I can’t upvote only a part of the post. I agreed with the part that Grom might have lied to us, and that it might well be the future narrative about the Lightbound using the means that justified the goal. But there still are no good guys here, and there hopefully won’t be.
I think Grom believing Garrosh makes sense. Garry, as the smartest character in history of Warcraft, took Grom to a shaman who showed him the vision of what´s going to happen. Then he killed the shaman in the right moment of the vision, just before Thrall came to Grom, liberated the orcs and put them on the path to redemption.
What Grom saw was Fel destroying the orcs, ending with them being permanent prisoners of the humans, and with him leading Warsong Clan as the sole “free” (as they were still influenced by demon blood) survivors of the orcish race.
If a guy like this came to me and told me he can save us, I´d believe him too. However, the issue with Iron Horde is that it then becomes just as brutal as original Horde. It´s not like MU orcs that have genuine excuse for why they behaved the way they did.
So, at the end of the day, we have Grom and Iron Horde who went on a genocidal campaign all over Draenor, telling us how 35 years later, they´re totally the good guys now and we should trust them over draenei, whose side we conveniently don´t get to see.
Now, do I think Mag´har are meant to be evil and AU draenei are meant to be good? No. Even if they originally were, I can´t imagine current Blizzard to bring us to AU Draenor and show us that Yrel was actually right. The opportunity for playable races to be evil has passed, it´s wholesome fighting side by side from now on.
But, just like in other parts of Warcraft story, such as Culling of Stratholme or Purge of Dalaran, people were able to find deeper meaning within the stories than Blizzard intended (and I guess, because in this part of the story the deeper meaning is “this Horde faction may not actually be as good as they say”, some people will vehemently oppose it because they seem to be very invested in the idea of Horde being much better than Blizzard has ever portrayed it). Which is why, just like people argue whether Arthas was right (he wasn´t if you ask Blizzard) or whether Jaina and Covenant were the bad guys (they weren´t if you ask Blizzard), they argue whether Lightbound were responsible for Draenor´s destruction.
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This is my primary issue with the Iron Horde.
Garrosh pretending to be a seer with knowledge of the future isn’t bad. Nor is Grom believing it.
But beyond that, and telling Grom to not trust Gul’dan, there is no further push. They committ horrible atrocities entirely of their own free will and for the fun of it.
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I honestly think the Iron Horde is, generally speaking, worse in its barbarity, even if we stopped them making a planet-wide road out of skulls of slain children and innocents. They’re slavers, despots, subjugators, befoulers, and industrialists who had no issue nearly tearing apart the balance of the elements, and thus Draenor’s stability, during our campaign against them. But they also were intent on razing Azeroth to the ground per Blackrock Foundry’s dungeon journal (which is, y’know, an omniscient source overview all of the time thus far).
I just don’t know how we’re ever meant to see Grom as sympathetic in anyway, he’s just Garrosh but he actually got away with doing everything he wanted to do and so much worse and is simply forgiven at the end because we had an even worse person to deal with at that moment (Gul’dan + Archimonde, and arguably Gul’Dan was actually a better person than Grom in the AU as he only wiped out one clan whereas Grom wiped out several because they wouldn’t join him).
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I think by far the best part about WoD was showing that orcs were naturally inclined to acts of evil and genocide. They weren’t noble savages by nature, they were savage monsters.
Even without mannoroth’s blood, they were more than willing to do the things that have been mentioned. And that’s fine. A race can be evil by nature / inclined toward it, but through great retrospect and struggle, can overcome their evil nature, or at the very least control it to an extent.
I’ll take that nuance a hundred times over the current lore where everyone suddenly has the ability of retrospect and can put themselves into the boots of others across species and factions and go “damn i was a fool then, im so sorry, lets never fight again”.
However, Lightforged enjoyers…
You forget.
Draenei are the root of all evil. If Draenei hadn’t succumbed to Sargeras’ lies and promises of power, many attrocities could have been avoided. Moreover, if draenei had at least -warned- the planets they chose to flee to during their exile, or taken as many of them with them on the voyage, they could have saved hundreds, maybe thousands of species and civilizations. Instead, they damned millions to eternal flames.
The orcs ruined their homeworld, and did a number on Azeroth, but that’s it. The Draenei, both directly and indirectly, destroyed at the very least hundreds of worlds during their exodus.
Who is the real villain here?
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I think that’s simplifying it a bit too far.
We’re talking about trying to resist what is basically a god.
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It does tie back directly to WC1 which indicated that orcs were more like locusts by nature.
Personally as I said though, I quite liked the idea of the orcs being more calmer and peaceful. The problem however is despite how much Blizzard says this is the case, every time we’re shown the orcs without demonic influence, more often than not, they’re even worse than when under fel.
I’m gonna put on my biggest nerd glasses I got and say “Acthually”, that would be the Eredar.
The Eredar species is very much shown to be egoistical and extremely self-centered and serving. Which makes sense for a society built on really powerful mages. The Draenei however, is specifically not a species but a sect(or group) from this species who directly opposes this behavior and mindset.
So actually, the Draenei are fine. Eredar as a whole however, yeah they tend to be baddies.
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What I find interesting here is that Chronicle and Legion effectively absolve them of all guilt. We´re told that Burning Legion not only wanted to destroy everything (so, they would have gotten to those worlds anyway), but also managed to achieve most of that goal.
Yes, draenei led them to many worlds, but in the process of doing so, they may have postponed invasions of others and maybe even saved them.
Which kind of makes this a worse story than the original.
Chris metzen
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Chris metzen
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Something that’s often overlooked about WoD is the fact that while they didn’t have Fel, they did have Garrosh being Grommash’s Grima Wormtongue, and using the technology and the remnants of the Blackfuse Company to arm the hell out of the Iron Horde.
Power corrupts, no matter if magical or not, and Garrosh basically did the same tactic as Gul’dan and the Legion did, through false flags and half-truth premonitions. The only difference was that his power was a highly efficient High Fantasy Military-Industrial complex instead of Fel.
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(Yeah, I know I’m taking the bait Atahalni his cleverly laid upon.)
In defense of the Draenei, nobody truly knows how many would have actually followed Velen or rebelled had the true nature of Sargeras and his Legion been revealed to the wider society. If we even are to taken in count ugh the Man’ari questline it was clearly a join us or die for those who truly understood what putting themselves into service to Sargeras upon him and his Demons’ arrival. Even with the precautions Velen took, he still had a traitor among his circle… Side tangent here, but one would think that Naaru would have a pretty decent evil alignement detector or at the very least “Light worshipper” radar. Beaming the info on what was about to happen to those faithful and get them out of there… A 100 or so souls to escape an entire planet seems like a skill issue.
Also strange to blame the Draenei for something the Legion intended on doing anyway regardless whether they were taking refuge on a planet or not.
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According to the wiki, the Iron Horde was meant to be inspired by the British Empire.
And we all know that the British are our world’s villains. (This is a joke)
I’m reminded of a quote (paraphrasing):
You can judge someone’s true moral character by the way how they treat those that they hold dominion over, real or potential.
If the orcs turn into genocidal maniacs the moment they are given one speech [100] check and hellfire missiles from the Military Industrial Complex, then their moral character isn’t very good.
This maybe makes many people uncomfortable because of how eeriely similar that is to real world.
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Yeah, if someone’s first instinct when given a gun with no instructions is to go on an almost immediate killing spree, they’re not really a good person.
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Didn’t the Alliance win over the Horde properly like twice and one time they set up extermination camps and the other time they wanted to wipe them out on the spot over Jaina going ‘lol do it’?
It’s really easy to make either faction if you oversimplify it to hell and back. Garrosh didn’t just ‘speech check’, Garrosh predicted, accurately, to a T, everything that was going to happen. All of it. So, when he had earned their trust by, as they perceived, being able to see the future, they did just that.
Garrosh didn’t just give this tech to the orcs and gave a rousing speech and suddenly they started blasting. Garrosh predicted everything that was going to happen for six years, including the enslavement of the orcs by the Burning Legion, and then went on to save Grommash’s life personally when he was getting burned to death by Mannoroth.
To be fair though, both those times did have reasons for this.
First time around, they didn’t know what else to do. Imagine living relatively peaceful lives until one day, out of literally thin air, huge creatures twice the height of you appear in the hundreds of thousands and almost instantly goes on a rampage and conquers half the world in under a year.
Then after beating them back and stemming the tide, you’re now stuck with a bunch of them captured. You gotta do something but you still don’t even know what these things are. So setting up containment areas seem like a decent idea.
Second time around, in Jaina’s defense, this did come not long after she had survived a nuke in which all of her friends died.
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Having a tragic backstory to an act of evil doesn’t make it not messed up, otherwise, the orcs were also in the right, for they had no way to know they were being manipulated in the First and Second War, and their world was a husk of its former self by the doing of Gul’dan and the Shadow Council. That doesn’t make it any less messed up that they razed Stormwind to the ground.
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True, and I think it is pretty clear that she is portrayed as a more villainous role here. She has her reasons, but she is clearly also being overtly aggressive and in the wrong. And having recently replayed Landfall, her and Veeresa’s literal extermination of Blood Elves in Dalaran is also very much a bad thing.
yeah and both times they deserved it
aye because their moral integrity isn’t very great as the canon has established
this is more or less what happened.
It’s fine that Horde is the more evil aligned faction. They have noble savegeness about them, but they are also perfectly happy to be genocidal monsters when required.
And I find that infinitely more interesting than “everyone is nice but a different species”.
I’m pretty sure they invented the camps -because- Terenas, Antonidas and others did not want to outright slaughter the orcs, whereas Thoras Trollbane and Genn Greymane and such did. So they were more prisoncamps rather than deathcamps.
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