Was Thrall irresponsible or was the Horde too evil for itself?

[TickTickTick]

The Horde was doomed from the very moment it's been reformed by Thrall. Let's see who were the members of the vanilla Horde:

- orcs who were prisoners of humans not long ago, so a grudge was still present
- tauren, who had nothing to do with humans or the old alliance before, meaning no grudge was there; their druids were also allies of night elven druids for a long time
- darkspear trolls, who had nothing to do with humans or the old alliance before, meaning no grudge; yes, the jungle trolls have a history with humans, but the darkspear splintered from them to begin anew
- undead, who were shunned by their former human allies, so a grudge was still present

Fast forward many years later, and nothing changed - orcs and undead hold a grudge against the humans, while trolls and tauren are more on a neutral side of things.

Thrall's mistake was taking in all of the orcs, even those who drunk the blood of mannoroth again in ashenvale and those who were still holding a grudge, and accepting the forsaken into the horde. With these two actions, he made the peace with the alliance impossible.

Cata zones perfectly showed how he failed in securing the peace. Orcs jumped into the war train the moment Garrosh was in charge, and Sylvanas was thrilled to have a legit reason to kill humans. I don't know if Thrall's intentions were for the horde to live in peace. It they were, he failed at the very foundations; if they weren't, I don't know why he was surprised.

[ClassicPeon]

The Horde was doomed from the very moment it's been reformed by Thrall. Let's see who were the members of the vanilla Horde:

- orcs who were prisoners of humans not long ago, so a grudge was still present
.

This is an interesting take on what happened imo.
Invading force from beyond a portal comes in and start killing pretty much anything they can find in complete bloodlust.

Humans defend themselves and take prisoners

What do we take away from this:

Orcs where prisoners of humans, so grudge... oO

[TickTickTick]

This is an interesting take on what happened imo.
Invading force from beyond a portal comes in and start killing pretty much anything they can find in complete bloodlust.

Humans defend themselves and take prisoners

What do we take away from this:

Orcs where prisoners of humans, so grudge... oO

I'm in no way defending that fact. But I higly doubt they were thankful for the just punishment. A grudge is still understandable, even if the reason for it was warranted.

[Mardux]

It mostly boils down to the fact that neither Blizzard nor the vocal Horde players ever managed to pin down what the Horde is. Is it the WCII/Forsaken army of mostly evil dudes but with some satirical/funny elements or is it the Warcraft III "Honorable Savages" (an already pretty loaded term, really) ?

Their inability to decide and reconcile the two halves (which is in fact impossible) has led the Horde to its current situation.

Funnily enough, the reverse problem put the Alliance in a similar problematic situation : they know too well what they think the Alliance and anything which doesn't fit their very narrow viewpoint is either cast away or immediately put in a bad light (case in point, Tyrande being clearly depicted as wrong to oppose Anduin's inconditional peace with the Horde).

It has never mattered what the vocal horde players have said or thought. The vocal alliance players deemed the horde players evil incarnate, and blizzards writers consistently reinforce the alliance players thoughts.

[Cyanu]

the Horde is a curious mix of many things:

bloodthirsty savages in orcs/trolls, the early itteration of Belves which had a raw 'the ends justify the means/at any cost' approach to their goals

it also has Tauren which are one of the most peaceful races of Azeroth, an honorable department of orcs/trolls, some noble and or scholarly BElves

Thrall in his humility and eagerness to step down was stupid: he was the best possible leader for the Horde and for no serious reason he gave up the mantle and to whom? an racial supremacist, warmonger, authoritarian, impulsive youngster

the Horde begins a stupid war and Thrall is spending time soul-searching...

and after the catastrophic results of his decision instead of standing up to his responsibilities he instead appoints the good natured but inadequate Vol'jin, which is kinda ok-ish i guess

till that idiot passes his title to Sylvanas of all people... let's see: undead, vengeful, deceitful, schemer, selfish, immoral, cruel, with no capacity for any form of empathy or emotional warmth, way to go mon!

Thrall keeps playing fetch with his pet wolf in some farmhouse...

so yeah, Thrall failed everyone with his inaction

ps: the forsaken were only made playable for sales imo, in any realistic storytelling the Horde has 0 reason to ally with dead lordaeron humans aka the corpses of the enemy

[The Emperor]

Thrall was a hippie pacisifist, never worthy to inherit the legacy that is the Horde. Horde's purpose is to fight, to conquer, to subdue, to rape and to pillage. That is when the Horde is strongest - when cries and blood of their enemies guide their purpose. Garrosh understood that, Sylvanas did as well. Thrall chose peace in his arrogance, blind to the fact that there can never be peace between a wolf and a sheep. He simply supressed the conflict, betrayed the culture of war and conquest that was built by his ancestors for many hundreds of years. But like with all things supressed, it has a tendecy to fire back horribly.

Thrall's defiant legacy is now turned to dust, his name a mockery and metaphor for abandoning one's own people, and whoever takes up his ideals is destined to fail miserably as well. Conflict breeds progress and it must be embraced. The Horde must have clear vision on this, because it might as well join up with Alliance if it doesnt, which is probably what that hippie Thrall always wanted.

[Villager720]

I think Thrall did a fair job for a 22 year old when he took the mantle of a wartime organization that was created solely to exact vengeance upon the draenei.

That said, holding his people to a higher set of ethics, while simultaneously punishing them indefinitely by settling in a desert was an odd choice.
What's more, because he hadn't been involved in any orc history prior, he almost certainly would have come across as patronizing to orcs that had already suffered through 2 (3?) wars and and years of internment.
If he could have avoided having his people resent him (and thus his ideals), I think the Horde would have had a very different couple of years following the War in Northrend.

And that, I think, was his biggest mistake. He came down too hard on his people, which undermined their loyalty and their desire to try to change for his ideals. The change he presented them with was counter to their previous lives and then, on top of that, it sucked.
Garrosh glorified them, fed them, and gave them an enemy to focus their frustrations.
Thrall gave them moral leadership and penance.

[Bootynuzzler]

Putting garrosh in charge of the horde was one of the best things thrall ever did, some one like garrosh was exactly what the horde needed but he ended up being betrayed on all sides by the people who were suppose to guide him so it ended poorly.

If thrall Had got carine and vul’jin to actually back garrosh and actually checked in from time to time the horde would have been glorious.

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Unlike his father baine is spineless He’d be the worse possible leader as he can’t actually stand up for any thing he believes, the alliance would walk all over the horde and corrupt horde underlings would have free reign.

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The orcs of the horde are the very same orcs who did said things against the Draenei grom,saurfang ect the older orcs were all apart of it even what’s his name thrall dad.

Well, at the very least those Orcs are a small minority of the Horde now given their age. The majority of Orc NPCs and all playable Orcs had no part in it.

I disagree with your sentiment about Baine. He is not spineless at all. He's a formidable force in battle and has on more than one occasion stood up for his beliefs, the most recent of which was for his belief of what the Horde stands for and that resurrecting Derek Proudmoore to be used as a weapon against the Alliance was wrong and not in the spirit of the Horde. He committed treason to turn Derek over to Jaina, and returned to face his crimes. Baine is honorable, wise, and promotes the very ideals of what the Horde is that makes its members so proud of their faction.

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and after the catastrophic results of his decision instead of standing up to his responsibilities he instead appoints the good natured but inadequate Vol'jin, which is kinda ok-ish i guess

till that idiot passes his title to Sylvanas of all people... let's see: undead, vengeful, deceitful, schemer, selfish, immoral, cruel, with no capacity for any form of empathy or emotional warmth, way to go mon!

You must play Alliance? There are quests for the Horde that try to determine why Vol'jin named Sylvanas Warchief, and because he has spent so much time dead he cannot remember, so in the quests we try to backtrack the events that led to that decision. In the end, if I recall correctly, it concludes as still a mystery that we must unravel in Shadowlands. Seems implied that something, or someone, was manipulating events.

[Powerogue]

Absolutely both. Thrall made the decision to appoint Garrosh, but it was because the people, mainly young orcs, wanted him.

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Thrall was a hippie pacisifist, never worthy to inherit the legacy that is the Horde. Horde's purpose is to fight, to conquer, to subdue, to rape and to pillage. That is when the Horde is strongest - when cries and blood of their enemies guide their purpose.

Careful not to cut yourself on that edge. If you want a faction like that, the Burning Legion is there for you-oh wait we beat them because this is a game where you play at least vaguely heroic characters.

[Mungho]

I think Thrall did a fair job for a 22 year old when he took the mantle of a wartime organization that was created solely to exact vengeance upon the draenei.

That said, holding his people to a higher set of ethics, while simultaneously punishing them indefinitely by settling in a desert was an odd choice.
What's more, because he hadn't been involved in any orc history prior, he almost certainly would have come across as patronizing to orcs that had already suffered through 2 (3?) wars and and years of internment.
If he could have avoided having his people resent him (and thus his ideals), I think the Horde would have had a very different couple of years following the War in Northrend.

And that, I think, was his biggest mistake. He came down too hard on his people, which undermined their loyalty and their desire to try to change for his ideals. The change he presented them with was counter to their previous lives and then, on top of that, it sucked.
Garrosh glorified them, fed them, and gave them an enemy to focus their frustrations.
Thrall gave them moral leadership and penance.

Wasn't Thrall 18 when he first escaped from Blackmore? Anyway, I think you really hit the nail on the head. He could also have not called it 'The Horde' for one thing, since if you're trying to lead your people to redemption, why keep the title of such an organization that had so much evil? And glorifying the old war heroes(naming of Orgimmar, Durotar, i.e.).

But now that I think of it, where could the Orcs settle? The Night Elves still considered Azhara theirs, the Barrens are barely better then Durotar. I can't think of anywhere else.

[Nefarious Tea]

Do you have a source for this? The only instance of rape I've ever read was when Gul'dan ordered an Orc to impregnate a Draenei, which resulted in the birth of Garona Halforcen.

Also I think Baine Bloodhoof would make an excellent leader of the Horde, and it kind of seems like that's the direction they're going, just without the title of "Warchief". He is an excellent diplomat and is a strong force for moderation, calm wisdom, and unity within the Horde, especially in their dealings with the Alliance.

Buddy, Russian soldiers between 1943 to 1945 from Stalingrad to Berlin raped virtually woman down to as young as FUCKING TWO YEARS OLD.

Do you really think the irredeemable bloodlust of the orcs, worse even than humans, didn't also include systematic rape?

[Bootynuzzler]

Buddy, Russian soldiers between 1943 to 1945 from Stalingrad to Berlin raped virtually woman down to as young as FUCKING TWO YEARS OLD.

Do you really think the irredeemable bloodlust of the orcs, worse even than humans, didn't also include systematic rape?

I mean, this is all a fictional cartoon with no basis of reality outside of what content creators write into the lore. So really if I want to imagine that systematic rape doesn't occur in the fictional universe of WoW, I'm allowed to think that, just as you're allowed to think the opposite.

But really, I'm not sure what your point is. You took an incredibly dark turn in this thread about a cartoon world, and any point you're trying to make is not really evident, especially since your post seems to heavily imply that the Alliance are just as likely to have rapists in their ranks.

[Azerox]

I miss blood shedding horde.
But yeah Thrall is a sissy.

[enigma77]

Blizzard just made bad decisions and the story has suffered.

You don't turn your faction's leader into a raid boss and you don't do it twice.

Garrosh being a warmonger was fine as long as he remained loyal to the Horde, instead they turned him into a villain even to the Horde. Baaaaaaaad writing.

[Fetus Rex]

They are different species. Orcs did what fighters do during war time. Kill, get wealthy and take pleasure where holes appear.

Thrall is unorcy scum who wanted his people to atone, which only built more frustration. Garrosh literally did nothing wrong.

[Thage]

A little bit of both. Thrall is a good example of how to write 'too trusting for his own good' relatively well (relative to WoW writing in general), with actual consequences for his trusting nature leading to allies and subordinates getting away with acting in bad faith. His trusting the Forsaken enabled them to engage in numerous atrocities which were overlooked for the sake of securing a Horde presence in the northern Eastern Kingdoms. His trusting Garrosh and nepotism toward him due to fond memories of his father allowed Garrosh to accumulate power and responsibility he wasn't mentally or emotionally ready for, and the more Thrall dumped power and responsibility into Garrosh's lap without doing anything to prepare him for either--despite even Garrosh's own protests on more than one occasion--the more Garrosh started to crack under the pressure until it broke him completely and he became a mad tyrant leading up to the Pandaren Campaign.

Thrall also had a bad habit of trusting that everything would just kinda work out. He wasn't nearly proactive enough in reining in the Warsong or the Defilers, which made it more difficult than it needed to be for the Horde to secure necessary land and resources (as opposed to working with the Sentinels on acceptable means to harvest lumber and working with them to terraform Durotar or Stonetalon, or any of a few hundred other ways such a stark contrast in natural resources and farmable land between night elf territory and Horde territory could have been addressed without throwing diplomacy into a wood chipper and creating long-term problems that kept tensions constantly high, leading indirectly to the Twilight's Hammer abusing these tensions to completely break kaldorei-Horde relations and in turn force Garrosh's and Tyrande's hands in fighting over resources in Ashenvale beyond a border clash). Nor was he proactive in any way in working with druids or the elements to make Durotar more than a sun-baked dust bowl, laboring under the belief that a hardy species like the orcs wanted to have to struggle and eke out any existence they could, to say nothing of the Darkspear trolls who were used to jungle-coated island climates.

That being said, Thrall's inadequacies wouldn't have been thrown into such start relief without those bad-faith actors to take advantage of them. Garrosh constantly sabotaged diplomatic meetings Thrall brought him along on, with no punishment beyond mild reprimand from Thrall. Sylvanas and the Royal Apothecary Society committed enough atrocities to fill a novel even before she merrily swan-dived off the deep end and began slinging Blight everywhere that took more than a modicum of effort to conquer--much of it even with the Undercity effectively under martial law via the Kor'kron, again due to Thrall's inability or refusal to enforce oversight. Even Garrosh failed in oversight, though, so this is either a situation where orcs are laughably ignorant and take everything at face value, or Thrall's inadequacies were endemic to the Warchief position.

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Garrosh literally did nothing wrong.

Garrosh did a lot wrong, but most of what he did wrong can be pretty reliably boiled down to nepotism. He was given too much power, responsibility, and authority in the Horde too quickly, with little to no training on any facet of his duties, left to figure it all out for himself, for no discernable reason other than Thrall's fond memories of Grom (or, in the case of his promotion to Warchief over even his own protests, because of Thrall's bias and what he believed would be bias in the Horde against a non-orcish Warchief, which led him to immediately dismiss all candidates except Saurfang the Younger, who's dead, and Garrosh, who got thrown into the deep end with an anchor tied around his ankles). Garrosh certainly didn't conduct himself befitting a potential leader of the Horde in Outland, and his time in Northrend was one tactical blunder after another only mitigated by Saurfang, the Adventurer, and some shoehorned-in plot points insisting he was a tactical genius early in The Shattering.

Garrosh would have made a splendid High Overlord, but as Warchief his reign was largely disastrous. The Horde's biggest gains were made by the goblins and undead, who proceeded to render most of the land they took inhospitable and unusable in the process or immediate aftermath of doing so. Garrosh's interpersonal skills were iffy at best, driving many of his allies to distrust him even when he was earnestly trying to do his best for everyone in the Horde. And the nail in the coffin was that he was not ready for his positions, either as Overlord of the Warsong Offensive or as Warchief of the Horde, and the pressures of the latter caused him to crack.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I disagree with your sentiment about Baine. He is not spineless at all. He's a formidable force in battle and has on more than one occasion stood up for his beliefs, the most recent of which was for his belief of what the Horde stands for and that resurrecting Derek Proudmoore to be used as a weapon against the Alliance was wrong and not in the spirit of the Horde. He committed treason to turn Derek over to Jaina, and returned to face his crimes. Baine is honorable, wise, and promotes the very ideals of what the Horde is that makes its members so proud of their faction.

Baine defends sylvanas after her genocide of the night elfs gas of her own troops and even when he “stoop up” for his beliefs he just passively let’s him self get captured leaving his people leaderless. You can’t find a weaker leader Carine on the other hand stands up to garrosh just because he thought he had some peaceful night elfs killed it’s like day and night if you compare the two.

[Nefarious Tea]

But really, I'm not sure what your point is. You took an incredibly dark turn in this thread about a cartoon world, and any point you're trying to make is not really evident, especially since your post seems to heavily imply that the Alliance are just as likely to have rapists in their ranks.

And they would. But that's also not what this thread is about, is it.

[Bootynuzzler]

And they would. But that's also not what this thread is about, is it.

It's not about Russian soldiers either, and look where we are. You still haven't addressed what the point of your response was.

[Saltysquidoon]

Wasn't Thrall 18 when he first escaped from Blackmore? Anyway, I think you really hit the nail on the head. He could also have not called it 'The Horde' for one thing, since if you're trying to lead your people to redemption, why keep the title of such an organization that had so much evil? And glorifying the old war heroes(naming of Orgimmar, Durotar, i.e.)

I mean he inherited the title directly from Ogrim, without being warchief and the doomhammer he'd have no dejure authority over the orcs he liberated.