What would have happend if Terenas decided to outright kill the orcs?

[Jastall]

Eh, the Orcs didn't experience such things and they are the backbone of the Horde. After the Second War they only lost the will to live (wait, wrong franchise) and got captured, which is kinda the topic of this thread. Then there are entire Clans that evaded capture. And then there's boatload of Orcs still on Draenor. The portrayal of the internment camps in game should be of no concern because game scale always sucked. The internment camp system was so large it put a heavy dent in the economy of entire nations.

On top of that the Orcs in internment camps alone were so numerous Blackmoore planned to use them to overthrow the entire Alliance back when its power actually was something tangible. It was after Gilneas, Stromgarde and Quel'Thalas already left, but on the other hand it still had the Lordaeron powerhouse. And in the AU where he stopped drinking (weirdly enough, because infant Thrall died IIRC) he succeeded at just that and became the new ruler. As for the civil war, as little sense as it makes, most joined the rebellion so Garrosh holed up in the Underhold or something.

So they were still the force that nearly threw all human world to its knees sans the few clans that left with Gul'dan. And then they got reunited with the Mag'har that didn't even take part in tearing humankind a new asshole during the Second War. Blood Elves and Darkspears are of course in a rather poor state, but on the other hand the power of Quel'Thalas largely comes from its spellcasters so even if they are low in number they can be rather useful. And the Tauren should be fine. Baine was talking about just his tribe being fucked by the Centaurs.

Dwarves are weird because by all measure they should be the strongest force driving the Alliance now as they largely avoided both the damage of the Second War and got spared the Scourge.




Horde makes up a significant part of those organizations though.

I mean, yes there were a lot of Orcs after the Second War (who all still somehow fit into a fleet, how big was it anyway?) but afterwards they fought Centaurs, then Jaina's humans, then each other when the Warsong drank the blood, then the Night Elves, then the Legion in an apocalyptic battle, then Daelin's forces, then the various wars in vanilla including the one against C'thun and the conflict in Alterrac Valley, then the campaign in Outland which was probably compensated for by the Mag'har, then the campaign against the Lich King where thousands died at the Wrathgate alone, then the Cata/Mists war where whatever Blackrock and Dragonmaw stragglers they could scrounge up definitely didn't make the difference, then the rebellion against Garrosh where all those who sided with him were Lok'tar Ogar types and thus probably snuffed it, then all the events surrounding WoD including yet more conflict against the Alliance, then the Legion invasion which among other things saw an entire army butchered and the Barrens invaded at the very least, and then BfA's war where we lost all Warfronts (including an Orc dominated one) under the leadership of a Warchief activelly trying to kill as many people as possible regardless of faction, and finally another rebellion, not counting other things like Ashzara crashing a Horde fleet and whomever N'zoth managed to kill before being lazored.

All this in, what, 15 years? I'm only using Orcs as an example, there are plenty of races who suffered similarly and by all rights should have their manpower completely exhausted and their economies completely tanked from having to endlessly finance faraway conflicts. Nobody but the Forsaken (due to war enabling them to bolster their ranks if they play their cards right) and the Dwarves (due to being in a defensible area and doing nothing) should be able to be able to field anything more than a company. But then Warcraft has always cared more about rule of cool and war for war's sake then logistics, demographics and basic common sense.

And yeah, Horde makes up a part of these organizations, but the lion's share are Alliance or neutral NPCs. And the last time a Horde character had an important role in a worldwide crisis was Thrall in Cataclysm, and previously it was also Thrall during the Third War.

[Arikara]

Also Scourge only managed to defeat Lordaeron because they killed Terenas. That's when the Lordaeronian armies basically gave up and stopped fighting. If Terenas was never killed Lordaeron could have opposed a much better resistance against the Scourge. That's why the first thing Arthas did when he became a Death Knight was killing his father.

hahah

yeah no. Terenas wasn't any kind of brilliant strategist, and while his death was certainly a blow to morale, if he had survived (and you're legit just making shit up now) nothing whatsoever would have changed. Lordaeron would still be faced with a crisis wherein civilians are being murdered by their own reanimated families—and soldiers, by their own brothers in arms. No feat of leadership would ever change that.

Every argument you make just further crumbles the platform you stand on. Its clear that you've invented headcanon about the glorious and unified people of the Alliance kingdoms. Quit trying to make the pieces fit in where there is no space for them just to justify that vision.

[Hutmacher]

[Varodoc]

hahah

yeah no. Terenas wasn't any kind of brilliant strategist, and while his death was certainly a blow to morale, if he had survived (and you're legit just making shit up now) nothing whatsoever would have changed. Lordaeron would still be faced with a crisis wherein civilians are being murdered by their own reanimated families—and soldiers, by their own brothers in arms. No feat of leadership would ever change that.

Every argument you make just further crumbles the platform you stand on. Its clear that you've invented headcanon about the glorious and unified people of the Alliance kingdoms. Quit trying to make the pieces fit in where there is no space for them just to justify that vision.

It is written in the very intro of the Undead campaign that the Lordaeron armies lost their morale and scattered after Terenas' death and the city's fall. Had Arthas never gone mad, Lordaeron would've held out a lot longer against the Scourge. And if the orcs never distracted the Alliance long enough for Kel'thuzad to spread the plague to Stratholme, that could've been a possibility.

Also, inventing headcanon is the point of this thread. You are inventing headcanon too (though an unlikely one, I'm afraid).

[omeomorfismo]

It is written in the very intro of the Undead campaign that the Lordaeron armies lost their morale and scattered after Terenas' death and the city's fall. Had Arthas never gone mad, Lordaeron would've held out a lot longer against the Scourge. And if the orcs never distracted the Alliance long enough for Kel'thuzad to spread the plague to Stratholme, that could've been a possibility.

Also, inventing headcanon is the point of this thread. You are inventing headcanon too (though an unlikely one, I'm afraid).

its written that they lost morale, not that they were enough to stop anything. the kingdom just felt earlier

[Mehrunes]

I mean, yes there were a lot of Orcs after the Second War (who all still somehow fit into a fleet, how big was it anyway?) but afterwards they fought Centaurs, then Jaina's humans, then each other when the Warsong drank the blood, then the Night Elves, then the Legion in an apocalyptic battle, then Daelin's forces, then the various wars in vanilla including the one against C'thun and the conflict in Alterrac Valley, then the campaign in Outland which was probably compensated for by the Mag'har, then the campaign against the Lich King where thousands died at the Wrathgate alone, then the Cata/Mists war where whatever Blackrock and Dragonmaw stragglers they could scrounge up definitely didn't make the difference, then the rebellion against Garrosh where all those who sided with him were Lok'tar Ogar types and thus probably snuffed it, then all the events surrounding WoD including yet more conflict against the Alliance, then the Legion invasion which among other things saw an entire army butchered and the Barrens invaded at the very least, and then BfA's war where we lost all Warfronts (including an Orc dominated one) under the leadership of a Warchief activelly trying to kill as many people as possible regardless of faction, and finally another rebellion, not counting other things like Ashzara crashing a Horde fleet and whomever N'zoth managed to kill before being lazored.

In regards to the fleet, it's worth pointing out that they got the fleet from Southshore. The same Southshore where all Stormwindians landed at in their fleet after the First War. So it should be plenty big. Then again you never know with Blizzard-scale.

As for the conflicts you mentioned, none of them were that large. The Horde thoroughly smashed the Barrens' Centaurs, the skirmishes with a city-state worth of humans were small, the fight with the Night Elves was between a logging camp of the Warsong and some Sentinels. Even war against Daelin went smooth as butter for the Horde. The conflict in AV was also small and regional thing between one rather small clan and an archaeologist expedition. It also should be mentioned that Frostwolves were never captured by the Alliance so them (and their losses) don't contribute to the count of the Orc forces that was big enough to still defeat the Alliance of Lordaeron, Kul Tiras, Dalaran, Ironforge and Gnomereggan because that referred to the internment camps' Orcs alone.

After you get into WoW itself yeah, things get wonky because Blizzard insists on an idiotic time scale where most expansions last only a year in-lore (only confirmed exception being Cata but we have no info on the last few) where everything sort of collapses because no one gets time to recuperate. Then there's Blizzard's complete inconsistency about numbers. For example, in Before the Storm Anduin berated Calia for almost starting a war that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. Which kinda makes the nine thousands at Wrathgate kinda irrelevant by comparison. The sentiment of hundreds of thousands as also repeated in Elegy I think. Or maybe it was tens of thousands in that case (though it should be noted that it was in regards to the potential small Silithus conflict). On the other hand, I recently read that the Iron Horde consisted of then thousand Orcs and that was still a threat big enough for both factions combined. I mean, they had their tech advantage, but still.

Back to the faction balance though, Alliance generally tends to lose more. Even at Wrathgate they lose five thousand while the Horde lot four. They also lost a chunk of their fleet to the Forsaken in a skirmish in Howling Fjords. Then there's the Cata-MoP period of that faction war where Alliance got completely humiliated on basically every front. Their loses included most of their fleet, non-human members of their strongest army of Seventh Legion etc. Not to mention Theramore and all the reinforcements Alliance (and even some others sent there). And half a dozen zones.

As for the rebellion against Garrosh, as I already mentioned, evenm most Orcs stood against him. The ones that followed him to the end? It was mostly the new additions like the Blackrocks and Dragonmaw that you mentioned. And the Mag'har. You could barely see any green Orcs in SoO on Garrosh's side. And losing mostly the fresh additions to Garrosh's idiocy is of little consequence to the core of modern Orc-kind that already should have been stronger than the Alliance at the start of all this (and that's even putting the colossal Alliance losses during that war to the side for a moment). Especially since in the meantime Alliance didn't get as many new non-playable additions like the Dragonmaw to balance things out.

Then the Alliance continued their proud traditions of losing more and lost their largest fortress on Azeroth to the Iron Horde while the Horde lost an outpost of primarily sentimental value and even then only temporarily. They also lost Taylor's entire expedition. Legion is somewhat even where Alliance lost their idiot king while the Horde lost their do nothing Warchief. But as per A Good War when it come to losses to Legion itself, the Horde went out of that war with a slightly stronger navy.

And while the Horde had some hiccups during this war (mostly thanks to the likes of Baine betraying their faction and undermining the war effort), the war opened with the obliteration of the Night Elves and then giant blighting of the Alliance army (and if not for Alliance's giant plot armor the Alliance should have been wiped out on at least five different occasions during their attack on Lordaeron). Loss of Darnassus was just Horde losing the territory they occupied so it's not like it's a big hit for them. Especially since as per the latest update, they still have a presence in Ashenvale. As for Azshara thing, that gambit crushed the Alliance navy and balanced things out from Dazar'alor. And we ended the war where the rebellion was flat out laughable and even with a bunch of Horde traitors on their side the Alliance ended the war weaker than the Horde, where the Horde could have easily smashed them if not for their sudden amnesia.

[Powerogue]

Ultimately the Legion would've managed to invade regardless, because they always do. Without the orcs, trolls, and tauren at Twilight of the Gods, Archimonde would almost certainly be victorious, and the world would burn.

Kil'Jaeden just pops out of the sunwell 3 expansions later going "What'd I miss? Aw seriously you didn't leave me any burning to do? I brought an army of demon-corrupted blood elves and everything. Sargeras damn it!