How cooked are the in-universe nations?

Community General Discussion
1

Play Warcraft 1. Then Warcraft 2. Then 3. Now back to WoW. Notice something?

In all 3 RTS games, each nation/faction imposes a specific set of armor and weapons on their troops depending on their rank and role, pretty much resembling a real army.
Because they are, an army. The cost of maintaining said army is immense, since you pay for their upkeep (farms), weapon upgrades(blacksmiths etc), their training and deployment (barracks), et cetera. The humans in Warcraft 3 also utilize a conscript/drafting mechanic where the peasants are called to serve as militia for a limited time, in the event of an emergency.

In WoW, all that work has been outsourced to… us. The uniformed troops gave way to a colorful wave of disorderly, mismatching catwalk fashion show-styled custom made armor sets and weapons. This is our operation from now on. And what are we, you may ask?

Well you see, WoW adventurers are part-militia, part-mercenary. Since you pay for your own upkeep in weapons, armor, shelter, food et cetera, employing you costs decidedly less to the authority you serve than it would to run a full army like they did back in the day. The armies in WoW have been, to a degree, cut down significantly.
Where a nation would pay, say, 100 gold for a basic forest clean-up operation, they now have to pay 75 silver to some dude who reported for duty two days ago.

BUT there is a fundamental problem with this practice, a problem which lies in the heart of who and what we are.
Truth be told, the best way I can think of to best explain what we are and what makes us tick, is to list the 4 steps we take in our more or less identical journeys.

Step 1: Volunteer to help your kingdom. Take on a task from the army, get rewarded 75 silver coins.
Step 2: Take on a larger military contract, get rewarded 100 gold coins. You feel like you belong in there.
Step 3: Some guy gives you 5,000 gold to kill his neighbor’s cows because yesterday he looked at his ears funny.
Step 4: You realize what this life is all about.

It’s dumb luck that for the past 20 years we had been forced to fight common threats which we really couldn’t ignore. Our loyalty, I believe, is undoubtedly in question and the nations of Azeroth are in deep :poop: .

  • Why would the Undead, for example, the “villain faction”, be loyal to the Undercity if some outside source paid them 60,000g to sabotage the faction? The undead have no emotions to speak of and after the Sylvanas disaster, certainly no loyalty.
  • How about the Death Knights, who did NOT hesitate to storm the class hall of their friends and allies the Paladins and kill dozens of them to retrieve the corpse of some dude with the personal end goal being, if memory serves, to get a mount?

How is fighting for the highest bidder any more immoral than these two examples listed above? And how more unlikely? Who are you loyal to? Personally, all I will say is that the Token won’t buy itself…

2

Nations still have uniformed armies but we are not members. We are individuals of reputation :smile:

3

Source? And you speculating isnt a source just

4

We’re hired Adventurers.

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5

There is a problem in your step 3. There are rules that the factions are enforcing. If you do something illegal, all of a sudden you are wanted and get raided by other adventurers that are sent after you.

What happened to defias brotherhood is a good example. They were cheated by the stormwind nobles and they revolted in their little town. All of a sudden the capital brands them criminal organization and sends adventurers to clear the area.

Because not all adventurers fight for the highest bidder. They also live in a world with laws, factions, and consequences.

You vastly underestimate the factions, and overestimate the “adventurers”. Sure our characters are powerful, but they are not even close to the power level of major lore characters.

Take for example siege of orgrimmar. To take the city it needed an alliance fighting force, the rebel hordes, and adventurers. In any scenario in lore, even the “biggest” guilds would not pose much of a threat to a faction. Even ignoring the fact that any faction has astronomically more resources to hire adventurers to go over the “outlaw” adventurers.

Edit:

Dude did you even play the undead starting zone?

Their whole story is the struggle of being raised into undead and having to face the fact that the whole world sees them as monsters (even their past families). Ofc they have emotions, and one if not the most important reason that they formed the undercity is for a sense of comradery and security.

Hiring a forsaken to go against their own is the hardest, since they view themselves as “monsters” and know that the chance for a place to accept them is really slim. At least every other race has multiple sanctuaries that can go and start a life.