as to it's actual definition, or use it disingenuously on purpose as a way of expressing their distaste. Either way it's the wrong word to use.

[Rozz]

Dropping the out of story aspect to discuss just the in-story, in WC3 and prior materials, arguably, sure. From then on, though, it's pretty clear that the things that make the Horde dysfunctional are the direct products of what Thrall did. The guilt cult, enforced primitivism, a lot of talk about values but no definition as to what they are, all of them go back to Thrall and lead up to this point. Thrall is the one who put his people in a shitty desert to make them pay penance, then at the same time returned to a homogenous version of shamanism and deindustrialization that meant the place wasn't fixed and they were reliant on Alliance handouts to exist. The values of the Horde he ran are so vague and insubstantial and so broken by the races he himself brought in and the leaders, like Gallywix, that he put into place, that they were immediately tossed into the bin the second he was out of the picture. They were also already ignored (for the Eastern Horde) and followed out of a sense of personal loyalty to him rather than any true belief (for the orcs, see Glory).

Garrosh was a reaction to him, sure, but it's Saurfang and Sylvanas that are really his successors, since they are the product of his Horde. One of them suicidally committed to an unclear ideal out of guilt, who's ideal version of the Horde is the same state that got their people starving in the desert because of the personal shame of one dude, the other basically the open dismissal of all his values in favor of the alliance of convenience and conquest it really was.

Wow, I honestly can't disagree with any of this. I feel it's very accurate to Thrall's actions and the results. Even the heinous actions of Garrosh and Sylvanas seem to be reactions to 'fix' what Thrall ignored.

Not saying the crimes were okay, but Thrall set the Horde up with few hands to play. Garrosh and Syvanas both reacted to this with extreme violence, but I can't fault them for feeling exposed and being more aggressive. Thrall left Horde lands severely exposed and forces underutilized. The entire Horde was on his redemption route and his orcish values don't really resonate or have much meaning similar to Saurfang's. ( 'Honor and Glory' are words used by orcs whenever they want to be right, but not always when they are ).

[sighy]

I agree with a lot of what you say in general here, but would quibble with specific comments here and there:
"A culture-wide penance for what they did to what are now Alliance races that has morphed to the current absurdity where Saurfang, Baine and their ilk are more upset about what happens to their enemy than their own people and are ready to throw their own away for an abstraction that is never explained to us, let alone the characters. "
I disagree with the "caring about enemies more than allies" bit, but what you're talking about here is simply just honor. It's not an elusive concept at play that needs explanation. Honor is often easiest to lose based on how one treats their enemies.

Honor is a very diverse thing depending on the culture. A 12th centure western european knight, a native american and mid 20th century japanese soldier would have some very different views and values. Works similarily in Azeroth, but it's largely ignored. The Dwarf in deepholme says it rather well, when interrogating the Ogre.(i don't remember the exact quote so i won't even try) I would say that for the Forsaken Loyalty and free will would be the primary tenants.

"...it's definitely not Garrosh's Horde, though he totally failed to oppose that too..."
Aucald speaks to this as well, but Saurfang definitely opposed Garrosh. He actually started doing so back in WotLK before he was even Warchief.

He had a bunch of empty threats, until the very end, when he helped Thrall clear a corridor of the Mantid.

"As already discussed, Thrall's Horde is an unstable failure that doesn't take into account those in it."
But since Saurfang is an orc, he probably sees Thrall's Horde the same way Thrall did. This doesn't necessarily mean it must be an unstable failure either; that's only true if you put another crappy leader in charge of the Horde. Thrall's vision of, as people like to call them, "honorable savages", isn't flawed. His complete failure to cultivate that is what was flawed.

Sadly we don't have the surveys on the views of the general populus of Azeroth. So it's tough to say what the general opinions are. We know that characters believe there is a big division, between the "old" and the "new" races of the Horde. Culturally makes sense. However Garrosh was a very popular choice, at the time of his "election" due to his exploits in Northrend and representation of classic orc values, in an authentic way Thrall could never achieve, because he never knew it. Thrall's version is based on nostalgia of old men combined with his human like upbringing at Durnholde.

"Thrall sees Garrosh as the answer to his own inadequacy."
I don't know if I agree with this or not. Honestly, I feel like Thrall elevated Garrosh because he felt bad about his daddy. Garrosh never really seemed to show signs he would be a good leader (despite us now learning that he allegedly is an amazeballs leader in other realities or whatever). I also think, since Thrall was not a good leader, that he doesn't know how to identify a good leader either.

Yes Thrall idealised Grommash, which lead into Garrosh's pride. He grew up believing his father damned his people and then learned he was basically a messiah.(well at least in Thrall's version) However Thrall decided to go full Green Jesus and despite all his advisors including Garrosh himself telling him it was a bad idea he inserted Garrosh to lead the Horde and pick up the clusterfuck he left behind. Problem with Garrosh in my view is that he viewed everyone inferior to the Orcs rather than his other actions, where he was largely innocent or taking the blame for someone else. the .1 patch of MoP was the turning point on that front.

[Aucald]

Well the war broke out, because the Ogres attempted to take the throne of the elements. And even then you have Frostwolves pushing the Ogres out, in WoD, because they thought it was necessary. And to add to Super Dickmann's argument(which i agree with). There is no proof that Sylvanas doesn'T care for the Horde. Saurfang clings to a nostalgic view of blind idealism, which failed miserably.

The Ogres trying to take the Throne of the Elements was simply the last straw that ignited the war in earnest. Ogres also don't make the best neighbors - they tend to crowd everyone else out of a region unless kept at bay by force. As for Saurfang and "blind idealism," you can't really claim something has failed if it hasn't occurred yet (and may not occur at all). If you're referring to Thrall's ideal of the Horde, that didn't really fail either - the fact that Garrosh was deposed by the majority of the Orcs pretty much underlines that.

The shamanism was abandonned, because all the shamans lost their power, after Gul'dan did something with the scroll of the elements or what was it called. And the reason, for Garrosh to invade the Ashenvale, between WotLK and Cata was precisely because of mass starvation.

Shamanism was starting to be abandoned well before Gul'dan severed the Orcs from the Elements at the Hand of Gul'dan - clan Shamans were embracing Warlock magic because the Elements didn't embrace the Orcs' fight against the Draenei (who had actually done them no wrong) as per "Rise of the Horde." Gul'dan's act was about silencing the remaining Shaman who were still loyal to the Elements and opposed to the upcoming war against the Draenei, ensuring that the Orcs had nowhere else to turn.

[Super Dickmann]

I agree with a lot of what you say in general here, but would quibble with specific comments here and there:
I disagree with the "caring about enemies more than allies" bit, but what you're talking about here is simply just honor. It's not an elusive concept at play that needs explanation. Honor is often easiest to lose based on how one treats their enemies.

Orcish honor is completely nebulous and ill-defined. For the most famous recent examples, Saurfang hires hundreds of assassins to backstab soldiers in an unannounced war, but refuses to kill a prone military leader despite knowing he will kill far more people afterwards. That kind of honor is not just nonsensical, it's actively morally abhorrent and selfish and along with his other honorable sparing of Anduin in the secret hope that Anduin would defeat, i.e kill the horde forces present and unseat Sylvanas pretty much kills any faith in Saurfang's reliability to govern for people rather than for whatever he feels good about this time around.

For the other example, there's Baine's reaction to Derek. "Necromancy is bad only when it's in front of us and it's a named character". It's not a real principle, it's moral convenience produced by closing your eyes when the bad thing is happening when you can't see it, then benefiting from its results. Baine is of course the far end of this, given the total non-reaction to his own being raised as skeletons.

But these are just the most recent examples. Saurfang, Thrall, Nazgrim and Garrosh all accused people disagreeing with them of lacking honor, for completely different reasons. It's no basis for a society, it can't even be reliably explained. Especially not if it requires more concern be shown for the enemy than for your own.

Aucald speaks to this as well, but Saurfang definitely opposed Garrosh. He actually started doing so back in WotLK before he was even Warchief.

Lip service. He didn't do anything until the literal last hurdle. Again, nothing to be ashamed of by default, but it speaks against him given his threat to Garrosh and his later comments.

But since Saurfang is an orc, he probably sees Thrall's Horde the same way Thrall did. This doesn't necessarily mean it must be an unstable failure either; that's only true if you put another crappy leader in charge of the Horde. Thrall's vision of, as people like to call them, "honorable savages", isn't flawed. His complete failure to cultivate that is what was flawed.

Thrall was out of touch with his people. One part has to go. Either the honorable part or the savage part. Either the orcs become a sedentary, industrialized society with agriculture capable rather than raiders/hunter-gatherers, or they drop the pretense, as they've done more often than not, and pursue their self-interest without cultural reprimand. From an out of story perspective, I prefer the latter, since it makes for more enjoyable conflict, but from an in-story perspective, the former is probably better. At the moment they're neither.

I don't know if I agree with this or not. Honestly, I feel like Thrall elevated Garrosh because he felt bad about his daddy. Garrosh never really seemed to show signs he would be a good leader (despite us now learning that he allegedly is an amazeballs leader in other realities or whatever). I also think, since Thrall was not a good leader, that he doesn't know how to identify a good leader either.

Thrall putting Garrosh in charge was part of him lionizing the Old Horde while at the same time making his people pay penance for it, but he actually states outright why he appoints Garrosh - it's what he believes the Horde need right now. He doesn't doubt that his people are capable of flaying the night elves alive in that Twilight's Hammer false flag. Like Saurfang later on, he's lost faith in his people.

[Aucald]

I disagree with your last point that it's unrelated. Guilt and deprivation as part of their culture is core to what Thrall wanted to do. What he did bring back can't be divorced from it since they're part of a package deal. Krenna is aggressive, yes, but her claims, if not her attitude towards those claims, are proven to be true by the narrative. Durotar is not self-sufficient and geographically can't be and this was deliberate. Thrall does not act against Alliance aggression and is reliant on their support to keep his people going. These are confirmed by Gorgonna and Thrall and observed by Garrosh. They were on a sustenance level and that was because of imports. When those imports ended because the Alliance consolidated with Varian's return, this ceased to be reliable, hence why we see reactions to the living conditions and Thrall's attitude, in Heart of War, Glory and Shattering.

Draenor itself was never a land of plenty - "Chronicle Vol. 2" described it as a harsh and violent world, where the Orcish clans eked out a largely subsistence-level existence before the war with the Draenei reduced the land to a barren and Fel-scarred wasteland. Thrall saw Durotar as a reflection of Draenor-that-was, which is something many other Orcs echo; a return to form more or less. There's also the notion that the Orcs didn't have a whole lot of choice when it came to places to settle down in Kalimdor - Krenna refers to Ashenvale, but without any real reflection as Ashenvale is neither land that belongs to the Orcs nor unoccupied. It is Kaldorei land, sacred to them, and they're willing to defend it to the death (as they do back in WC3). Dustwallow Marsh is a fetid swamp, and the Barrens are similar to Durotar in terms of scarcity. You don't see a whole lot of farmland in Nagrand or greater Draenor either, do you? Krenna makes a lot of surface-level statements that don't really stand up to further reflection. The Orcs are a hunter-gatherer culture and not an agrarian one, after all; and the neighboring lands of the Barrens and Azshara are full of wild game.

That's true, he did bring these things back. I'm not going to argue that Thrall was all bad or that he invented these things entirely out of whole cloth, but he had a very un-orcish perspective as things went on. And the clan identity part was especially key, since the problem with it was exactly what Thrall replicated in his leadership style by not actually binding any of the component races together. Garrosh tried with force, Sylvanas tried with self-interest and trickery and Vol'jin did so by design, but Thrall was neglectful and in the process caused many of the problems going forward. He actually has that problem in common with Sylvanas. Both significantly expanded the Horde, but did so by incorporating races that didn't align with what their leaders wanted to do, which ended up biting them in the ass.

Thrall didn't fully understand Orcish culture, which was root cause of many of his mistakes of a leader (such as thinking that Garrosh would be good for the Orcish part of the Horde). I think you over-emphasize his errors and minimalize what he got right, though; it is a massive undertaking to try to reclaim a culture corrupted to its very core and scarred by the loss of its own world (due to its own actions). Thrall managing to salvage the greater essence of the Orcs from their own accumulated errors is a feat that shouldn't be understated.

His opposition was a last-minute thing. I actually don't mind Saurfang not opposing Garrosh because he didn't disagree with what he was doing up to a point, but we're told that's not the case and that Saurfang was heavily against Garrosh, yet he did nothing outside the literal last minute. Everything else I've said of Saurfang is just what we see happen in-game and finding what 'his' Horde that he wants back is by process of elimination.

Thrall's opposition itself was rather last-minute, at least insofar as we're shown. We're not given any insight into what Saurfang thinks one way or the other until we see him (except perhaps early on in the visions from the Vision of Time). But given what we know about Saurfang from WotLK and his view on Garrosh, it's pretty easy to see how he might have an issue with Garrosh's leadership of the Horde. This would be like saying Nazgrel completely agreed with Garrosh's practices because he doesn't show up in the events of the fight - you can't really know that, and Saurfang was also stationed in a distant land and probably didn't hear about what was happening in Orgrimmar for some time.

[schwank05]

I love being the "bad" guy in video games, this is the main reason I played Horde in the first place back in Vanilla I wanted to be the cool monster races. I love that Sylvanas is finally embracing the evil/ bad guy vibe and running with it.

[Garretdejiko]

Thralls short sighted decision to make Garrosh was the catalyst that eventually led the Horde down to this dark path.

He doesn’t deserve to be Warchief again.

Garrosh was the best Warchief since Doomhammer... untill writers brainfarted him into what we saw at the end of Pandaria.

Fictional characters aren't lousy, writers are.

[Grazrug]

The Ogres trying to take the Throne of the Elements was simply the last straw that ignited the war in earnest. Ogres also don't make the best neighbors - they tend to crowd everyone else out of a region unless kept at bay by force. As for Saurfang and "blind idealism," you can't really claim something has failed if it hasn't occurred yet (and may not occur at all). If you're referring to Thrall's ideal of the Horde, that didn't really fail either - the fact that Garrosh was deposed by the majority of the Orcs pretty much underlines that.



Shamanism was starting to be abandoned well before Gul'dan severed the Orcs from the Elements at the Hand of Gul'dan - clan Shamans were embracing Warlock magic because the Elements didn't embrace the Orcs' fight against the Draenei (who had actually done them no wrong) as per "Rise of the Horde." Gul'dan's act was about silencing the remaining Shaman who were still loyal to the Elements and opposed to the upcoming war against the Draenei, ensuring that the Orcs had nowhere else to turn.

This has nothing to do with morality. Elements always answer to your call if your ask about it with enough respect. The Elemental spirits never gave two craps about morality from the mortals POV. Gul'dan directly was responsible to ensure, that the Shamans couldn't hear the Elements AND acestors anymore, after he threw in his dark magic.

[tyrlaan]

Orcish honor is completely nebulous and ill-defined. For the most famous recent examples, Saurfang hires hundreds of assassins to backstab soldiers in an unannounced war, but refuses to kill a prone military leader despite knowing he will kill far more people afterwards. That kind of honor is not just nonsensical, it's actively morally abhorrent and selfish and along with his other honorable sparing of Anduin in the secret hope that Anduin would defeat, i.e kill the horde forces present and unseat Sylvanas pretty much kills any faith in Saurfang's reliability to govern for people rather than for whatever he feels good about this time around.

For the other example, there's Baine's reaction to Derek. "Necromancy is bad only when it's in front of us and it's a named character". It's not a real principle, it's moral convenience produced by closing your eyes when the bad thing is happening when you can't see it, then benefiting from its results. Baine is of course the far end of this, given the total non-reaction to his own being raised as skeletons.

But these are just the most recent examples. Saurfang, Thrall, Nazgrim and Garrosh all accused people disagreeing with them of lacking honor, for completely different reasons. It's no basis for a society, it can't even be reliably explained. Especially not if it requires more concern be shown for the enemy than for your own.

Honestly I think the inconsistency is more often a result of inconsistent writing than anything else, but since it's what we have, I think you've made a fair point here. Horde honor is a lot like the way many people these days seem to treat religion - relevant when convenient and quite dismissable until it pushes against personal values. I think that's what we see with Saurfang and others (who presumably exist) who are so opposed to Sylvanas' recent actions.

Side note: I'm still sad they made Nazgrim so devoted to Garrosh and made him a loot pinata. I really liked that guy before MoP!

Thrall was out of touch with his people. One part has to go. Either the honorable part or the savage part. Either the orcs become a sedentary, industrialized society with agriculture capable rather than raiders/hunter-gatherers, or they drop the pretense, as they've done more often than not, and pursue their self-interest without cultural reprimand. From an out of story perspective, I prefer the latter, since it makes for more enjoyable conflict, but from an in-story perspective, the former is probably better. At the moment they're neither.

Yeah, I agree with this. Well, I prefer the former over the latter though. In part because I think the latter makes less and less sense in the context of the evolving world of Azeroth and in part because I'm not confident the writers can pull off the latter without making Horde the "bad guys".

Thrall putting Garrosh in charge was part of him lionizing the Old Horde while at the same time making his people pay penance for it, but he actually states outright why he appoints Garrosh - it's what he believes the Horde need right now. He doesn't doubt that his people are capable of flaying the night elves alive in that Twilight's Hammer false flag. Like Saurfang later on, he's lost faith in his people.

I suppose. I still think the biggest issue is Thrall's complete failure to understand what makes a good leader.

[Aucald]

This has nothing to do with morality. Elements always answer to your call if your ask about it with enough respect. The Elemental spirits never gave two craps about mortality from the mortals POV. Gul'dan directly was responsible to ensure, that the Shamans couldn't hear the Elements AND acestors anymore, after he threw in his dark magic.

Read "Rise of the Horde," the Elements refused to answer the call of many Orcish Shaman well before Gul'dan performed the cutting ritual - they said the war was "out of balance," and they would not answer calls anymore. The only magic they permitted the Orcish Shaman were healing magics, but pretty much nothing else.

[Super Dickmann]

Draenor itself was never a land of plenty - "Chronicle Vol. 2" described it as a harsh and violent world, where the Orcish clans eked out a largely subsistence-level existence before the war with the Draenei reduced the land to a barren and Fel-scarred wasteland. Thrall saw Durotar as a reflection of Draenor-that-was, which is something many other Orcs echo; a return to form more or less. There's also the notion that the Orcs didn't have a whole lot of choice when it came to places to settle down in Kalimdor - Krenna refers to Ashenvale, but without any real reflection as Ashenvale is neither land that belongs to the Orcs nor unoccupied. It is Kaldorei land, sacred to them, and they're willing to defend it to the death (as they do back in WC3). Dustwallow Marsh is a fetid swamp, and the Barrens are similar to Durotar in terms of scarcity. You don't see a whole lot of farmland in Nagrand or greater Draenor either, do you? Krenna makes a lot of surface-level statements that don't really stand up to further reflection. The Orcs are a hunter-gatherer culture and not an agrarian one, after all; and the neighboring lands of the Barrens and Azshara are full of wild game.

I'd say even the Barrens or Azshara would be better picks. Durotar is a lot more inhospitable than Draenor. Presumably Thrall got his idea of what Draenor was like from the Frostwolves and Blackrocks, with Gorgrond and Frostfire both being pretty tough to live. But I think your last point is where you hit on what I was talking about. As I've said before, the orcs of Draenor were never a unified entity until they became the Horde, which proceeded to completely wreck the land in the span of a few years. Separate hunter-gatherer and raiding societies can work on a smaller scale, but Orgrimmar is a proper city, which the climate prevents from being sustained by the land its situated in, relying on imports as Krenna points out. The idea of a city is itself something new to the orcs, as is a sedentary life in the sense Thrall set up, and Durotar was purposefully ill-suited for that life.

I think you over-emphasize his errors and minimalize what he got right, though; it is a massive undertaking to try to reclaim a culture corrupted to its very core and scarred by the loss of its own world (due to its own actions). Thrall managing to salvage the greater essence of the Orcs from their own accumulated errors is a feat that shouldn't be understated.

Thrall did manage to restore the Horde and his reforms were well meant, but I'm skeptical of the notion that what he was aiming at was to reflect what the orcs actually were so much as what he would like them to be. Like I said before, the orcs admired him for putting them back on the camp and pulling them out of their period of internment, but they didn't necessarily agree with his overall views once he actually set up Orgrimmar. You might argue that what he meant to create was better and if it weren't for the penance element I might agree with you, but when he went past restoration and into implementing his own ideas the orcs weren't on board with them. Even Saurfang is an example of this.

Thrall's opposition itself was rather last-minute, at least insofar as we're shown. We're not given any insight into what Saurfang thinks one way or the other until we see him (except perhaps early on in the visions from the Vision of Time). But given what we know about Saurfang from WotLK and his view on Garrosh, it's pretty easy to see how he might have an issue with Garrosh's leadership of the Horde. This would be like saying Nazgrel completely agreed with Garrosh's practices because he doesn't show up in the events of the fight - you can't really know that, and Saurfang was also stationed in a distant land and probably didn't hear about what was happening in Orgrimmar for some time.

Thrall's uninvolvement is a plot point. He purposefully refuses to do it until the last moment. Nazgrel is irrelevant to the conflict. But with Saurfang these are relevant points of his characterization. We know from his threat to Garrosh and his later internal monologue about how Sylvanas acting as Garrosh would by sending them to the meatgrinder would have him challenge her right on the spot that he holds Garrosh in very low regard. And we will now have him as fighting against the Horde losing itself yet again or what have you. But the last time this happened, in his own mind, he didn't do anything until the last minute. His inaction is relevant.

[Grazrug]

Read "Rise of the Horde," the Elements refused to answer the call of many Orcish Shaman well before Gul'dan performed the cutting ritual - they said the war was "out of balance," and they would not answer calls anymore. The only magic they permitted the Orcish Shaman were healing magics, but pretty much nothing else.

I did. And the answer stays a NO. Kil'jaeden and Gul'dan already startedt to alter the bond between Orcs and Elements at the time druing, you are talking about. The Chronicles reaffirmed this. At the end the final bond was shattered together with the Life source of Draenor itself, when Gul'dan corrupted Cythrus and rose that Fel Vulcano out of the ground.

[sighy]

The Ogres trying to take the Throne of the Elements was simply the last straw that ignited the war in earnest. Ogres also don't make the best neighbors - they tend to crowd everyone else out of a region unless kept at bay by force. As for Saurfang and "blind idealism," you can't really claim something has failed if it hasn't occurred yet (and may not occur at all). If you're referring to Thrall's ideal of the Horde, that didn't really fail either - the fact that Garrosh was deposed by the majority of the Orcs pretty much underlines that.

On dreanor there was a trend that the smaller and more intelligent species overtakes the older, bigger and dumber. Going from Colossi down to the Orcs. And i say that Thrall's regime was ultimately a fail, when it's weaknesses were exposed. Namely the mass starvation and apologistic relationship with the Aliance. Also Orcs opposing Garrosh were pretty much a non factor, unless you think that Etrigg, Saurfang and Thrall were the majority.

Shamanism was starting to be abandoned well before Gul'dan severed the Orcs from the Elements at the Hand of Gul'dan - clan Shamans were embracing Warlock magic because the Elements didn't embrace the Orcs' fight against the Draenei (who had actually done them no wrong) as per "Rise of the Horde." Gul'dan's act was about silencing the remaining Shaman who were still loyal to the Elements and opposed to the upcoming war against the Draenei, ensuring that the Orcs had nowhere else to turn.

They needed power, because they believed that they were facing an existential threat. The elements abandoned them, as did the spirits of their ancestors. Gul'dan finished the job. Thrall was the first in many years to get a response from the elements.

[Florena]

It was Doomhammer's fault for naming Thrall his successor!