In World of Warcraft, a lot of the fandom is content with the assumption that both sides are “morally grey” and that there’s “good and bad on both sides.” While Blizzard has certainly gone out of its way to paint that narrative with every new edition of Chronicles, the truth is actually a bit more obvious than a lot of you want to admit.
Let’s start off with everyone’s favorite faction, the Horde. Originally formed by the Burning Legion as its auxiliary tool for punishing the Draenei and bringing about the destruction of Azeroth, the Horde was a war machine. Like the war machines of real life, the Horde was not supplied by its own economy and infrastructure, but ate up the land it occupied in order to sustain itself. Like the Ironborn of ASoIaF, a war machine does not sow or plant; and neither does the Horde. This is the only explanation for the exorbitant use of natural resources that the Horde has demonstrated: they burn through a tenth of Ashenvale and are still not satisfied!
So the Horde was in the time of Blackhand, Doomhammer, Gul’dan, and Ner’zhul. When Thrall, son of Durotan, learned of the honorable tribal traditions of the pre-Horde Orcish clans, he endeavored to lead his people to greatness once again; likely his ultimate goal was to reform the Horde more as a nation-state similar to the human kingdoms he had learned about from his education. He met with fierce opposition from his successor, the war-monger Garrosh Hellscream: and, judging by the writing of some of the quests in the re-vamped Cataclysm zones, the fanboys weren’t the only ones sucking Garrosh’s brown dick!
Likely as a result of the Horde’s years of servitude to the fel, the Orcs of Thrall’s Horde viewed his vision for the Horde as a sign of weakness and so opposed it. Garrosh promised a return to the Horde of Blackhand, and so many joined him without question, betraying the new idea of what the Horde was supposed to be. Vol’jin did little more than to keep the Horde alive until his death on the Broken Shore, after which Sylvanas decided to sick the war machine on the world in her quest to make everyone suffer as she had suffered.
Now let’s talk about the Alliance. Unlike the Horde, which existed as far back as Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, the Alliance came about during Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness in response to the destruction of Stormwind by the Horde. Their goal was not to establish a humans only hegemony, like many of the Horde fanboys will tell us, but to defend their world from a wicked threat. And after they did just that, they disbanded. Likely fueled by their progressive narrative which began in Warcraft III and culminated in Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard went out of their way to make the Alliance “the bad guys” in Warcraft III and its predating lore. Everything from internment camps to slavery was levied against the Alliance, as well as the dissolution of the Alliance itself, with the kingdoms going back into their own corners (some of them, like the High Elves, never returning). As if that was not enough, Warcraft III’s expansion The Frozen Throne went to laughable lengths just to make the Alliance look bad by creating what could generously be described as a straw man, Lord Garithos, to depict all humans as angry racists: and then when he became too much of a joke, they brought in Jaina Proudmore’s father to be the serious “evil human.”
But as time went on, the Alliance had been getting the short end of the stick. While the Horde got Saurfang, one of its last honorable characters, back in classic WoW and Garrosh, the fan-favorite murder machine, in Burning Crusade, the Alliance never really got anything beyond the Draenei. It wasn’t until Wrath of the Lich King that the Alliance players began to take more presidence, and their king, Varian Wrynn, became an actual character rather than a place-holder in Alcaz Island. But then in Mists of Pandaria, the Alliance got taken down a few rungs in order to push the narrative that both sides were “morally grey.” Well Garrosh bombed Theramore, so might as well have the Alliance mercilessly gun down helpless Orc sailors off the coast of the Jade Forest, as well as shoving Jaina Proudmore’s face into the mud and dragging her through it so relentlessly that asinine Horde fanboys like taliesin believed her to be a dreadlord trying to tear down their “innocent little Horde.”
Because that’s the deal with the Horde fandom. Having spent the majority of my time as a Warcraft player on the Horde, I’ve seen exactly what they’re like: and it isn’t supporters of Donald Trump, it’s closer to antifa and the ignorant left. The Horde will spew out any number of hitler-esque reasons to justify their need to slaughter, destroy, and commit genocide with reckless abandon – whether it be “lebensraum”, a shortage of resources which they caused, or the nebulous “need to survive” – and then cry foul when the Alliance retaliates against them! I mean, only a liberal expects zero consequences for their actions! You can’t seriously expect that the Alliance is going to take genocide or unwarranted acts of aggression committed by the Horde lying down and just go “oh well, if they need to wipe out an entire race or kill a peaceful city of refugees, who are we to stop them?” That’s what the American left would do!
“But it’s just a game” you retort. Well, yes, faceless internet troll: it is just a game, with a story-line “written” by real people. And those real people are making really bad story-writing decisions. No, not in making Sylvanas “bad” (she’s always been crooked and out for herself), but in their absurd belief that the only way they can make “morally ambiguous situations” is my making the morally good side “evil” while the side who is actively committing evil pretends to have some moral high ground. What Blizzard’s writing team has done is an example of poor writing, which is applicable to writers in the real world.
The Viking Blog 