Horde Reparations

[Sharnie786]

Dumping all on Sylvanas, of course.

At least until Trolls are reinstated the lands the Night elves and Humans stole from them

It wasn't just Sylvanas. Also Night Elves came from ttolls, they were just superior in every way and expanded an empire.

[Mehrunes]

This is a interesting topic. What do you think the Alliance should have done with the subdued Orc invaders?

Exiling them to their dying world through the Dark Portal they were going to seal anyway? Not only would it be safer for the Alliance, it would actually have been more of a punishment for the Orcs than the camps (while still leaving the Alliance in the position to pat themselves on the back for not killing them personally).

[Sharnie786]

The idea that Versailles was so harsh that it caused WWII doesn't pan out. It's nothing more than German interwar propaganda. Versailles isn't even the harshest treaty imposed on the central powers after the war was over. Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, treaty of Trianon and treaty of Sevres were all harsher than Versailles. Same goes for the treaty of Brest-Litevsk that Germany had Russia sign when Russia imploded into a revolution.

Germany lost only 8% of its continental territory, its very few colonies and 10% of its population. Austria-Hungary was shattered into smithereens and the same was planned for the Ottoman Empire (with most of it being achieved even after they won the Turkish War of Independence and regained control of Anatolia). Russia lost up to 30% of its population (depending on count), and most of the territory that was industrialized and not a Siberian wasteland (and, again, it was imposed on them while they had a revolution to deal with on top of that).

And while Versailles required higher reparations, Germany was only really expected to only ever pay the A and B bonds, so roughly 1/3rd of the total sum. Which, combined with the fact that Germany was a richer nation to begin with and unlike the rest was not carved into a sliver of its former self, i.e. it did not lose a bejeezus out of its industrialized territory or its population in the process like the others, made it much easier for them to repay their bill than it was for the rest.

Yet no one ever excuses USSR's involvement in WWII with Brest-Litevsk. No one excuses Turkey's involvement in WWII with Sevres, because Turkish involvement in WWII was them joining at the last second to pile up on the Axis so that the Allies wouldn't think badly of them. Which flat out shows it actually is possible to take a harsh treaty and then not go on a rampage across half the world. WWII happened because Nazis were filth. The myth that Versailles made them do what they did is just one of their myriad of excuses, right there next to blaming it on the Jews stabbing Germany in the back during WWI and making the "master race" lose that war.




Garrosh's war resulted in Horde gaining multiple new territories at the cost of withdrawing out of Ashenvale. Sylvanas' war saw Horde ending up stronger than the Alliance, to the point that Alliance characters themselves commented on how it's the Horde that's the only force in the world capable of standing up to N'Zoth. So how were they ruined, again?

But the Horde didn't win BfA, the Alliance did, in every war except the Burning which wasn't a war, it was a massacre. When did the Alliance say the Horde is the only thing that can defeat N'zoth? Lorewise, Stormwind has more people than all Horde cities combined and this excludes the recent refugees and allied races.

[Mehrunes]

• They had no way of returning the orcs back to where they came from.

Except for this thing called the Dark Portal that they sealed only later on.

• There was no guarantees that the orcs would go on another bloodlust if unchecked.

Locking them on another world would have made it a complete non-issue.

• Might as well put them to work as punishment for what they did.

Locking them on a dying world would most certainly be rather punishing.

So rehabilitate them after they destroyed stormwind, burnt quelthalas, killed llane, and nearly took lordearon.

It's an interesting place these forums where you can find both:
1. Ugh alliance always goody two shoes
2. Ugh alliance doesn't do enough

Which part of plurality of opinions confuses you? If one was to assume you weren't deliberately making a blatantly facetious jab to put yourself on some kind of a pedestal here, that is.

But the Horde didn't win BfA, the Alliance did, in every war except the Burning which wasn't a war, it was a massacre. When did the Alliance say the Horde is the only thing that can defeat N'zoth? Lorewise, Stormwind has more people than all Horde cities combined and this excludes the recent refugees and allied races.

Alleria did, right after the failed siege of Orgrimmar. And nothing has been said about any massacres. Blizzard only said off-screen that the Alliance won the warfronts. With no statements about casualties. You know where they did mention casualties? Dazar'Alor, where Alliance lost most of their distraction army they sent to the north, making Dazar'Alor a Phyrric victory (if even that, given how they completely failing at their objective at driving a wedge between the Zandalari and the Horde). That is besides the point anyway. Whether the Horde officially lost the war (which is a hard sell given how they merely decided not to fight the Alliance force that was at their mercy) or not is immaterial to the fact they weren't "ruined" by this war.

And you pulled the idea that Stormwind has more people than all the Horde cities combined out of the Nether. Blizzard never provides clear population numbers. Just the opposite, they keep them as vague as possible so they can then push new forces for each faction whenever the convenience strikes. And what we do know about the state of things runs contrary to the idea Stormwind is so populous.

The city was flat out obliterated less than 30 years ago and had to be rebuilt from scratch. On top of that it was almost obliterated two more times (by complete jokes like the Gnolls and the shambling corpse of the Gurrubashi Empire no less) in the last 80-something years. With the Troll invasion requiring a deus ex machina to save them from obliteration (the leaders were literally already praying for an outright miracle when Medivh popped out of nowhere to save their sorry asses).

Then there's the part where according to Blackmoore's estimates the population of just the Orcs alone (and not even all of the Orcs, but just those in internment camps) was still enough to overthrow the entire Alliance even when the much stronger Lordaeron was still at its helm. And those estimates were proven correct in the AU where Blackmoore stopped drinking and actually got off his ass and worked to achieve his plans.

Yes I'm sure the orcs can pull the "we were treated unfairly" card after paving a road with draenei bones to a portal which they took to....plant trees and bring peace...wait no....kill more ppl. But oh man how dare someone put them in cages after that!

You do realize @TheRevenantHero's alternative proposal still involved imprisoning the Orcs, right? And that they only postulated a different purpose for the imprisonment? If you want to put yourself on a high horse, go ahead. But at least do so when you actually address what you're replying to. Otherwise it looks a bit silly.

In the end regardless of how they were treated it is now canon lore that not one but two warchiefs have started harmful wars and had to be taken down while the alliance high King has done zero of that. So even if the alliance does bad shit it's too late Blizzard has already bashed horde so hard that if today anduin goes and sets fire to thunderbluff for a BBQ extravaganza it would be the alliance "getting even" rather than "going too far".

It is so canon that the previous faction war began a year before Garrosh was even made Warchief... And the Alliance has totes legit done zero of that when they were the ones to start that war. Truly, this is the pinnacle of "look at how impartial I am, I seriously play both factions and treat them equally".

Also, whether it would be the Alliance "getting even" or not is completely immaterial. Even if it was, that wouldn't magically make it morally right. Which is, kinda, the point. Especially if you looked at things from the Horde perspective. Because a war where Alliance thinks they have just revenge on their side while the Horde wants them to fuck off with that would actually be grey. Because *gasp* the Alliance position isn't automatically the one true truth of Azeroth.

It did for grommash.

Drank fel blood on Draenor went on murder spree
Drank fel blood in Azeroth killed cenarius

Became orc hero.

It's almost as if he became the Orc hero for what he achieved despite throwing himself under Mannoroth's control again. So what does this have to do with two wrongs making a right?

[Jester Joe]

In the Precious Cargo quest, you rescue Thrall from becoming a slave to the Alliance again.

You mean according to Thrall's assumptions?

Because it's his word of "If not for you, I would surely be on my way back to Stormwind to be paraded as a trophy and a slave."

He's a key figure from the Horde though, he would have been thrown in jail just like Saurfang was if anything. Especially considering that he was still close friends with Jaina at the time of Cataclysm.

[Krothar]

But the Horde didn't win BfA, the Alliance did, in every war except the Burning which wasn't a war, it was a massacre. When did the Alliance say the Horde is the only thing that can defeat N'zoth? Lorewise, Stormwind has more people than all Horde cities combined and this excludes the recent refugees and allied races.

Got any sources on that claim?

[Mehrunes]

Make your choice. Either:
Accept that they are goody two shoes and not complain about them imprisoning orcs.
Or:
Accept that they are evil and thus bad for imprisoning them.

Can't have both where you complain they are nice and then at the same time say they aren't nice enough.

Your first option doesn't even make sense. Because this whole thing is a blatant misrepresentation (in the name of faction impartiality, obviously). Meanwhile in the real world where nuance actually exists, one can complain about the Alliance being portrayed by the narrative as goody two shoes while pointing out all the bad shit they've done that is deliberately brushed under the carpet by said narrative.

Real life comparos have never worked well for the Warcraft universe. Ever. Not in game not on forums.

It is a world where chicken men shoot lazer beams from the moon and wings sprout from your back to give you flight. Real life agendas and parallels don't work. If they did then things like the blood oath of the horde and such wouldn't even exist as an example.

Tell that to the myriad of steppe tribes subjugated by the Mongols that then had to do the bidding of the Khagan.

"The alliance is so nice they put orcs in prison instead of wiping them out, even after all that was done"

Said no one ever.

Instead we have: "but why! They were enslaved! They should be rehabilitated! Alliance is so evil! But they are goody two shoes!"

It doesn't require a literary genius to understand that the above thought process is confusing at best, bipolar at worst.

Either they are evil for imprisoning and thus not goody two shoes. Or they are goody two shoes for not wiping them out for the war and holding them in prison. Can't be both.

It also doesn't take a literary genius to understand how you're beating your straw-man here. Which you effectively acknowledged because right in this same post (in your reply to the second sentence by @Soon-TM that you separated from the first one despite them being a part of the same point), that it is obvious that the narrative downplays what the Alliance is doing. Which is the very point of what you're deliberately misrepresenting here. So do go on about them bipolar thought processes.

Well obviously. I mean to put it into perspective, they had to dig up Arthas' and Garithos to find comparisons to Sylvanas and Garrosh. They have taken the horde to a level where as I said, it would take nearly two expacs worth of alliance committing genocide to be on the same level of media appearance evil. And that part is key because take this as an example.

The twilight father

Was

Benedictus.

Now that's actually huge given the position he was in at the church of the light and the alliance poster boy paladins and priests vs the hordes shaman and deathknights. The leader of the church! In league with Deathwing! What a scandal!

Guess how they deal with it. In a patch quest line. Not even a dungeon, not even a cinematic, no CGI, no raid. Forgotten. New players after cata don't even see that part.

And then the horde does something and boom:
- Garrosh ruining the vale (MoP)
- Garrosh putting ppl on spikes (SoO trailer)
- warchief made into repeatable raid boss with an iconic shoulder piece drop so every dude on earth farms him and hears him say "mountains of skulls and rivers of blood"
- orcs invading Azeroth again in WoD nice cutscenes and such
- orcs drinking fel blood in fury of hellfire. Confirming that one way or another it will happen.
- sylvanas warbeinger in BfA
- the saurfang netflix series in Ultra HD

It's not just about the alliance not doing bad things or its things getting shoved aside. It's about the gynormous magnifying glass they have put on the horde that even if the alliance shits in orgrimmars waters it looks like they are doing the horde a favor by trying to add fertilizer to their barren farm fields.

I'm not even sure where you're going with this, but Benedictus was unveiled to the world as the Twilight Father in the Hour of Twilight dungeon... And even if it was dealt with in a questline, how is that related to the magnitude of Benedictus' actions? How he was dealt with doesn't change the fact that he teamed up with a force planning to wipe out all life on Azeroth and actively worked towards that goal, making him more than ample comparison to Garrosh. And the fact that the story is completely hush-hush about that is just yet another example how the narrative deliberately brushes Alliance's wrongdoings under the carpet to whitewash it. If you wanted to disprove @Soon-TM's point here, you kinda achieved the opposite result.

Also, not only do the WoD Orcs have little to do with the playable Horde, but two instances of Orcs being misled by someone else doesn't actually constitute a confirmation that Orcs would always get corrupted, no matter how many times you try to push this totally impartial falseshood.

[Sluvs]

The Horde had slavery well long after the camps. The Alliance was just respecting the orcs culture and trying to treat the orcs like they treated themselves.

It still does not excuse them from enslaving then 15 years before the new horde was created. This discussion is not about enslavement at large, it's about the enslavement of orcs by the alliance.

I know it's a joke but still.

[Soon-TM]

You mean according to Thrall's assumptions?

Because it's his word of "If not for you, I would surely be on my way back to Stormwind to be paraded as a trophy and a slave."

He's a key figure from the Horde though, he would have been thrown in jail just like Saurfang was if anything. Especially considering that he was still close friends with Jaina at the time of Cataclysm.

Nu-Thrall, much like Jaina or Anduin, is not a character but rather an author mouthpiece. Which means they can never be wrong - or if they even are, it does not actually matter, since the narrative will be turned on its head to accommodate them.

[Feanoro]

I bet you're the kind of person who thinks if Jaina had destroyed Orgrimmar that it would have been totally fine because of what happened to Theramore.

Oh, we're speculating on each other now? You're the kind of person who thinks atrocities are just dandy so long as they're against anyone NotHorde, and that any slight to the Horde deserves a full scorched earth war of extermination response.

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Nu-Thrall, much like Jaina or Anduin, is not a character but rather an author mouthpiece. Which means they can never be wrong - or if they even are, it does not actually matter, since the narrative will be turned on its head to accommodate them.

When has Thrall NOT been an author mouthpiece?

[Jester Joe]

Nu-Thrall, much like Jaina or Anduin, is not a character but rather an author mouthpiece. Which means they can never be wrong - or if they even are, it does not actually matter, since the narrative will be turned on its head to accommodate them.

I mean, even as a joke, we're talking about the very expansion that Thrall made the biggest mistake ever by putting Garrosh in charge.

[Sorrowseer]

World of Warcraft is not our world, they don't have the law we do, we only had a lot of these laws in the past few centuries, looking at the real world the shit we do to each other makes these wow wars look like playground fights, if you insist on applying MODERN ideals and laws on world of warcraft, well it aint gonna happen.

The Horde has never and will never face any consequences for their actions.

[Soon-TM]

I mean, even as a joke, we're talking about the very expansion that Thrall made the biggest mistake ever by putting Garrosh in charge.

Indeed. And he has never been made responsible for his decisions - as a matter of fact, he's still depicted as the ultimate saviour of the Horde (along with Baine/Saurfang) despite his massive blunders.

[Sluvs]

Not really.

Many of the laws we have in real life don't exist in wow. Also there is a reason why multiple threads that try to bridge this either end up with nothing or just discussing something completely unrelated and thus locked.

In the end. The story has to go forward. It sucks though that the horde has been made the horse to ride this story on but that's that. Because let's be honest. Without the horde this would be one boring ass world. Without the horde alliance would be just a bunch of hobos and farmers. The horde being present is what provides motion for the story. The horde being active is what provides the fuel for the narrative. Yes as a consequence of that it gets whacked in the face but honestly it's still better than blue world police.

But this is not about laws, or treatises. It's about marginalizing a group of people to the point where they need to fight to be free. Enslave people for long enough and there will be a war because death is preferable to everlasting servitude.

I'm not discussing code of laws or anything like that.

While I do understand the need having a villain, IMO, blizzard relies too much on the "HORDE BAD" trope. They tend to use the same plot point several times in the same way. (MoP & BfA comes to mind) It's fine having the horde be the bad guy once in a while, but man, everytime? The horde can NEVER feel good about themselves, and it's annoying. I'm not saying the horde should not have conflict, what I am saying is that alliance should not be as reactionary as they are right now.

[Mehrunes]

I mean, even as a joke, we're talking about the very expansion that Thrall made the biggest mistake ever by putting Garrosh in charge.

But as Thrall established in his final duel with Garrosh, that was all on Garrosh and his own hands were perfectly clean.

[Jester Joe]

Indeed. And he has never been made responsible for his decisions - as a matter of fact, he's still depicted as the ultimate saviour of the Horde (along with Baine/Saurfang) despite his massive blunders.

Well, in fairness he did also do a lot of good too, and technically he did save the world in Cataclysm. But yes, he has a lot of flaws/mistakes that he did make also. But that is going a bit away from the point I think, although I do think his flaws make him a more fleshed out character overall than most.

But as Thrall established in his final duel with Garrosh, that was all on Garrosh and his own hands were perfectly clean.

I mean, and the earth hand did strangle Garrosh, not Thrall's hand.

[Mehrunes]

I mean, and the earth hand did strangle Garrosh, not Thrall's hand.

Didn't he die by electrocution?

[Jester Joe]

Didn't he die by electrocution?

Well, yes.

But that didn't fit the joke as well.
The old hand grab into the electric chair.

[Soon-TM]

O
When has Thrall NOT been an author mouthpiece?

Idk, he was noticeably less annoying in WC3/early Wow. YMMV ofc.

[Ielenia]

Except for this thing called the Dark Portal that they sealed only later on.

You mean the portal that Khadgar closed to avoid more orcs from coming in, by destroying the portal itself, which also caused the portal in Draenor to explode?

Locking them on another world would have made it a complete non-issue.

Locking them on a dying world would most certainly be rather punishing.

You mean returning them to their own world, risking restarting the whole "lok'tar ogar" party into Azeroth again?

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In the Precious Cargo quest, you rescue Thrall from becoming a slave to the Alliance again.

All we have there is Thrall's opinion of what would happen.

One possible option is that the news that Thrall having just stepped down from Horde leadership did not reach Alliance's ears yet, and captured what they thought to be the leader of the Horde.

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Ok, but the orcs were corrupted and being controlled by the demons right? So hanging the invasion above their heads while they barely had control over it is incredibly unfair. Is the same thing as saying the forsaken destroyed silvermoon, which is a lie. So yeah, they were being punished for crimes they could not do anything about. What the fel horde dis so long ago should have no bearing at all over the current horde.

But the problem is that the idea that the orcs were "controlled" by the demons is weakened by the fact that the orcs have shown, more than once, how easy they fall to demonic corruption, willingly. During the Warcraft 3 orc campaigns, Grom Hellscream and his orcs willingly drink demon blood to gain an edge against Cenarius. And in Warlords of Draenor, again, the majority of the Iron Horde drinks the demon blood, willingly.