The Horde, the council and a Warchief

Lore Story
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Now for the longest time the Horde has been about survival in a world that hates the disparate races that makes it up. (I am talking about the Horde Thrall revived after he took up the role of Warchief.)

Often savage and brutal but more controlled than the Old Orcish Horde that was corrupted by the Legion and sent on a campaign of slaughter unto Azeroth. Usually the Alliance could act as the shining bulwark and stalwart defenders of order and the Horde could act as that more chaotic force of pure power.

For a long time this has been the backbone of Warcraft and it has been made clear over some years now that someone at Blizzard is afraid to tell the types of stories that made Warcraft what it is.

You could see that difference in the types of quests usually given by each of the factions, many of the stories on the Alliance side were often about defending and maintaining their lands, the Defias is a great example of the Alliance’s struggles.

While the Horde was usually about taming the wilderness, exploring and surviving the harsh environments it was forced to stay in.

The two factions served as checks and balances on each other, they would fight and make war often. Hatred ran deep, tragedies happened. But it also acted as the catalyst that created so many amazing stories.

Now having talked a little about the background I feel I can go on from here, so I apologize for my rambling above if it was to much for some people.

As you know the Horde no longer has a Warchief and has created a council to govern in the positions stead. To me it is rather clear that the council is way to slow and ineffective to properly guide the Horde. I think the fact that the Horde did not show up to help defend Silvermoon is a good example of this. By all rights the Forsaken at least should have been able to march forces up into Quel’thalas quite easily.

While the position of Warchief could be a splitting force within the Horde (See Garrosh and Sylvanas) under proper leaders it was very united. Thrall and Vol’jin (Sadly for how short his reign was) did do much better than the two formerly mentioned.

I really do think the Horde needs a Warchief again, one singular figure that can rally the rest with him/her. We need not dissolve the council necessarily but could act as proper advisors to the Warchief.

As for who should be Warchief I think there is only one choice now and it is Thrall, no matter how much he does not want to do it he is the only one who can do it.

Blizzard also needs to be less afraid of using the Horde for story telling, and also not be afraid to talk about the darker parts of the Horde’s identity. The savagery and struggle to control blood-lust has ever been things that the people of the Horde has had work with. Not even the noble Tauren are free of this.

I also personally want some of that old badassery back, the old heavy metal album cover feel that the Horde had. When you heard ¨Lok’tar Ogar, For the Horde!¨ thundering across the battlefield you felt electrified, something primal inside lit up. It is more than a battlecry it is the Horde’s spirit in its purest form.

It is a roar that can turn the tide of the direst battle, when the Horde lets loose there is little it cannot do.

But I merely wanted to say my peace on a topic that is very close to my heart. If you have something you feel you need to add then by all means let us have a discussion on it. Just talking lore is fun and it gets you excited.

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Thats not a council problem since neither alliance forces show up.
And horde force appear finaly in 12.0
It not on the council, its on the writter.

No, since therr is a verz high concentrations of ligh recently, first thought the sunwell, secon the many ligh user and thris lighbloom

Undead wous really suffer pain there, even alaonsus doul describt he onnlz mange to endure with his willpower.

So from a lore perspective and logic one it make sense undead wont show up.

Juat to fall back on old pattern.
Multiple time the warahif uses hia siprem authority to uses the horde as weapon of destruction and war.
That the warchif positin was siaolves ans replaves with thw council is a logic step after being missused TWICE.
It shows even growth sinve they acknowledge the failure and disolved jt aibce the position is burned and unreasonable and woud soon or later bring another garrosh, another sylvanas
It shows they can move on and learn from thwri failure and let lose of it.

Like with voljin and cairn who were instals as adviaor to guid gattish and he disregard and disrespect them and dissolve the position quickly.

Neither did sylvanas cares of the opinion od the members.

The council/adviser woud be toothless paper tiger when another warchief with absolute authority and commander in chief is in power.

Thez don’t need another warchief, ot woud take anz growth and common sense instal a szstem taht failed twice

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Did Turalyon, Alleria and Arator suddenly stop being part of the alliance? Get real.

Been that since BFA mate.

It doesn’t. The Forsaken are neighbors of Quel’thalas yet they are nowhere to be seen. This elven unification story is just full of holes.

Alliance has a supreme commander just fine with no one abusing the power.

alliance opinion spotted and rejected.

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warchief? more like lootchief they will go insane and get killed in another raid

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Apart from the desirability of the Warchief as a concept… How would you propose we actually get there as a story? As it is we have a council. Founded especially because a good part of its members had to turn against two Warchiefs before. I have a hard time thinking of a scenario where such a council with that history decides to give all power to an absolute ruler again, who can make quick decisions for the whole faction without having to go through any checks and balances.

So I’d assume you’d have to fracture the council first, before the notion of a Warchief would be attractive again from an in-world pov. Maybe the Horde itself could fall apart and disband because it’s lack of reactivity makes it useless as an alliance, until someone steps up and gives the Horde a new reason to stand together, convincing the different peoples to rejoin under their leadership? Or you could aactually kill off the council and have the new Warchief be the one that rises up to keep things from falling apart by action instead of right? Either way, what I’m thinking would be needful is very drastic (though still storylines I’d much prefer to chasing some goth girl or another through worlds). What were you thinking of?

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Ah a very good question indeed and thank you for asking it.

One way I could suggest bringing back the position of Warchief is for it to be a specific station during War more or less. You could take the current status of what has happened in Quel’Thalas in that for example the Council has been to slow to send aid to one of their allies, due to in part politics, voting etc that would go on in a council.

Select someone for the position of Warchief that in times of great distress can take command of the overall forces of the Horde to meet those threats instead of leaving such to the council’s slower hand, leave them with the day to day dealings.

That is one option.

Option two is a complete return to the old system which would be radical and unstable to deal with out of the bag, recent history and all.

But at the same time I would have this not be Garrosh’s or Sylvanas way but a return to Thrall’s Horde as it was. This would effectively call for Thrall to get off his laurels and do what both Saurfang and Doomhammer would tell him to ¨Lead your people¨.

Even if Thrall has some stigma over him because he left Garrosh in charge I still think he is one of the few who can inspire true loyalty from everyone else.

Anyway those are some of my ideas, thanks for the question again.

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Yeah the whole horde npc’s showing up to go hey we here all along for the horde as hindsight as it was, the intent was indeed to make it clear the factions didn’t ignore them and I agree, this was a fumble by the writers, because it implies that even they can’t really come up with a reason why the horde wasn’t there.

When in the thick of the lightbloom or near the sunwell yes, other areas they should be just dandily doodily fine as shown by the forsaken still having a pressence in Tranquillen.

Even with Foal iirc it was implied that he could stand outside the sunwell just fine, but entering the well chamber proper with the beam of light there would’ve gotten him out yeah.

The arguement for a warchief is moreso focussed on having a single leader to act as a face for the faction, rather then a council of literal who’s that lack the expression of a personality a single leader could have (they all kind of blend together into a faceless body nobody cares about)

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I think we first have to accept the reality that is now apparent.

Blizzard has deliberately sidelined both factions since the end of Battle For Azeroth.

This was not apparent in Shadowlands, we crossed over into a brand new reality so a unified questing structure and a lack of Horde and Alliance NPCs made sense, we didn’t question it.

It wasn’t apparent in Dragonflight, it was a brand new continent we were exploring together though they did create a joint Expedition when they could have had us adventuring besides the Explorer’s League and Reliquary instead.

It started to become apparent in the War Within, but we began that expansion by arriving at Khaz Modan and then leading the bleeding edge vanguard through already settled zones.

But now in Midnight, with an attack on a Horde homeland, when in all honesty the entire Horde should be front and centre defending that homeland, we got nothing. Then we collectively realised that 'hang on, it has been seven or eight years since the factions were treated as a driving part of the plotline.

So in a way we are like boiled frogs. We accepted the de-emphasising of the factions because the context of where we were going and what we were doing supported the factions taking a background seat.

Midnight broke the spell though. We had a situation where the Horde absolutely should be front and centre and it wasn’t. And it wasn’t because Blizzard forgot. It was the result of a deliberate choice NOT to use the Horde and instead do a story about Elves.

This was the penny drop moment. Blizzard has written the story as if we have moved past factions. I would wager a lot of people have not. I mean you’ve seen it recently, discussed on the forums or elsewhere in the net. Something is missing which folks find hard to articulate but they definitely know isn’t there anymore.

Some people call it ‘edge’ and that is as good a term as any. In reality, what it is the shift from more grounded threats to the increasing prevalence of cosmic themed enemies and bad guys prone to bellow ‘mortals, you meddle with forces beyond your ken!’ at us, with scale functioning as a substitute for personality.

The de-emphasising of the factions is a major contributing factor to this loss of identity.
And this isn’t just a Horde problem.

The Alliance is a complete mess. The Night Elves seem off doing their own thing, some races such as Gnomes seem to have dropped completely off the radar and I couldn’t even tell you who is actually running the thing.

Anduin was not the kind of leader you need for a major player faction in a videogame. You need a charismatic figurehead who you buy as faction leader, who can command the entire might of that faction and whom you can fist-pump in real life and feel good about following into conflict. In other word, you need a Varian.

And the Horde?

They put a committee in charge of the Horde.

A committee.

I don’t know whose idea that was, but if you are telling a story you don’t put a committee in charge of a major force within that story. They are narrative death.

So if it were up to me, this is what I would do.

Firstly, recognise that the two factions are core to the experience of the game and its identity. Nobody is ever going to be shouting ‘For the Army of the Light’ at Blizzcon. Even ‘For Azeroth’ comes across as wishy washy. Return to having parallel levelling paths for both factions through expansions…it not only improves replayability, it creates a sense of distance between the two sides.

Secondly, accept that players being able to play and group together across faction does not mean that the factions themselves need to be downgraded. WE should be the exception to the rule as the big heroes of the game, the factions shouldn’t be softened to the point of pointlessness to accommodate us. Explain us away as mercenaries or legends to whom the rules don’t apply.

Thirdly, refresh both factions. Narratively have tensions rise again between them. Go through each race, establish who is the leader of that race within the faction, then choose a single leader from that group as the overall leader. Have Anduin finally abdicate, replace him as High King with a new leader willing to lead Stormwind and protect the Alliance from the Horde. He wants to do it anyway.

Same deal with the Horde, have a single Orc…and it must be an Orc just as the Alliance leader needs to be a Human…step up and have the Council realise a single leader is needed to cut through bureaucracy and disagreements and to protect the Horde from all threats, including the Alliance. It doesn’t even have to be titled Warchief, a new title can be selected to embody the ethos of the Horde.

This leader should not be Thrall. I am kind of hoping Thrall dies during the World Soul Saga so we can move past him.

This leader should also NOT be a Garrosh. Enough villain batting Horde leaders, someone can be hostile to the opposing faction on the grounds that the opposing faction is a threat to them, not because they are secret megalomaniacs.

Establishing leaders for races and an overall leader for the faction gives them back their spine, they can be used again in stories to drive the plot.

And as for the narratie reason?

The radiant song. Have it explained that for the past few years the song has been growing stronger and it has been deliberately tamping down tensions between the Alliance and Horde so that the heroes of both sides would be able to stand together against the Void. This is why the Horde and Alliance stepped back from animosity…they aren’t acting as they should. Once the song ends…and it will…old hatreds and distrust will reassert themselves and as they do, the need for a singular leader for each faction who can serve as a rolemodel for the players will become apparent within the game.

Out of the game, we need heroes for each faction who are villains to the other side.

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That’s pretty much it, the issue isn’t “Council vs Warchief”, it’s about Blizz not knowing what to do with either faction now (For the foreseeable future, anyway) another endless faction war is off the table.

So the Horde has a council that does nothing, the Alliance has a high king that just quiet quit his job, and the storyline is about the Windrunner family struggles, and Xal’atath being up to something, but nobody really caring about it.

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And other tils thw sole focus on faction killd it in the kong term because atirz favoriism aa better racials which caused an unbalance.

We had varian and he git later jilled.
He was fiat nit kiked well byr at keaat he had balls and take command and had a mire aggression course

Yes, and whz?
Shall i remind you why?

As reaukt if two warchief who abused the postiin and juat wavted wage war, and njt act un intresst id the horde
Garrosh: brown irc supremacy!!
Sylvanas; im a agebt fir master boldie and just have ben manioukatiin to feed the maw with nuch aouks as possibke for a cosmic holocaust.

That they Albanin it is consequence, nuts Charakter grow to acknowledge the failure.

To say were going back is atuoud, it revert the grow and make the charaker look stupid.

Is like , yeah, giving Germany his FĂźhrer back.

Yeah, tear shain tve playerbase appart…is nit like we know hiw damaging tvat was.

Tebauon without a proper secelopment in atiez bring bithibg and tehy cant go again full faction qar, we all kkow how wekk taht was received.

Probabem hus the the monarchy evdes sibce there us ni successor.
Ir si you wabt a council for thw alliance-tje same thing you dispse dor the horde.
Ir a "supreme " leader which woud be juat warchief just only with another name

Again, we saw how well that with garrosh worked

Not necessarily since the peace is now for 5 yeas and horde and alliance stand together multiple times, nlime ub DF and niw Midnight
It dibt make sense againt after every external thread to gi at each other throat..
After we fight together.
That’s why even bfa didn’t make sense after Legion.

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Thanks for the reply,

Unironically, I do kinda love this solution that basically retcons every bit of character development we had in years. The idea of everyone slowly waking up, noticing that they were under some kind of mind control, going through the treaties they signed in the last years and declaring them void for magical manipulation, while the “enlightened ones” find out that we were drugged for our own good and maybe shouldn’t throw away peace, just because the way we got it is iffy, is quite interesting as well. It also makes Azeroth more shady in a Xe’ra “I know better” kind of way, allowing for much more reasonable resistance to letting it control everything than “I’m in an end of the world cult, so we oppose the world”, or the vaguely reasoned purely cosmic crap we have been feeding on.

I don’t really see it plausibly leading to a fraction along faction lines, but I certanly see the potential fpr ground-level conflict, and any way they reintroduce that is a step in the right direction by me… And it’s even a fair extension of their “violence bad, hmkay?” message they have been forcing on us for years. “Peace is frail and can’t be forced, but must be actively protected” with the player as the fighter for peace in a world of war is a cliché by itself, but at least one that allows the world to regain some of its brutal premise. Not exactly the metal/Warhammer endorsement of the “glory of war”, and the focus on heroic acts instead of tragic consequences, that I’d really love to see, but that’s probably too much to asj at this point…

Now, do I believe that anything like that would happen? That they would be willing to basically put it in the text of the game that they messed up and that making peace was only possible with a dose of mind manipulation? That the “great” character moments of forgiveness and moving beyond were imposed on the characters from outside? Not for a second, but still a cool idea.

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So you want the last original leader we have left to die too? What kind of mindset is that even?

Well everyone who could have gotten screentime is dead now. No moving back from that. Which is also why I wager that the Horde is largley absent in Midnight despite blood elves being our allies.

Their old heroes get all the attention right now ltierally.

I totally agree.

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Look I am genuinely not being insulting here, but that post is too difficult to read and I don’t wish to puzzle it out. I am happy to respond if it is cleaned up or if the ideas are reposted in a better format.

Thanks for your response. Essentially, the genesis of the idea is simple. The Alliance and the Horde are currently behaving out of character. The tipping point for me was Eitrigg joining the sons of lothar, something so jaw droppingly ridiculous I wanted to find any other explanation, and Danath being so forgiving towards the Horde.

The planet wide, consciousness warping song of a world-soul is a convenient get out clause should they choose to use it. Nor do I think it would necessarily be mind-control. I don’t know if Azeroth would even be familiar with the Alliance and Horde or if it would simply feel hostility and hatred and it would have acted to soothe them and tamp them down.

If this theory were true, I would also not see it as a prelude to the return of full-scale war. After all, folks would still have had those years of peace. Instead, it would be the return of friction and bleeding borders, the sort we had in classic Warcraft, with the two sides uncomfortably grinding against each other and low level conflicts breaking out.

The two sides would instead compete with each other, seeking advantages with neutral powers, promoting faction pride and trying to maintain an overall peace whilst turning a blind eye to the odd bloody nose they give their opponents. And of course some would see value in the peace that was built, though they may end up less in thrall to the concept.

What Warcraft needs isn’t a faction war it is a cold war with bleeding borders. We used to have all those folks criticising the faction conflict memeing that the Alliance and Horde kept teaming up to fight bigger foes before falling out with each other again. Now we have seen what the world is like when those got their way…and it is bereft of drama, tension and edge.

I would much prefer what we had when we were at loggerheads and occasionally teamed up than this forced love-in that has hollowed out the two greatest factions in gaming.

I mean can anyone even tell me who is running the Alliance these days?

Does anyone even care even more?

Because if the story cannot grow if he remains, then he should die. Nobody should be kept if their presence harms the story. What has happened in the past is the Horde has lost leaders gratuitously, most notably Vol’Jin.

Besides, Metzen may wish to retire…

Yet the Alliance is still in as equally a bad situation as the Horde. Both sides need to be in a state of opposition to the other to function properly and both need defined leaders to drive the plot forward.

You want a healthy Horde? You need a healthy Alliance. And they both need to be treated with respect. The Alliance needs a new leader in the Varian mould. I have no idea if that character currently exists or if they would have to create a new one.

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Being one of these guys that advocated against the factions before, because I thought forcing everything into 2 unwieldy powerblocks (that couldn’t ever lose members for gameplay reasons) was actually holding the potential for way more interesting conflict stories back… Yeah, I kinda got my monkey’s paw wish on that one, and it seems a faction conflict at low simmer is probably the best that they could and can manage. Without it, it seems not even non-conflict faction stories are possible for this team…

To be honest, I’ve stopped caring about that one when they introduced the High King. The Alliance was, and still is, actually the place where I wanted a dysfunctional comitee that leaves the different races to act for themselves. The dwarves antagonizing Tauren and Frostwolves there, the Nelves fighting it out with the Orcs here, the Draenei hunting Warlocks everywhere, and the comitee writing sharply worded letters to try to herd all of that and more into the same direction… That would have been so fun and made faction conflicts sooo much easier…

So yeah, since I’m not getting that, I really couldn’t care less what random human they put up as the face of the Alliance, or what their politics are. As far as I’m, concerned their role is to step out of the way and let the story happen.

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they have cool leaders left because they never die. In my view that means they have priviliges.

That comes 10 years too late. I rather keep Thrall before I lose yet another OG. Cairne and Vol’jin were bad enough.

Turalyon until Anduin returns.

Eitrigg is a traitor simple as. He rather goes on to kill fellow Orcs of the Blackrock clan just because they reject Thrall and his ideas. And joined the organization who made it their life goal to eradicate ALL Orcs back in the day.

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A lot of MMO’s used this format a lot back then and even now. It has that connective tissue that keeps the player as an acknowledged entity without tying them to anything incredibly restrictive.

It might not be the ‘best’ narrative solution, but no one can deny that is the one that has worked incredibly well especially when the world itself was transforming and progressing.

Even WoW used to do this… I wish it was back. I’ll even do a ‘Champion of Azeroth fades, so others may take their place’ chapter just to have that element back.

EDIT: Scratch that, I recount RPG and Fantasy worlds in general use this ._. It just works!

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Another great advantage is the way it usually comes with its own team of peers or followers that you have a pretty close working relationship with, and that don’t change all the time. Like the class halls, that were Blizzard’s most earnest attempt to put us into that free agent legend role, did in Legion. It was always a pretty stupid idea to try to make kings and generals our only regular adventuring buddies.

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Great point actually.

Even if the Class Halls let go of their respective hero’s artifacts to strip the Sword of its power, keeping the halls around as an active element would have been fantastic. Even more if, when the artifacts’ power were given over, you also stepped down as the leader of said class hall to let someone else with a more specific mindset to govern that whilst you just become an acknowledged ‘figure’.

Ahhh… the missed beats and potential.

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