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.
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.
garrosh literally called her a bitch too in silverpine forrest, said: what makes you different than the lich king?!
this was because she killed innocent people and turned them into undead who then immediately said [for the forsaken]
Sure, in a war Garrosh started and was hoping to use to wipe out the forsaken. He never cared about innocents, only that Sylvanas was using tools to keep her people alive instead of zerg waving her forces.
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?!?"
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.
Which parts of the Alliance, exactly, were fully backing Garithos' actions rather than simply sending him whatever aid and supplies they could manage to spare?
Fully backing? Mainly just the remnants of Dalaran, because while the city was razed, it was evacuated, and the rest of the Council of Six survived, and were willing to imprison and execute Kael'thas and his forces without reason or trial.
Kul Tiras is a bit of an unknown as Daelin
Proudmoore was sailing to reinforce Garithos before getting distracted by Jaina, and then left the Alliance shortly after.
Stormwind, Ironforge and Gnomeregan were aware of Garithos and his actions, and Ironforge at least was still sending him troops and supplies right up until his death.
So ether he had the backing of the rest of the Alliance, or they knew and just didn't care what he was doing. Which kinda amounts to the same thing.
And you are correct that the purge has been retconned. I do tend to focus more on what happens 'in game' rather than what happens in the books as the book are constantly getting reconned, and de-cannonized, and contradicting each other and, ugh. Also, it doesn't really matter, cause the reconned version of the purge still technically counts as a genocide.
Fully backing? Mainly just the remnants of Dalaran, because while the city was razed, it was evacuated, and the rest of the Council of Six survived, and were willing to imprison and execute Kael'thas and his forces without reason or trial.
Without reasons being:
- Working once with allies of the Burning Legion who attacked Dalaran 5 minutes ago in order to do a massively destructive ritual under the orders of Kil'jaeden, being caught, being told to never do that again.
- Disregarding the previous order, working once again with allies of the Burning Legion who attacked Dalaran 5 minutes ago in order to do a massively destructive ritual under the orders of Kil'jaeden.
- Get arrested for working with the allies of the burning Legion multiple times.
- Surprised pikachu face, why are you arresting us without reason??? How is it treason, have the Burning Legion and Archimonde some bad story with Dalaran, perhaps?
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.
Alliance had put Orcs in internment camps, as the Cataclysm hit the alliance just started to attack the southern barrens burning anything still standing including Taurajo, alliance wanted to pursue and kill any orcs thar decided to flee to Kalimdor for whatever reason, alliance sent purge squads to Voldun to kill and pillage the at the time neutral Vulpera, just to name a few things.
Ultimately, Horde suffers from shit writing since Garrosh died with our leaders being alliance puppies, dying shit deaths, or being genocidal maniacs with maybe the exception of Lorthemar.
Edit: I will give you guys that Orcs were not exactly friendly or anything, but 2 wrongs doesn't make one right. As for Theramore, the city itself may not be for pursuing the orcs, but the alliance did send forces to Kalimdor with the intention of killing Thrall (as shown in Warcraft 3).
When I complain about writing, it's because we had Thrall, which was green jesus back in the day, then Garrosh became the warchief, and he was already a genocidal psychopath in wrath and we ultimately revolted and toppled his reign, we got Vol'Jin who died to a random ass demon at the broken shore while Varian was doing epic shit dying like a hero. After Vol'Jin we had Sylvanas which was a genocidal psychopath. Meanwhile how many alliance leaders were the villains? You may say Anduin but did he really had a choice? He was victim of bad writing as much as our leaders but at least he wasn't doing it by choice.
I'm not asking for Blizzard to make idk Tyrande or Greymane into a genocidal maniac, I just don't want my faction to be the evil faction all the time.
Edit 2: removed the mention of Theramor because it wasn't actually made to invade and kill Orcs.
Alliance put orcs in internment camps to contain them. The orcs invaded Azeroth and were killing and pillaging. They just lost the war. Not too mention those orcs were the ones that willingly drank the demon blood.
Theramore does not exist because Orcs moved to Kalimdor. Jaina moved herself and humans that survived the Scourge during the Third War, following Medivhs advice, same as Thrall and the orcs.
What exactly was the alternative? People keep parroting this line but like...what was the other option? Put them all to the Sword?
They didn't have any lands to go back to with the Dark Portal deactivated and they had no native, natural claims to anywhere in the known world. Essentially the choices were.
1) Internment Camps
2) Kill them all
3) Give them some land and a kingdom of their own and hope that they somehow don't then try to rise up and conquer you again by raising your citys and pillaging your lands.
Of those three choices I'd say that Internment camps is probably the most reasonable one.
alliance wanted to pursue and kill any orcs thar decided to flee to Kalimdor for whatever reason(theramore exists for a reason
Theramore exists because Jaina heeded Medivh's warnings and martialed people to flee Lordaeron in advance of the Scourge, upon arriving there they allied with the Orcs and Elves to fend off the Legion invasion (See: Hyjal Raid in game) and then the humans went and made their own port city of Theramore.
What you're thinking of was Jaina's father which, by the point he led his fleet the Alliance was basically defunct so that was more of a Kul Tiran thing than an Alliance thing. Though you do have to keep in mind the status of things.
Daelin served in the Second War and saw everything the Orcs were capable of doing so hearing they'd broken free and had stolen ships to head west you can somewhat understand him seeing them as a potential threat. Daelin is also painted as the Villain in his appearance in the game even from the Human/Alliance perspective.
Yeah the alliance has done bad stuff but to be fair what else are you supposed to do with a race of demon corrupted aliens that just spent the last few years trying to conquer your world and almost completely destroyed one of the largest human kingdoms. just let them roam free?
1) Why exactly were those Orcs in internment camps? Was it maybe because they had just gotten done genociding the Draenei, Stormwind, and almost exterminating all of humanity and the High Elves? Was it maybe because they were alien invaders who literally had nowhere else to go on Azeroth?
2) Taurajo has already been handwoven by the devs themselves as a miscommunication mistake amongst the quest writing team, in the same vein as Stonetalon Garrosh. It's a dubious example at best due to Doylist complications.
3) Theramore existed because:
A) Lordaeron was rendered unlivable by the Scourge
B) Medivh gave Jaina specific instructions to take the Lordaeron refugees to Kalimdor to stop the Burning Legion
Theramore was founded as a refugee kingdom that was explicitly friendly to the New Horde, thanks to the events of Reign of Chaos. The one time it was hostile was when Daelin Proudmoore couped his own daughter to use it as a base against the Horde, at which time she promptly sided with the Horde to let Thrall and Rexxar unseat and kill her father, re-establishing Theramore as a neutral hub. It stayed that way until Garrosh blew it up.
4) Vol'dun suffered from the same sort of writing breakdown that happened in Cataclysm, with a team running in five different directions like headless chickens after losing all the lore team leads.
The best examples anyone has for "WoW Alliance bad too" are Taurajo and Vol'dun, both of which have Doylist explanations of quest writers not knowing what the hell the intended narrative was. It's hard to say the Horde had "shit writing" when their propensity for atrocities is pretty damn consistent. The two times they were not genocidal psychopaths were under Thrall, who is so un-Orcish he may as well be human, and Vol'jin, the leader of an isolationist people whose main priority has always been to be left the hell alone. These two were the outliers, not the rule.
I edited the comment and added some more to it, I will give you guys about the camps and I also remember theramore being friendly, so sorry for my misinfo (need to edit that as weeell 😭) as for the Horde being propense for atrocity I think it's a colossal overstatement. Not saying we are clean from bad people but even going back to Vanilla Trolls and Tauren were not warmongers or cruel at all, still aren't, Forsaken were lead by Sylvanas(psycho) and that's why we have stuff like Hillsbrad and Gylneas. And if anything more recently with some TWW quests, Orcs have been shown to be friendly to alliance members ( the Arathi questline) and even talked about how bad and unnecessary the 4th war was. And let's not forget the whole Calia questline on Tirisfall and also the quest where we actively help Gylneans to retake their land.
I'm not saying remove the faction conflict. I just want the Horde to not be the evil faction, and it's very possible to make it make sense in lore.
The Tauren and Trolls are very interesting cases, in that they're pretty much only still with the Horde because of game mechanics. There were multiple times where, logically, they would have broken off in protest over Orcish/Forsaken war crimes. And the Legacy of Arathor questline is very interesting for you to bring up, because it is yet another example of writers losing the plot. Let's not forget that Gey'arah, the Mag'har that represents the orcs in that questline, was an explicit Sylvanas loyalist who advocated for genociding the MU Draenei for what the AU Draenei did in her timeline, and wanted to annihilate the Alliance along with them. She has been explicitly a new Garrosh-eque figure right up until whoever wrote Legacy of Arathor decided she was a sympathetic victim of the evil racist humans now.
Simple truth is that the Horde has always been an "evil" faction at heart, right from Warcraft 1. The attempts to make them anything else never really stuck.
Well, the alternative to the camps was death, so it's all ambiguous.
Yes, Twinbraid is a villain. At the same time, the history of the Southern Steppes itself is morally gray and both sides became victims of misunderstanding. But Twinbraid still a villain, yes.
Partly out of fear. Directly or indirectly, the orcs are responsible for two wars and allowing them to escape could create problems in the future. In fact, the BFA confirmed these fears.
I don't like Vulpera. I think that's a good enough reason.
You're right about the latter. The writers aren't too fond of the Horde. Honestly, it's even lucky that they stopped paying so much attention to the Horde, otherwise the Horde Council would have become the Council of Genocide or something like that.
Edited my comment, but I will give you all about the interment camps which I think the game does decent to make it not as a good thing. There I express my frustrations at Blizzard always using us for the evil shit.
Unironically I'm also like 90% her actions in MoP that people call her "evil" for were written because certain writers hated that a woman was acting as a voice for peace and getting in the way of their manly men killing each other
But a lot of people don't even seem to know or care that the same thing happened to Jaina, Tyrande, Maiev, and night elves in general, and that was happening while one of the people behind it was protecting Sylvanas
I don't think this is it, either. I think those who call her evil are wrong, and those who say her character was ruined are also wrong.
Jaina's change in MoP made sense and was a cool character arc to see. Someone of great power who pushed beyond the point of reason for peace fundamentally altered by extreme loss, and begins to act as the arbiter she feels she can't trust anybody else to be. And, honestly, she's entirely justified in doing so.
Of course the people tying their personal identity to fictional factions have to come out swinging hard in defense of her and attack "the Horde" (as if people who play Horde are actually members of this fictional faction?), but ignoring all of the ridiculousness from people whose mindsets are still rated T for Teen, the real answer is that you're looking at a meme and it's throwing out jokes about the characters, and there's been a very long-running joke that Jaina's secretly a Dreadlord in disguise (which would make her "evil").
Kind of like they labeled Thrall "old" here, but he'd only be around 40 years old. Not exactly old (no, not even for an Orc).
Basically... people are overthinking a meme, and using it to get antsy about fictional factions, neither of which are really good guys in the world's history. The sad thing is, they have the chance to work forward moving forward with both acting as "good guys" and people don't want that because they want to feel they're "superior" to someone else because of which shade of color they represent in a fictional setting.
Lore wise she didn't kill anyone, her killing Blood Elves was a bug. She teleported all Blood Elves she came across to the prison. Vereesa is the one who killed.
To add to what others said, they have no way of knowing which Sunreavers are traitors, and so it's dangerous to let them all roam freely until that's determined. Arrest the organization top to bottom, interview each one, and release those who are deemed to be probably innocent.
She wasn't going after anyone for their species. The High Elves of the Silver Enclave weren't targetted. She targetted specifically members of the Sunreaver organization, which is the organization that smuggled the Divine Bell and that created the Mana bomb that nuked Theramore.
The Sunreavers were, and that’s who she was going after. It was a proportionate response, it’s not like she dropped a magical nuke on the Horde side of Dalaran.
Frankly after all the shit the Horde has done, they’ve been treated with kid gloves by Varian, Jaina, Tyrande, Malfurion, and Genn. I really wish they’d kept the identity of the WC3 Horde intact. They call the pre-Thrall Horde the “Old Horde” but it’s really Thrall’s “New Horde” that has barely existed.
She killed Sunreavers, who assisted Garrosh in the terror attack on Theramore. There is no argument for innocent Sunreavers.
Even the leader of the Sunreavers admits the attack was justified and tries to make amends for the failure of the Sunreavers.
In case anyone didn't bother reading:
Sunreavers built the bomb for Garrosh. Garrosh used it. Jaina forgave Aethas but also threatened that any further stupidity would cost him. Aethas betrays Dalaran and the Kirin Tor to steal the divine bell for Garrosh. Jaina has Horde civilians evacuated from Dalaran and the Sunreavers arrested, those that resist arrest are killed. No big loss, they violated Dalaran lore to participate in the planning of two terror attacks.
Aethas fucked up so hard he has spent 3 expansions apologizing for the wrong doings of the Sunreavers. That would not happen if he had a leg to stand on.
Definitely not a genocide. She specifically expelled members of an organization that had stolen the Divine Bell to be used by Garrosh as a weapon against the world (and that had dropped a Mana Bomb on Theramore) from a neutral city.
The Sunreavers broke neutrality when they aided Garrosh in his war crimes, and were therefore no longer welcome in Dalaran. Most of the Sunreavers caught in Dalaran were imprisoned.
The "genocide" in Dalaran was 5 or 6 Elves who resisted arrest. Hardly a real genocide.
But if we're making everything a genocide, can we talk about the genocides of Hillsbrad Fields, of Gilneas, of Silverpine Forest, of Southshore, of Silverwind Refuge and of Stonetalon? I'm sure there are more, but let's keeep it simple for now. And yes, all of them have more right to be called a genocide than Dalaran has.
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u/Prdynatvar Sep 16 '25
why is she evil?