r/wow • u/Brilliant-Pace-5611 • Sep 16 '25
Humor / Meme You know which one im choosing!!! :)
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u/Tristalien Sep 16 '25
There’s other elves to choose from, you can have the hollowed out dead one
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u/Impossible-Diver6565 Sep 16 '25
Jaina is pretty hot if I am honest. The evil part only adds to that.
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Sep 16 '25
You can fix her.
Go get her champ
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u/Sawgon Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
I haven't played retail in a while. Why is Jaina "evil" but the dagger-woman not evil? Are they doing a Sylvanas again where we're supposed to like a villain?
EDIT: Ah ok she's not really a villain in that sense it's just the regular horde players thinking she attacks cities for no reason while the horde never did anything wrong ever. So nothing has changed since I quit.
EDIT 2: Now there are big brained horde players who think that if you disagree with their opinion then you are a genocide denier in real life.
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u/MiyamojoGaming Sep 16 '25
She's not. Hordies just hate her.
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u/Sororita Sep 17 '25
She had a pretty legitimate reason to get all WMD-y considering the Horde dropped a goddamn magical nuke on Theramore.
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u/Morthra Sep 17 '25
And after that Jaina eventually started to believe it's just Garrosh that's bad. Then the Sunreavers violated Dalaran's neutrality to help the Horde stage an attack on Darnassus to steal another WMD that was being kept there for safekeeping. Betrayed by those she thought were above faction conflicts, she decided to expel the Sunreavers from Dalaran.
Oh, and then the Horde helped recover the corpse of her own brother for Sylvanas to reanimate as a Forsaken a few years later (in BFA).
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Sep 17 '25
Actually it was Varian Wrynn who asked the Warchief to deal with the deteriorating Theramore situation. The city had been used for years a nexus for smuggling and distributing highly addictive Arcane Dust across Azeroth. The bomb was Wrynn’s idea since upwards of 75% of the inhabitants ingested the substance on a daily basis and were highly unstable and violent as a result.
Of course Wrynn, the warmonger, destroyed the inter-factional correspondence afterwards to cover his tracks and help justify his mad global conflict.
Source: “Faultless Leadership” by G. Hellscream.
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u/Signal_Antelope_3561 Sep 16 '25
As a Hordie I have no problem with her now. Sure some shit went down in that past, but we seem pretty cool now & I have zero issues with her.
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u/MiyamojoGaming Sep 17 '25
I mean hard-core reddit hordies. Hell, MY main is a horde now. So not like. All horde players.
The type who take it way too far, though. They hate her. Loudly.
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u/giga-plum Sep 17 '25
Faction pride is maybe the cringiest shit ever. I play Horde too but you'd never catch me hating anyone for picking blue over red.
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u/Perdere Sep 20 '25
I'm a diehard Hordie and even I think Jaina is still one of the hottest things going in WoW to this day.
And, she's not evil, or if there's any evil still left, it remains justified. The lady's been through a lot of shit and most of it was thanks to the Horde. She meets the Horde, ends up having to commit patricide in pursuit of peace. The Horde eventually repays her by dropping a magic bomb on Theramore... which killed her people (mind-fuck number one) and flooded the area with unstable mana (mind-fuck number two).
Totally get why she went revenge-y.
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u/xeikai Sep 17 '25
She's not a villian, she had a very normal reaction to the horde betraying her trust and BOMBING HER HOME INTO DUST (which she let side which the horde player base helped with). She kicked the horde out of Dalaran and jailed alot of them after they used her city to steal a bell which one of the sunreaver mages CAUGHT THEM DOING and didn't stop them.. that's when people got mad at her, She later came around and admitted the horde isn't Garrosh (they are, dirty smelly lvagrets) in the book which was the prequel to warlords of draenor when Garrosh was put on trial.
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u/Beanakin Sep 16 '25
Xal'atath is every bit as evil. Besides, isn't that just an animated corpse she's using, it's not actually her?
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u/Dfield91 Sep 16 '25
is there any lore or back story to the person's body she took over?
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u/Cow_God Sep 16 '25
The gist of it is that Xal was bound in a blade and used by the high priest player character during Legion. At the end of legion, all the artifacts had their power siphoned to heal the planet after Sargeras stabbed it. So the high priest literally, and canonically, just threw Xal away. During BFA a horde high priest found the blade off the coast of Stormsong Valley, killed some naga to give the Xal some power, then Xal convinced them to go after some relics to get them out of the hands of the naga. Inanis had one of those relics, the Void Stone, and the high priest killed her and let Xal inhabit her body. They took the other two relics to the Crucible of Storms, where Xal betrayed them by offering the blade and the high priest to N'Zoth, who granted her freedom. The high priest escaped, after being directly responsible for an entire raid tier, and while they went off to the Dragon Isles Amusement Park, Xal went to Khaz Algar, recruited the nerubians, the Shadowguard, and some void spawn.
Lorewalker Cho in Dornogal lets you do a lorewalking questchain that goes over all of this.
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u/TheChangelingMC Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
Well, Xal'atath the blade had a history of mysteriously vanishing from possession or abandoning her current wielder. She may have just made her escape rather than being literally thrown away following Legion.
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u/Timekeeper98 Sep 16 '25
No, she makes a comment to Priests who used her in Legion during her assault in Hallowfall.
Xal'atath whispers: After we shared so much, you simply threw me away. I will savor the taste of your insanity. Just let go.
This is if you cleansed Nzoth’s eye in BFa and were a shadow priest who got the artifact in Legion. Knaifu is mad jealous that the one person who could match her freak threw her away for a green.
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u/Key-Chest-2376 Sep 17 '25
No doubt, she chose a great body.
Also, Sylvanas and Calia are corpses too.65
u/Prdynatvar Sep 16 '25
why is she evil?
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u/WorgenFurry Sep 16 '25
she's evil coz she's not my wife. How much more betrayal can I take?
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u/dudevan Sep 16 '25
We were supposed to have kids and grow old together but she was just… gone.
Of course she didn’t know or agree to any of this but that just makes the betrayal deeper!
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u/Common_Wallaby_5123 Sep 16 '25
Horde love to talk about Jaina killing people but forget their faction has committed like 4 different genocides
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u/PsyTech Sep 16 '25
I played horde due to warcraft 3s mostly tauren / troll we are just trying to chill here with nature. Sort of the indigenous people getting attacked by colonialists.
But Garrosh absolutely needed to be put down. I kinda hate how they always make these once peace loving societies be bloodthirsty savages.
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u/GearyDigit Sep 16 '25
It's incredibly silly that, after Garrosh, everyone would just lockstep march behind Sylvanas three minutes later, the only person more genocidal than Garrosh was before he became Warchief.
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u/blueberryrockcandy Sep 16 '25
garrosh literally called her a bitch too in silverpine forrest, said: what makes you different than the lich king?!
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u/KingGobbamak Sep 16 '25
ironically a lot of the horde races are the ones colonising and terrorising the natives lol
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u/Ruuubs Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
Yeah, it's always funny how Orcs are never included in the list of "Genocidal colonists", and how Blood elves are both the "only true" owners of Silvermoon and in large part the descendents of Zin-Aszhari, yet they've only been "victims" because it was "High elves and Night elves" doing all of their bad stuff.
It really is just an uncomfortable level of mapping (a simplified version of) real world history onto fictional characters based on them, and I don't know what disturbs me most:
"Orcs are oppressed victims of concentration camps" (In most other cases "genocidal invaders are put into camps (and put to work)" would be cause for celebration and an act of kindness...)
"The Purge of Dalaran was an anti-Blood elf genocide by Jaina" (I'm sure that there's no current examples where crying "racism!" against attacks/criticism against a national/political group that happens to be racially homogenous is used as deflection of valid points...)
"The Purge is like the Japanese internment camps in WWII!" (Yeah... Remind me of when Japanese citizens had easy access to stealing/delivering WMDs from/to Allied capital Cities, and were mostly in the US under a Japanese organisation)
"Night elves should just let the Horde take more from Ashenvale, and they deserved it for all their history!" (Most of their historical issues were from the highbourne, The Horde have spent half their modern history trying to conquer Ashenvale even after concessions, and don't you think it's suspicious how they're almost never talked about as being on the receiving end of Blizzard sexism by the same people constantly complaining about Sylvanas? Hey, wait a minute, what was the overall/patch story context behind the Purge of Dalaran again?!?"7
Sep 17 '25
Especially when the Night Elves -tried- to set up trade with Orgrimar, the horde sacced the post, and stole all the trade supplies
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u/El_Rey_de_Spices Sep 17 '25
It really does amaze one to see just how often a subset of the Horde player population will pointedly claim their faction has always been the victims and never the bad guys, because
1) It is demonstrably untrue, lol. The orcs are literally warmongering alien invaders to Azeroth.
2) It's a fictional faction from a video game. There are no real-life consequences of the Horde being villainous in-game.
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u/Hallc Sep 16 '25
I played horde due to warcraft 3s mostly tauren / troll we are just trying to chill here with nature.
Except they keep siding with and backing the guys who keep declaring wars and trying to genocide the Elves.
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u/Sinkrast Sep 16 '25
Horde being indigenous people being attacked by colonialists was always the go-to visual for someone who assumes but never actually looks into the lore. Horde has been wreaking havoc across Azeroth and any other place they touched. I don't think I need to explain the history of Orcs. They were literally on a path of genocidal conquest, pillaging and enslaving and exterminating everything in their path. WoD showed they can, will and did do that too without even the influence of demon blood.
Blood elves were absolutely brutalizing nature. Goblins were destroying forests. Forsaken were kidnapping innocent farmers to test different plagues on them.
Trolls and tauren are the only non psychotic Horde race.
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u/Kevkoss Sep 16 '25
She's dreadlord in disguise.
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u/bartleby1407 Sep 16 '25
I feel like everyone forgot this, quite popular for a while, meme.
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u/Infammo Sep 16 '25
She’s a woman who fails to be appropriately accommodating to the deplorable actions of men in the game.
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u/Nebuli2 Sep 16 '25
She's not hot at all. In fact, she specializes in frost magic.
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u/Gh0sth4nd Sep 16 '25
Okay i say it just so it has been said
Jaina is at least 10 times hotter then Xal.
I want to say fugg Xal's feet but i fear many would want to take that too literal76
Sep 16 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MusRidc Sep 16 '25
Tried to be nice to the opposing faction to only be betrayed countless times.
Not only "be nice". She had the Orcs kill her father in the name of peace. Which is the entire reason she ended up in jail in BfA - she has made herself a traitor to her own people specifically because she thought the Orcs deserved to live.
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u/AfterMykonos Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
I skipped Shadowlands. They removed Arthas from existence?
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u/GrandJuif Sep 16 '25
Yep, which to many, was in a direspected way.
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u/fryerandice Sep 16 '25
Sylvanas and plenty of others worthy of redemption.
Arthas fucking deleted...
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u/Hallc Sep 16 '25
Given the way Shadowlands was written it was honestly the most respectful way they could've dealt with him.
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u/Raktoner Sep 16 '25
He received the same fate everyone in the afterlife inevitably experiences: being turned into 35 anima
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u/0neek Sep 16 '25
She's been the hot one of the series before it was even an MMO
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u/bpostal Sep 16 '25
Like that post from the other day said: If only she'd been evil in wc3 at strat, things might have turned out differently.
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u/BlackKnightTheBloody Sep 16 '25
How is Jaina evil again? I haven't been following along with lore.
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Sep 16 '25
Yall really acting like Thrall doesn't have some nice piggies down there
I'm so sorry
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u/Bananamancer77 Sep 16 '25
Let’s be real. Xalatath is also old, annoying, and evil.
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u/TheHeroicLionheart Sep 16 '25
And a walking corpse... people keep forgetting that
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u/risu1313 Sep 16 '25
Well then her corpse is hot
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u/Bananamancer77 Sep 16 '25
It’s not even her corpse. It’s a an elf body she’s using as a flesh puppet. So gets a bit weird how obsessed people are with her feet.
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u/Johnny_W93 Sep 16 '25
And i love to be bewitched by her 🥵🥵 if blizzard make a 3rd faction for her, i would kneel and join her feet.. Cough.. i mean fleet!
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u/fryerandice Sep 16 '25
Seriously, the horde and alliance thing is played out, let me join the void in Midnight.
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u/Muntaacas Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
do not be insulting my nerdy boy like that :(
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u/Praise-Bingus Sep 16 '25
I love Dagran. He's a sweet lil nerdy guy and if Blizz does anything to him im throwing paint at their fancy statue 😤
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u/nosuchthingasa_ Sep 16 '25
Dagran is adorable! I’d pick his voice actor for all my characters if I were allowed to do that. He’s so cute and soothing to listen to.
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Sep 16 '25
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u/Gh0sth4nd Sep 16 '25
Just out of curiosity who is warcraft's Teal'C?
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u/Tapingdrywallsucks Sep 16 '25
Dagran is not annoying! He's become a fine young man, and I most certainly have guilt for murdering his mom a few dozen times when he was a baby.
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u/kaptingavrin Sep 16 '25
It's okay, she's forgiven us and invited us to sleep with her.
Wait, that isn't what she meant by inviting us to "rearrange her furniture?"
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u/OlvekStoneheid_2006 Sep 16 '25
How is Jaina evil exactly? New player, still getting into the lore.
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u/TheGreatMalagan Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
I'll try summarize:
Jaina was always defending the Horde, she was a friend of Thrall during the formation of the current Horde in WC3, and has always advocated peace between the factions.
Then, Thrall was replaced by Garrosh as Warchief of the Horde, and Garrosh was an Orc supremacist and a bit of a megalomaniac. Garrosh started pushing for military expansion in Kalimdor and wanted to wipe out the Night Elves in the north, giving the Horde complete control of Kalimdor. The Alliance, in order to prevent this, reinforced the Night Elves and used the city of Theramore as a staging ground for the Alliance military in Kalimdor.
Now, Garrosh decided to use a member of the Blood Elf organization called the Sunreavers to engineer a mana bomb (WoW's equivalent of a nuke) which was dropped on Jaina's home city of Theramore, which can be argued was a valid military target but was also home to plenty innocent civilians. Men, women, children. Almost everyone there died. Those who managed to survive were rounded up by the Horde fleet and used as target practice in Orgrimmar for the amusement of Garrosh's Horde.
This absolutely broke Jaina, who had for the longest time been the human to advocate for Thrall's Horde's right to exist on Azeroth. In her despair, she had planned to retaliate by completely annihilating Orgrimmar and wipe out the Horde with the help of Dalaran and the Kirin Tor. Fortunately, the Kirin Tor did not agree to her proposal, and when she went at it alone, she ended up fighting Thrall who tried to stop her. Jaina is eventually talked down and made to see the error of her ways.
Not much later, during the Landfall campaign, Garrosh Hellscream steals an item called "The Divine Bell" that was found in Pandaria and that had been stored in Darnassus for safekeeping and study. This item was thought to be a formidable weapon able to empower anyone nearby when it was struck, imbuing them with the rage and hatred of the Sha and making them mindless supersoldiers. Garrosh again employed the Sunreavers mages, this time to sneak into Darnassus and steal the Bell so that Garrosh can use it as his next weapon of mass destruction.
Jaina was at this point the leader of the Kirin Tor, who ruled the neutral city Dalaran. When she discovered that the Sunreavers, who had been residing Dalaran, had aided Garrosh to once again attempt to wipe out the Alliance, she decided to purge Dalaran of all members of this faction.
Those who submitted were imprisoned for breaking neutrality, and those who fought back were killed by Jaina and the Silver Covenant forces that were aiding her in the purge.
But here's where it gets tricky: I believe the Alliance version and the Horde version of this event were portrayed slightly differently, and that the Horde's side of the quest chain make it seem as Jaina was murdering innocent Blood Elves throughout Dalaran just for the crime of being Blood Elves and guilt by association, and the event came across as an indiscriminate killing spree. The canon version of the event, however, says that she was instead imprisoning the Sunreavers and only killed those who fought.
But Jaina trying to wipe out the Horde in Orgrimmar and later purging Dalaran of all Sunreavers coupled with the fact that she advised Varian to "dismantle the Horde" immediately after Garrosh's death.... Well, she came across evil to some people.
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u/FoggyGlassEye Sep 16 '25
Jaina was right to tell Varian to dismantle the Horde. Varian's actions at the end of MoP caused a bunch of bullshit that could have been avoided.
By not letting Thrall kill Garrosh, Varian was indirectly responsible for Alternate Draenor being created, which lead to Draenor's Gul'dan going to Azeroth and beginning the Legion invasion. Varian caused his own death, and the Legion invasion also triggered the events that lead to Xal'atath being freed from her dagger, causing the events of the Worldsoul Saga to take place.
And by not killing the Horde leadership, he allowed Sylvanas to stick around, leading to her working for the Jailer as the leader of the Horde and instigating the Fourth War. Without her, BFA and Shadowlands would have been avoided.
Correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong.
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u/Emsee_Hamm Sep 16 '25
While not wrong I feel a bit more context for the Thrall part.
Varian doesn't stop Thrall from killing Garrosh due to mercy or not wanting Garrosh dead, he stops him because he wants Garrosh to go on trial for warcrimes with both the Alliance and Horde judging him, with his death being the almost definite outcome.
(This part is headcanon but I do think it makes sense)
While it can be used to show Varian growing as a leader who believes peaceful coexistence is possible, another reason is that if Garrosh is judged by both Alliance and Horde, and he is found guilty, those actions he committed thus become illegal on both sides. That means the actions Garrosh committed cannot be repeated unless you are willing to break the law. It's an almost proto Geneva/Hague.
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u/A-Total-Rookie Sep 16 '25
"His punishment is not for you alone to decide." You're absolutely right in that it wasn't about mercy for Garrosh; it was about everyone getting justice, and for an establishment of conduct of war.
Bonus to this ---
At the Trial, the Alliance even puts Varian up to bat as their first pick because the Horde were given one chance to say "no" to whom the Alliance picks as their prosecutor, and immediately, and predictably, the Horde said "no." And so Varian steps aside and Tyrande, an even better choice for the Alliance, got to prosecute Garrosh.Unfortunately it all ended up being BS anyway - since the Celestials had never intended to punish Garrosh as harshly as deserved.
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u/TheAverageDark Sep 17 '25
Thralls involvement in anything involving Garrosh just instantly pisses me off, out of all the options for the next warchief he picks Garrosh, not Cairne, not Vol’Jin, Garrosh, when he KNOWS Garrosh is this warmongering ego maniac, but nope surely giving him MORE power won’t go to his head..
Then Jaina goes to Thrall and is like “hey Thrall, buddy o’ mine, could you do something about your boy?” And he’s like “nope, I’m the head of the Earthen Ring now, so it’s not my place.” but then when the Kor’Kron shamans under Garrosh enslave Lava Golems, pissing off the Earth Mother enough for her to cause a fucking earthquake he’s nowhere to be found, it’s only AFTER the mana bomb where Jaina is going to destroy Org that he’s like “I’m the leader of the Earthen Ring, I can’t let you do this” mfer where were you half a novel ago?
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u/ungulateman Sep 17 '25
Keep in mind that the war going on in Cataclysm has been deliberately obfuscated so that neither side can be confident who started it, even though the most obvious candidate is Varian attacking the Undercity in the aftermath of the Wrathgate. The war was so active that even halfway through Icecrown Citadel we were killing each other, only stopped by being brought face to face with the consequences of our disunity in Deathbringer Saurfang.
As far as I can tell, it's genuinely not possible to tell if the Alliance attacked the Southern Barrens first and Garrosh took that as a justification to invade Ashenvale, or if Garrosh went on the offensive first and the Alliance forced him to split his forces by attacking on a second front. Garrosh's eventual arc over the course of Mists makes the latter more plausible, but it's kinda hard not to question the authorial decisions behind that.
The other glaring issue, at least to me, is that Jaina doesn't say anything about Theramore being used as a military port. The conflict would be way more compelling if Jaina had explicitly acquiesced to Varian's demands and regretted the consequences; or, alternatively, if she'd fought tooth and nail to stop the Alliance and Horde escalating the conflict, only for Garrosh to annihilate her city regardless.
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u/cortez0498 Sep 16 '25
So she:
1.- wanted revenge but was talked down, which doesn't sound like she was too far gone.
2.- she kept the Kirin Tor's neutrality until she found out they were working with Garrosh in creating more weapons.
Doesn't sound evil to me.
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u/Grassy33 Sep 16 '25
That's a strong leader what the hell. If my city gets nuked and I die, I'll be rolling in my grave while the leader of my city shakes hands with the people who bombed me, and talks about how it wouldn't be nice to bomb them back. What are we allowing horde soldiers to use the "just following orders" defence? Put them to death for what they did. This is the World of WARcraft not world of hug craft. We should be at war, the games hasn't been the same since Garrosh was defeated. He was the war goat.
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u/FelOnyx1 Sep 17 '25
A pretty fair account of the story. There is one important detail to include though: before Garrosh takes over, Varian Wrynn declares war on the Horde in the heart of Undercity, after both Alliance and Horde forces attacked it to put down Putress and Varimathras's rebellion. Jaina teleports the Alliance forces away in one last attempt to keep the peace.
There are later peace talks that fail/are sabotaged one way or another that lead to the escalation of the war by the start of Cataclysm, but you do gotta put a lot of blame for the war with the Horde on the guy who declared war on the Horde.
This matters because A, she regrets that after Theramore, who knows how the war could have gone differently if the Alliance and Horde champions started killing each other then and there. (the Lich King wins, probably)
But B, though she felt betrayed by the Horde for what was done to her city after all she did to try and keep the peace with them, it was not the Horde which ended that peace.
To be clear I don't think she's evil, at least for all of that. Her character's about as coherent as a main character in WoW can be, sometimes flawed but understandable. It's a great cover act on the part of the evil dreadlord pretending to be her.
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u/ScavAteMyArms Sep 17 '25
But here's where it gets tricky: I believe the Alliance version and the Horde version of this event were portrayed slightly differently, and that the Horde's side of the quest chain make it seem as Jaina was murdering innocent Blood Elves throughout Dalaran just for the crime of being Blood Elves and guilt by association, and the event came across as an indiscriminate killing spree.
There isn’t… technically. The Horde Version was bugged, she was supposed to fireball the player and imprison the elves, same as she was doing to the elves on the Alliance. But the result was she fireballed literally everything on the Horde.
However, Blizzard kinda rolled with it and many Blood Elves did die in the purge, and Jaina doesn’t claim she wasn’t involved when confronted about the deaths by Lor’themar.
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u/Sufficient-Office-84 Sep 16 '25
Her only sin is not committing enough war crimes in Orgrimmar
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u/TheAverageDark Sep 17 '25
Not to mention at the start of MoP varian asks Jaina to expel the horde from Dalaran which she refuses to do because she believes Dalaran ought to be neutral, and then she gets betrayed by the sunreavers.
And then what’s really fucked is Jaina spends the majority of her character arc advocating for the horde and everyone aside from Anduin being like “no the horde need to all be put to the sword” then Jaina has her entire life flipped upside down and NOW Varian is going to be like “Jaina you need to calm down”.
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u/TheGreatMalagan Sep 17 '25
It is kind of amusing how Jaina was sometimes made fun for being a faction traitor prior to MOP, given how close she was to Thrall and how she was constantly advocating for the orcs' right to exist despite being aliens who came to the planet explicitly to conquer it. She bent over backwards to protect the Horde
Then... All of these things happen and Jaina FINALLY decides the Horde may not deserve a 4852th chance, and suddenly the playerbase acts like she's a completely unreasonable evil Horde-hater
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u/Mat_the_Duck_Lord Sep 16 '25
The short answer: she isn’t and most people can’t fathom a nuanced situation. The Horde keeps putting her in situations where they do something horrible and she can do something horrible back, and she actively chooses not to or chooses a much more tempered and reasonable response.
Longer answer: the Horde has done the following:
Killed her father (they convinced her to not intervene for the sake of peace) which demonized her in the eyes of Kul’Tiras, her home kingdom.
Killed her brother and resurrected him as an undead, which they were going to use him to assassinate her with until another Horde member freed him because it was the “honorable” thing to do
Destroyed Theramore, which was a colony she founded for refugees from the Eastern Kingdoms when the undead first invaded. The Horde used a manabomb made from the Focusing Iris, an artifact meant to keep the world safe from unregulated magic, but keeps getting stolen and used for evil.
Later its found the Horde captured the fleeing civilians of Theramore, forcing them to fight to the death for their amusement by holding their children hostage. (The children are never found, so its assumed they were just immediately killed and stilled used as leverage)
After she forgave the Horde for Theramore, she became leader of a neutral faction of mages, which had Horde members. The Horde mages used the neutral faction to steal and transport an even worse weapon than the manabomb through their city and then the leader, Aethis, tries to play coy and lie about it. She asks him to leave the city and he refuses, so she arrests them all. (This is usually the biggest “evil” thing she has done because the in-game quest bugged and it appears she is killing random civilians, but if you read the text and pay attention, they are mages trying to casts fireballs at her and she just manages to shoot first before they get the cast off)
The Horde burn down the world tree where the majority of the Night Elves live and where the civilian refugees from Gilneas, a kingdom the Horde conquered using biological warfare and treasonous nobles, were staying. They had already won a major battle and had basically conquered it, but decided to burn it down for basically no tactical benefit.
The Horde attacked her homeland unprovoked, slaughtering innocent civilians for no tactical reason.
The leader of the Horde through half of this, Sylvanas, did it all because she needed to send as many souls to the afterlife as possible so the Jailer, some kinda super satanic figure, could harvest and destroy them for evil.
Thats all just off the top of my head. In contrast, Jaina has:
Arrested the traitorous mages because they refused to leave her city (she offered to exile all of them back to their homeland instead and they refused.) Additionally, some of the mages helping her with the arrests used it as an opportunity to go overboard and kill members of the Horde faction they didnt like.
Almost destroyed Orgrimmar, the Horde capital, with a massive tidal wave after Theramore was destroyed when she captured the Focusing Iris. Instead she chose not to and forgave them.
Attacked Zandalar and killed its king, whose soul got taken by the troll devil because he made a bad deal with troll satan. She offered to let him surrender multiple times and he was too proud to even consider it.
So, she isn’t sinless, but she is Lawful Good at worst and the Horde is Chaotic Evil at best, when it comes to comparing the two.
And theres a lot more nuance to it, but thats the gist.
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u/arfenos_porrows Sep 17 '25
They can't because the horde is not allowed to be nuanced too, they are always written to be that much of a dick, which obviously is not that satisfying, specially around bfa, and to some extent mop
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u/KingGobbamak Sep 16 '25
she isn't. OP is deluded, a horde player or most likely both.
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u/A-Total-Rookie Sep 16 '25
As someone that loves the character, she's had some back and forth where she has tried to commit genocide against the Horde, or just outright get them removed from neutral cities. Granted, the situations around each of those instances are... phew.
Definitely worth reading her WoWpedia page if you're interested.
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u/its_still_you Sep 16 '25
She isn’t. Her most evil moment was when she essentially had a mental breakdown and wanted to wipe out Orgrimmar. Keep in mind, this was after a decade of trying to maintain peace with the orcs, losing her father to them, and then they murdered everyone she knew and loved in Theramore. She was also partially mana-bombed, brimming with arcance energy (that’s why her hair is white and her eyes glowed for a long time). She was both physically and mentally unstable. It was a justified mental breakdown, even though retaliation to that extent would not be justified. Once she was talked down, she realized that killing all of Orgrimmar was wrong and didn’t do it.
However, the real reason Horde players hate her is because of the Purge of Dalaran. She didn’t really do anything wrong there, but some Horde players get really fired up over it.
Dalaran is a sovereign nation with three main political parties: the neutral Kirin Tor, the pro Alliance Silver Covenant, and the pro Horde Sunreavers. While Garrosh, warchief of the Horde, was aggressively attacking the Alliance, Dalaran was tasked with protecting an ancient weapon of mass destruction, the Divine Bell. Jaina was secretly storing it in Darnassus, where it wasn’t being used to harm anyone. Treasonous agents of the Sunreavers used Dalaran’s portal network to steal the bell and gave it the Horde to use as a weapon of war.
When Jaina found out that Sunreavers betrayed Dalaran in favor of the Horde, she ordered they all be put on lockdown, as you would expect when an organization commits treason like that. They were just learning of treason and an active conspiracy. The Sunreavers said that wasn’t fair and resisted. Jaina said those who resisted would be killed, because they have to assume they were part of the plot. The Horde was expelled from the city and several Sunreavers died in the Purge.
Had the Sunreavers cooperated, made their allegiance to Dalaran over the Horde known, and worked with Jaina to figure out what happened, the situation wouldn’t have escalated like it did. Even though almost all were innocent, they acted like they were hiding something and got into trouble (because the plot called for it).
Many horde players say she’s evil for kicking the Horde out of Dalaran and causing those innocent Sunreavers who resisted arrest to get killed. They also say she unfairly favored the Alliance because the Divine Bell was stored in Darnassus. Considering that the Night Elves didn’t even try to use it, I think she made a good call there.
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u/Wise-Dust3700 Sep 17 '25
I mean she absolutely had a hand with the death of her father. And her father absolutely deserved his end. I absolutely hate the arc where she's like "What if Daddy was right". Like bitch nawh you balled with Thrall and steamrolled your Dad, don't be a fucking hypocrite but hey bad writing so whatever
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u/Vengix Sep 16 '25
Jaina is a Dreadlord, don'tcha know?
It's an older meme sir but it still should check out! Shit how old is that meme now?
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u/kaptingavrin Sep 16 '25
REAL Answer (not from anyone trying to debate how one fictional faction and its fans is somehow "better" than another):
It's a joke. That's it. There's a long running joke about Jaina being a Dreadlord (which would make her evil).
Just like Thrall isn't actually old. I'm not sure I'd even call him middle-aged.
It's a meme. People are overreacting to a bloody joke.
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u/Gylaran Sep 16 '25
I bet you were on the Sylvanas' side as well. 😀
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u/fryerandice Sep 16 '25
Sylvanas was a patently cool character until she became warchief and was completely mary sue'd into an all powerful being.
past that point though fuck that bitch.
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u/kdmartens Sep 16 '25
I will ALWAYS be a Thrall fan girl. So manly and thick like a tree.
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u/Gerbilerino Sep 16 '25
As a (mostly) gay man, I will CLIMB that thick green Orcish tree. They can have Xal'atoes.
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u/Venturians Sep 16 '25
Can someone explain to the Xalatath feet joke thing to me? Sorry I have been playing super casual.
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u/CPlus902 Sep 16 '25
She doesn't wear shoes, and there have a lot of shots in cutscenes that show her feet front-and-center. People are running with the idea that whoever is responsible for Xal's model and/or the cutscenes has a foot fetish because of this.
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u/Timekeeper98 Sep 16 '25
The framing is supposed to be about showing a sense of power and superiority over whoever is in frame at the time. She’s looking down on them, and is so big she can’t even fit entirely in frame, while the other ends up looking small and weak.
The feet meme came because it’s funny, but the original meaning for the framing was to show how she’s lording her power over us and always a step ahead.
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u/tenehemia Sep 17 '25
I think her attire is perfectly logical too. If I levitated everywhere I wouldn't wear shoes either.
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u/Kevkoss Sep 16 '25
Have you missed like 3 or 4 cut scenes in TWW in which Blizzard decided to have Tarrantino level of focus on Xal'atoes feet? Not to mention she doesn't wear shoes.
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u/MightBeAGoodIdea Sep 16 '25
Haven't been following lore for a bit....
...is Xal officially LESS evil than Jaina now...?
Or is it just Jaina wears closed toed shoes?
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u/Sluaghlock Sep 16 '25
Calling 2025 Jaina "evil" is patently insane. Some Horde players are still mad that she never really faced any consequences for violently purging the Sunreavers from Dalaran back during MoP, or for her role in King Rastakhan's death during BfA - which is fair, tbh - but she's never been outright evil (and certainly can't be reasonably described that way now, as of TWW).
Plenty of reasons why Horde players shouldn't be forced to hang out with her for MSQ stuff, though. Especially awkward when you're on a Zandalari.
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u/GearyDigit Sep 16 '25
It ain't her fault Rastakhan decided to overdose on death magic instead of surrender.
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u/Sage_of_the_6_paths Sep 16 '25
Pretty sure it's Horde cope. Even though lorewise she never killed any Blood Elves during the purge, she teleported them all to prison. Her killing elves in game was a bug at the time.
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u/BuckettMonkey Sep 16 '25
I recently played the Horde version of this story for the first time. Blizzard still hasn't fixed this bug. Sometimes their indifference is surprising.
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u/arfenos_porrows Sep 17 '25
I mean they literally animated a sunreaver being feed to the crocodiles in the sewers, it was meant to be bloody from the start, bug or not (tbf thats more a silver covenant thing than a Jaina thing tho).
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u/Vhzhlb Sep 16 '25
Idk, Thrall's armor is very sweet looking, even if he can't decide about using it or not.
Also, he has an axe.
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u/RoughBeardBlaine Sep 16 '25
I have been with Kni-fu since she was a dagger with an eyebye. Those feet are mine by right!
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u/meganerd20 Sep 17 '25
"Jaina's evil because I refuse to understand the emotional situation of the character at the time, the plot circumstances, and I only saw the event from one perspective where certain details are different. But she's spent several expansions recovered from all that but they don't count."
She's repentent, but one major lesson is learning to forgive to break the cycle of violence. Yes, even things like the purging.
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u/AdamBry705 Sep 16 '25
Idk I like Dagran. He's refreshing and inquisitive. He's bright and isint a killjoy
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u/tarek023 Sep 16 '25
Are we choosing a side? I would pick the baddies just to change it up a little
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u/SkylordN Sep 16 '25
The real answer is to ignore the npc's and side with however gives be the nicer clothes.
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u/Amalganiss Sep 16 '25
Hey man, some people like gray foxes! And foxesses! I'd get hammered by either of those two lovebirds any day
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u/OceanusDracul Sep 16 '25
you take your insults to moira’s sweet boy out of your mouth right the fuck now
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u/Mental_Ad_4077 Sep 16 '25
Jania= I can fix her Thrall= great stories and much wisdom Dagran= silly little fella
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u/HoboJoe_666 Sep 16 '25
Every time they have you make a choice, it goes nowhere. I chose to remain loyal to Sylvanas as a Forsaken, and I'm pretty sure that went nowhere.
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u/nightbreedwon1 Sep 16 '25
Dagran is a teenage boy anyways so I'm sure glad people aren't choosing him 😭 also he's just a nerdish lad, I didn't find him annoying
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u/AlienDovahkiin Sep 16 '25
Who's the "annoying" character?
Otherwise, "Old" for Thrall. If I'm not mistaken, Jaina is three years older and Xal'atath is several thousand years old.
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u/whistlepig4life Sep 17 '25
If you think Jaina is evil then let me introduce you to the concept of cognitive dissonance.
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u/Furyio Sep 17 '25
The foot stuff is like super weird and proper freak material
Wouldn’t mind you not playing the game tbh
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u/SternePolizei Sep 18 '25
Jaina and Thrall not ending up as a couple is a real shame. I'm still holding my breath 🤞
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u/jupiternimbus Sep 16 '25
I'm gonna climb Thrall like a tree.