Why did Thrall allow the blood elves into the horde?

Aight, i’mma biting into this “nurrr i like X so you liking Y is dumb” pie. Because there seems to be some fundemental misunderstandings about the Second War/Vanilla/TBC. Much against my better judgement of getting drawn into serious conversation here.

Access to Outland, the Blood Knights and more of a foothold on the EK; they were only ‘accepted’ when they arguably weren’t on ‘life support’ any more and dumped Drathir in the dumpser. Again. (The Blood Knights canonically came in hand a couple of years later FYI, when Arthas awoke. Sylv was very giddy at the idea of them being in NR). And magic, beyond the Forsaken there wasn’t really any great deal of sorcery going on in the Horde. And even then they’re no Silvermoon.

Anyway.

I think people are very much conflating Thrall’s Horde with the Second War Horde, as though they’re one and the same or they are at least longing for a return to it (which is impossible). After the Second War, the vast majority of orcish clan-traditions died out due to the sheer losses the orcs took alongside being put in camps/being hunted.

In the camps themselves you had a cultural death, Thrall didn’t even know he was a frostwolf until he met the Grom. And any questions he asked within the camps or orcish settlements he came across external to Durnholde he was given jaded “it’s over boy, none of it matters any more. We bleeped up.” or simple “O-orgrim will come save us, r-right?” and those orcs were typically shut down by the more jaded ones. The modern Horde is largely clanless, the only really two surviving clans are the Frostwolves and the Warsong, the former who eeked by in a secret valley (AV) and the latter who were actively hunted. Grom vocally regretted the Second War, because as it turns out invading another world and declaring total war on its denizens gave them a very valid reason to hunt your people down, the Second War cost the orcs their culture and (arguably) their future as it was at the time. Which is why Thrall’s Horde is this mingling of frostwolf ideas counterbalancing Warsong ideas. At least, that’s how the books depict it. And you can see how, from the very start of Warcraft 3 this has tempered the orcs and generally made them more weary were Thrall says something akin to “ignore the humans, don’t attack them. But if they attack us, slaughter them.”

And then we dip into Vanilla Warcraft, were the Horde has picked up new allies (The Tauren and the Forsaken) and are sold as “the underdog faction, were they may not necessarily be family but they are forced to be allies in a world that doesn’t like them.” Which is how the Forsaken were inducted into the Horde via the Grimtotem (mostly because they were gunna use the Forsaken to remove Cairne and the Bloodhoof tribe from power).

And even then, it was the Forsaken chomping at the bit to get the Blood Elves in the Horde (another arrow in Sylv’s quiver against Arthas). And bear in mind at this point in time you had the Alliance being a genuine threat, you had dwarven imperialism and humans enroaching into the Barrens and night elves generally being aggressive.

And arguably this is why Thrall wasn’t fond of the Amani (as someone mentioned earlier), because the Second War cost the orcs -everything- and they no longer aligned with what the orcs had become/were forced to become. Whereas the Amani didn’t get what they wanted and went back to their forests.

To touch on this, Silvermoon actually wasn’t really involved in the Second War for a long time. It was isolationist. It did its own thing, skirmishing with the trolls. Menathil asked for aid and all the elves did was send Alleria and some other rangers, “there you go guys, we’re helping!” Silvermoon wasn’t chomping at the bit to go out and butcher the poor widdle orcies :< hell, Anasterian was reluctant to do -anything- at that point in time.

But prior to this the Amani had joined the Horde in exchange for the promise of Silvermoon’s destruction, and even -THEN- Anasterian didn’t shift his stance until Amani/Orcish heads were thrown at his feet. And the Horde were already attacking the outer forests of Quel’Thalas - The Blackened Woods, later to be the Ghostlands.

And even after the war, the elves didn’t contribute much to the Alliance or had much dealings with orcs after. They simply retreated away again and returned to their cold diplomatic stance.

There seems to be this idea going about in this thread that somehow the Second War Horde was wronged, or they are owed some reparations or apology for losing in a total war which they initiated. In which they attempted to scour more kingdoms from Azeroth.

Edit: Hell, even through all this - and despite the corruption going on AT - the camps. Menathil planned to integrate the Horde into the Eastern Kingdoms, to reform them and then let them go. Which is arguably more gentle than whatever the Horde/Amani had planned for the Alliance if they won.

If a roaming warband demolished the kingdom at the opposite end of the continent, then marched towards my own home and attempted to bulldoze that too and butcher everyone in it just to lose… Why would they be given an apology? What mental gymnastics are being conducted in this thread?

The only orcs to be “wronged” so to speak, were the children fostered in the internment camps. Who didn’t get told much of their heritage beyond the flustercuck that was the Second War and having to witness their parents fight in gladitorial combat for entertainment. What loyalty would they have to the Amani?

Even Arthas comments on this either stop mistreating Thrall’s people like that or stop training Thrall. All Blackmoore did was create the perfect general with insider knowledge of human military tactics and infrastructure and a very legitimate reason for the orcish youth to hate them. But even then Blackmoore wanted this because he wanted to use the orcs to bulldoze Lordaeron and insert himself king before taking over neighboring lands. You can’t even really lay down Thrall’s mistreatment at Lordaeron due to the corruption and hidden agenda of one nobleman.

Look, if you like the Amani over the Blood Elves then whatever. Yes the Blood Elves were added to the Horde to balance faction numbers, but if you oppose the blood elves being a part of it then surely you would oppose the Forsaken too?

I like strawberry ice cream and you like chocolate, I don’t particularly care.

But from what posts i’ve had a cursory glance over, there’s some real gold medals being dished out chief. It wasn’t until Warcraft III that Blizzard actively flipped the orcs and tried to make them more sympathetic.

Edit: People are also forgetting that the Scourge actually hammered the Amani too (Zul’Mashar/Ghostlands), and that the Amani attempted a flat-out invasion of Silvermoon after the Scourge ransacked the place and failed*. The Amani coming into World of Warcraft were just as much of a sickly Horse as Silvermoon. And even if the Amani joined and the Horde turned on the elves, would the Forsaken have been idle while this happened? Would the -Alliance- have been idle? Seeing as a restrengthened Zul’aman would threaten the Hinterlands -and- Stromgarde.

*This was while the elves were destroying the Sunwell which was actively killing and poisoning them and also fighting the Scourge.

Sources: Arthas - Rise of the Lich King, Lord of the Clans, Blood of the Highborne.

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No orcish heads, only troll heads. Further more, the Ghostlands were not the outer forests of the Quel’Thalas, and the trolls were attacking north of the Elrendar river.

Prior to becoming the Blackened woods or Ghostlands, they were part of Eversong, quite well-populated. What is now Eversong was only the northern parts of these woods.

The entire Blackened Woods shizz came only after the Red Dragons burned it.

Anyway, this is just a minor correction, your post is quite informative.

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Implying they didn’t have access before that.

Which weren’t used to full effect. The odd one or two appearing here and there means little when their homeland is opn the verge of collsape. This is going as far as WorLK when Sylvanas threatened to pull her forces from Quel’thalas and effectively letting the Blood Elves fall if they didn’t send their other forces.

When would you consider the Blood Elves finally able to hold their own without the threat of collapse? It certainly wasn’t by WorLK and they were part of the Horde then.

But that is a rather later development after they had to be bailed out. I highly doubt the idea of securing a better forhold on EK was to align with one of the weakest nations, pull that nation out of the dirt and hope that they would stay. The amount of resources sunk into such a move outweighs any early benefits they got from it, when then goes against the idea of seeking a strong foothold.

Yes, the Horde did change a lot over them years I agree, but you need to remember how many survivors came from that time. Saurfang goes on about how there are so any veterans from the earlier wars yet nothing is brought up about it when they actually fought against the Forsaken and Blood Elves but we always hear about the Draenei being slaughtered or other crimes what were committed from either side during them times.

That doesn’t just go away just because you are allies and that should have been more of a point of tension when in the Second War Quel’thalas came close to being destroyed.

Oh please, the Alliance was acting uncharacteristically moronic throughout all of Quel’thalas in order to push them further away from their old roots and into the Horde hands. After what happened in Warcraft 3 there is no way the Night Elves would act that way.

And yet they still added the Raventusk to their Horde despite it being from this exact era. You can’t just pick and choose which stuff you want from the past and then give this reason as an excuse. It is hypocritical.

Ye, they wanted to kill them all and got annoyed they didn’t get their way. Shouldn’t this be, ya’now, a point of tension???

I don’t care for an apology, but for something like that to happen and for it to have no repercussions on their story together is utter BS.
We have this Night Elf-Blood Elf hatred story which was added randomly in TBC which happened like 10,000 years ago be a massive point of tension but the razing of Quel’thalas done by the Horde to the extend the only reason they still stood was the massive shield defending Silvermoon isn’t. Like seriously? This isn’t even mention the whole Garithos thing.

I think you are missing the point of what I mean by the Second War and their conflict with each other. There should be more to it then what there is, and what we have between the too in nothing.

Ye I am, and like I said before I can understand from a meta perspective, but from a story perspective it was utter trash and I will have that stance with it because I will always prefer gameplay>lore. And this goes for any race which joined a faction for BS reasons.

Ye I am pressing the Doubt key on that.

Lets put it this way, the core land of the Amani was intact, Zul’aman was intacted. Silvermoon and the Sunwell were destroyed. Well I say “were” as the entire invasion of Quel’thalas was apparently done in a small single stripe of land and not a complete invasion like it was back in Warcraft 3.

Still, Amani were easily in a better spot than the Blood Elves at the end of the third war, easily. The best of the Blood Elves weren’t even on the same planet at that point and yet you think they were on the same level?

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As I don’t want to go into some complex and messy quote tree, I’ll give a final answer with a list-like post that sums the basic points:

  1. No, the Darkspear had no reason to glorify a Forest Troll that fought for Forest Troll interests. Specially given he came from a tribe that looked down on them, and would probably kill/enslave them all if he could (much like the Gurubashi, which even were fellow Jungle Trolls, tried).
    It’s one thing to have some player like Zuljins cause, but from an ingame/in lore perspective, the Darkspear had no reasons to wish the Amani cause well.

  2. The Amani didn’t want an alliance and the Blood elves did. It really was that simple.
    The Horde didn’t need either, and didn’t ask for them. But if the Blood elves offered to help them, and brought with them a series of perks or benefits, then the Horde will obviously go along with it. Regardless if that would upset someone that had decided, by himself, to stay out of the faction.

  3. The Amani breaking away from the Horde is no new lore. It goes all the way back to the first novel that talked about the tribe. Tides of Darkness marked the beginning of the fallout between them and the faction.

  4. Past relations and grudges were of little consequence to this new Horde. And given the state all sides concerned were in, the reactions these had were fitting for the setting.
    Blood elves were desperate for some help, and the Alliance had just proven they didn’t want them, so they turned to a more moderate leader like Thrall, the Amani had distanced themselves from the faction and were fine with trying to keep to themselves as they had done for several hundred years before orcs even arrived to this planet, and Thrall was willing to take on whatever ally he felt like trusting, even if at that time, he didn’t even need any new one.

So, in all, regardless of how people feel about it, the Blood elves joining the Horde made sense given the development that led to said event.

Were there other routes? Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the current one isn’t valid/reasonable.
The fact that some people don’t like it means little.

You know how else this could’ve made “more sense”? If the Darkspear had been written out of existence, and instead Thrall had met Zuljin first upon breaking out of the interment camps.
That Tauren had remained neutral like centaur, and Ogres had joined the faction instead.

Oh, and regarding the Forsaken, given the legacy of both Blackhand and Orgrims Horde, they make more sense as a follow up for old Death Knights, than most of the current races.

All the above would’ve given us a “true” representation of what the “Horde” was first meant to be.
But instead we had a few “tweaks” to it.

People might find these adjustments or deviations regarding the faction concept of their liking or not, and I’m not judging it, but that’s beyond the facts.

Edit: And regardless of this whole post, I do agree on the fact that Blizzard went overboard with making Zuljin and the Amani an antagonist.

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Lorelol. :slightly_smiling_face:

Because the horde needed a pretty race to balance the factions, and because they wanted to give Shamans and Paladins to each faction.

As for the lore reason, the blood elves proved that they could deal with their own issues and be an asset to the Horde and a valuable ally in the north EKs, plus the Forsaken backed them up.

I personally don’t mind this. If they could have made up an excuse for the Forsaken to join the Horde (which was a very poor and nonsensical excuse in my opinion), then this was also a viable thing to do.

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the horde didn’t live up to metzen’s bias and thus the blood elves was sacrificed to boost the horde numbers and since thrall is basically a self insert of metzen him self of course they’d be welcome into the horde

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Time to make pilgrimage to SunStrider Isle to spit on his grave. Here comes pros of being allied to them.

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Dath’remar and Anasterian. Truly great kings. None shall ever forget their greatest deeds.

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only if i can behead you for your insolence troll mongrel

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You will not, we’re allies. Now excuse me I’m on my way to desecrate the grave. :relieved:

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i can’t wait for the zandalari queen to get lol crazy too so i can add her to my troll head collection looks at the head of Zul’jin and Prophet Zul

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Heeey it’s okay I have enough saliva I can spare some for you too. :wink:

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when the last troll falls there will be celebration in quel’thalas

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And all nine citizens will be invited!

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Btw since Sylvanas broke the Helmet , it means that Scourge will now run rampant. Last time I checked Windrunner spire was overrun by undeads still.

Does that mean they will get another scourge invasion? :thinking:

Oopsies.

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i’m sure it will be fine there are zero consequences for anything in this game you could outright murder azeroth and nothing would change

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The Revantusk should reserve the right to build a temple to the Amani loa in the ruined parts of Sivlermoon. After all, they are allies with the Sindorei.

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how sad you imagine your self free but your just another dog of the Zandalari Queen and Quel’thalas will out live you

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You understand, that I’m not serious about this?

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