The Alliance is held together by some very old ties. The humans, gnomes, and dwarves have fought together for a long time. Generations. As much as I know there were ties even before the Orcish invasion.
In contrast the New Horde is young. The Orcs have barely been free of the demons. The trolls and tauren are about as recent. The undead even sooner. And the belfs, they got here yesterday it seems. There hasn't been time for alliances to be tradition and unquestionable, to be taken for granted and unshakable.
Really it is Thrall and his relationships which keep the Horde together. And safe. It was who brought in the Darkspear and the Tauren. While they swore loyalty to the Horde, at the time he was the Horde. With Garrosh replacing Thrall, a lot of loyalty will be lost. Not a split yet... until Garrosh starts doing what he does: run his mouth and start conflict.
As Garrish turns the orcs towards expansion against the night elves and away from their allies, the Horde will fragment. How much? I don't know. But I think it's high time we had a civil war to sort out some bad elements.
I can see it now: the trolls break away, at least some towns, and end up in conflict with orcs attempting to retake the territory. Quests on both sides would set Horde players against breakaway or loyalist NPCs. Eventually it is resolved, but tensions run high.
Two individuals are ultimately killed or dethroned: Magatha Grimtotem and Garrosh Hellscream. While the tauren consider breaking away, she takes the lead with her Grimtotem tribe. A combination of loyalist tauren and orcs put down the rebellion and kill her. Or do we? I see an opportunity for her to have a mere setback and end up with the quilboar, undead or otherwise, along with the renegade Forsaken who have previously been plotting with her.
Garrosh will meet his undoing at the hands of Saurfang, making good on his promise: "I will kill you before I let you take the horde down that dark path again". He might not kill him, but instead beat him into submission and take control of the orcs and reunify the Horde.
I think it would be for the good of the Horde. The tauren and trolls need a test of loyalty, and proof that they can and should be loyal. If they can stay without Thrall, that is the proof. The orcs need a cleansing, a removing of the reckless ones, and a civil war would reveal and kill them. Thrall somewhat kept them in line, but I believe Saurfang can be more direct. He was there and knows what the bloodlust leads to, like a former addict who can explain that actually no, slaughtering men, women, and children is not glorious.
Imagine a Horde which is formed not by murloc attacks and centaur marauders, but by removing all the dissidents: the Grimtotem and Zalzane and Garrosh. Imagine a Horde which is together because it chose, at cost of blood, to remain together. It would not be a pacifist Horde, it would not be a warmongering Horde, but it would be a Horde which would do whatever it needed to survive.
Meanwhile the Alliance can rebuild itself and take some of what it has lost: Gnomeregan, Stromgarde, and who knows what else.
Two factions, consolidating their strength, preparing for war over what is left of their world. My axes needs sharpening...
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11 comments:
Lore wise horde is bullshit.
Antagonistic races clumped up together for the sole purpose of being an opposite to the Alliance faction.
Lets start from the Original WC3 factions:
Human Alliance: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes
Orc: Orcs, Trolls, Tauren
Undead: The Scourge
Night Elf: The Sentinel.
Ideologically, Orcs and Trolls fit. They are both driven by the same bloodthirsty needs and their alliance is traditional. However, I do not see why the good natured Tauren will decide to have a long lasting alliance with these monsters. But let's admit it because of the events in RoC.
The forsaken however are a completely different issue. The horde fought againts the Undead Scourge just like the Alliance. The forsaken fight against the living who consider them to be monsters. Even though they ARE humans(Lordaeron inhabitants) turned into undead by the scourge. Alying themselves with a bunch of Orcs and Trolls seems completely artificial.
Their leader Sylvannas Windrunner is a High Elf. Therefore she has ties to the Human Alliance more than to the Horde. To me the Forsaken could just as easily be Alliance or Horde, or their own independant faction.
The blood elves are also really far fetched. In wow we continue to have High Elves which are a part of the Alliance, although not playable, and yet the horde has blood elves. In WC3 TFT, the elves start calling themselves blood elves and are still a part of the human alliance. Their transition to horde is a pretty weird one. It has been done, in my opinion, just to increase the popularity of the Horde among players. (Adding pretty characters, and Elves! to the faction). Moreover Blood Elves are magical. There is nothing magical about the horde (they are all a shamanistic oriented faction - sure they have mages but that's because of game balance). If blood elves love magic they should be around traditional mages: which is the Kirin Tor (Humans, High Elves and Gnomes).
To me, this faction, is quite the impossible mixture of creatures and ideological beliefs. No wonder it is unstable. So I dunno, seems kinda far-fetched to me that someone can be loyal to such a faction
I know...uh, virtually nothing about lore. But from my first day playing it seemed strange to have these pretty blood elves aligned with those ugly, drooling orcs.
But the Horde wanted a palidin, and you can't make those uglies standardbearers of the light. That is until Cataclysm when you'll get Light-wielding cows.
Nothing bullshit about the Horde at all Okrane. They're all outcasts of Azeroth who can't survive on their own, banding together under Thrall's leadership to become something much stronger than they are alone.
Trolls: outcast tribe of weak trolls who couldn't make it on their own.
Tauren: the tauren were being wiped out and forced to move by the centaur before they joined up with Thrall.
Undead and Blood Elves: No longer welcomed by THE alliance, they turned to the only other alliance that would welcome them. Without the horde these guys would be wiped out.
Same theme applies to the more minor additions to the horde too, such as Taunka.
Bloodelves as part of the horde made sense to me becasue of Sylvanas Windrunner as well as all those bridges that Kael'thas broke. Forsaken, well. Alliance didn't exactly welcome them with open arms either, but horde, or more importantly Thrall did. Horde needed numbers and Forsaken needed allies that would protect them from being killed along with their former scourge brethren.
So back, to Bloodelves (and btw, horde was popular before them, just not among the younger "kawai" generation) They went the same way as Azshara, messing with magic too much, using fel magics (like old horde) alliance in their fear didn't want them anymore.
high elves chose not to seek alternative sources of magic when sunwell was destroyed, so they weren't a threat. Bloodelves? were.
As for Tauren? Thrall. pure and simple. their loyalty is to Thrall. Thrall helped them when they were being overrun, not alliance.
Saying that Thrall "welcomed" them inside the Horde does not counter my arguement at all. I mean sure, you can make up lore just as long as u like. Give me 10 minutes and I will make up reasons for which in Cataclysm Blood Elves decide to break their alliance with the Horde and join the Human Alliance and Draenei actually go join the Horde. It's not hard to make up stories...
However, you must notice that putting together shamanistic, human eating, savage orcs and trolls,
with good natured, sun worshiping Tauren, with Risen-from-the-dead, swearing to snuff out the living Forsaken, and magic-addicted, seeking new power sources elves, is at best a really hard to believe, unstable, alliance.
I wouldnt be surprised if more civil wars would occur inside the Horde. It's predictible.
I might buy Orcs-Trolls-Tauren in one alliance because of Thrall, and Forsaken-Blood Elves in a second because of Sylvannas...
The main point you needed to take away from that was that they were together because in spite of their differences they have specific similarities that are thematic to all horde races.
Both orcs and trolls have renounced cannibalism. They aren't the Old Horde, and are in fact actively at war with them. The tauren aren't quite the all-peaceful perfect race they seem, though I would be put them by far the lowest on the Evil Scale. The blood elves seem like a good fit: exiled spellcasters who have been deprived of that which sustained them, just as the Horde were.
Sure it won't be stable, but to call it "hard to believe" is taking personal bias and proposing that it is something more.
I acknowledge that it's all just making up stories. All of it. The entire Warcraft universe is made up stories created to drive gameplay. The bloodthirsty Horde existed to create conflict, just as the evil Scourge did after. It's all completely made up.
Plus you're making the huge mistake of treating WoW lore as deep or logical
I never really understand the lore behind WoW. Aren't Horde meant to be "good guys" and have an alliance with um, the Alliance? So shouldn't players from both sides be able to group and communicate with each other? And how does PvP work then?!
I'm so confused!!
I play Forsaken, it's time my brothers and sister rise up, Putris led the way at Wrathgate, Death to the Scourge, Death to the Living!!
Unfortunately, Blizzard will not give horde players that big advantage in terms of content. If Horde has a civil war and Alliance doesn't then why play boring Alliance?
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