with our class, the race doesn’t impade your ability to be morally questionable 
Wut? The current Night Elves and Humans are guilty of countless genocides? Wut??
Don’t be that disingenous, come on.
I am not that kind of person who usually says that
It used to be better but…
Vanilla forsaken were the best.
Bit tongue in cheek, i know.
But still rich to have all this virtue signalling and name-calling when even the good guys are settled atop conquered land they took after genociding its former inhabitants. And are expected to be treated with pity when anyone else tries that same approach with them.
Humans got their Lands by conquest, as did Nightelves. Names like “Trollbane” don’t come from being nice to trolls. Then there are species that aren’t as sophisticated like Gnolls, Kobolds, Ettin etc. living hunted and supressed in human lands.
The former inhabitants, at least in the case for Humans, who were overly aggresive Troll tribesmen on a perennial killing frenzy on any newcomer in a hundred mile radius away from their lands whose only approach had always been instant slaughtering.
Sure the writing is pretty stupid to make the Trolls universally insane to the point the moral ambiguity is completely rubbed off, because the Humans stopped a band of bloodthirsty murderers from genociding them in turn. The Humans minimized an ever-present, vicious threat who wasn’t up for compromises.
Before you bring up the Orcs and Ashenvale. Let me change the context to suit the comparison: The Orcs land in Durotar and are shortly afterwards repeatedly attacked from the Night Elves, because maybe some Elves lived there in the desert before the Orcs landed, they don’t show any remorse and they’re not willing to compromise. After the Orcs manage to defend themselves, the Night Elves keep coming regardless. Until they are stopped for good in their own lands. Now, the Orcs would have been right to put down the Night Elves, at least as a power.
But even then, to assign a fault for those ancient victories over the current Humans to say that they are guilty of countless genocides is stretching it at best.
Don’t remember the Night Elves setting a massive pyramid full of Trolls on fire.
No?
Ashenvale, Hyjal, Azshara, Darkshore (bar Shatterspear Valley, which was left untouched until they decided to join the Horde and attack) were always Night Elven.
The Night Elves lived together with the Dark Trolls afterwards. They even fight side by side with them in the Third War.
“The night elves knew that the Shatterspear lived in their territory, but as long as the trolls were not hostile, they were apparently quite content to leave them and Shatterspear Vale in peace.”
Lmao, I can’t even
You know, the nightelves came after the trolls and didn’t get their lands by asking nicely, but by mercilessly using their magic to burn the trolls to prevent regeneration.
Didn’t they come from the trolls? >_>
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You’re confusing the Night Elves with the Humans. That happened in the Troll Wars, the Night Elves never did that, also because they were the first to inhabit Darkshore, Ashenvale, Azshara and Hyjal along with the Dark Trolls in some cases (whom they lived with for the next ten thousand years), they didn’t have to conquer anyone for them.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Troll#/media/File:Kalimdor_Chronicle.jpg
Besides, that event you described happened during a Troll invasion into Alterac. Not in a harmless village full of children. They killed Troll soldiers who were about to take their home.
Any conqueror can rationalise the extermination of the natives from any land if he wills it. You just need to throw their way the amount of derogatory tags you deem necessary in order to exonerate yourself from any blame.
In real life i think the term was to “pacify” natives.
Just as you painted that scenario, the Forsaken were taking down a bunch of rabid wolves that spread some disease and had been attacking them on their feral hunts, from the moment their curse started to spread out of Shadowfang Keep.
So yeah, fact remains that humans decided to take all troll land for themselves, and wipe out any clan or tribe that argued/acted against it.
Same goes for NEs, who drove entire empires to the ground, and left their remains to encroach on small portions of their lands with the threat of total extermination if they lifted a finger against them.
And now that there is another player willing to go down the same route, people call the fault when either of these races gets the beating.
They are still settled on said conquered land. They have been shown willing enough to move against the former owners (who are largely still around), if they make any attempt to take it back.
Let alone, that tagging the Forsaken as guilty of “countless genocides” is about as “stretchy” in my book.
well, the use of the term “countless genocides” is even in case of the forsaken very questionable.
The things the forsaken did were ethnic cleansings, for a genocide there needs to be the will and drive to kill every single member of a race.
If whiping out a village or city is enough for genocide, every single race in WoW is guilty of that, except the High Mountain Tauren and (at least to our knowledge) the Lightforged Draenei and Draenei, but i tend to question a planet wide empire without at least a few “lesser races” biting the dust on the way.
That is just a misinterpretation of what happened. The Humans fought a defensive war where the Trolls who sought to massacre them to the last were neutralised.
And heck, the Humans weren’t even on Troll territory to begin with, they had their own home in the Eastern Kingdoms, it’s the Trolls that tried to kill the Humans to either rebuild their empire or who knows, the Humans retaliated on a similar scale.
Any correlation you may try to draw with the colonisation of the Native Americans is completely absurd.
This isn’t “history written by the conquerors”, it’s Chronicles lore. Which apparently is “written by the Titans’ view”. A third party, that witnessed things as they unfolded.
No, no the same doesn’t go for the Night Elves. It’s silly that you would try to make the current Night Elves guilty of the deeds of the same empire they deposed and later distanced themselves from.
Over ten thousand years ago, no less.
As they should for self-preservation. Those former owners haven’t grown any less violent with the following generations. The fact they are still alive and their villages are still standing should tell you a good bit on the tolerance and restraint the Humans are showing here.
Having broken free from the tyrannical rule of the Lich King, a renegade group of undead seek to retain their own free will while destroying all those who oppose them. Known as the Forsaken, this group is dedicated to serving their leader, the banshee queen Sylvanas Windrunner. These dark warriors have established a secret stronghold beneath the ruins of Lordaeron’s former capital city. Situated deep beneath the cursed Tirisfal Glades, the labyrinthine Undercity is a sprawling bastion of evil. Within its shadowy confines, Sylvanas’ royal apothecaries scramble to develop a devastating new plague - one which will not only eradicate their hated Scourge rivals, but the rest of humanity as well. To further their dark aims, the Forsaken have entered into an alliance of convenience with the primitive, brutish races of the Horde. Holding no real loyalty for their newfound comrades, the Forsaken have duped them into fighting against their common enemy - the Lich King. Only time will tell how these disciples of doom will fare in their mission of vengeance.
So, they’ve been genociding humans since Vanilla and have merely mass-murdered the Elves in BfA, accidentally being more successful at it than in their attempt at genocide.
Well in that case, they’re all good 
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The thing is: There is a difference between attempted genocide and “countless genocides”. At least in my mind
Which, you know, doesn’t make them any less morally pitch black.
No, it doesn’t of course.
They indeed killed a bunch of people with mass destruction weaponry, that’s how forsaken roll and it’s pretty horrifying for everyone who is not Forsaken.
But genocide needs to have intent to be one.
People just throw word “genocide” around like it has no meaning ever since Theramore Bombing.
“Eradicating the rest of humanity” doesn’t give the intention of exterminating a people to you?
What started off as border skirmishes was turned into a conquest war by Thoradin.
One that not only secured several new pieces of land for the human tribes that had been semi-nomadic up until then, but also one that actively chipped large chunks of Amani lands once victor, in order to create new human settlements across the land.
So yeah, humans definitely went about conquering troll land. Eastweld was troll territory.
Let alone that they were already fighting other native species like Gnolls, kobolds, etc, while actively taking pieces of said land for themselves too.
Yeah. The equivalence with the native americans is definitely there.
And the same applies to NEs, if they insist on claiming as their own, lands they took from others.
Regardless of when that happened, Malfurion and the rest didn’t rebel against Azshara for her troll mistreatment, but because of her demonic allies.
And i’ve yet to see NE handing over the land they are currently holding and using. Its not as if several troll enemies haven’t knocked already asking for it.
When the Forsaken came along, much like Azshara or Thoradin, they decided they wanted land but had “natives” settled in their way.
Why should these races be treated as poor victims? Its not as if they had any qualms dispensing that sort of mindset when it suited their territorial needs.
I guess the NE should count themselves fortunate to have a few settlements still around. Their aggressors are tolerant and restrained indeed.
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And again, still find it rather funny to read the “Countless Genocides” bit, when the most i can currently think of, numbers at a debatable two.
i never claimed the forsaken are not bad, i’m just a fan of precise language
I detest most of what the forsaken represented in the past, and the day Sylvanas’ head decorates a Spike on Orgrimmars walls will be a good day
Now watch as they don’t replace the ‘Beware the living’ and ‘Death to the living!’ soundsamples